Chapter Nine The Reception of Grote The copious scholarship and the boldness of Grote’s arguments on the political and social history of ancient Greece impressed the world of classical scholars. Most reviewers welcomed the completely transformed picture of Greek life and politics that emerged from the learned text of the liberal historian. Scholars everywhere praised him for his astounding contextual recreation of Greek political life and for the unique freshness and inexhaustible fertility of his arguments, emphasising that the History was the first attempt to judge the Greeks by their own standards, whether religious, social, or political. Instead, eighteenth-century historians had levelled the severest judgement against the Greek political ethos and democratic ideals out of a profound commitment to constitutional monarchy. Their particular prejudices, being in stark contrast to the Athenian liberal temper, did not allow them to appreciate the liveliness and vivacity of the Athenian faith in democracy. The works of Mitford and Gillies were reassessed in the light of Grote’s work and pronounced to have been expositions of the hatred which the French Revolution inspired in their minds. Their prejudices hampered a proper understanding of Greek antiquity. Their polemical writings, now superseded by the conscientious scholarship of Grote, were designed to convince the readers of Greek history about the dangers of constitutional democracy which, as they never stopped warning, entailed the drastic involvement of the lower classes in the affairs of government. Mitford was criticised because in his voluminous work he gave vent to strong and uncompromising Tory conviction. The reviewer in Tait’s Magazine spoke about Mitford’s involvement in the field of Greek research as a means of ‘eternizing a wretched Pitt politics’; every great act that appeared democratic in his eyes, was offensive ‘to that selfish, sceptical, utterly negative, and all-shivering aristocraticism which they called the conservatism, (save the mark!) of the idol of the then statesmen of England!’.1 John Anster (1793-1867), Regius Professor of Civil Law at Dublin, criticised those writers (Mitford among the most prominent), who had made Greek history the vehicle of their own beliefs.2 The anonymous reviewer in the Eclectic Review did not hesitate to declare Grote’s defence of the Athenian democracy successful not only against Mitford’s ‘libel’ but also against the antidemocratic discourses of Xenophon, Anon., “Grote’s History of Greece”, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 13 (1846) 375. A.D. Lindsay regarded Grote’s defence of Athenian democracy as a ‘natural reaction against the foolish carpings of anti-democratic historians like Mitford’; see “Introduction” to Grote’s History of Greece I vii. 2 J. Anster, “Grote’s History of Greece” [I], Dublin University Magazine 35 (1850) 754. 1 Chapter 9 Plato, and Socrates.3 The London Quarterly reviewer called Mitford’s History a ‘truly monarchical history of Greece’, expressing her delight in the general approbation that Grote’s philosophical history received. 4 John Stuart Mill similarly argued that earlier historians were misled in their judgements by the political passions of the revolutionary era. Grote’s work, Mill believed, surpassed even the best previous achievements, like Thirlwall’s History of Greece. It is hardly imaginable, Mill wrote in the Spectator, that any English historian could surpass such an exemplar of philosophical narrative. The virtues of Grote’s work are so striking, Mill claimed, and the talent of understanding and vividly narrating past events so imposing, that it would not be easy to find a superior work among those published in any country.5 Not surprisingly, Grote’s History was favourably received in America. James Tift Champlin (1811-1882), the editor of Demosthenes, argued that history as written in Europe, ‘and especially in England ... is little else than a high-sounding, many-voiced chorus, chanting the praises of monarchical institutions. The choir historical, like that of the ancient tragedy, has generally been composed of a select class of venerable men surrounding the throne, or sufficiently near it to secure the steadiness of their political sympathies’.6 The New York Quarterly reviewer attacked Mitford for applying the political prejudices of the day to the study of ancient history. Mitford’s ‘ignorance of the true spirit of antiquity’, according to this reviewer, ‘and his atrocious style, got possession of the ground, and held it, and diffused more error and prejudice with his four quartos than quartos ever diffused before’.7 Cornelius Conway Felton (1807-1862), the American classicist and president of Harvard in the early 1860s, pointed out that the influence of party spirit on the works of the British historians had significantly lowered their authority. Standing at either the Tory or the Radical extreme, historians had looked upon the events of ancient history in the light of their political persuasions. Mitford in particular, wrote under ‘the panic then created in Tory breasts by the French Revolution’.8 Lewes not only contrasted Grote’s work with those of his British predecessors but also with the ‘somewhat narrow and pedantic Germans’ whose works, though full of imagination, lacked trustworthiness. 9 Leonard Whibley (1863-1941) similarly contrasted Grote with the ‘old school of historians represented by Böckh Anon., “Grote’s History of Greece”, Eclectic Review 22 (1847) 290. M. Foster, “Grote’s History of Greece”, London Quarterly Review 7 (1856) 51. 5 J.S. Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece - Vol. V and VI”, The Spectator (3 March 1849), reproduced in Newspaper Writings 1122. 6 J.T. Champlin, “Grote’s Greece”, Christian Review 16 (1851) 483-4. 7 Anon., “Grote’s Greece”, New York Quarterly 3 (1854) 110. 8 C.C. Felton, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany 48 (1850) 294-5. Grote’s impact on Felton is present in his Greece, Ancient and Modern, 2 vols. (Boston 1866). 9 G.H. Lewes, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Westminster Review 46 (1847) 385. 3 4 246 The Reception of Grote and K.F. Hermann, and caricatured by Mitford’, who accepted without reserve the blame cast on democratic Athens by ancient writers.10 The Germans, according to Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), Professor of Poetry at Oxford, though long occupied with the writing of books and treatises related to every branch of Greek antiquities, never produced a commanding work on Greek political history. In 1846, Milman argued, German literature lacked a full and complete history of Greece.11 Similarly, George Cornewall Lewis (1806-1863) maintained that the general characteristic of the most eminent German historians of antiquity is ‘that they are sceptical as to received facts, but credulous as to their own hypotheses, or the favoured hypotheses of some of their own school’.12 According to James Wycliffe Headlam (1863-1929), Grote systematically applied his political experience to the interpretation of Greek history in a safe and productive way. His experience and quick intuition in dealing with political matters helped him to get useful and fascinating insights into Greek life.13 But Grote’s reviewers were at variance as to the actual extent and propriety of his using modern concepts and analogies in his exploration of ancient history. In Eduard Meyer’s (1855-1930) judgement, for instance, Grote wrote a passionate political pamphlet, giving up historical precision to serve political objectives. 14 The Radical politician, he argued, wrote not a history but an apology for Athens. The reviewer in the Christian Examiner criticised Grote for allowing his political and philosophical beliefs to stand on the same level as objective factual statements, thus taking ‘collective Athens under his particular protection’. He could not ‘bear that the Athenian people - the Demus ... should ever be placed in the wrong’.15 Similarly, Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) spoke of a ‘preconceived opinion, which has sometimes a detrimental effect on the work of that excellent historian’, whereas the great Hellenist Ulrich von WilamowitzMoellendorff (1848-1931) believed that the historian subjected his source material to ‘an absolute belief in liberalism’. 16 The nationalist historian E.A. Freeman commented on Grote’s ‘love of paradox’, presumably the result of his avowed partisanship. Despite the liberal prejudice the History had a calm and dignified tone: ‘Mr Grote’s political views 10 L. Whibley, Political Parties in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge 1889) 2. H.H. Milman, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Quarterly Review 78 (1846) 113. 12 G.C. Lewis, “Grote’s History of Greece” [I] Edinburgh Review 91 (1849) 121. 13 J.W. Headlam, Election by lot at Athens (Cambridge 1891) xiii. 14 E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 5 vols. (Stuttgart 1893-1915) III 239. 15 N.L. Fronthingham, “Grote’s History of Greece” 62, 59. 16 Ranke, Universal History, trans. D.C. Tovey and G.W. Prothero (London 1884) 269n. Grote’s ‘epoch-making History of Greece’, wrote Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History of Classical Scholarship 153, ‘treated Athenian democracy in terms of modern liberalism. The book is based on a conscientious study of the literary sources, and the writing is highly effective, in the manner of political pamphleteering’. On Wilamowitz’s reception of Grote, see Chambers, “George Grote’s History of Greece” 20. 11 247 Chapter 9 colour his judgments, but they in no way colour his statements.’ 17 In reviewing the first American edition, William Watson Goodwin (1831-1912) praised the ‘true liberal spirit’ that pervaded the whole work, noticeably for the first time in an English historical project. 18 William Henry Smith (1808-1872), the philosopher and poet, after criticising those who had converted the history of Greece into a field for modern party political disputes, pointed out that apart from an occasional political tone in some of Grote’s observations, there was nothing discreditable in the scholarship of the ‘too liberal politician’. 19 In fact, commentators were divided between those who believed that the use of modern analogues for purposes of illustration added significantly to the outstanding qualities of the work, and the reviewers who refused to acknowledge the use of such parallels. Of the latter group, George H. Emerson (1822-1898) suggested that Grote’s excellence primarily consisted in that he did not view ancient Greece through the spectacles of modern society. The criteria extensively applied by Grote in drawing the distinction between just and unjust actions, moral and immoral behaviour, expedient and inexpedient policies, were those the ancients themselves would have endorsed. In this respect, Emerson wrote, Grote ‘makes himself a contemporary of the people whose history he records’: ‘Surely, this Mr. Grote, must be a Greek! ... [I]t requires a conscious effort of reflection to be assured, that our author is an Englishman of the nineteenth century’. 20 In the same way, Mill emphasised that Grote’s narrative is ‘a picture of the Greek mind’, and Grote himself eventually becomes ‘a Greek’. No writer, in Mill’s view, had made the reader enter into the religious feelings of the Greeks as Grote did. 21 William Smith, whose review article of 1856 as Harriet Grote told us pleased the historian, contrasted Grote’s History with previous writings (with the notable exception of Thirlwall) that placed the Greeks under the severe judgements of modern political and religious standards. Grote, on the contrary, Smith maintained, divested himself of modern ideas and ‘transports himself into Hellenic society’, endeavouring to ‘view the events of Grecian history with the eyes of a contemporary, and to realise to his own mind the various phenomena of Grecian thought and feeling’.22 Lewis Richard Packard (1836-1884), well-read in German scholarship, argued that Grote, though an Englishman whose friends were among the leading liberal politicians and reformers, ‘Englishman as he was, he made himself, by study and habit, at home in the Greek world, and able to look Freeman, “Grote’s History of Greece” 143. W.W. Goodwin, “Grote’s Greece”, North American Review 78 (1854) 151. 19 W.H. Smith, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 62 (1847) 144-5. 20 G.H. Emerson, “Grote’s History of Greece”, The Universalist Quarterly and General Review 14 (1857) 55-6, 62. Emerson called Grote’s work ‘the noblest contribution to historical literature, which the present century has furnished’ (65). 21 Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II] 332. 22 W. Smith, “Grote’s History of Greece” Quarterly Review 99 (1856) 62; similarly Anton, Masters in History. Gibbon, Grote, Macaulay, Motley 90. 17 18 248 The Reception of Grote upon events in its life as if he had been an Athenian’. 23 Georg Friedrich Schömann (1793-1879), the German historian and classical scholar, similarly underlined Grote’s ability to empathise with the ancient Greeks. Grote, Schömann observed, could live with the ancient Greeks. He could feel as a contemporary of the people whose life he narrated; he could penetrate their innate thoughts and sentiments, hopes and intentions, fears and passions. As a consequence, he could have easily been misled into identifying himself with the interest of a specific sect or a particular actor. Nonetheless, Schömann concluded, the liberal historian managed to remain an impartial observer, whose ‘liveliest sympathy with the actors does not impair the independence and impartiality of his judgment’. Grote’s familiarity with the ancient sources as well as his profound admiration of the Greek spirit and intellect are so deep and exhaustive that ‘he can live, as it were, with the ancient Hellenes; and he thinks and feels as a contemporary of the men whose acts and destiny he narrates’.24 One of Grote’s major contributions is related to his success in changing the attitude of classical scholars respecting Athens. In a new popular History of the Ancient World, Philip Smith (1817-1885) associated in a clear and unambiguous way Athens’ legacy - her ‘unique position in human history’ - with the fact that the Athenian people enjoyed the blessings of political freedom.25 There is no evidence, Smith asserted, that liberty and its fruits, cultural richness and variety, resulted in ‘licentiousness’ as Grote’s predecessors had almost unanimously contended. The picture of Athens was emerging lively and bright; frequently idealised. Grote succeeded in showing, Mill wrote enthusiastically in the Spectator, that the Athenian government was of surpassing excellence, its time and circumstances considered; that no other form of society known to the ancients realized anything approaching to an equal measure of practical good government; and that this was mainly owing to the nearer approach which it made to democratic institutions ... It was a government of unlimited publicity, and freedom of censure and discussion. Public officers were subject to effective responsibility. The L.R. Packard, “Grote and Curtius”, New Englander 34 (1875) 127-8. Curtius, according to Packard provided a ‘presentation of the life of ancient Greece as modern scholarship has unfolded it ... Grote’s work, on the other hand, was from beginning to end peculiarly personal and private ... [T]he work itself bears in every chapter the stamp of his individual character, the evidence of having been wrought out by a single mind, grasping, ordering, and interpreting by its own independent judgment materials furnished from the greatest variety of sources’ (124). Packard translated Hermann Bonitz’s Über den Ursprung der Homerischen Gedichte, The Origin of the Homeric Poems (New York 1880). See his Studies in Greek Thought, published posthumously (Boston 1886). 24 G.F. Schömann, Athenian Constitutional History as represented in Grote’s “History of Greece”, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (Oxford and London 1876) 1; The original German title of Schömann’s book was Die Verfassungsgeschichte Athens nach G. Grotes “History of Greece” (Leipzig 1854). 25 P. Smith, History of the Ancient World, 3 vols. (London 1873) I 467. 23 249 Chapter 9 tribunals, being multitudinous and appointed by lot, were like modern juries, generally incorrupt. And there was no distinction in political rights and franchises between poor and rich, lowborn and high born. That the Athenian institutions on the whole were eminently favourable to progress, is shown by the splendid development of individual intellect during the three or four generations that this form of society lasted ... Nowhere else in antiquity was respect for law so deeprooted a principle as at Athens ... Nowhere in Greece were life and property so secure against every kind of legal or illegal violence.26 The Athenians were now often represented as a noble people who, in the course of their long imperial predominance, displayed ‘moderation and good faith’. Rather than unsteadiness and inconstancy, Freeman wrote, the citizens of Athens were characterised by an obstinate resistance to changing their minds. A deplorable example of this peculiar conservatism was the confidence shown in Nicias just before and during the fatal expedition to Sicily. 27 Mill similarly argued that in changing their opinions, the Athenians were not ‘fickle’, as had been maintained by the antidemocratic historians, but ‘mobile’. The citizens of Athens were outstandingly faithful to their constitutional rules. If we are to ascribe to them any peculiar characteristic, Mill said, this should be their ‘easy and good-natured a confidence’, manifest in their practice to tolerate citizens who constantly worked to subvert democracy, like Peisander and Antiphon. 28 Ernst Curtius (1814-1896), Professor of History at Berlin, went a step further arguing that the constitutional arrangements of the Athenians were conceived in ethical terms. The ideal of democracy was associated with a moral vision. Thus the democratic constitution promoted ‘fidelity, justice, love of truth, and readiness for self-sacrifice’.29 According to Lewis, Grote had rendered justice to the character of the Athenians. The fifth-century Athenians were firmly faithful to their constitutional arrangements. The democratic ethic was promoted through the principle of participation in decisions of common concern, coupled with the commitment of the minority to comply with the public will.30 Participation became a civic responsibility. Mistakes, maintained the Putnam’s reviewer, were certainly Mill, “Grote’s Greece”, The Spectator 16 March 1850 , vol. 23, no. 1133, 256, reproduced in Newspaper Writings 1161. See also W. Smith “Grote’s History of Greece” 82: ‘Nowhere were life and property so secure; nowhere did citizens submit more readily to legal and constitutional restraints; and nowhere, notwithstanding the jokes and taunts of the comic poets, was there a more equitable government, or a more impartial administration of justice.’ 27 See Freeman, “Grote’s History of Greece” 159, 160-61. See also G.W. Cox, who criticised Nicias for ‘caring more for the policy of his party than for the wider interest of his country’, History of Greece, 2 vols. (London 1874) II 187-8; and G. Rawlinson, A Manual of Ancient History, from the earliest times to the fall of the Western Empire (Oxford 1869) 173. 28 Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II] 317, 327. 29 E. Curtius, History of Greece [original German title, Griechische Geschichte, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1857-67)] trans. A.W. Ward, 5 vols. (New York 1867-75) I 428. 30 G.C. Lewis, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II], British Quarterly Review 13 (1851) 317-8. 26 250 The Reception of Grote committed in the course of Athens’ long imperialist hegemony. But they grew ‘not out of their [the Athenians’] democracy but out of a departure from the policy of the democracy’. In focusing on these mistakes, and on the so-called unchecked advance of individual ambition within democracy, writers had cast much injustice against the ‘liberal system of the noble city’. Grote, with his vast and varied learning, succeeded in reversing the old misconceptions, thereby creating a revolution in Greek historiography. 31 The prolific Greek scholar Richard Jebb (1841-1905) could now confidently argue that Periclean Athens was ‘the most perfect example of Greek civic life; an imperial city, in which the fullest individual freedom was enjoyed without prejudice to the strength of the State; ... a great seat of industry and a focus of commerce’. 32 Grote, according to William M. Gunn, ‘mastered the records of antiquity, so that they have become part and parcel of his mind’. It is not surprising therefore that he revolutionised the field of classical studies. In patient, unwearied industry, combined with independent judgement and originality of view, he surpassed most of the best examples set before him. 33 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881), a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, wrote that the student of classics derives from Grote’s examination of the political and social aspects of Greek life, ‘a flood of light, in which the particular facts of the history stand out, as if for the first time, in distinct and intelligible relation with each other’. The liberal historian with his ‘strict attention to the laws of evidence, with a masculine sagacity and common sense’ overthrew the entire interpretative tradition. ‘Through the microscope of scholarship he has gazed upon their [the classical authors’] words till every shade and fibre of their meaning has manifested itself to his discerning vision, and revealed to him the general laws of the mind which was working through them’. 34 Another prolific classicist, John Pentland Mahaffy (1839-1919), praised Grote’s History as the best political commentary on classical texts ever written, equal in rhetorical and intellectual effect to the political speeches of Demosthenes. Grote’s success, Mahaffy pointed out, depended on his ‘genuine historical sense and Anon., “Grote’s History of Greece”, Putnam’s Monthly Magazine 8 (1856) 186-7. G.W. Cox, The Athenian Empire (London 1888, 6th ed.), argued that Athens’ subject-allies had no special grievance against the imperial city, for its policy was by no means oppressive. 32 R. Jebb, Essays and Addresses (Cambridge 1907) 122. 33 W.M. Gunn, “Gods and Heroes of Legendary Greece”, Classical Museum 5 (1848) 126. If Grote, wrote Stephen, The English Utilitarians III 340, ‘was able to rival or to surpass German professors on their own ground, it was because his want of some of their special training was more than counterbalanced by his experience of business and public life. In Threadneedle Street and at Westminster he had acquired an instinctive perception which served him in describing the political and economical conditions of Athenian life. When joined with an ardour for research that power gave a value to his judgments of fact which enabled him to write a model history’. Grote, Stephen argued, ‘resembled an ideal judge investigating evidence in a trial’ (338). 34 A.P. Stanley, “History of Greece”, Quarterly Review 86 (1850) 387-8; similarly, Felton, “Grote’s History of Greece” 299-300. 31 251 Chapter 9 appreciation of proper evidence’, which was quite foreign to Curtius and other philologists who were engaged in the study of Greek politics.35 Grote’s History received recognition and approval in Europe and the United States soon after its publication. Characteristically, there appeared French, German and Italian translations of the voluminous work.36 Following the publication of Grote’s monumental work, Curtius, Julius Beloch (1854-1929), Adolf Holm (1830-1900), and Schömann in Germany, published independent studies on Greek history, thus replacing the various ‘Manuals’ which offered precious and trustworthy collections of factual information but not a corpus of critical analysis.37 As Momigliano observed, German professors took Grote’s challenge seriously: ‘All the German studies on Greek History of the last fifty years of the nineteenth century are either for or against Grote. The German scholars produced their famous series of Greek histories in answer to Grote.’ 38 In France, Jean Victor Duruy (1811-1894) published between 1886 and 1891 a 35 J.P. Mahaffy, A History of Greek Literature, 2 vols. (London 1910, 5th ed., 1st ed. 1890) II, Part II 106, 86n. 36 In France the History was trans. by Alfred L. de Sadous, 19 vols. (Paris 1864-7); in Germany by N.N.W. Meissner and E. Höpfner, 6 vols. (Leipzig 1850-55); in Italy by Olimpia Colonna, Storia della Grecia antica, incomplete, 4 vols. only (Napoli 1855-58). In the United States it was published in 12 vols. (New York n.d., 1848?-58); 12 vols. (New York 1853-72); 12 vols. (New York 1875-80); and 12 vols. (New York 1899); there is also a reprint of the 1888, 6th London ed., 10 vols. (New York, n.d., but possibly 1888-89). Extracts of it appeared in T. Fischer, trans. Griechische Mythologie und Antiquitäten, 4 vols. (Leipzig 1856-60); T. Fischer, trans. Lebens und Charakter-Bilder griechische Staatsmänner und Philosophen, 2 vols. (Königsberg 1859). 37 J. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, 3 vols. (Strassburg 1893-1900); see also his Die attische Politik seit Perikles (Leipzig 1884); A. Holm, Griechische Geschichte, 4 vols. (Berlin 1886-91), vol. 4 trans. by Frederick Clarke (translators of vols. 1-3 not known) as History of Greece from its Commencement to the Close of the Independence of the Greek Nation, 4 vols. (London and New York 1894-98). In sympathy to the Athenian democrats Holm can be compared with Grote. See vol. II 205, 209, 217-9, 367 (defence of Cleon). Of G.G. Schömann, see The Antiquities of Greece, trans. E.G. Hardy and J.S. Mann (Oxford and Cambridge) 1880. Interestingly, Ch.V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, Introduction to the Study of History, trans. G.G. Berry (London 1898) 310, considered Grote’s History as the first ‘model’ of ‘critical-scientific’ exposition of historical material. 38 Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History 13. See Momigliano’s learned essays on German historians, Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. G.W. Bowersock and T.J. Cornell (Berkeley 1994). Hermann Müller-Strübing, according to Momigliano ‘wrote what amounted to a pamphlet of 735 pages against the German adversaries of Grote’; see Aristophanes und die historische Kritik (Leipzig 1873). Johann Jacoby made extracts from Grote for purposes of political propaganda: see, Geist der griechischen Geschichte, Auszug aus Grotes Geschichte Griechenlands, nach dessen Tode hrsg. von F. Rühl (Berlin 1884). Wilhelm Oncken, Athen und Hellas. Forschungen zur nationalen und politischen Geschichte der alten Griechen, 2 vols. (Leipzig 1865-66), expanded on Grote’s views, esp. in his chapters on Pericles, Cleon and Thucydides. See also K. Lehrs, Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum (Leipzig 1875). R. von Pöhlmann (1852-1914) examined Grote’s History from a Marxist point of view in his Aus Altertum und Gegenwart (München 1895) 315-42. 252 The Reception of Grote comprehensive Histoire des Grecs. The arguments of the liberal French historian and politician (minister of public instruction from 1863 to 1869) were largely consistent with Grote. For Duruy, Athens should be praised for securing to ‘her people the largest political liberty, and to the individual the freest development of the abilities given him by nature and education’. 39 Even in Greece, the nationalist scholar Konstantinos Paparrêgopoulos (1815-1891), Professor of History at the newly established University of Athens, praised Grote for the introduction of a critical method and analysis into the study of Greek history and for correcting long-established misunderstandings. Pericles, Paparrêgopoulos remarked apparently with Grote in mind, ‘reminds us of those English politicians, who, from the concerns of public life move to the tranquillity of theoretical study - not at the cost of their political duties; for that study in fact provides them with the necessary energy to achieve their practical purposes’.40 On two occasions worth mentioning, Grote’s arguments provoked ill feelings and fanned the flames of controversy. On the first occasion, the historian was violently attacked by Richard Shilleto (1809-1876), classical scholar at Cambridge. The tone of Shilleto’s critique presents an example of the spirit in which historical research was conducted prior to Grote. In the opening sentences of his pamphlet, Shilleto confessed that he had opened and read Grote’s work with great prejudice against its author, ‘the prejudice of one not ashamed to call himself a Tory against one not (I believe) ashamed to call himself a Republican of one proud of an Academical Education against one disregarding such a position’.41 Shilleto’s explicit purpose was to defend Thucydides’ reliability against Grote’s assertion that the historian of the Peloponnesian war had misrepresented the demagogue Cleon. As is known, Grote believed that Thucydides was hostile to Cleon because the demagogue, after the loss of Amphipolis, convinced the Athenians to send him into exile. It is uncertain, Shilleto argued, whether Thucydides was really exiled. This uncertainty derives from Thucydides’ own indistinct use of ‘pheugein’ (depart), which leaves doubts as to the form of phygê (V 26): in other words, it might have been a voluntary 39 Duruy, Histoire des Grecs, 3 vols. (Paris 1886-1891), trans. M.M. Ripley, History of Greece, 4 vols. (London 1892) II 633. According to Roberts, Athens on Trial 12, the ‘effect of Grote’s work on continental historians was enormous. This impact is attested in an amusing footnote to the second edition of the Histoire Crecque of Victor Duruy ... In this note Duruy relates that his idiosyncratic preference for Athens over Sparta in his first edition of 1851 had earned him a severe chastisement from the administration of his university on the subject of his “temerities”; but since the publication a year later of Grote’s assessment, he reports, his view has attained respectability.’ 40 K. Paparrêgopoulos, Historia tou Hellenikou Ethnous, 5 vols. (Athens 1860-74) I 528 (my translation). See also a complimentary reference to Grote in, Peri tis archês kai tis diamorphôseôs tôn phylôn tou archaiou hellenikou ethnous [On the Origins and Formation of Ancient Greek Tribes] (Athens 1856) 1-2. See also a reference to Grote by G. Mistriotis, Ta aitia tou archaiou kai tou neoterou politismou [On the Causes of Ancient and Modern Civilisation] (Athens 1891) 18. 41 Shilleto, Thucydides or Grote? (Cambridge and London 1851) 1. 253 Chapter 9 rather than a legal exile. To lend support to the idea of a voluntary exile, Shilleto employed a number of sophisms to show that the Athenians had reasons not to banish the historian. Cynically, the Cambridge scholar concluded that he was ‘happy’ that Grote was ‘not a member of either of the old Universities of our land’. It is not impossible, Shilleto stated, ‘that the foregoing strictures may provoke an unfriendly reader to say that I have been dipping my pen in gall as well as in ink. I may be so, but I would not desire to re-write a single sentence’.42 The historian never replied to Shilleto, but interestingly his brother, John Grote (1813-1866), who was then Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge, undertook to provide a reply partly ‘by a feeling of justice in respect of Mr. Grote’s History, which ... Mr. Shilleto has handled most offensively and most ungenerously’; partly however, by his desire to defend the reputation of the University of Cambridge as a source of intelligent classical criticism - a reputation, John Grote observed, unavoidably impaired.43 But the most intense criticism was provoked by Grote’s unfavourable picture of Alexander the Great. Grote’s Alexander contrasted sharply with the idealised hero drawn earlier under the contemporary Prussian impulse of nationalism by Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884), Professor of History at Berlin from 1859 to 1884.44 Significantly, while Grote was writing his conclusive chapters of the History, tracing what he thought was the tragic end of Greek autonomy under the Macedonian sword, a younger generation of scholars became increasingly concerned with national politics. The clash was inevitable. With Grote, Freeman argued, Alexander becomes ‘a Barbarian instead of a Greek’, because the historian erroneously believed that the Macedonian king systematically interfered Thucydides or Grote? 21, 32. Shilleto’s hostility to Grote provoked Goodwin to speak of ‘the insolent pamphlet of Mr. Shilleto, who seemed to consider Mr. Grote’s classical criticism as a daring trespass of an outsider upon some private property of the University of Cambridge’, “Grote’s Greece” 165; and Mahaffy about his ‘foolish hostility to Grote’, History of Greek Literature II, Part II 118. Such a hostile attack on Grote was repeated twenty years later by John Ruskin, who excluded Grote from Sir John Lubbock’s list of the ‘one hundred best books’. In this decision, he was led by a conviction that ‘there is probably no commercial establishment between Charing-cross and the Bank whose head clerk could not write a better one if he had the vanity to waste his time on it’. Quoted in G.M. Royce, “Ruskin vs. Gibbon and Grote”, New Englander and Yale Review 45 (1886) 954. 43 John Grote, A few Remarks on a Pamphlet by Mr. Shilleto entitled “Thucydides or Grote?” (Cambridge and London 1851) 1-2. 44 Droysen, Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Hamburg 1833); see also his Geschichte des Hellenismus, 2 vols. (Hamburg 1836-43). See Grote’s critique in the History XII 191, 193, 195 n. Niebuhr, who was an ardent champion of liberty and possessed of a bitter hatred against the Bonapartist militaristic imperialism, disapproved of the Macedonian rule, which in his view aimed at subjugating Greece. See Vorträge über alte Geschichte, herausgegeben von Marcus Niebuhr, 3 vols. (Berlin 1847-51), trans. L. Schmitz, Lectures on Ancient History from the Earliest Times to the Taking of Alexandria by Octavianus, 3 vols., (Philadelphia 1852) II 308-309; quoted in J.R. Knipfing, “German Historians and Macedonian Imperialism”, American Historical Review 26 (1921) 658. 42 254 The Reception of Grote with the governments of the Greek cities, and that the result of Alexander’s imperialism was to asiatise Hellas instead of hellenising Asia. Grote, Freeman went on, failed to understand that as ‘the pioneer of Hellenic cultivation, [Alexander] became in the end the pioneer of Christianity. He paved the way for the intellectual empire of the Greek and for the political empire of the Roman. And it was the extent of that empire, intellectual and political, which has marked the lasting extent of the religion of Christ’.45 In the same fashion, Donne criticised Grote for misrepresenting the story of Alexander. In the last two volumes of his great work, Grote ‘dropped the calmness of the judge and adopted the prejudices of the advocate. He sees only with the eyes and hears only the ears of Demosthenes and his faction; forgetting the peculiar temptations of the orator to exaggerate, of the party-leader to misrepresent the acts and motives of his opponents’. Thus, Grote saw the Macedonian king as a rude and ruthless destroyer of Greek freedom, driven by sheer ambition in his imperialist march. Grote, Donne contended, failed to realise that Alexander had genuinely identified himself with the cause of the Greeks, namely, to conquer Persia and civilise the barbarians by opening the way for the diffusion of the arts and literature of Greece. ‘The conquests of Alexander enlarged the borders of the civilised world: those who drank the waters of the Oxus and Hyphasis learned to reverence the name of Athens and Delphi: the long-sealed kingdom of Egypt was brought within the European pale: Alexandria received and cherished the embers of Hellas, became for ten centuries the centre of commerce and literature.’ 46 The Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates did not win immediate popularity. Scholars were by no means ready to accept an interpretation of Plato coming from an author for whom the principles of utilitarianism were a secular gospel. Indeed, it appeared rather incongruous that a utilitarian would become a student of the ‘father of Idealism’. 47 Grote’s work on Plato was thus received with scepticism. This is understandable, if we consider that it seemed a disguised advocacy of philosophical liberalism and, in many respects, a misinterpretation of E.A. Freeman, “Alexander the Great”, in Historical Essays, second series (London 1889, 3rd ed.) 183, 196, 212, 221. Cf. the approving account of Grote’s presentation of Alexander as a ‘NonHellenic conqueror’ by F. Jacox, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Bentley’s Miscellany 39 (1856) 533-50. 46 W.B. Donne, “Grote on Alexander the Great”, National Review 3 (1856) 53-4; similarly, Julius Kaerst (1857-1930), Forschungen zur Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen (Stuttgart 1887), and Geschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters (Leipzig 1901). In these works, Kaerst maintained that Alexander, who only adopted the ideas of his epoch, should not be convicted of mad ambition. Alexander was extolled for promoting the political unification of Hellas. See also the observations of Theodor Lenschau in “Die Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert, Griechische Geschichte”, Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 124 (1905) 166-67. 47 SeeTurner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 286, 385; Clarke, George Grote 143. 45 255 Chapter 9 Plato’s philosophy. Even Thomas Hare (1806-1891), the political reformer, emphasised the differences between the Plato and the History: The style is distinctly inferior - less finished, more involved and diffuse, resembling more the outpouring of a well-filled note book than the harmonized issue of sustained reflection. Of Plato’s thoughts and teaching we have an adequate picture, and many criticisms, all acute, some profound, of his distinctive doctrines; but of the man himself, his etherial charm, his exquisite grace, his subtle humour, his distinction, his urbanity, scarcely a trace; all has vanished in the crucible of a destructive analysis ... Hare, like many scholars at the time, believed that Grote’s activity as a historian of ancient Greek thought had been constrained by his intellectual background and ideological vision: Grote, Hare said, was unable to give a fair account of Plato because he ‘had early adopted the tenets of a somewhat narrow philosophy, and he never entirely shook himself free from the trammels of pure Benthamism’. 48 Predictably, however, on the appearance of Grote’s Plato, the indefatigable John Stuart Mill published a long encomiastic review. Unlike most contemporary scholars, Mill did not detect in Grote’s analysis any traces of hostility towards Plato. What commentators understood as ‘hostility’ was, in his view, a shift of emphasis from the systematic - dogmatist Plato to the sceptic, dialectician philosopher. Grote, Mill argued, reacting to the German systematic approaches, and indeed the entire tradition of Platonic interpretation, rightly placed emphasis on Plato as the continuator of Socratic philosophising. He correctly shed light on Plato as the philosopher who propounded in writing the ‘necessity of a scientific basis and method for ethics and politics, and of rigorous negative dialectics as a part of that method’. By using the historical method, and in meticulously assessing the source material that comes from antiquity, Grote showed that the ‘enemy against whom Plato really fought, and the warfare against whom was the incessant occupation of the greater part of his life and writings, was not Sophistry, either in the ancient or the modern sense of the term, but Commonplace. It was the acceptance of traditional opinions and current sentiments as an ultimate fact’. Grote successfully proved that Plato’s illustrious place in the history of philosophy is not linked to the dogmatic ethical and political speculations which he defends in his constructive pieces. While Plato’s philosophical significance, however, is essentially related to his dialectic discourse, it should be pointed out that a careful reading of the constructive dialogues would establish that the philosopher was in many respects the predecessor of modern utilitarianism. Plato’s remarks respecting the true end of government, the happiness of the community, and his ‘vigorous assertion of a truth, of transcendent importance and universal application - that the work of government is a Skilled Employment’ (the 48 T. Hare, “The Personal Life of George Grote”, Westminster Review 100 (1873) 170. 256 The Reception of Grote work of persons competent with ‘a large and liberal general education, followed by special and professional study, laborious and of long duration’), are in complete harmony with the intrinsic claims of utilitarianism. The point of view from which Platonic questions are treated by Grote, Mill wrote in his conclusions, ‘is that of the Experience philosophy, as distinguished from the Intuitive or Transcendental: and readers will esteem the discussions more or less highly according to their estimation of that philosophy’.49 Of those who highly esteemed ‘Experience philosophy’, and accordingly Grote’s Platonic analysis, were Lewes and Bain. Both expressly believed that Grote’s treatment of Plato produced a seminal work, comparable to an encyclopaedia of ‘quæstiones platonicæ’. Lewes found nothing to disagree with Grote, even on the most controversial issues: thus, Plato never framed a coherent, premeditated philosophical system; the dialogues were not to be praised for their consistency (in fact they are full of contradictions). Plato is not consistent even in the application of the Socratic method. The amount of positive thought to be found in Plato, Lewes argued, is assuredly very small. The amount ‘of knowledge scarcely rises above zero. But the dynamic influence of this thinker, who for twenty centuries has been a great intellectual force ... still remains, and will ever remain, a source of power’. Further, Lewes agreed with Grote on the most debatable aspect of his dealing with Plato, namely his defence of the authenticity of all dialogues transmitted from antiquity in the classification of Thrasyllus. There is no point in excluding any Platonic composition, Lewes asserted, since all are ‘self-contradictory’.50 Bain, Grote’s posthumous editor, in his review essay provided in effect a résumé of the Plato, displaying throughout complete coincidence with the interpretation and critical ideas there expounded. Bain approved of the distinction drawn by ‘the liberal reformer and the ballot-moving politician’ between the negative dialogues and the dialogues of exposition – a distinction that served both as an interpretative tool and as an essential criterion of J.S. Mill, “Grote’s Plato” Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 383, 403, 418-20, 438, 440; first published in Edinburgh Review 123 (1866) 297-364. 50 Lewes, “Mr. Grote’s Plato”, 173, 183; similarly, Frank B. Jevons, A History of Greek Literature: From the Earliest Period to the Death of Demosthenes (London 1886) 475, 477, 481-2. Grote’s argument respecting the authenticity of the entire Thrasyllean canon was criticised amongst others by Blackley, “The authenticity of the works of Plato” 283; A.W. Benn, “Plato and his Times”, Westminster Review 114 (1880) 392; B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 5 vols. (Oxford 1892, 3rd ed.) I xii. Whewell disagreed with Grote on the chronology of the dialogues; see “Grote’s Plato” 411-23. Interestingly, Whewell, in a letter addressed to the historian on 12 Aug. 1854, encouraged Grote to embark on his Plato: ‘Now in all my previous speculations about Plato and his companions, I have found all the views at which I have arrived so completely overpast, and superseded by the clearer, better, and more solidly demonstrated views, which you have given in your History’, etc., Posthumous Papers 131-2, emphasis added. Interestingly, the title of Grote’s work might have been inspired by his communication with Whewell. 49 257 Chapter 9 evaluation.51 Similarly in France, Léo Jubert, after explaining why he considered Grote greatly indebted to Comte and to Positivism, commented on the critical and ingenious presentation of the dialogues of Plato that eventually left the reader free to determine for himself whether he agreed with the ‘liberal’ and pluralistic treatment of Grote or with the traditional and systematic approach.52 The Westminster reviewer, the historian James Richard Thursfield (18401923), ventured to predict that the Plato ‘will be talked of by many, read by few, and thoroughly appreciated by fewer still’. Plato, Thursfield argued, ‘has been at all times the philosophical bulwark of the great Conservative party ... It must be admitted that he embodies their favourite theory of Athenian history ... Of course, too, popular and fashionable writers often have a word to say on Plato. To them he appears in the disguise of a melancholy man, with dreamy eyes and a pale brow - the Byron of the fifth century B.C.’. Grote, who devoted a lifetime to the study of Greek life and character, Thursfield went on, set out to upset the conventional treatment. For the liberal historian of Greece, no consistent scheme could be deduced from the various dialogues of Plato, in which there are countless contradictions. On the whole, whether one looks to the quantity or quality of the various compositions, Grote’s analysis proved that the position Plato occupies in the history of philosophy is due to the searching and critical character of his investigations, rather than to his expository schemes or dogmas. But this conclusion alone would greatly displease the traditional Platonist, the scholar who adheres to the philosopher as a great constructive genius, the ‘idealist and poetic dreamer’. This ‘Platonist’ would not feel at home with Grote’s rational Plato. 53 Campbell, editor of Plato’s Theaetetus (1861), Sophist and Politicus (1867), rigorously objected to Grote’s sharp distinction between the dialogues of Search and the dialogues of Exposition. Positive and negative compositions, Campbell argued, are substantially intermingled, in the sense that Plato’s negative procedures had always a definite positive aim. Positive tendencies may be found even in dialogues that had no concretely affirmative result. The variety of Plato’s style and ideas do not necessarily involve contradictions. Campbell’s major disagreement concerned however Grote’s criticism of Plato’s ethical theory. Virtue, Campbell wrote, ‘is intrinsically good: and this goodness consists in conformity to a perfect law or principle. The good or blessed life is variously described as the imitation of, or becoming like to God, as the harmonious acting of a soul at peace with itself, or, metaphorically, as the health of the soul. To this A. Bain, “Grote’s Plato: the Negative, or Search Dialogues”, and “Grote’s Plato: the Affirmative, or Exposition Dialogues”, Macmillan’s Magazine 12 (1865) 193-208, 457-472. See also Bain’s “On Early Philosophy”, Macmillan’s Magazine 14 (1866) 148-160, which borrows a lot of ideas from Grote. 52 L. Jubert, “Platon et l’ école socratique devant la critique moderne”, Revue Contemporaine 48 (1865) 602, 628-9. 53 J.R. Thursfield, “Mr Grote’s Plato”, Westminster Review 84 (1865) 459, 462, 482. 51 258 The Reception of Grote ideal Mr. Grote applies the rule of Utilitarian Ethics’. It is exactly his particular commitment to utilitarianism that misled the historian into believing that Plato’s theory of virtue was self-regarding.54 Campbell’s criticism of Grote’s understanding of Platonic ethics was taken up in a formidable, well-substantiated work written by Thomas Maguire (1831-1889), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. In his scholarly Essays on the Platonic Ethics, partly written for the task of refuting Grote’s arguments, Maguire argued that Grote had confounded Plato’s moral philosophy with modern utilitarian ethics. Plato’s idealism and Grote’s utilitarian philosophy inescapably clashed. Plato’s aim in the Republic, which Grote failed to see, was to ‘illustrate the ethics of the individual’. The object of ‘the treatise is individual Ethics’. Thus, the analogy between the city and individual man, which Grote decisively rejected, was perfectly justifiable. 55 In the same context, but in a less scholarly way, the Macmillan’s essayist contended that Grote’s Plato was the offspring of the secularist school of utilitarianism, whereas Jowett’s ‘historical’ Plato was the true apostle of asceticism and moral truth, the champion against contemporary materialism.56 Edward Caird (1835-1908), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, similarly highlighted the tension between Grote’s philosophical discipline, the gospel of Benthamite utilitarianism and Plato’s idealism. Grote, Caird argued, being at the opposite intellectual pole from Plato and lacking the necessary imagination for understanding the great idealist philosopher, failed to see that ‘self-sacrifice’ was central to Plato’s moral and political scheme. Plato’s individual, Caird asserted in a quite obvious Hegelian spirit, is eventually lost in Reason and so he has nothing left to himself: individual will is lost in mind, and thus a person becomes completely unselfish. ‘Plato does not, it is true, speak of Campbell, “Grote’s Plato” 144. See also Campbell, The “Theaetetus” of Plato, (Oxford 1883, 2nd ed.) vii: Grote’s ‘steadfast utilitarian point of view has made it hard for him to do real justice to Plato’s meaning’ in the Theaetetus. The same criticism was put forward by Campbell in his article on Plato that appeared in the 11th ed. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge 1911) XXI 811. For his approach to Plato, see also his interesting review of Whewell’s, The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers in the Quarterly Review 112 (1862) 306-347. 55 T. Maguire, Essays on the Platonic Ethics (London, Oxford and Cambridge 1870) 34-7. As Grote’s ‘tenets’, Maguire stated in his “Preface”, ‘are identical with the tenets, which Plato spent his life in opposing, and as they exhibit modern Positivism in its most improved form, the admirer of Plato will not regret Mr. Grote’s critique ... And we may be tolerably certain, that if Mr. Grote’s exposition, which is professedly derived from the text of Plato, pure and simple, can be answered without exceeding the same limits, the Academy need fear no new assault.’ Similarly, the anonymous reviewer of “Jowett’s Plato”, London Quarterly Review 37 (1871) 79, believed that Grote could not ‘refrain from elaborating a picture of the Platonic philosophy, and, trying it by the standard of the system he himself favours, pronounces it unsatisfactory’. 56 Anon., “The Study of Plato”, Macmillan’s Magazine 24 (1871) 81-83; similarly, A. Day, Summary and Analysis of the Dialogues of Plato (London 1870) iv, argued that Grote ‘belongs to the sensational school of Mill and Bain rather than to that of Plato, and is not wholly in sympathy with him’. 54 259 Chapter 9 sacrificing one’s individual will and pleasure to the pleasure or good of others, but rather of sacrificing all individual will to reason, to that higher nature which is incapable of being the object of selfish impulse.’ 57 In the same fashion, Jowett, in the “Preface to the first edition” of his translation of Plato (1871), thought it necessary to address to Grote personally the following words in which deep respect and disagreement manifestly co-exist: If Mr. Grote should do me the honour to read any portion of this work he will probably remark that I have endeavoured to approach Plato from a point of view which is opposed to his own. The aim of the Introductions in these volumes has been to represent Plato as the father of Idealism, who is not to be measured by the standard of utilitarianism or any other modern philosophical system. He is the poet or maker of ideas, satisfying the wants of his own age, providing the instruments of thought for future generations ... He may be illustrated by the writings of the moderns, but he must be interpreted by his own, and by his place in the history of philosophy. We are not concerned to determine what is the residuum of truth which remains for ourselves. His truth may not be our truth, and nevertheless may have an extraordinary value and interest for us ... It will be seen also that I do not agree with Mr. Grote’s views about the Sophists; nor with the low estimate which he has formed of Plato’s Laws; nor with his opinion respecting Plato’s doctrine of the rotation of the earth. But I “am not going to lay hands on my father Parmenides” [Soph. 241 d.], who will, I hope, forgive me for differing from him on these points. I cannot close this Preface without expressing my deep respect for his noble and gentle character, and the great services which he has rendered to Greek Literature.58 The liberal historian, according to certain critics, left in too much of modern philosophical bias to colour his interpretation of Plato’s Theaetetus, where the sophist Protagoras is involved. Not surprisingly, Grote’s understanding of Protagoras’ ‘man-measure’ doctrine was hotly challenged. According to Grote, Protagorean subjectivism was not confined to sense perceptions, but it extended to the whole world of the phenomenal and noumenal objects. Further, Grote contended that the ‘man-measure’ doctrine of the sophist offers the only basis on which philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’ can stand. The Protagorean formula was not meant to lower the force of argumentative scrutiny; on the contrary, it allowed freethinking and secured mutual respect and toleration. But Grote’s critics received these arguments as being equal to a vindication of an all-embracing theory of relativism, that resulted in questioning the possibility of objective truth. Campbell, for instance, believed that Grote’s argument on the man-measure doctrine was similar to Pyrrhonian scepticism, inasmuch as it confounded mere individual belief with a belief grounded on evidence. Edward Meredith Cope 57 58 E. Caird, “Plato and the other Companions of Socrates”, North British Review 43 (1865) 382. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato I xi-xii. 260 The Reception of Grote (1818-1873) of Cambridge, translator of Plato’s Phaedo, went so far as to produce a separate work to refute Grote. His principal object was to defend Plato against the charges of prejudice and inconsistency ‘so freely brought against him by Mr Grote in his recent work’. The Cambridge scholar believed that Protagoras had taken a narrower view of the man-measure doctrine than Grote assumed. Overall, Grote’s theory of relativism, Cope argued, lacked theoretical persuasiveness. Mathematics and the sciences could not stand without the certainty that some objective standards exist as realities per se. In the domain of axiomatic sciences, ‘individual judgment is for no value’. Here we are in need of the artist, the man of skill and specific knowledge. 59 The most interesting criticism of Grote’s analysis of the Homo Mensura doctrine came from Mill, who otherwise was in total agreement with Grote’s interpretations. The truth of an opinion, Mill remarked, is a different thing from the reception of it as true in so far as it involves reference to an external standard. Things are relative to the believing mind, but most importantly are relative to the matter of fact which the belief is about. ‘We grant that, according to the philosophy we hold in common with Mr. Grote’, wrote John Stuart, ‘the fact itself, if knowable to us, is relative to our perceptions - to our senses or our internal consciousness; and our opinion about the fact is so too; but the truth of the opinion is a question of relation between these two relatives, one of which is an objective standard for the other.’ 60 The protest raised against Grote’s interpretation of Protagorean thought was only a part of the wider reaction to his overall defence of the sophists. Alexander Grant (1826-1884), the Aristotelian scholar, confessed that the ‘paradox’ of Grote’s arguments on the sophists excited in him a protest against it, which found expression in the first edition of his The Ethics of Aristotle in 1857. In 1885, when the fourth edition of this work appeared, Grant could admit that ‘[t]ime and reflection and the remarks of various scholars who have taken part in the controversy, would seem to necessitate the modification of that protest’. Not only there were eminent sophists in the fifth century but some of them, like Protagoras, taught doctrines that showed the way to ‘critical philosophy’ and inaugurated the Campbell, “Grote’s Plato” 144, and The “Theaetetus” of Plato viii, 254-5: Protagoras made the ‘man-measure’ principle the end of the inquiry, and not like Socrates the starting point of it; E.M. Cope, Plato’s “Theaetetus” and Mr Grote’s Criticisms (Cambridge 1866) 3, 14, 27. See also G.T. Kingdon, An Essay on the “Protagoras” of Plato in which a reply is furnished to some modern critics (London and Cambridge 1875), a work apparently designed to refute Grote; and J. Watson, “Plato and Protagoras”, Philosophical Review 16 (1907) 469-87, who continued the discussion in the early twentieth century. Cf. F.C.S. Schiller, Plato or Protagoras? Being a critical examination of the Protagoras’ speech in the “Theaetetus”, with some remarks upon error (Oxford and London 1908), esp. 8, 16-7, 22. Schiller agreed with Grote that Protagoras was a great pragmatist and Plato’s attempt to reduce his philosophy to mere sensationalism was motivated by his onesided intellectual idealism. 60 Mill, “Grote’s Plato”, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics XI 427. 59 261 Chapter 9 ‘science of ethics’. 61 Arguably, in distinguishing between the able sophists of the fifth century and their quite inferior counterparts of the fourth, Grant might have been influenced by the philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) who declared Grote’s vindication of the sophists to be a ‘historical discovery of the highest order’.62 According to Sidgwick, in showing that the sophists were not the charlatans portrayed in the traditional reception, and that the first generation of sophists included renowned intellectuals, Grote managed to restore them to an integral position in the history of Greek thought. Even Cope, who undertook to defend the traditional view of the sophists, spoke of Grote ‘with the respect due to the great name which he has made himself in literature, and the important services which he has conferred upon Greek history’. In the case of the sophists, in Cope’s judgement, Grote invested his account with great ingenuity, furnishing new and plausible conclusions. The historian proved, for instance, that the Athenians ‘had in no respect degenerated’ during the course of the fifth century, and that ‘the personal character and personal morality of the Sophists were neither above nor below the ordinary standard of the time’. 63 From Scotland, Blackie, who was generally averse to the new interpretation of the sophists, admitted that there was nothing ‘necessarily bad or immoral in the profession or teaching of a sophist; some of them, evidently, such as Protagoras and Prodicus, even on the witness of their great adversary Plato, were very proper and respectable gentlemen’. 64 The German historian of philosophy, Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915), drew abundantly on Grote, asserting that the ‘Sophists are ... first and foremost the bearers of the Greek Enlightenment. The period of their activity is that of the expansion of scientific culture ... Their work was first directed, with an eye to the people’s needs, to imparting to the mass of people the results of science’. 65 Grote’s defence of the sophists also influenced the way scholars treated Plato’s testimony regarding them. Plato’s derogatory representation of the sophists, it was argued, had been dictated by his profound hostility towards Athenian democracy. Thus Mure, the classical scholar, agreed with Grote that the charges against the sophists ‘may be ascribed to the spirit of malicious exaggeration in which Plato, 61 A. Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle, 2 vols. (London 1885, 4th ed.) I 105, 131-2, 134-5, 154. H. Sidgwick, “The Sophists” (reproduced from the Journal of Philology 4 (1872) 288-307) in Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (London 1905) 323. See the second part of this article in the Journal of Philology 5 (1873) 66-80. 63 Cope, “The Sophists”, The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology 1 (1854) 146, 148. See also “On the Sophistical Rhetoric”, Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology 2 (1855) 129-69. Interestingly, Cope dedicated to Grote his Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Cambridge 1867). 64 Blackie, Four Phases of Morals. Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism 30. Similarly C.W. Collins, Plato (Edinburgh and London 1874) 25, argued that the teaching of the sophists ‘was directed to the practical requirements of life and ... [they] supplied a recognized want in the education of the age’. 65 Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy 111. 62 262 The Reception of Grote throughout, handles [their] character and habits’. 66 Gilbert Murray (1866-1957) similarly pointed to the unfairness of depending on Plato to describe the sophists who, after all, were ‘the spiritual and intellectual representatives of the age of Pericles’.67 Even the theologian Edwin Hamilton Gifford (1820-1905), who edited the Euthydemus, called attention to the extreme contrast between ‘the stigma ... affixed by Plato to the name “sophist” and its original use as a title of honour’. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Gifford observed, Plato’s representation of the sophists was assumed to have closely corresponded with their real character. ‘But the confidence with which this view was entertained received a sudden shock when Mr. Grote published his famous defence.’68 If Plato, however, criticised the sophistic movement, he did not conceal his respect for distinguished sophists. In his introductory remarks to the edition of the Gorgias, Thompson argued that Protagoras’ discourse ‘is quite as moral in its tendency, and at least as elegant in style’. Thompson further acknowledged that the treatment of the sophist Gorgias by Plato, in the dialogue that bears his name, ‘is respectful rather than contumelius’. 69 In the same spirit, Robert Blakey (17951878), Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Queen’s College, Belfast, observed that ‘it may safely and consistently be admitted, that there might be many distinguished and able men among the Sophists, who really and disinterestedly laboured for the solid and useful instruction of mankind’. The conventional treatment of the sophists as quibblers and the enemies of tradition had been corrected, Blakey continued, ‘by some writers of judgments and reputation; [and] in particular, by Mr Grote’. 70 Under Grote’s influence, scholars began to examine individual sophists, accepting that they differed in some important respects from one another. Indeed, the first step to appreciating the sophists in modern times was the recognition that Plato’s portrait of them as a general type of character was a misrepresentation. 66 W. Mure, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, 5 vols. (London 1850-57) IV 37n. 67 G. Murray, A History of Ancient Greek Literature (London 1898) 161, 164; similarly, J.W.G. van Oordt, Plato and the Times he lived in (Oxford 1895) 114-16. 68 E.H. Gifford, The “Euthydemus” of Plato (Oxford 1905) 43. 69 Thompson, The “Gorgias” of Plato iii-iv. G. Lodge similarly acknowledged that Plato represents Gorgias as a man of ‘upright aims and high attainments’, Plato’s “Gorgias” (London 1890) 15. A.M. Adam, Plato, Moral and Political Ideas (Cambridge 1913) 56, believed that Plato spoke of Protagoras and Prodicus, though not of Hippias, with great respect. Similarly, F.A. Cavenagh, The Ethical End of Plato’s Theory of Ideas (London 1909) 9, expressed his agreement with Grote in holding that Plato treated Protagoras with marked respect. 70 Blakey, Historical Sketch of Logic 14. Similarly, A.W. Benn criticised Zeller for his insistence on the ‘old’ idea of the sophists, pointing out that that misconception had been ‘long ago corrected by Grote’, “The Place of Socrates in Greek Philosophy”, Westminster Review 114 (1880) 28. Zeller, however, in his “The development of monotheism among the Greeks”, Contemporary Review 4 (1867) 367, confessed that the sophists deserve a high place in history. See also Plato and the Older Academy (London 1876) 183. 263 Chapter 9 Grote’s argument that the sophists were not a sect or school, and that there was no community of doctrine, eventually received general acceptance. Scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century often called attention to a ‘degenerate class of sophists’ which differed both socially and intellectually from a more elevated class that included Protagoras and Gorgias. The distinction did not deny the existence of a common tendency that permeated the movement as a whole. But this common feature, the tendency to make philosophy relevant to human life, was the result of diverse methods and distinct theoretical approaches. 71 The former class was in Plato’s day represented by Euthydemus and his brother and it can be called the ‘interrogating’ class as contrasted to the ‘lecturing’ class which included sophists of the greatest ability. 72 The idea that gradually prevailed respecting the sophists, and effectively passed through into the twentieth century, was the one summarised by John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927) in the Cambridge Ancient History. The sophists, Bury stated, ‘were simply itinerant professors; collectively they performed the functions of a university in Greece. They were polymaths; the Sophist engaged to give a complete training to a pupil, to impart instruction in every possible subject and prepare him for a good life, and for all the duties devolving on a citizen’.73 Grote’s understanding of Socrates, which was of a totally different stamp from the traditional treatment,74 similarly took scholars by surprise, but ultimately proved of tremendous influence. Henry Bleckly (1812-1890) believed that no picture of Socrates ‘can be more distinct and clear than that which is drawn by Grote. It bears the impress of impartiality and truth, doing justice ... to the Athenian people, and not less so to Socrates’. In Socrates, Grote found the unrivalled energy of a philosophic genius, of analytical vigour and precision, as well as the Baconian radical spirit which paved the way for the development of See the remarks of R.W. Mackay, The “Sophistes” of Plato (London and Edinburgh 1868); Cope, “The Sophists” 181; A.W. Benn, The Philosophy of Greece (London 1898) 144; R. Adamson, The Development of Greek Philosophy, ed. W.R. Sorley and R.P. Hardie (Edinburgh and London 1908) 69. 72 See G.H. Wells, The “Euthydemus” of Plato (London and Cambridge 1881) xii; and F.D. Maurice, Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, 2 vols. (London 1882, 2nd ed., 1st ed. 1854) I 116, 118-9). 73 J.B. Bury, “Athens, 478-401 B.C.”, in Cambridge Ancient History, ed. J.B. Bury, S.A. Cook, F.E. Adcock (Cambridge 1958, 1st ed. 1927) V 377. In books dealing with the history of education, published during the first decades of this century, the sophists occupy a prominent place: W. Boyd, The History of Western Education (London 1968, 1st ed. 1921) 21-4; P.R. Cole, A History of Educational Thought (Oxford and London 1931) 30-31; H.I. Marrou, Histoire de l’éducation dans l’Antiquité, Paris 1965. 74 Which was represented in A.P. Stanley’s friendly critique of Grote, “Socrates”, Quarterly Review 88 (1850) 41-69, and partly represented in R.M. Wenley, Socrates and Christ. A Study in the Philosophy of Religion (Edinburgh and London 1889). Cf. an uncommonly hostile treatment of Socrates by Henry Highton (1816-1874), in his Dean Stanley and Saint Socrates. The Ethics of the Philosopher and the Philosophy of the Divine (London 1873). 71 264 The Reception of Grote formal logic. Socrates established Ethics as a separate subject of inquiry, showing that it should rest on a profound philosophical basis. By his teaching and example, Socrates explicitly defended the right to individual dissent. Having said all that, Grote acknowledged that Socrates, who in theory did not appear to have advocated the democratic system of government, in practice fully enjoyed democratic liberty. Nowhere but in the Athenian agora could he practice his negative dialectic; no other city would have tolerated him for almost fifty years. 75 While subsequent generations saw in the face of Socrates the immortal genius, great in thought and consistent in action, the Athenians, according to the Cornhill reviewer, saw ‘little more than an eccentric old gentleman, poor, of no great social or civic repute, who was meeting them daily at every point and corner of the city with ideas and recommendations opposed to their dearest instincts and oldest prejudices’.76 Socrates disregarded all profitable labour and abstained from all political business; no doubt, his practices gave to the industrious citizens of Athens the impression that he led a remarkably idle and purposeless life. Even Zeller remarked that Socrates must have appeared to his contemporaries a ‘strange person, altogether unlike anyone else’. His convictions were fundamentally opposed to the beliefs the Greeks cherished, and his habits were foreign to those of his contemporaries. His general manner of life, as well as his constant argumentation, were sufficient reasons for rendering him odious to his fellow citizens.77 Under Grote’s influence, scholars started to explore anew the grounds for Socrates’ condemnation to death. James Riddell (1823-1866), the great classical scholar of Oxford, in his edition of the Apology ascribed Socrates’ condemnation to the fact that the Athenians could not endure Socrates (whom they confounded with the sophists) in the growing political sensitivity of the restored democracy after the terrifying events of 404. Twenty years later, another editor of the Apology, George Stock, after paying his tribute ‘to the inexhaustible mine of learning contained in Grote’s writings’, went on to argue that the Athenian H. Bleckly, Socrates and the Athenians (London 1884) 6, 42: Bleckly emphasised that Socrates’ career confirms the ‘general fairness and toleration of the Athenians’. M.I. Finley’s statement echoes Grote’s understanding: ‘It was in Athens that he [Socrates] worked and taught, freely and safely, for most of his long life; and what he taught was hostile, down to its very roots, to much that Athenians believed and cherished. No one threatened him or stopped him. The Athenians are entitled to have their record judged whole for the two centuries in which they lived under a democracy, and not solely by their mistakes. So judged, it is an admirable record, or argument for a free society. Ironically both Plato and Xenophon ... idealized Sparta as against Athens. Sparta was the Greek closed society par excellence. There Socrates could never have begun to teach, or even to think.’ See “Socrates and Athens”, in Aspects of Antiquity (London 1968) 72. 76 T.H. Healey, “The Socrates of the Athenian People”, Cornhill Magazine 9 (1864) 579. 77 Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools 78-9. See also D.F. Nevill, The “Apology of Socrates” (London 1901) 18-9; and the remarks of A. Leigh, in his popular The Story of Philosophy (London 1881) 61-2. F.W. Bussell, The School of Plato (London 1896) 91-2 believed, like Grote, that Socrates’ mission was negative not constructive. 75 265 Chapter 9 ‘dicasts went home to their supper that day [of the trial] with the comfortable assurance that they had conscientiously discharged their duty as good citizens’. 78 Alfred Denis Godley (1856-1925), fellow of Magdalen College, in his ambitious biographical sketch of Socrates, argued that there was a great difference between the Socratic view of politics and the views held by the Athenian democrats. It was this substantial difference of political philosophy that eventually led to Socrates’ condemnation. Another reason that explains his unpopularity was the novelty of his religious persuasion. Socrates never lost an opportunity to chastise his compatriots for having only a superficial knowledge of piety. 79 Under Grote’s impact, contemporary scholars also started to inquire into the relationship between Socrates and the sophists. The traditional idea of Socrates as a professional enemy of the sophists was interestingly questioned, amongst others, by Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894), who recognised, like Grote, that the idea of Socrates as the enemy of the sophists originated ‘through the influence of Plato’.80 Grote had argued that Socrates was the continuator of the humanitarian movement. His method originated from within the sophistic movement and not in opposition to it. In effect, both Socrates and the sophists wished to emancipate individuals and strengthen their critical insights. Yet, as Theodor Gomperz (18321912) observed, Grote’s devoted disciple in Germany, Socrates was a philosophical radical in a way the sophists were not. His tendency was to demolish the old foundations in order to establish the new principles of the ‘Science of Ethics’. The sophists were more conservative in their aspirations, more positive in their instructions. They taught what the age asked for in harmony with social and historical requirements. 81 Another German scholar, Ueberweg, accepted Grote’s argument to the effect that there was a line of continuity between Socrates and the sophists. The instruction of the sophists, their disputes (eristic) and scepticism, paved the way for the destruction of the established commonplace.82 J. Riddell, The “Apology” of Plato (Oxford 1867) xxix; G.W.J. Stock, The “Apology” of Plato (Oxford 1887) 4, 22. Stock edited also the Meno, 2 vols. (Oxford 1887), the Crito (Oxford 1891); and the Euthyphro and Ion (Oxford 1909). F. Ueberweg similarly held that Grote developed ‘very comprehensively and exactly’, the political bearings of the trial; see Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie [1862-66], trans. G.S. Morris, History of Philosophy, 2 vols. (New York 1874) I 82. 79 A.D. Godley, Socrates and Athenian Society in his day. A Biographical Sketch (London 1896) 43. On the question of Socrates’ departure from the values of democracy, see, from the first generation of classical scholars in the twentieth century, G.C. Field, Socrates and Plato. A Criticism of Professor A.E. Taylor’s “Varia Socratica” (Oxford and London 1913) 10-11; and J.T. Forbes, Socrates (Edinburgh 1913) 69-70. Cross’ Socrates, the Man and his Mission is in every respect indebted to Grote. 80 W.O. Pater, Plato and Platonism (London and New York 1893) 88. 81 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers II 80. 82 Ueberweg, History of Philosophy I 72-3, 80-81. Sidgwick went even further and denied any differences between Socrates and the sophists; see “The Sophists”, in Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant 338. J.H. Hyslop argued that Socrates was ‘a sophist in the best sense of that term’: in 78 266 The Reception of Grote The conventional idea was that Socrates had been a leader of a school and that he developed a system of doctrines. He upheld a definite philosophical system that comprised the principles of ethical action. He pretended ignorance; but in reality he was a qualified teacher and an earnest reformer. In the early 1860s, the traditional assessement was questioned. 83 Socrates, the London Quarterly essayist wrote, ‘had no theories to defend’. 84 Like Descartes, Socrates came primarily to demolish, to employ the negative arm of his thought in order to clear up the mind from a priori confidence. The author in the Dublin Magazine, who enthusiastically accepted Grote’s estimation of Socrates’ philosophical significance, argued that Socrates’ novelty was to be found in his negative elenchus.85 David Binning Monro (1836-1905), the founder of the Oxford Philological Society in 1870 and a distinguished Homerist, argued that Socrates was not dogmatic in any sense; he was an indefatigable researcher who even believed himself to be an unsuccessful researcher. It was his method of inquiry, in a period dominated by metaphysical curiosity, that secured to him the perennial debt of philosophy.86 CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have examined the reception of Grote by his contemporaries and by the generation of scholars that came after him. His reappraisal of Athenian democracy, his critical examination of Platonic Philosophy, the new light thrown on the eccentric personality of Socrates, the rehabilitation of the sophists, and generally his scholarly investigations into Greek antiquity along with the vast learning crammed into his works astonished his readers. It has been shown that in the second half of the nineteenth century the novelty of his arguments sometimes surprised and delighted classical scholars in Britain, Europe and the United States. At other times, however, it provoked a vigorous criticism, especially by scholars regard to method, Socrates was a sophist, The Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (New York and London 1903) 26; similarly, W.W. Merry, Aristophanes, “The Clouds” (Oxford 1879) viii; W.H. Thompson, “The Nubes of Aristophanes”, Journal of Philology 12 (1882) 171; and J.D. Morell, Manual of the History of Philosophy (London 1885) 55. 83 And even earlier; see the introductory remarks in Wayte, Platonis “Protagoras” viii. 84 Anon., “Jowett’s Plato” 96. 85 W. MacIlwaine, “The Mission of Socrates”, Dublin University Magazine 82 (1873) 304. Similarly in Italy, Antonio Labriola (1843-1904) argued that Grote was perfectly right in not ascribing to Socrates any principia, or sets of opinions. See Socrate (Bari 1947, 4th ed.; 1st ed. 1871). Quoted in M. Montuori, Socrates, An Approach (Amsterdam 1988) 28-9n. In France and Germany Grote influenced considerably the arguments and the historical and philosophical pictures of Socrates put forward by A.J.É. Fouillée, La Philosophie de Socrate, 2 vols. (Paris 1874); August Döring (1834-1912), Die Lehre des Sokrates als soziales Reformsystem (München 1895), and Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, 2 vols. (Leipzig 1903); Alfred Croiset (18451923), Histoire de la littérature grecque, 5 vols. (Paris 1887-1899), and Les democraties antiques (Paris 1909). 86 D.B. Monro, “Jowett’s Plato”, Quarterly Review 131 (1871) 496. 267 Chapter 9 who attributed that novelty, or ‘the paradox’ of his ideas, to his utilitarian philosophical influences and his avowed liberalism. Yet, even scholars who belonged to opposite schools of thought and whose ideas were formed in the context of distinct theoretical traditions (Jowett, Blackie and Zeller for instance) retained many of Grote’s ideas in shaping their own interpretive constructions. Grote’s scholarly achievement was by all means impressive. He showed that all questions related to Greek political history and philosophy should be resubmitted to critical examination. The traditional interpretations appeared to him biased and running counter to historical facts. At the time, his works were a triumph of critical analysis, of historical testimonies, of clear judgement and liberal temper. His chapters on the constitutional and social progress of the Greeks, of Greek culture and religion, were based on a critical method that overlooked no ‘trivial’ material, no record from ancient times, and no secondary source from contemporary scholarship. Grote’s influence went far beyond his immediate audience. Time showed that Grote’s contribution was far more influential and stimulating than some of his contemporaries could have ever imagined. 268 

Chapter One The Scholar and the Radical On the 17th of November 1794, George Grote was born at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, in Kent. 1 He was of German ancestry through his paternal grandfather, Andreas Grote, who had left Bremen and settled in London in 1731, where he founded the firm of Kruger and Grote, merchants, in Leadenhall Street. Andreas Grote’s prosperity as a merchant led to the establishment of the bankinghouse of Grote, Prescott, and Company in 1766. Young George was raised in an austere, evangelical environment influenced by his mother’s (Selina Grote) side of the family. At the age of five and a half, already educated in elementary Latin, he was sent to the Grammar School at Seven-oaks where he remained for four years. In September 1804, at the age of ten, he was sent to his father’s school, Charterhouse, where, along with Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875), the future historian of ancient Greece, he received a classical education extending from Homer to Virgil and including a great deal of verse composition. On the completion of his studies at Charterhouse at the age of sixteen, his father, who had no sympathy for his son’s academic pursuits, took George into the family business, the bank in Threadneedle Street. The youthful Grote subsequently pursued a path of self-education with outstanding dedication becoming an accomplished polymath and polyglot. It is interesting to speculate that had Grote continued his formal education within the disciplinary walls of Cambridge or Oxford, classical studies and intellectual history would most likely have been deprived of both a new history of Greece and a work on Plato which radically transformed both fields. The turning points in Grote’s life have largely been considered to be his meeting with James Mill (1773-1836) through the economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) and, soon afterwards, his coming under the personal influence of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The emphatically polemical intellect of Mill at first disappointed the young Grote. ‘I have met Mill often at his house’, he wrote in a letter of May 1819, and hope to derive great pleasure and instruction from his acquaintance, as he is a very profound thinking man, and seems well disposed to communicate, as well as clear and intelligible in his manner. His mind has, indeed, all that cynicism and 1 The standard biography of Grote is that written by M.L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (London 1962). See a shorter biography by John Vaio, “George Grote”, in W.W. Briggs and W.M. Calder III, ed. Classical Scholarship. A Biographical Encyclopedia (New York and London 1990) 119-127. Chapter 1 asperity which belong to the Benthamian school, and what I chiefly dislike in him is, the readiness and seeming preference with which he dwells on the faults and defects of others - even of the greatest men! But it is so very rarely that a man of any depth comes across my path, that I shall most assuredly cultivate his acquaintance a good deal farther.2 Setting aside his reservations, Grote assiduously sought instruction from the elder Mill and the ascendancy of the latter’s powerful mind over his young companion soon became apparent. He rapidly seized on Mill’s ideas and adopted a resolute antipathy towards aristocratic and monarchical government, together with a strong conviction in favour of representative democracy and a profound opposition to the established Church and the clerical body. 3 By the late 1820s, Grote, distinguished for his ‘knowledge and clear vigorous thinking’, had emerged as a mature utilitarian, a radical in politics, and a resolute atheist, to the utter satisfaction of his mentors and companions. 4 All that is except Harriet Lewin (1792-1878), Grote’s wife, whom Lady Eastlake and the Lewin Letters reveal as a woman of strong aristocratic temperament and a rather authoritarian personality. 5 For Grote, she thought, was forced to sacrifice his imagination and poetic sensitivity to rigid and unimaginative intellect. 6 (The poems of his youth were published for private circulation after his death, in 1872.) At this early period, related Harriet, the aversion ‘to everything tinctured with aristocratic tastes and forms of opinion, which animated George Grote’s mind, obliged his wife to relinquish her intercourse with almost all families of rank and position, rather than displease her (somewhat intolerant) partner’. 7 2 Harriet Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote (London 1873) 21. On Mill’s political theory, see R.A. Fenn, James Mill’s Political Thought (New York and London 1987). See further, inter alia, L. Stephen’s classic, The English Utilitarians, 3 vols. (London 1900) II; E. Halévy, La Formation du radicalisme philosophique, 3 vols. (Paris 1901-4), trans. M. Morris, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (London 1928); T. Ball, ed. James Mill: Political Writings (Cambridge 1992) xi-xxxvii; J. Hamburger, “James Mill on Universal Suffrage and the Middle Class”, The Journal of Politics 24 (1962) 167-90; W.R. Carr, “James Mill’s Politics Reconsidered: Parliamentary Reform and the Triumph of Truth”, Historical Journal 14 (1971) 553-80; W. Thomas, “James Mill’s Politics: The Essay on Government and the Movement for Reform”, Historical Journal 12 (1969) 249-84; and The Philosophic Radicals. Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841 (Oxford 1979), a work that situates Mill’s thought in the political context of his times. 4 See an intellectual portrait of the young Grote in a letter addressed by James Mill to Macvey Napier (editor of a supplement to the sixth ed. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1814-24), on the 3rd January 1821. In that letter Mill entreats Napier to publish Grote’s ‘truly philosophical discourse on the subject of Magic’; quoted in A. Bain, James Mill: A Biography (London 1882) 193. 5 See T.H. Lewin, ed. The Lewin Letters. A Selection from the Correspondence and Diaries of an English Family, 1756-1884, 2 vols. (London 1909). 6 See Lady Eastlake, Mrs Grote: A Sketch (London 1880) 43. 7 The Personal Life of George Grote 43. 3 2 The Scholar and the Radical Grote derived a great deal of valuable instruction from James Mill. However, in his historical writings and philosophical explorations, he retained much of his idiosyncratic modesty and scarcely indulged in his mentor’s dogmatism. Moreover, he never managed, despite his expressed willingness, to appropriate to himself Mill’s stoical analgêsia, that is to say, indifference towards individual affections that the elder Mill seems to have considered detrimental to lofty aims and harmful to moral character. Harriet, whom George eventually married in 1820 after overcoming his father’s objections, was always the sentimental antidote. A Victorian lady of high aspirations and sociable instincts, she seems to have controlled Grote’s life and spurred him on whenever he was struck by lack of confidence or showed signs of his natural tendency ‘to retire into his shell, to despond, to take opposition as an excuse to retire from the fray’.8 With typical frankness, Richard Cobden (1804-1865) wrote in his diary of June 1837: ‘I was yesterday introduced to Mrs and Mr Grote at their house. I use the words Mrs and Mr Grote because she is the greater politician of the two. He is a mild and philosophical man, possessing the highest order of moral and intellectual endowments, but wanting something, which for need of a better phrase, I shall call devil.’9 It is from her that we learn many personal details, anecdotes, and general biographical information about the historian. The Personal Life of George Grote ‘owes its origin to the entreaties addressed to me in 1864-1865’, wrote Harriet, by more than one of our intimate friends, that I would furnish some account of Mr. Grote’s early history. Reluctant as I felt to enter upon new literary labours, at an advanced period of life and with very infirm health, I at last yielded to their importunity, and began (in 1866) to collect such old letters and journals as I had preserved, in the view of weaving them into a biographical form. Being thus occupied on one morning of (I think) the year 1867, Mr. Grote came into the room. “What are you so busy over, there, H.?” enquired he. “Well, I am arranging some materials for a sketch of your life, which I have been urgently invited to write by several of our best friends.” “My life,” exclaimed Mr. Grote, “why, there is absolutely nothing to tell!” “Not in the way of adventures, I grant; but there is something, nevertheless - your Life is the history of a mind.” “That is it!” he rejoined, with animation. “But can you tell it?” It is perhaps no accident that the greatest part of Grotes’ correspondence was addressed to Harriet, evidence of her overwhelming presence in conducting her husband’s relationships with the outside world. Notwithstanding her constant exhortations and positive aid, she failed, however, to bring forward the publication of Grote’s grand project, a new history of ancient Greece, prior to his long engagement with party politics. The London banker and other radicals who 8 9 Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals 413. Quoted in J. Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London 1881) I 136-7. 3 Chapter 1 comprised the famous debating class of 182710 won seats in parliament for the first time after the Reform Act was passed in 1832. Among them were John Arthur Roebuck (1801-1879), Sir William Molesworth (1810-1855) and Charles Buller (1806-1848).11 This is not the place to concentrate on the political affairs of the 1830s and the involvement of the Radicals, but a few words are relevant to understanding Grote’s position in the most crucial decade of his life, years of struggle and disillusionment that left an enduring effect upon his mind, and explain the rationale of his turning to scholarship in the early ’40s for solace. When the great Reform Act of 1832 was passed, Grote could no longer resist the pressing invitation of his radical companions. Accordingly, he announced himself as a candidate for the City of London which, after his election, he continued to represent from 1833 to 1841. During that period the reformed House of Commons witnessed the ascendancy, the decline, and the fall of the Whig Government under Charles Grey (1764-1845) and Henry W. Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848). Grote was known as the most dedicated advocate of the Ballot and, not surprisingly, his maiden speech was delivered on that topic, an hour’s ‘oration’ that impressed almost everyone with its forceful argumentation and the calculated symmetry of its sentences. 12 He again brought forward the Ballot in 1836 but found himself unassisted by the Ministers that he and Buller had helped to carry the Irish Municipal Reform Bill. By that time, Grote had pursued every means of acquiring professional rhetorical skill (possibly with a view to overcoming the defects of his naturally thin voice). In common with Molesworth and a few others, he took lessons in elocution from a specialist, a master named Jones, in 1836. 13 The Society met at Grote’s house on two mornings each week, from half past eight to ten o’clock. The meetings were resumed in the winter of 1829, apparently on the occasion of the publication of James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 2 vols. (London 1829). Discussions often turned to political economy, metaphysics, and to a wide range of historical and political subjects. 11 Buller supported vigorously the bill for granting municipal corporation to Ireland. Roebuck was the author of The Colonies of England: a Plan for the Government of some portion of our Colonial Possessions (London 1849); and History of the Whig Ministry of 1830: to the passing of the Reform Bill (London 1852). 12 See Speech of George Grote, Esq. M.P., delivered April 25th, 1833 in the House of Commons, on moving for the Introduction of a vote by ballot at elections (London 1833). Grote returned to the question of the ballot in 1836 and 1838. His speeches were published as pamphlets. 13 Compare Grote’s eulogy of Demosthenes for overcoming his natural disadvantages: He ‘was not endowed by nature, like Aeschines, with a magnificent voice; ... his voice was bad and even lisping - his breath short ...’, etc. See History of Greece, 12 vols. (Everyman’s Library, London and New York 1906) XI 242, 438-9. ‘The art of persuasion’, he wrote earlier in criticising Plato’s objections to rhetoric in the Gorgias, ‘of which oratory is one branch, can never be much cultivated except in a free society. It is only where men are free that their actions can be much influenced by persuasion. Liberty and the art of persuasion seem to be so necessarily connected 10 4 The Scholar and the Radical The Philosophic Radicals were committed to reform as a means of attacking the aristocracy and believed in the directing influence of a rational intelligentsia to advance what Molesworth, the editor of Hobbes’ Works (1839-45), defined in a letter addressed to Mrs. Grote in October 1834, as ‘the philosophy of society - of the human mind - of imaginative literature and ethics’.14 The Philosophic Radicals aspired not only to reform the institutional machinery of the state but, moreover, to regenerate society according to a philosophical dogma. In this respect, they fought the aristocracy of birth and interests and vigorously advocated the rights of the middle classes, social and legal reform, the extension of the suffrage, annual parliaments and universal education. To achieve their ends, they had to decide on the proper policy for dealing with the ‘schizophrenic’ position of the Whigs, who were neither true anti-reform aristocrats nor true democratic reformers despite their professions. Since 1835, there was disagreement within the Benthamite Radicals as to tactics. Some advocated cooperation between the radical group and Whigs; others, such as Francis Place (1771-1854) and Molesworth, urged a more independent policy lest their identity be fused with the Liberal party. Their failure to form a powerful party in the House of Commons was partly a consequence of this internal discord. John Stuart Mill believed that due to a lack of a true leader (an implicit stricture on Grote), the ‘instructed Radicals sank into a mere côté gauche of the Whig party’.15 The General Election of 1837 brought practical gains for the Conservatives and losses for the parliamentary radicals. Internal quarrels and conflicts within the radical circle in London and the provinces, along with a certain degree of indecisiveness thus occasioned in Parliament, tended to undermine fundamental ideas and principles that could have sustained the extensive radical project for reform. On the other hand, the attempts of the parliamentary radicals to launch a great reform movement were destined to fail because the middle classes were too varied, fragmented, and too limited in education to pose a viable alternative to aristocratic interests. At the end of the decade, the Radicals were a dejected and sadly disappointed group, practically destitute of political power. Political realities did not seem to conform to the abstractions of the parliamentary utilitarian politicians who were primarily a lobby of intellectuals and theorists. Grote’s that we might almost determine where one was not, there neither did the other exist’. See University of London Library [ULL] MSS 493/3 (dated 1820 et. seq.) fol. 142. 14 H. Grote, The Philosophical Radicals of 1832 (London 1866) 10. For details on the activities of the Radicals see E. Halévy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century: The Triumph of Reform, 1830-1841 (London 1927). J. Hamburger’s, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven 1965), and James Mill and the Art of Revolution (New Haven 1963) are indispensable; see also, L. Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870 (Oxford 1962, 2nd ed.); J. Dinwiddy, Radicalism and Reform in Britain 1780-1850 (London 1992); J. Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London 1993). 15 J.S. Mill, Autobiography, ed. J. Stillinger (London and Oxford 1971) 118. 5 Chapter 1 political competence was put to a test. In the Early Draft of his memoir, Mill, who otherwise admired the historian, did not spare Grote from harsh criticism for his inability to effectively promote the plans of the philosophical reformers. ‘Nobody’, he wrote, disappointed my father and me more than Grote because no one else had so much in his power. We had long known him fainthearted, ever despairing of success, thinking all obstacles gigantic; but the Reform Bill excitement seemed for a time to make a new man of him: he had grown hopeful, and seemed as if he could almost become energetic. When brought face to face however with an audience opposed to his opinions, when called on to beat up against the stream, he was found wanting ... If his courage and energy had been equal to the circumstances, or to his knowledge and abilities, the history of those ten years of relapse into Toryism might have been very different.16 Grote retired in 1841 from the turmoil of political life convinced that the Radical party was at that time too weak to do any effective service. He refused to continue ‘an unavailing and almost solitary struggle in Parliament’. 17 Not sparing the irony, Lord Macaulay said that ‘the Radicals were extinct, being reduced, as far as he could learn, to Grote and his wife’. 18 Grote’s concerns and state of mind at the time emerge from a letter of 13 November 1844: ‘In regard to present politics, there is nothing to divert my attention, no great question stirring, no hopes for any speedy advance in the great interests of the people, and I feel constant satisfaction in being exempt from the obligation of meddling with fruitless party quarrels.’19 In the summer of 1843, Grote retired from his ancestral banking-house and devoted himself entirely to his magnum opus, the History of Greece, giving up fruitless praxis for calm theorising. Grote spent his mature life in vigorous intellectual pursuits, while in politics his disappointments for speedy reforms ended in pessimism. Characteristically, in later years, he even stopped cherishing the idea of the ballot as a panacea for corruption and bribery. ‘Since the wide expansion of the voting element, I confess that the value of the Ballot has sunk in my estimation. I do not, in fact, think the elections will be affected by it, one way or another, as far as party interests are concerned.’ Harriet Grote has also left us a memorable conversation with the elderly historian that took place in 1867, in which he is said to have confessed that, ‘I have outlived my faith in the efficacy of Republican government regarded as a check upon the vulgar passions of a majority in a nation, and I recognise the fact that supreme power lodged in their hands may be exercised quite as J.S. Mill, The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s “Autobiography”, ed. J. Stillinger (Urbana 1961) 155. 17 The Personal Life of George Grote 140. 18 Quoted in Lewin Letters I 383. 19 G.W. Greene, “Reminiscences of George Grote”, Atlantic Monthly 44 (1879) 774. 16 6 The Scholar and the Radical mischievously as by a despotic ruler like the first Napoleon’. Yet his political pessimism did not mean a partial abandonment of his philosophical convictions. Interestingly, two years before his death, the elderly historian kindly rejected Gladstone’s offer of a peerage partially because he did not want to alter his ‘framework of existence in any way’, but primarily because becoming a member of the House of Lords would have been inconsistent with his ‘peculiar feelings’. 20 His reply to Gladstone on the 9th of November 1869 is worth reproducing: My dear Sir I beg to acknowledge the letter of yesterday with which you have honoured me. Its contents and the generous offer which you have obtained Her Majesty’s authority to make to me, are alike flattering and unexpected. I deeply and gratefully appreciate the sentiments which you are pleased to express respecting my character and services. These I shall treasure up, never to be forgotten: coming as they do from a Minister who has entered on the work of reform with a sincerity and energy hitherto unparalleled. Such recognition is the true and sufficient recompense for all useful labours of mine. But as to the farther recompense which you graciously propose - a Peerage - I must ask your permission respectfully, yet very decidedly, to decline it. I say little about the honourable status and title, which, at my age and to my peculiar feelings, would be an unwelcome charge: But my insuperable reason for declining the proposition is, that I cannot consent to undertake any new or additional public duties. You allude, with perfect propriety, to the “important effect of adding strength to the House of Lords for the discharge of its weighty duties” - as the legitimate motive for new appointments. Now my hands are already too full to allow of my taking part in other weighty duties. I am deeply interested in the promotion of the higher education, on the principles common to University College and the University of London: and much of my time and energy is devoted to both these Institutions. Besides these, I am actively engaged as one of the Administrators of the British Museum; which I consider to be of high national importance, and to which (I believe) I give more attendance than any other Trustee. Last, though not least, I am engaged in a work on Aristotle, forming a sequel to my work on Plato: and I am thoroughly resolved to complete this, if health and energy are preserved to me, I feel that (being now nearly 75) I have no surplus force for other purposes.21 When I was in the House of Commons formerly, I well remember the dissipation of intellectual energy which the multifarious business of legislation 20 Personal Life 312, 309-310, 314. The work remained incomplete and was published by Murray after the historian’s death; see Aristotle, 2 vols. (London 1872). Grote in effect managed to deal only with Aristotelian logic. The book was received favourably. See E. Wallace, “Aristotle”, Westminster Review 103 (1875) 84106; J.S. Mill, “Grote’s Aristotle”, Fortnightly Review 19 (1873) 27-50; Anon., “Aristotle”, British Quarterly Review 57 (1873) 463-484; A. Grant, “Grote’s Aristotle”, Edinburgh Review 136 (1872) 515-558. 21 7 Chapter 1 then occasioned to me. I must therefore now decline a seat in the House of Lords, for the same reasons which have induced me, more than once, to decline the easy prospect of a renewed seat in the Commons. I am almost ashamed to trouble the Prime Minister of England with so much personal details about myself. But my only uneasiness in writing this note is, lest, in sending a decided refusal, I should appear to respond ungraciously to his generous communication.22 The work on Aristotle was left unfinished due to Grote’s declining health that led to his death in 1871. In the last decade of his life, he added to his various duties those of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of London and he served dedicatedly as a Trustee of the British Museum in succession to the historian Henry Hallam (1777-1859). INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT In considering Grote’s early intellectual development, one has to examine and appreciate the dominant place of James Mill as the indefatigable administrator of the school of utilitarianism. In the words of James H. Burns, Bentham, left to himself, ‘would have never have founded a school or launched a movement, for all his ambitions and dreams’. 23 It was James Mill’s energy and imposing personality which bestowed an ideological colouring to Bentham’s philosophy by rendering its main principles intelligibly simple and effectively more dogmatic. 24 It is to him that political thought at the time of the Reform settlement stood at a high level of ‘sobriety’. Alexander Bain (1818-1903), his major biographer, believed his place ‘could not have been taken by any other man that we can fix upon’.25 His intellectual influence upon others was of the most profound nature. As his son John Stuart wrote, ‘by his writings and his personal influence he was a great centre of light to his generation’. 26 As a young disciple of utilitarianism Grote’s mind was typically moulded under the influence and the supervision of James Mill. In reviewing J.S. Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865), Grote devoted ‘a few words to the fulfilment of another obligation’. James Mill’s life, according to the historian, was a striking example of one who dedicatedly carried out ‘the lofty Platonic ideal of Dialectic’, tou didonai kai dehesthai logôn (the giving and receiving of reasons). His pursuit of the Platonic pattern of critical discourse, combined with a vigorous character consistently devoted to truth, Grote 22 Gladstone Papers. Vol. CCCXXXVIII, British Library [BL] Add. MSS 44,423 fols. 54-5. J.H. Burns, “Bentham and the French Revolution”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 16 (1966) 113. 24 See Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism 307. 25 Bain, James Mill: A Biography 447. 26 J.S. Mill, Autobiography 123. 23 8 The Scholar and the Radical continued, explains why this man exercised a great intellectual ascendancy over younger minds. Several profited from his society and remembered with gratitude this noble figure; among them, Grote confessed, ‘the writer of the present article, who owes to the historian of British India an amount of intellectual stimulus and guidance such as he can never forget’. 27 Unlike Grote and John Stuart Mill, James Mill obtained his academic education at the University of Edinburgh that, with the University of Glasgow, was the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century. These institutions numbered among their faculty notable philosophers and historians such as Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), John Millar (1735-1801), Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), Adam Smith (1723-1790) and many others. One of them, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), taught Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh continuing the tradition of the Scottish Liberals at the time Mill attended his classes. James Mill never lost the influence of this enlightened scholar. As Fenn remarks, the influence of Stewart was twofold: ‘he introduced Mill to the problems of mental and moral philosophy in a manner that made him consider the solving of such problems as the essence of one’s duty in striving for moral, social and political reform and, much more importantly, made him an admirer and follower of the philosophy of common sense of Thomas Reid.’ 28 In addition to moral philosophy, his course of studies included political economy, history and certainly the classics, including Mill’s deeply admired Greek sage, Plato. Upon completing his first degree in 1794, Mill began studying for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, earning his living as a tutor of the children of noble families. Licensed to preach four years later, Mill could not secure a position. Serving for a while as an itinerant preacher, he became disheartened and disillusioned and, at the threshold of the nineteenth century, left for London. Until his appointment to the East India Company in 1819, Mill pursued a professional career in authorship and his literary labours, judged by any standard, were indeed prodigious. In 1808, he met Jeremy Bentham. All things considered, Mill’s conversion to Benthamite utilitarianism did not mean an absolute surrender of his formidable Scottish philosophical background. His twofold intellectual background is apparent in the History of British India (1818) which combines philosophical historiography and Benthamite doctrines. Sharing much in common with Bentham in terms of aspirations and intellectual temperament, they formed a unique philosophical and political partnership. Their aims, revolving around social and political change, religious toleration and legal reform, were to be solidified and expressed by the Philosophical Radicals on the practical level. The Grote, Minor Works of George Grote, ed. A. Bain (London 1873) 283-4. Grote’s lengthy review first appeared in the Westminster Review, Jan. 1866. A reprint was published two years later, Review of the Work of Mr. John Stuart Mill entitled “Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy” (London 1868). 28 Fenn, James Mill’s Political Thought 7. 27 9 Chapter 1 Radicals comprised many distinguished people who, in one way or another, were enlisted in the Utilitarian cause. The cause was promoted by the founding of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the launching of the Westminster Review, and the establishment of the ‘godless institution in Gower Street’, University College of London.29 Bruce Mazlish, in his idiosyncratic attempt at a psychohistory of the two Mills, recreates a picture of the utilitarian circle as a union of determined adherents or proselytes who derived their inspiration and stimulus from James Mill and Bentham.30 For William Smith (1813-1893), the classical scholar, the utilitarians regarded Bentham ‘as a kind of deity, whose utterances were carefully watched and reverently received. James Mill was their prophet, who exercised uncontrolled sway over their minds’. 31 Grote did not escape from this interpretation. Since the nineteenth century, he has been largely considered a devoted Millite and Benthamite, the type of a utilitarian doctrinaire par excellence. Grote’s work has almost invariably been seen through the tradition of the allegedly irresistible spell of James Mill’s authoritative indoctrination. Accordingly, his works have been explicitly read as a sophisticated, formidable exemplification of utilitarian principles. It is important to try to ascertain the validity of this interpretation by examining Grote’s intellectual development under the guidance of the liberal utilitarians. Grote’s qualifications were prodigious. He had been introduced at Charterhouse to the language of the Greek and Latin authors and pursued learning German (at a time a very rare qualification) with the aid of a Lutheran clergyman. German not only helped him to study classical philology and history but also, as 29 The expression belongs to Thomas Arnold; quoted in S.J. Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain (London 1963, fifth ed.) 422. See the Statement by the Council of the University of London, explanatory of the Nature and Objects of the Institution (London 1827) 7-8: ‘It has been a subject of regret, that a very large proportion of the youth of England, whose future professional occupations are such as to render an University education most desirable, have, owing to various causes, been deprived of that most important benefit. Oxford is, by its statutes, accessible to those only who belong to the Established Church; and although Cambridge has so far relaxed the strictness of its rules that Dissenters, while deprived of the privilege of obtaining Degrees, may still receive their education there, that University is, practically, scarcely less exclusive than Oxford on the score of religion ... When it is considered, therefore, how great must be the number and the opulence of those who do not belong to the Established Church, and how large a portion of the people of England consists of persons in easy yet moderate circumstances, there cannot be a doubt that the best interests of the country urgently demand the establishment of an institution, where an enlightened education may be obtained at a reasonable charge, and where persons of every religious persuasion may be freely admitted.’ 30 B. Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (London 1975). 31 W. Smith, “George Grote”, Quarterly Review 135 (1873) 109. G.M. Young, Victorian England: Portrait of an Age (Oxford 1953) 8, argued that ‘Mill’s friendship with Malthus and Ricardo, had created a party, almost a sect, with formularies as compact as the Evangelical theology’. 10 The Scholar and the Radical his manuscript notes reveal, enabled him to go through Kant and Hegel in the original.32 Prior to his formal ‘initiation’ into the circle of the utilitarians, Grote kept a close friendship with Charles Hay Cameron (1795-1880) and George Warde Norman (1793-1882). Cameron, jurist and well read in classical and modern literature, was a disciple of Bentham who took a great interest in the education of the natives of India and the colonies. It is Cameron, according to Harriet, who conducted Grote ‘on the great path of development, both of character and objects of study’.33 Norman was a keen liberal in politics and an advocate of free trade. According to the bibliographer and antiquarian George Clement Boase (1829-1897), Norman and Grote read books in common, chiefly on historical and political subjects and political economy. Moreover, ‘in 1814 Norman introduced Grote to Miss Harriet Lewin, who afterwards became Grote’s wife, and it was at Norman’s suggestion that Grote undertook to write the history of Greece rather than that of Rome, which he had originally contemplated’. 34 One of Grote’s earliest associates was also Ricardo, whom he often visited at home. As mentioned above, Grote owed his meeting with the elder Mill to Ricardo. On John Owen’s view, Grote’s intellectual career after his encounter with Mill was ‘simple and straightforward. What he was when he died, at the age of seventy-six, he had already become in his early manhood - a philosopher of the school of Locke and Hartley, an utilitarian in morals, a republican in politics, and a freethinker in religion’. In a similar manner, George Washington Greene (18111883), the American Consul in Rome in the early ’40s, who met Grote on the occasion of his journey in Italy, wrote that the historian ‘talked like the friend of Ricardo and the two Mills. And this was the distinctive characteristic of his conversation: he sought truth everywhere, and seemed to feel that he had no time to talk for victory [in conversation]. He could take up a theory and lay it down again as facts demanded ... His manner corresponded with his matter, - calm, firm, and earnest’.35 Posthumous commentators, like the classical scholar James Davies (18201883) and the anonymous author in the Christian Observer, commonly called See Grote’s various notes on Kant and his disagreement with the philosopher on substantial epistemological issues in BL Add. MSS 29,526 (1818-1822) fols. 137-164. The historian criticised Kant for founding a metaphysical philosophy on hypotheses and not on observation and experiment. He also criticised Kant’s theory of moral feelings in an essay transcribed and edited by Bain from his MSS (the original unfortunately now lost). See Grote, Fragments on Ethical Subjects, ed. A. Bain (London 1876) 41-7. 33 Personal Life 15. 34 G.C. Boase, “George Warde Norman”, Dictionary of National Biography [D.N.B.] (London 1895) XLI 112. The assumption that Grote might have first contemplated the writing of the history of Rome could be correct. There is in the British Library a large collection of notes on Roman history dating from 1815-17. See BL Add. MSS 29,524. 35 J. Owen, “George Grote”, Theological Review 10 (1873) 510; Greene, “Reminiscences of George Grote” 772. 32 11 Chapter 1 attention to Grote’s growing atheism following his involvement in the activities of the utilitarians, which they lamented as rather unsuitable to his type of character. According to Davies, Grote’s ‘oracles and prophets were Ricardo and James Mill, and with their convictions he imbibed their antipathies, one of which - a prejudice against the Church and its ministers, derived from the latter’. The anonymous reviewer attacked Mill and Bentham inasmuch as their education rendered the – originally sensitive - historian irreligious and insensitive to human misery: ‘The life might be that of an accomplished and, so far as man can be, a virtuous heathen. Whether also it was from the feeble hold with Christianity apparently had on Mr. Grote, or from the chilling influence of his philosophical fancies, we equally fail in discovering, through the whole work, an instance in which he seems to have taken personal or pecuniary interest in any charitable work for the relief of the suffering or distressed.’ 36 In a recent informative account, Mortimer Chambers brings to light a letter sent by Grote to his sister-in-law, Frances Lewin, which is worth quoting as it clearly evinces Grote’s susceptibility to the irreligious trait of Benthamism. While admonishing Frances to get free from the mentally paralysing religious yoke, the historian stated that he was delighted, to learn that you pursue the study of Bentham. I cannot too strongly impress upon you the inestimable advantage of thoroughly comprehending and familiarizing to yourself the principle of utility, in all its different applications to human affairs ... You cannot feel doubt any longer, when once you have thoroughly satisfied yourself that an action is sanctioned or commanded by the principle of utility. This is the only rule which can possibly be delivered, and whoever lives without this, much really live without any rule at all ... And (as you remark very truly) if there be a benevolent God, this conduct must be the most pleasing to him as well as the best in itself. But that supposition is in truth altogether impossible - there cannot be a benevolent God who suffers evil and pain to exist.37 Such a fervent confidence in Benthamism on the part of Mill’s protégé can only be compared to a faith in a universal religion of reason that does not fail to liberate true believers. Grote’s mentors commonly believed that there could not be a benevolent God who allowed pain to exist and did not aim at increasing happiness.38 In December 1821, Bentham sent Grote a number of boxes with disarrayed manuscripts, trusting that his ‘tactical powers will make a good use of it ... Truly J. Davies, “George Grote”, Contemporary Review 22 (1873) 394; Anon., “Life of George Grote”, Christian Observer 73 (1873) 636. 37 M. Chambers, “George Grote’s History of Greece”, in W.M. Calder III and S. Trzaskoma, ed. George Grote Reconsidered. A 200th Birthday Celebration with A First Edition of his Essay “On the Athenian Government” (Hildesheim 1996) 6. 38 See Bentham’s Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined (1818) and Not Paul, but Jesus (1823). 36 12 The Scholar and the Radical sorry I am’, wrote the elderly philosopher, ‘that the demand for labour on it should be so great’. A number of directions follow. ‘When you have tumbled the lay stall all over, if your perseverance lasts so long, there may be the time for a conference, to consider of the plan of operation. As it strikes me at present, the best way would be to stop in the first instance at the subject of the Natural Religion; showing its insufficiency to useful purposes, and thus, its efficiency to mischievous purposes … In speaking of its efficiency to mischievous purposes, there might be an occasion (if advisable) to bring in all the several mischiefs produced by alledged revealed religion.’ 39 The output was the Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, published by Richard Carlile who was already in Dorchester gaol in 1822 – and thus safe from further prosecutions - under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp. 40 (It was re-published by Grote himself for private circulation at a later time in 1866, an evidence of his lifelong faith in Bentham’s philosophy.41) After the death of her husband, Mrs. Grote gave the manuscript upon which Bentham had worked from 1815, to the British Museum with his covering letter of suggestions of how to use them. A mere glance at the massive and barely decipherable material shows that Grote had virtually rewritten the essay and much in the finished version bears the stamp of his methodical, conscientious character. As the utilitarian philosopher George C. Robertson (1842-1892) pointed out, Grote ‘had practically to write the essay, leaving aside the greater part of the materials before him and giving to the remnant a shape that was his rather than Bentham’s’. 42 That the great philosopher and legal reformer entrusted to Grote the completion of the work is unmistakable evidence of the confidence he enjoyed within the utilitarian circle. Significantly, Grote’s preparation of Bentham’s Analysis coincided with the publication of his own pamphlet, A Statement on the Question of Parliamentary Reform (1821), which contained the germs of his philosophical and political attitude. The Statement constitutes for us an additional indication that the ‘fathers’ of Utilitarianism chose the young Grote to be the ideological propagandist of the Philosophical Radicals. In his politically engaged prôtoleion, the future historian of Greece advocated specific utilitarian ideas such as popular representation, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and short parliaments. 43 39 BL Add. MSS 29,806 fols. 4-5. ‘At that period’, Harriet Grote wrote, BL Add. MSS 29,806-809 fol. 6, ‘the London booksellers were afraid of having anything to do with writings wherein Religion was in question’. 41 Interestingly, it was translated into French by M.E. Gazelles, La Religion Naturelle; son influence sur le bonheur du genre humain, d’après les papiers de Jeremie Bentham (Paris 1875). 42 G.C. Robertson, “George Grote”, D.N.B. (London 1890) XXIII 285. H. Grote’s only reference to the manuscript is to be found in a note, quoted by Bain in Minor Works [18]. Grote, we learn, ‘bestowed much time upon some MSS of Jeremy Bentham’s, which the venerable sage entreated his young disciple to put into a readable form’. 43 See A Statement on the Question of Parliamentary Reform (London 1821) esp. 18, 69, 111-12. 40 13 Chapter 1 The Analysis applied a destructive criticism to the idea of the utility of religious belief: ‘religion, considered with reference to the present life, is not beneficial but pernicious’. Religion is conceived as holding a power radically hostile to the intellectual progress of society. God, with His omnipotence as to rewards and punishments, is described as an irresponsible and egoistic despot. 44 It is worth observing that one of Grote’s unpublished essays entitled “Expectations of Pleasure and Pain in a future life”, written in the context of his study of metaphysics from the early ’20s, reproduced in substance and in spirit Bentham’s central argument in the Analysis: ‘Religious torments (or the expectation of them) most painful to an individual first at the time when the terrors which they impress can be of no benefit to mankind.’ 45 Elsewhere, the young scholar addressed a sceptical polemic against the standard propositions relating to God’s existence which he explicitly characterised vague and inconclusive. There is no direct evidence of ‘this supreme dispenser’, Grote complained, and, even worse, there is no clear and unambiguous authoritative enumeration of those acts which attract God’s favour or provoke His wrath. Both crucial issues are left to be determined by unassisted conjecture. Consequently, most people tend to define acts hostile to human happiness as calculated to be received with approbation by the Deity. Later on, Grote returned to the issue of religion emphasising the logical weaknesses supposedly present in the theory respecting the Creation. The key idea of an all-powerful, self-existent, independent Deity of the theologians and intuitionists appeared absurd to the future historian of Greece. As the Creator itself must have eventually had a source of existence, the inevitable paradox would have been the idea of the existence of ad infinitum creations of Deities. And if, argued Grote, ‘(as Hume says) we have no right to conclude from the works of the Creator, that he himself possesses a greater degree of power than is barely sufficient to effect those works, still less right have we to conclude, that there exists any where independently of him a power so much greater than his, as to be able to create it’. 46 At any rate, whether the world was created by a great First Cause or by the command of a Final Power is of no definitive or beneficial cause. Closely linked to Grote’s atheism was his profound opposition to the established Church. His remarks on the utility of the ancient polytheistic religion show that he took to heart the elder Mill’s anti-clericalism: ‘The great advantage, or rather the smaller injurious tendency, in Polytheism as compared with 44 Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (London 1822) 3, 33. 45 BL Add. MSS 29,528 (1818-1822) fol. 76. See also Grote’s notes on “Cruelty of Laws founded on Religion”, BL Add. MSS 29,516 fols. 89, 94, 115. 46 BL Add. MSS 29,528 fols. 98-99. See also Grote’s note on the “Religion of the Ancient World”, BL Add. MSS 29,523 (apparently written between 1825 and 1826) fol. 5: ‘To call God spiritual is an evasion resorted to after men have become in some degree sensible of the absurdity of supposing an imperceptible material person’, etc; and in fol. 54: ‘What can exceed in credulity the authors of the New Testament, whoever they were?’ 14 The Scholar and the Radical monotheism is, that the priesthood of many Gods cannot be brought into such efficient cooperation as the priesthood of one. They cannot obtain as a body so much influence over the human mind.’ 47 In political theory, Grote’s Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, the first reply to James Mackintosh’s (1765-1832) attack on Bentham, was written in 1831 at the request of his mentor. The political views expressed in the pamphlet and the reformatory spirit that permeated its main propositions were unquestionably favoured in Bentham’s circle. In this work, which formed in effect an elaboration of his earlier Statement, Grote criticised the idea of class representation and defended a representative system that included one million voters. Such a system would not have neglected ‘the interest and well-being of the middling classes’, and would ‘purify the Government, thoroughly, at once and for ever, of that deep and inveterate oligarchical taint which now infects it in every branch’. 48 The political thinking expounded in Grote’s Essentials directly derived from Bentham’s various writings, especially those calculated to advocate the idea of democracy, such as the Fragment on Government (1776),49 the Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817), and the Constitutional Code (1830). In his Parliamentary Reform, initially written in 1809, Bentham argued for the implementation of his fundamental axiom - ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ - through the creation of such mechanisms as could guarantee the identity of interest between government and governed. Government, like individual agents, tends to be self-interested and, therefore, to promote the general good, it should be connected with the communal interest. After all, the people are the best judges of their own interest and it is hypocritical to believe that a certain privileged group of selfish politicians could be better judges than the people themselves about what is in their best interest. The people have no interest in being governed badly; hence, the necessity of ‘democratical ascendancy’. 50 But how is this political change to be effected? The identification of interests could be achieved through frequent elections, a near-universal suffrage, the secret ballot, and full publicity about the working of the institutions of government - thus full and general access to information. BL Add. MSS 29,517 (1826-1832) fol. 15. In his “Logical and Metaphysical Essays”, Grote rejected the idea of a supernatural ‘Creator’, BL Add. MSS 29,528 fols. 98-9. The word ‘immaterial Being is in reality as great a contradiction as a non-existent Being’, BL Add. MSS 29,523 (prior to 1826) fol. 5. The Philosophic Radicals, Mrs. Grote maintained, ‘naturally lent themselves to a project tending to separate education from the management of the clerical body’, The Personal Life of George Grote 56. 48 Grote, Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, Minor Works 24. On the ‘middling citizens’, whose interests James Mill particularly vindicated, and their influence in promoting stability in the Greek democracies, see BL Add. MSS 29,514 (Notes Relating to Grecian History, 1818-1831) fol. 192. 49 A Fragment on Government [1776], ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, with a new introduction by R. Harrison (Cambridge 1988). 50 Quoted in R. Harrison, Bentham (London 1983) 211. 47 15 Chapter 1 The more sophisticated Constitutional Code expounded in detail a more elaborate and thorough system of constitutional representative democracy. 51 This work, according to Frederick Rosen, was designed to ‘increase accountability and to place educated and competent officials in positions of power ... Just as his conception of security was designed to protect each individual from interference by other individuals, his conception of constitutional government incorporated sufficient powers for strong government but with securities in place to limit corruption and oppression’.52 Bentham’s outline for the democratic reform of 1817, was offered to the public in a more accessible (albeit narrow and less radical) way by James Mill, the acknowledged publicist for utilitarian ideas on politics, in the Essay on Government (1820). Mill, after exposing what he considered as the inherent pathology of various forms of government, concluded that what was needed was not a myth of a balanced constitution, but a House of Commons that could become a constitutional counter-weight provided it were truly representative. What was to be represented by the Commons were not classes, but individuals, or, to be more precise, educated citizens. It should be observed that a principal objection against universal suffrage had been that the people were virtually ignorant and incompetent to exercise a right to vote with wisdom. The people were indeed ignorant, yet ignorance was by no means incurable the utilitarians claimed. Systematic education offered to the middle classes, combined with universal franchise, would be a catalyst for social and political progress. Grote’s early writings and various activities clearly indicate that he was one of the major representative ideologues of Philosophic Radicalism. The spell of James Mill on the young disciple’s intellectual and political career emerges remarkably clear. Bentham’s influence upon the future historian is beyond dispute and it is perhaps sometimes underestimated by modern scholarship. Now it is important to trace the impact of Grote’s intellectual background and political experience upon his identity as a classical scholar. To do so, we first have to turn to his manuscript 51 Bentham, Constitutional Code [1830-43], ed. F. Rosen and J.H. Burns (Oxford 1983). See Rosen’s, Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, A Study of the Constitutional Code (Oxford 1983). The literature on Bentham’s political ideas is immense. The following are insightful guides: J.H. Burns, The Fabric of Felicity: the Legislator and the Human Condition (London 1967); “Jeremy Bentham: From Radical Enlightenment to Philosophic Radicalism”, The Bentham Newsletter 8 (1984) 4-14; “Utilitarianism and Reform: Social Theory and Social Change, 1750-1800”, Utilitas 1 (1989) 211-25; D. Long, Bentham on Liberty: Jeremy Bentham’s Idea of Liberty in Relation to his Utilitarianism (Toronto 1977); H.L.A. Hart, Essays on Bentham, Jurisprudence and Political Theory (Oxford 1982); L.C. Boralevi, Bentham and the Oppressed (Berlin 1984); P.J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice. Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law (Oxford 1990). 52 See the masterful introduction to Bentham by Rosen, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (Oxford 1996) xxxi-lxxviii; quotation is to pp. xliv-xlv. 16 The Scholar and the Radical preparatory notes and essays, which provide us with an essential basis for understanding the extent and intensity of the enduring ideological sympathies and antipathies that influenced both his judgement and the direction of his studies. The second requirement is to identify the influence of liberal utilitarianism in his published works that will be realised in the development of the chapters that follow. GROTE’S MANUSCRIPT NOTES AND VARIOUS ESSAYS Grote possessed what can best be described a ‘practical and a searching mind’. This trait emerges clearly in the selection of his various studies, the consistent criticism applied to religion, and the systematic, all-encompassing approach to philosophy and the other subsidiary studies, economics and classical literature, then recognised to be part and parcel of a philosopher’s training. A survey of Grote’s general readings, essays and notes prior to 1820, and shortly after this date, demonstrates two things: first, at an early period, before he became a committed utilitarian, Grote’s views on certain social and intellectual questions were strikingly suggestive of his later radical position. Secondly, they fully reveal his tendency to explain ancient political experience and institutions by extensively utilising concepts of the broader circle of the scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment and English Utilitarianism. We have many examples of Grote’s early attachment to the intellectual and reforming interests of the utilitarians and the moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. For instance, the young student considered James Mill’s remarks on the introduction of laws in primitive societies through the aid of allegedly divine authority, put forward in the History of British India, as of great importance for understanding and evaluating the all-powerful presence and function of the supernatural in remote times. It is in light of Mill’s theoretical positions that Grote compared the utility of religious sentiments in antiquity with the ‘irrational’ spirituality of Christianity which he believed was basically hostile to any conception of political virtue. Hence, in terms of political usefulness, ancient religion was superior because it helped generate a civil morality and legislation that gathered people together under the imaginary command of one indestructible Deity. In a pragmatically oriented note, Grote observed that the priests in antiquity, being excluded from the military domain and ‘executive’ sources of power, necessarily turned their attention to the possession of the legislative power: ‘By representing the first laws as the immediate commands of the Deity, the conception of such a thing as a general law would be rendered easier and smoother to a rude mind, and the supposed will of the Deity might furnish a reason for obedience where other motives would not act. Even where there was no priesthood and therefore no sinister motives, the primary legislator 17 Chapter 1 (as Mill remarks) everywhere availed themselves of a pretended mission from God.’53 Grote, in a note from 1817, explores slavery in antiquity by using Adam Smith’s concept of sympathy, which in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) the great economist and moral philosopher took as the most influential of human motives.54 It seems an extraordinary fact, Grote observed, that an intense love of liberty in Greece, Rome, and America should have been consistent with domestic slavery. The citizens’ love of liberty and the recognition of its importance should have naturally resulted (under ‘the force of sympathy’) in a desire to impart its blessings to more people. Yet ‘in these countries the extraordinary power of other principles of the human mind appears to have checked the natural progress of sympathy, and to have permitted the existence of this great seeming contradiction in opinion’. Patriotism was one such principle. The feeling of patriotism, very exclusive and intolerant due to the proximity between hostile states and, thus, the constant danger against life and property, led people to consider the rest of mankind as if it were a different species. ‘It was the overgrown influence of this principle which prevented that natural diffusion of the tide of sympathy over the whole human race. Slavery too must have appeared originally under the aspect of mercy since it was merely a substitute for the massacre of prisoners.’ 55 Sympathy also constitutes a central concept in Grote’s note on ‘tortures and punishments’, practised in Sparta on the Helots, in Asiatic governments, and by Alexander the Great. The practice of intentionally administering physical sufferings on people is, for Grote, ‘a conclusive proof of low civilization’. The state of the affections which this practice supposes, argues an entire absence of those sympathies which constitute the first step in human improvement ... The habitual employment of refined tortures, then, as it indicates extreme feebleness of the sympathies between man and man, and a standing purpose on the part of the governing few to render themselves exclusively objects of terror, may be received as an unequivocal characteristic of almost the lowest grade of civilization, and the greatest debasement of the human character. It is the first and most obvious improvement in the science of government, to limit the amount of pain which the governor is empowered to inflict upon any individual citizen: next, to determine 53 ULL MSS 429/I (Notes of Various Studies in 1820 et. seq.), fol. 17. Grote himself wrote about Smith’s concept of sympathy, BL Add. MSS 29,528 fol. 53: ‘Smith’s principle of sympathy has undoubtedly great influence upon our judgment on many occasions. When for instance one man shoots at another with the intention of killing him, we ought to view the action with precisely the same sentiments as if he had killed him, did we obey exclusively the moral sense. But our disapprobation and abhorrence would undoubtedly be greater, if the person had been killed - and this heightening of the feelings I take to result from a strong sympathy with the sufferer.’ Hume, according to J. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians (Oxford 1966) 30, also defines ‘sympathy as the pleasure or pain we feel whenever we contemplate the pleasures or pains of other people. And from sympathy springs benevolence’. 55 ULL MSS 429/III fol. 132. 54 18 The Scholar and the Radical the occasions in which he may inflict it. Where no attempt has been made to compass these ends, government is in rudest possible state. And thus it has always been in the Oriental despotisms.56 The pervasive nature of Mill’s influence on the formation of Grote’s political views is clearly reflected in some early notes on “Government and Education”. Commenting on the original text of the Essay on Government of 1820, published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Grote expressed his substantial agreement with the principle that any electing body should have an interest identical with that of the whole community. This principle can effectively be applied only if this body is sufficiently large so that it will represent not the interests of a small segment of the people but the interests of the whole nation. Whatever qualifications set for obtaining an elective body (age, property, and profession) it should be such as would embrace the interests of all. It is evident, Grote observed, that choosing good representatives presupposes that the community itself is capable of discerning the true and collective interests of society. Should the community ‘be incapable of exercising this function, there is no remedy for misgovernment. And we must be compelled to choose either those evils which arise from the distinct interests of the aristocracy; or those which arise from the mistaken notions of the people’.57 Thus, wide participation in government requires, in effect, extension of education for the masses.58 A universal system of education would not nullify the disparity in the intellectual endowments of individuals as was widely held. ‘Mental superiority would still command respect - indeed it would exercise greater influence than ever ... A more complete system of instruction, as it would advance each individual positively, would still leave the same relative differences between them. There would still be leaders and followers; but the followers would be better enabled to select the right leaders.’59 A similar remark occurs elsewhere in refuting the objections of Plato in the Gorgias against rhetoric. Here we find an early prelude to Grote’s forthcoming rehabilitation of the sophistic movement. Plato’s objections, Grote maintained, were based on the false assumption that the possession of this art would enable a man to appear better educated than he really was. Granted the fact that rhetorical power is not natural but is acquired, teaching BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 431. By contrast, throughout ‘the whole career of Athenian democracy, there is nothing more remarkable than the entire absence of manual violence or assassination among the competitors for popular favour’, fol. 19. See also BL Add. MSS 29,529 fols. 33-34, “Essay on Ancient and Modern Social Systems” and Grote’s criticism of ‘domestic slavery’ in ancient times. 57 ULL MSS 429/III fol. 236. 58 See Bentham’s major work on education, Chrestomathia [1815], meaning ‘useful learning’, ed. M.J. Smith and W.H. Burston (Oxford 1983). The book contained a secondary school curriculum and the philosopher’s contribution to linguistic theory. 59 ULL MSS 429/III fol. 308. 56 19 Chapter 1 the laws of persuasion should be considered beneficial. In effect, this art will enable the best to articulate convincingly their position. To be acquainted therefore with the laws of persuasion, and to impart them by artificial means, where nature has denied them, is clearly advantageous. It holds out no assistance to ignorance which it does not in an equal degree afford to real genius, and indeed in a much greater degree, since the same power of persuasion will be incalculably more efficacious when employed in conjunction with the latter ... Real knowledge acts so powerfully as a coadjutor and multiplier of the powers of persuasion, that any mode of imparting these latter powers by art must always be favourable to the influence of the best instructed portion of the community.60 James Mill’s belief in a middle-class dominated society, insofar as its members could be the fountain of progressive ideas in all fields of human experience, found its echo in Grote’s sociohistorical explanation regarding the stability of the Greek democracies. The young Grote examined Aristotle’s observation to the effect that the influence of the middling citizens, ‘the most prudent portion of every community’, was greater in democracies than in oligarchies. In a democratic regime, the opinion of the ‘middling citizens’ (the majority) would naturally determine the policy of the state in such a way as to substantially coincide with the interests of the whole. The oligarchic governments of the Four Hundred and the horrid consequences of the Peloponnesian War kept the power of the middle classes to the minimum, thereby destroying the best and most temperate element in the state. In explaining the greater stability of democracies as compared to oligarchic regimes, ‘[i]t ought not to be forgotten’, according to Grote, ‘that the most energetic men commonly rose to power under them, and thus acquired an interest in maintaining the constitution. These men would have been the most formidable enemies to any other form of government, which did not allow a free scope to their ambition’.61 Elsewhere in his notes, Grote asserted that stability of government is not always a sign of internal concord or an indication of the existence of ideal constitutional arrangements. A constitution might be fitted to keep government in coincidence with the opinions of the ruling class yet not be well fitted to promote the happiness of people. In order to make the government efficient and better, ‘the sentiments of the ruling mass must first be bettered - the ruling mass must itself be changed’. The improvement of the many could be the only way towards a qualitatively stable and more secure form of government. But how? The utilitarian belief in the power of education is once again invoked: ‘Education must first be extended, prejudices dispelled, and wealth generally diffused before the ruling body will include a sufficient portion of the whole community to make it certain 60 61 ULL MSS 429/III fols. 146-8. BL Add. MSS 29,524 fol. 192. 20 The Scholar and the Radical that particular interests will be neglected and the general benefit only attended to. The greater the number of persons who are able to think, the surer you are that particular prejudices will be neutralised, and that correct opinions will be formed as to the tendency of measures.’ 62 Grote’s “Logical and Metaphysical Essays”, extending from 1818 to 1822, demonstrate both his varied learning and his growing resolute attachment to utilitarian empiricism. It should not be forgotten that this is the most decisive period in the formation of his political and philosophical belief - the most consequential phase of his intellectual development in terms of future inspiration. Among the issues he considered in these sketches were those related to “Instincts; Beliefs; Distinct & Indistinct Ideas; Visible & Tangible Extension; Existence of External Objects; Early processes of Mind; Of the Origin of our knowledge; Reason and Identity”. 63 The future historian of Greece disagreed with Dugald Stewart who maintained that the proper evidence of metaphysical science is individual consciousness. Instead, Grote proposed ‘human action’ as the ultimate criterion of the scientific character of metaphysical truth. ‘Consciousness’ or ‘the memory of successive consciousness’ is, Grote argued, highly deceitful and illusive. This is not hard to prove provided that one considers the ‘universality of self-deceit, and of self-overvaluation, even in the most cultivated minds’. Furthermore, nothing like a science can be built upon unsupported consciousness inasmuch as the train of the mental phenomena around us is long and complicated. The evidence of metaphysical truths is to be sought in the actions of human agency. Tracing the principles of science in action has several advantages. For instance, first, the facts of experience, ‘the evidentiary facts’, singly taken, ‘are perfectly distinct and unequivocal’. Factual reality, understood in terms of notions and modifications of the human body, are open and cognizable to everyone’s senses. Thus, ‘by deducing metaphysical science entirely from human action, the individual facts upon which the science rests become as plain and as ascertainable as any physical facts whatever’. The second advantage to be noticed is the perfect communicability of the evidence provided by human action. The fact that such evidence is eventually perceivable by everyone’s knowledge makes it verifiable by anyone, whereas the ideas of a person’s own consciousness cannot be confirmed or refuted by others. Thirdly, ‘all human actions are in reality facts subjected to the senses - that is, they are sensations. But sensations are far stronger and clearer than any other of the mental phenomena; and this superior distinctness of course renders all the principles built upon them more certain’. Fourthly, and here the utilitarian element is conspicuous, confinement of observations to human action leads one almost by definition to observe what, for the good of human nature, is desirable to observe. ‘The pleasures and pains of human beings are sure 62 BL Add. MSS 29,528 fol. 22. The stimulus derived apparently from a reading of D. Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 3 vols. (London 1792-1827). 63 21 Chapter 1 to present themselves to the view in the most prominent manner ... Human Pains and Pleasures therefore and the circumstances most essentially promotive and preventive of each, will be the first to strike our eyes.’64 Closely related to Grote’s empiricist epistemology is his espousal of David Hartley’s (1705-1757) theory of Association. The first factual notions a child’s mind receives, he stated in a note, ‘are introduced through the medium of the senses, and to these notions the sentiment of belief is, by the laws of our nature, firmly and universally annexed. But as the first notions of facts, thus acquired, uniformly awaken belief, there will naturally be formed in the mind of the child a very powerful association between the former and the latter. By virtue therefore of the known laws of association, whenever he acquires the notion of a fact, by any other means than the senses, the sentiment of belief will yet arise, as it had previously been accustomed to do’. 65 The Association-theory is furthermore put forward as a key for demystifying magic. The belief in magical powers, Grote argued, rises when ‘[u]nimportant phenomena are connected in our imaginations with a particular result, merely because they happen to precede it in the order of time and thus become invested with that excessive and unwarranted range of agency, which if not detected and verified by subsequent observation, falls afterwards under the denomination of Magick’.66 Grote’s essay “On Magick”, written in 1820, bears unmistakable signs of being influenced by Mill as well as by Bentham. Mill’s debt to Hartley is well known. Leslie Stephen regarded Hartley as Mill’s ‘chief master’, whose theory he applied extensively and even advanced further. 67 As we are informed by John Stuart Mill, his father considered Hartley’s Observations on Man (1749) as the ‘really master-production in the philosophy of mind’. Subsequently Mill, in the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829), extended the principle of Association; it was one of his most important 64 BL Add. MSS 29, 528 fols. 2-8. BL Add. MSS 29,528 fol. 85. See also Grote’s note on Hartley, BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 327. In the Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates, 3 vols. (London 1865) I 523-4, Grote ascribed to Plato a good part of the theory of Association. 66 BL Add. MSS 29,531 fols. 9-10. The essay was published with an introduction by J. Vaio, “Seventy Years Before the Golden Bough: George Grote’s Unpublished Essay on `Magick´”, in W.M. Calder III, ed. The Cambridge Ritualists Reconsidered, Illinois Classical Studies, Supplement 2 (Atlanta and Georgia 1991) 263-74. 67 Stephen, The English Utilitarians II 288-9, 292-3. For an extensive discussion on Mill and Hartley, see Fenn, James Mill’s Political Thought 34-46. Stephen also emphasises Mill’s attachment to ‘Baconian principles and the philosophical effectiveness of the inductive method’. Interestingly, Grote, referring to Bacon’s Novum Organum several times, identified the Socratic method with the inductive process of Baconian methodology. See BL Add. MSS 29,528 fol. 38: Bacon, according to Grote, ‘gave to the human intellect light to see by, and tools to dig with’, etc. In one of his poems, which he composed before his meeting with the Utilitarians, Grote alluded to Lord Bacon, as the founder of experimental philosophy: ‘[H]e, the British Genius, sent his light/ O’er the long track of Lethargy and Night.’ See Poems (London 1872) 19. 65 22 The Scholar and the Radical contributions to psychology John Stuart believed. On the basis of the theory of Association, the elder Mill envisioned the moral improvement and intellectual condition of humankind by means of education. 68 The utilitarian philosopher deemed the value of education to be dependent on the building up of associative links between pleasurable (or painful) ideas and actions advantageous (or disadvantageous) to the greatest number. 69 A considerable part of Grote’s notes and thoughts on Greek history (often rising to the status of essays) is associated with utilitarian politics and the theory of education.70 In an essay entitled “Ancient and Modern Social Systems”, written between 1818 and 1822, interestingly Grote invoked Plato’s authority to lend support to fundamental utilitarian principles. What strikes the reader is that his idea of Plato in the early 1820s appears to be extremely favourable unlike his more critical stance towards the philosopher forty-five years later and when the younger Mill’s essay On Liberty was published. It is worth transcribing the whole passage. ‘The three grand causes’, Grote observed in truly utilitarian language, which determine the happiness of any community, are 1: Good Laws. 2. Universal education. 3. Universally small families. If these three causes were once brought into full and concurrent operation, as much would be done as the situation of man in society admits of. Such is the connection between the various branches of social amelioration, that it seems impossible to accomplish fully any one of these three great ends unless the other two be at the same time brought about. If families are generally overburdened with children, they will be too poor and miserable to partake in the entire benefits of education. If the population be not well educated, they will not become sensible of the inevitable misery consequent upon numerous families: nor will they duly appreciate and reverence a good system of laws. Again, if there be not good laws in operation, no effective system of education can be extended through the community: every man’s energies will be demanded for his own protection against 68 J.S. Mill, Autobiography 43, 65-6. See W.H. Burston, ed. James Mill on Education (Cambridge 1969) 14-6, and G.S. Bower, Hartley and James Mill (London 1881) 183. 70 The massive volumes of manuscripts, either notes, transcripts or short essays reveal Grote’s mastery of ancient sources early in his life. Manuscripts dating before 1818 contain much on Homer, Plato, Pausanias and Strabo. Homer seems to have occupied a considerable part of his early Greek studies. Some notes on the Timaeus may be dated as early as 1818. Other pieces, as for instance his school exercises and notes before 1809, manifest his excellent knowledge of the Greek language. There are also some notes on Euripides, Hesiod, Xenophon and Cicero. See Grote’s “Early Exercises at Charterhouse, at about the age of eleven or twelve - 1805-6”, ULL MSS 429/I; and his “Verse Translations and Miscellaneous Notes from 1809-1824”, BL Add. MSS 29,527; on Homer see fols. 49-53; on the Timaeus fol. 69; on Euripides fols. 64-8; on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia fols. 89-94. See also ULL MSS 429 (1820) and BL Add. MSS 29,515 (1818-1824), for extensive notes and extracts from various sources, such as Diodorus, Pausanias, Herodotus, Plutarch, Thucydides, Isocrates, and minor essays on several subjects (ancient law, finances, slavery, education, poetry). 69 23 Chapter 1 the aggression of neighbours: and a numerous family, though it may be a source of poverty, will be highly prized as a means of defence and security. It appears thus that all these three separate blessings mutually assist and second each other, and that no one of them can be enjoyed in perfection, without all the three. These are the three ultimate ends to be brought about: The modes of nominating and remunerating the various magistrates and servants of the public, the arrangements for detecting and controuling their misconduct, the apportionment of the legislative and executive functions, all these are means to the above ends. If in a nascent and untainted community, one were permitted to assume, what the vehement imagination of Plato ventures to claim in his Republic, the coincidence of philosophy and power in the same hands, the three abovementioned benefits would result with infallible certainty. Perfection would not be attained at first, but mistakes would be discovered and corrected, when there were none of the governing interests concerned in their perpetuation.71 This passage is remarkable because it delineates the enlightened manifesto of utilitarian thought. Grote’s reflections distinctively combine the intellectual traditions that gave rise to Philosophical Radicalism and remain a testimony to his ideological response to the pressing political issues of early Victorian society. The young disciple first drew attention to the essential constitutive elements of the ‘happiness of the community’, i.e. good laws, universal education, and universally small families. The first element (good laws) is theoretically rooted in Bentham’s philosophy of legislation, initially formulated against Sir William Blackstone’s (1723-1780) Commentaries on the Laws of England, and which, broadly speaking, aimed at the production of a fully rational and critical jurisprudence based on the axiom of the desirability of the principle of utility. 72 The second element (universal education) apparently derives from James Mill, who was adamant in his demand for social and political education. 73 Social influences and wise legislation are in fact the grand instrument of education and highly consequential in terms of redefining the purposes of government. 74 The argument for ‘universally small families’ underpins the Malthusian theory respecting the size of population and its consequences upon economic activity and the general progress of humankind. In his Essay on Population, the political economist Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) argued, against the excessive optimism of the French philosophes regarding the future progress of society, that as population increases in geometrical proportion and subsistence in arithmetical proportion only, vice, misery, and social degradation would increase 71 BL Add. MSS 29,529 fol. 35. See Bentham, Traités de législation civile et pénale, ed. É. Dumont, 3 vols. (Paris 1802). 73 See James Mill, Schools for All, in Preference to Schools for Churchmen only (London 1812). 74 The influence of Mill’s theory of education on Grote is manifest in his unpublished “Essay of Education” which is appended to this chapter. 72 24 The Scholar and the Radical respectively.75 Under a rational system of institutions, Malthus believed, the size of the population would become adapted to the means available for the people’s support. To bring the result nearer to the desired standard, the population should be accordingly enlightened and, thus, encouraged to become accustomed to habits of moral reflection. Understandably, the Malthusian principles developed within the same revolutionary context as Bentham’s and Hume’s philosophy enriched and supported the doctrine of utility and the idea of discovering the laws that could ensure progress and happiness.76 Grote conceived the formation and advancement of ‘public opinion’ as being of great importance for the progress and happiness of political society. The task for improving public opinion should necessarily involve the activity of the ‘best’ people in the country, that is, those free from the bonds of traditional prejudice and selfish motives. The disinterested liberal Radicals are here insinuated, whereas the clergy (once the representatives of a ‘popular Church’) are again reproached for being attached to ‘sinister interests’. New thoughts and feelings, the fruit of an active political discussion do every now and then find their way into the bosoms of the people, in spite of all the ascendant influences which tend to check and stifle them. Though the large sinister interests in a state operate with irresistible effect on bodies of men, so as to determine the reasonings as well as the actions of a large majority among them: yet there will always be a small minority who escape the bias, and whose minds adopt conclusions peculiar to themselves. Many out of this minority will of course be mere capricious separatists: but there will always be a small fraction in whom the genuine light of truth and patriotism will be kept alive. Such individuals, few in number and at ordinary periods exercising no apparent influence, are the real sources of advancement and instruction to the community ... The immediate agent, which acts in the last resort on the minds of the ordinary mass, is at present the daily press. Two centuries ago it was the pulpit. When the Church of England was really the popular Church, its preachers seem to have touched more upon extrareligious subjects than the popular dissenting preachers do now. By exciting the minds of the people in that direction, they might at that time hope to extend their own political power: whereas the dissenting clergy have never had the smallest chance of acquiring political power, nor has it ever entered into their contemplation to stimulate the feelings of the people on those matters.77 75 See Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers (1798). In one of his essays on the “Grecian Colonies”, BL Add. MSS 29,519 (1824-1831) fols. 67, Grote praised the ancients for being aware of the importance of controlling the size of population. Interestingly, this essay was read by J.S. Mill, whose remarks with pencil still survive in the margin. 76 See Halévy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism 225-251. 77 BL Add. MSS 29,529 fol. 36. 25 Chapter 1 The reader of Grote’s manuscripts will come across several preparatory essays to the history of Greece - or relevant pieces of work obviously initially designed to form independent articles but later put aside, never appearing in Victorian journals. One of the most important pieces (“Of the Athenian Government”) was recently transcribed by Chambers and Vaio, to which J. Buckler has attached a historical commentary. 78 Interestingly, this essay formed a liberal critique of ancient democratic practices. Grote followed Demosthenes in his attack on the wealthy politicians who dominated the assembly and who could easily escape conviction in the courts by offering bribes to the dicasts. 79 Disregarding the possibility of rhetorical exaggeration, Grote suggested that such politicians subverted democracy by frustrating the assembly and by violating liberty of speech. One should also consider a number of important essays written between 1815 and 1831. The first to be noticed is the essay entitled “On the Character of Philip of Macedon” dated 15 November 1815. Another piece concerned the “State of Greece from the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War to the peace of Antalcidas, B.C. 404-387” also dating from 1815. In both essays, Grote clearly emerges as the future liberal historian of ancient Greece, rejecting the ‘excessive panegyric’ of Philip drawn by earliest historians and citing with approval the more dispassionate judgement of Thomas Leland (1722-1785).80 Had the Athenians, Grote argued, remained faithful to the values and mechanisms of their constitutional arrangements, Philip could never have extended his control to their borders. Interestingly, in this essay the youthful Grote severely criticised the ‘wretched state of the Athenian judicature’ in the fourth century; the ‘senseless weakness which at that time pervaded the Athenian republic’; and observed to the effect that ‘the politics of the Athenians were often marked by insincerity & want of principle, & almost constantly of indecision & fickleness’.81 Two other essays dating from 1831 examined the “Liturgies of the Athenians” and the “Athenian Law Proceedings”. Among the acts of injustice imputed to the Athenian democracy, Grote maintained, was the imposition of severe burdens upon the rich for sheer public gratification. ‘But this charge too against the government of Athens is, as we think, entirely groundless; the offices in question though they might occasionally prove vexatious to individuals, were sources of 78 In Calder and Trzaskoma, ed. George Grote Reconsidered 75-94. See also BL Add. MSS 29,516 fol. 35. Crito, according to Grote, encouraged Socrates to escape from prison, ‘for everyone would believe that he might have procured his friend’s release, if he were willing to devote a certain sum of money … This is a remarkable proof of the notorious omnipotence of bribery at Athens, & of course, an evidence that the rich could evade the law whenever they pleased.’ 80 See T. Leland, The History of the Life and Reign of Philip, King of Macedon, the Father of Alexander the Great, 2 vols. (London 1758). 81 BL Add. MSS 29,520 (1815-1851) fols. 25-26. 79 26 The Scholar and the Radical advantage & power to the rich as a body.’82 In the essay respecting Athenian law, Grote pointed out that one of the most hazardous biases of the Athenian courts of justice had been their standing prejudice in favour of wealthy families that made them highly imperfect as instruments of justice. The Athenian courts of justice, Grote believed, were defective mostly in favour of the rich but uniformly defective in respect to protection of the poor. 83 It is apparent that Grote’s early essays on Greek historical subjects were largely intended to provide an antidote to earlier derogatory judgements of ancient democracy. For Grote, if there was an important defect in the way ancient democracy was organised and ruled, it was its bias in favour of the rich and definitely not the (historically ungrounded) suppression of wealthy or noble families by the poor freemen. Thus, reversing by 180 degrees the long-established judgement, Grote argued that Athenian democracy was, in a certain sense, defective on the grounds of its not being radical enough as to exclude distinctions of property and family rank from the sphere of political life and the administration of justice. CONCLUSION There are two turning points in Grote’s life that can be viewed as a preparation for his contribution to Greek historiography and philosophy: his meeting with the utilitarian liberals and his political career in Parliament. The former laid the foundations of the scholarship that Grote afterwards admirably presented in the History of Greece and the Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates. Features such as insistence on the importance of facts, rejection of vague apriorism, accuracy, and freedom from conventional beliefs were developed in conformity with the intellectual requisites of Utilitarianism. The latter showed to him the direction in which his previous studies and his vast researches were driving him. His political instinct, strengthened in the context of continuous parliamentary struggles, focussed a new light on the history of ancient Greece, unveiled to him BL Add. MSS 29,520 fol. 57. See also fol. 74: ‘To serve trierachies & choregies was to purchase advancement to office for himself, & for those whom he chose to befriend; it was to secure pardon before the tribunals for any slight offence, & mitigation of punishment for a great one … We are fully warranted therefore in affirming that the gain of the wealthy taken as a body, in power & influence, was fully equal to their expenditure in money; & as the expenditure of the rich everywhere (agreeably to the remarks of Adam Smith in one of the best chapters of his Theory of Moral Sentiments) is for the most part destined to procure for themselves distinction & command over the sentiments of others, that mode of outlay cannot have been displeasing to the generality of the Athenian rich, which secured to them these rewards in the highest possible perfection.’ 83 See, however, BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 421: ‘The Athenian administration of justice, by their numerous juries, must have been such as to inspire great confidence in the people, & must thus have led to an abandonment of the habit of private revenge much more completely than in those cities where justice was in the hands of an oligarchy.’ 82 27 Chapter 1 the diversity of human characteristics and motives, and provided the empirical apparatus for appreciating the complex structure of Greek politics and society as well as the influence of local legislation upon the people’s political and moral attitudes. James Mill, no doubt, provided Grote with an essential intellectual stimulus, but it should be observed that there is no direct anecdotal or other evidence showing that it was Mill who encouraged Grote to embark on his ‘Greek projects’ or even that he enhanced his interest in the ancients. It has been shown above that Grote had acquired classical education as a part of his basic education and that he was independently very well read in the original Greek sources definitely prior to his encounter with the elder Mill. It is worth observing that Grote was so timid and moderate a person that he could believe himself ‘guided’, though without sufficient justification. As one of his biographers justly remarked, ‘no man was ever so unconscious of his own greatness’. 84 There is no doubt that Grote cannot be understood outside the ideological heritage to which he belonged. He was a straightforward, almost obsessed utilitarian, a lifelong devoted disciple of Bentham, an honest and upright liberal politician, animated with hopes for speedy change and social progress. From a consideration of his manuscripts, it is abundantly clear that Grote turned his eyes to the ancients equipped with the full apparatus of a Benthamite Radical and that he was prepared to thoroughly apply his experience and knowledge to his interpretations of the political affairs and intellectual experience of the Greek world. However, the present work will try to remember that ‘the motives of a book, and the purpose for which it was written, are not the book itself’. 85 This is a useful idea in studying Grote, whose enthusiasm for liberty, toleration and social justice is so vividly present in his defence of Athens, the sophists and the demagogues, that it might be suggested that defending them was his real objective, even at the cost of scholarly exposition and argument. Grote’s scholarship was profound and vast, and it is worth trying to see what in it transcended time-bound conditions and ideological interests, without neglecting either element. 84 85 W. MacIlwraith, The Life and Writings of George Grote (London 1885) 7, 17. See E. Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven and London 1946) 127. 28 The Scholar and the Radical Appendix ANCIENT AND MODERN EDUCATION86 The education set on foot both by Aristotle and Plato would not fail to communicate to the citizen a powerful and earnest love of his commonwealth & of all his fellow citizens. That of Plato would also impart considerable logical powers & much strengthen the intellect. Of positive knowledge, at that period, so little had been treasured up, that no scheme of education could include more than slight scientific acquirements. In this latter point, the ancient schemes of education fall incredibly short of the modern. But in the two former, they will be found fully equal, if not superior to the latter. Ancient education comprehended abundant vivâ voce discussion with the preceptor, on all kinds of moral subjects. There were then few books, and there was less opportunity of acquiring knowledge purely through reading. The master was called upon to resort more to his own memory or invention for topics to communicate, or questions to start. In the solution of the difficulties which he propounded, all the mental powers of his pupil must have been brought into action, and a capacity of promptly answering perplexing questions must have been created. The ancient philosophers, depending as they did altogether upon their celebrity, must have possessed in considerable perfection the art of interesting and drawing out their pupils. All the subjects then known as fit for discussion, must have belonged to some departments of moral & political science, or must have had reference in some way or other to the phenomena of human society. Neither history, nor physics, nor foreign languages, could then have formed distinct branches of instruction. Education was thus less conversant with particular facts, and more with general reasonings: it tended much more than it does now both to sharpen the intellect, & to impart logical and persuasive powers; though it did not open so extensive and diversified a range of ideas, nor store the memory so amply with new acquisitions. Ancient education communicated to the mind as far greater power of original combination, & rendered it more capable of turning a limited number of facts to account. The instruction which the scholar received, too, turning so much more on moral subjects, bore a more immediate reference to the constitution and wellbeing of society, & tended to keep that great more constantly within his view. The superior tendency of ancient education, “to communicate love of the commonwealth & of fellow-citizens in general,” arose partly in the manner indicated by the last sentence, partly also from the indirect effect of republican 86 BL Add. MS 29,529 (1818-1822) fols. 29-30 verso-recto. 29 Chapter 1 institutions. The reasonings and illustrations of the professors in his school naturally bore some affinity to, and were in part deduced from, the public discussions in the agora. Now all such discussions contemplated the happiness of the mass of the citizens uniformly as their professed object, generally as their real object. The reasonings for or against any proposed measure were drawn from this common source, & as the discussions in the schools were in part formed upon this model & also intended to qualify a youth for ultimately figuring in public life, the habit of looking to the good of society as a paramount end was early implanted and systematically maintained. The rights and obligations of the citizen as such, both towards individuals and towards his fellow citizens collectively, were first introduced to the view of the youth under fictitious and hypothetical circumstances; he heard them vindicated and enlarged upon by the eloquence of the teacher, & was called upon to recollect and reproduce what the heard: & the civic status thus became one of the earliest subjects of meditation. There was no king or other single personage to draw the feelings of the citizens towards himself, & to appear to common imaginations as the representative and substitute for the collective supremacy of all. The preservation of the common authority over all, from whence each individual derived his protection and security, was intimately allied with a feeling of equal rights and equal obligations inhering in every citizen. Existing functionaries were universally imagined to hold their power purely for the service of the commonwealth, without any title except what the voluntary choice and consent of the community bestowed upon them. The idea of the general interest was thus kept more steadily present to the mind of each citizen, without being crossed by the interest of one or a few predominant individuals, or of any recognised partial confederacy. All these remarks belong immediately to the working of the government: but when we recollect how much the workings of the governments suggested & determined the topics of instruction between a master & his pupils, it will appear evident that the tendency of ancient education, arising from this source, to keep alive attachment to the commonwealth, must have been great & important. Both Aristotle and Plato direct that all the youth, sons of citizens, shall be educated together, by the same teachers and according to one common system. Education so conducted must have had a still farther tendency to assimilate the school to the state, & to give a political tone to the topics selected for discussion between teachers and pupils. The public scheme of education was adopted both at Sparta & in Crete: but the teaching, in both these states, seems to have been so very meagre and contracted, that the minds of the citizens were scarcely influenced at all by what they actually learnt there. See a remark of Aristotle. Polit. viii.3.5. on the neglect of every thing except bodily training, in the Lacedæmonian education: in his time, indeed, other nations in Greece had begun to surpass them even in bodily training. 30 The Scholar and the Radical Ancient education, therefore, however less efficacious than modern in imparting positive knowledge, is assuredly not inferior either tois êthesin or tô logô,87 to adopt the distribution of Aristotle, either with reference to the habits & the disposition, or to the ratiocinative and intellectual powers. Scarcely any thing is done in modern education, to rectify the one of these or to invigorate the other. Especially, nothing is done in modern education to create any extensive sympathies for fellow-citizens, or any strong sense of right or obligation connected with the character of a citizen. Much pains are usually taken to implant in the minds of youth feelings suitable to the peculiar station, or rank, or profession, occupied by each. A peculiar code of morality is inculcated upon each individual, according as he makes one of this or that section of society: the common rights and obligations appertaining to all remain untold & overlooked, & consequently never become allied with any of the stronger emotions. Men never acquire the habit of contemplating their interest in common as partners in one great political union. Each man dwells upon some separate lot of rights and obligations which attach to him as a member of one of the subordinate fraternities, & the affections which he thus contracts rather tend to sever him from the community than to bind him to it. It is true that each of these several fraternities recognise the duty of obedience and submission to the law, & the habits of a good citizen, to this extent, become tolerably well established. But the law of the land is looked up to as a common superior, not over a great number of different individuals, but over a small number of separate fraternities wherein these individuals are respectively enrolled. The politeia becomes not mia, but pleious, with a sort of federal authority, presiding over them. 87 Greek in text. 31 

Chapter Two British Historians of Ancient Greece, 1739-1847 The histories of Greece published throughout the second half of the eighteenth century were vehicles for political manifestos inspired by the panicked hatred of revolutionary aims and ideas. 1 Monarchists in Britain as well as the ‘party historians of antiquity’ felt that the revolutions in America and France threatened the constitutional order established by the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. The political ideology of the revolutionary era appeared to them as subversive to life, property, and important social distinctions. Historians commonly started their narratives with references to the problems of the day, admitting that the subject of their research was important primarily for its pragmatic value for morals and current politics. But even prior to the French Revolution, British historians urged the study of Greek antiquity as a convenient source of instruction, and thus a means of preventing constitutional anomalies. This didactic and instrumental understanding of ancient politics was plainly reflected in their recurrent comparisons between the ancient Greek constitutions and the British system of government. It should be kept in mind that Britain prided itself on possessing a balanced constitution. The Greek republics were judged inferior, prone to faction and decadence and, thus, of limited life because power went to the hands of the indigent, and the indigent are always destitute of political virtue. Having the Greek (Athenian) historical paradigm in mind, the contemporary British politician should have been alerted to the possibility of an unequal distribution of political offices or of excessive royal influence in government. In the course of the French revolution and shortly afterwards, it was felt that the imminent danger to the status quo and the structure of property relations was the rapid spread of democratic ideas. In this chapter, I shall provide an outline of the debate over Athenian democracy in the period 1739 to 1847, covering the historiographical period commencing with Temple Stanyan’s (d. 1752) Grecian History and closing with the History of Greece by Connop Thirlwall, Grote’s immediate predecessor.2 In doing so, I am not suggesting that Thirlwall’s work and eighteenth-century 1 The classic treatments of the subject are: T.P. Peardon, The Transition in English Historical Writing, 1760-1830 (New York 1933) 69-102; and G.P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London and New York 1928) ch. XVI 308-322. Of the modern accounts, see F.M. Turner’s commanding The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London 1981) which partly deals with the eighteenth century, and J.T. Roberts, Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought (Princeton 1994). 2 It is an ‘outline’ because authors like Mitford and Thirlwall deserve separate treatment, which is not possible within the limits of the present work. Chapter 2 ideological historiography form an inseparable unity. The truth is quite different. Overall, it will be argued that for the eighteenth-century British historians an investigation into the nature and background of Greek society and politics would have been worthless if it had not succeeded in guiding the reader to a wiser and better political awareness, usually of a conservative character. To write a history of ancient politics involved, in effect, the propagation of a true code of political morality, which was emphatically incompatible with the definition and content of political ideas in classical Athens. POLITICS AND PARTY HISTORIOGRAPHY The tendency to embody political discussion in Greek historiography is distinctly represented in the works of Stanyan and Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), who first claimed that exploring Greek history could be a useful task if it provided the perennial lesson of how to secure the preservation of liberty through a balanced constitution. A close study of the history and destiny of Athens in particular could provide a valuable illustration of how the people of Attica, possessing excessive political control, conducted foreign and domestic policy badly, and led the state to a moral crisis that eventually proved fatal to its integrity. In his historico-didactical essay, Montagu, an eccentric traveller and, between 1754 and 1762, M.P. for the borough of Bossiney, Cornwall, 3 emphasised that the history of Athens should be primarily read for contemporary instruction: Athens ... by her fall, has left us some instructions highly useful for our present conduct. Warned by her fate we may learn, that the most effectual method which a bad minister can take, to tame the spirit of a brave and free people, and to melt them down to slavery, is to promote luxury, and encourage and diffuse a taste for publick diversions ... That there cannot be a more certain symptom of the approaching ruin of a State than when a firm adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of merit.4 The ‘mob government’ of Athens, according to Montagu, gradually became the seat of faction and civil dissension, which was a natural result given the unwise compliance of eminent politicians with the people’s wishes. Solon’s reign provided a deplorable example of a politician who, despite his virtues, had been flatly mistaken in entrusting the supreme power to ‘the giddy and fluctuating 3 See E.W. Montagu, Autobiography, ed. R.S. Mackenzie (Philadelphia 1870). E.W. Montagu, Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republics. Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain (London 1759, later editions in 1769 and 1778) 144. It was translated into German, Betrachtungen über die Aufnahme und den Verfall der alter Republiken (Breslau 1781); and French, De la naissance et de la chute des anciennes republiques (Paris 1793). 4 34 British Historians of Ancient Greece populace’ and to ‘factious Demagogues’. 5 Similarly Stanyan (the first author to wrote the history of ancient Greece not as a part of a wider project), while not displaying a desirable apparatus criticus in his examination of the ancient sources - he generally copied the anecdotal style of Plutarch and the moralising tone of the French universal historian Charles Rollin 6 (1661-1741) – cast abundant strictures on Solon’s legislative policy. Solon’s reforms, Stanyan believed, were designed to answer the ‘capricious’ needs of an Athenian mob destitute of any moral character.7 The state had finally disintegrated into rival factions yearning for political power ever ready to employ any means to promote selfish objectives. 8 ‘Factions’ for Stanyan, and indeed contemporary moral and political theorists, were subversive, bigoted, and self-interested conspiracies, whereas ‘party’ could always imply a vehicle for the promotion of public prosperity and virtue. 9 The long essays on Greek history by Stanyan and Montagu are eminently characteristic of the moralising ‘warning literature’ of the eighteenth century. Like many other works, they were devoid of any illuminating or original comments on political history and seem to have fulfilled their purpose in warning the nation of the dangers inherent in luxury, loose morals and immoderate liberality. Predictably, the two historians concluded their works by presenting what they considered to be an indispensable contrast: ‘The British constitution’, Montagu declared, ‘as settled at the revolution, is demonstrably, far preferable to, and better formed for duration, than any of the most celebrated Republicks of antiquity’; adding that ‘if Britain follows the way of Athens it soon will have to face the same fate’. In similar fashion, Stanyan praised the British constitution on the grounds that, ‘as an Englishman’, he could not resist ‘the temptation of saying something in preference of our own, which is certainly the nearest to perfection’. 5 Montagu, Reflections 80, 84-5. See Charles Rollin’s popular universal history, Histoire Ancienne, 6 vols. (Paris 1730-38). It was translated into English as The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians, 8 vols. (London 1813, twelfth ed.). 7 T. Stanyan, The Grecian History. From the Original of GREECE, to the Death of PHILIP of MACEDON, 2 vols. (London 1781, first ed. vol. I 1707, vol. II 1739) I 180-81. It might be interesting to note that Stanyan dedicated his own work to Lord Somers (1651-1716), who presided over the committee which formulated the Declaration of Rights. The American edition (New York 1845), includes the life of the author by J. Bell. Interestingly, Diderot translated the text of Stanyan, Histoire de Grece, 3 vols. (Paris 1743). 8 Similarly, Oliver Goldsmith, Grecian History, 2 vols. (London 1774) I 227. Goldsmith’s work was trans. by Christian D. Beck, Geschichte der Griechen ... bis auf den Tod Alexanders des Grossen, 3 vols. (Frankenthal 1788-89); and interestingly in Greek by Dēmētrios Alexandridēs, Historia tis Hellados, 3 vols. (Vienna 1806-1807). 9 For an example of the rhetoric on the opposition between ‘faction’ and ‘party’ in the mideighteenth century, see H. Walpole, The Opposition to the Late Minister Vindicated (London 1763) 16-7. 6 35 Chapter 2 Liberty, he argued, ‘is better secured to us, than it could be in any of the republicks of Greece, or in any of those regal governments in Europe’. 10 The compilations of Montagu and Stanyan are ideological responses to the political and social problems of the day at a time prior to the events in France and the loss of the American colonies, which shocked and alarmed the propertied class. At this time, the greatest perceived danger derived from three sources: first, the factious struggles for power of the leading Whigs within the political and parliamentary arenas. Second, the constitutional imbalances that could be created by either an increase in the influence of the Crown or excessive power of the Commons respectively. (Walpole’s success in surviving one ministerial crisis after another because he monopolised the confidence and protection of the king provided a lesson in how the Court could control the Commons.) And third, by the distrust towards authority, expressed sometimes in anarchistic activity by the lower classes, the segment of the population that suffered from unemployment and poverty. Outside Parliament, opposition was growing between the Tories, country gentlemen, and the Whigs. While not advocating old-fashioned Toryism, divine rights and hereditary succession, which suffered a serious blow in the political philosophy of Locke, conservatives decisively defended the long-valued triangle of Crown, Lords and Commons and, thereby, the confinement of political power to the property owning groups.11 By illuminating the moral and political uses of Greek history, British historians wanted to formulate viable propositions legitimising the foundation and purposes of government. The establishment Whigs, and indeed most of their opponents, believed that the British constitution was the best ever established in the history of humankind, because it was not a threat to liberty, authority or property possessions. The ancient constitutions by contrast, whether monarchical, aristocratic or democratic, had always degenerated into self-interested factions. The constitutional structure established in Britain created a mixed government that was superior to monarchy, aristocracy or democracy in their pure forms. The British constitution, historians argued, established an admirable equilibrium between the executive and the legislature branches through various checks and balances. No doubt, the rhetoric in favour of the preservation of a ‘balanced constitution’ appealed most to men of property, since such a balance could protect them both from the rule of the ‘giddy and turbulent mob’ and/or the potentially arbitrary decisions of the Court. According to William Blackstone, first Professor of English law at Oxford, ‘herein indeed consists the true excellence of the English government, that all the parts of it form a mutual check upon each other. In the Montagu, Reflections 151, 388; Stanyan, Grecian History II “Preface”. The ideological battle of the age is admirably explored by H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London 1977). See also H. Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge 1968). 10 11 36 British Historians of Ancient Greece legislature, the people are a check upon the mobility, and the mobility a check upon the people; by the mutual privilege of rejecting what the other has resolved: while the king is a check upon both, which preserves the executive power from any encroachments’. Their interaction thus ‘constitutes the true line of the liberty and happiness of the community’. 12 Both Whig and Tory ideologues praised the virtuous constitution insofar as it established a balance between authority and liberty. But ‘liberty’ always meant the free expression of competitive landed and commercial interests in the context of the state’s consistent promotion of industry and trade. Until the time of the late eighteenth-century Radicals, liberty rarely meant the interests of the labouring classes. The labouring mass was considered inferior and unable to exercise political judgement. Abandoning the mixed constitutional ideal might have resulted in creating excessive power on behalf of the Commons, and thus the democratic element would have escaped the control of the king and the Lords. The thousands of pamphlets and critical texts published at the time reveal the intensity of the debate over the constituents of political rule, the extent of governmental rule, and the rights of the people. They also lay bare to the historian’s eye the deep-rooted assumption that only men of property were able to rule and that the common populace could not be accepted as a vital constituent in the decision-making processes.13 William Mitford (1744-1827) - Gibbon’s fellow militia officer - and John Gillies (1747-1836), who was appointed Royal historiographer of Scotland in 1793 in succession to William Robertson (1721-1793), provided extensive interpretations of the relationship of classical Greece to contemporary politics. The two scholars, both well read in Greek historical sources, produced the first massive histories of Greece in eighteenth-century Britain. Mitford was the most influential antidemocratic historian at the time, and his work, imbued with a firm belief in the excellence of the British constitution, instructed generations of students.14 His project started in 1784, on the suggestion of Gibbon, but it was not completed until 1810. The rapidly evolving changes in the political and social environment around him considerably affected the development of his thought and, even more, the arguments in the History of Greece.15 The historical narratives of Mitford and Gillies were typically infused with a distinct feeling of the political significance of Greek history, which, they believed, could throw light 12 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England [1765-69], 4 vols. (Oxford 1775) I 1545, quoted in Dickinson, Liberty and Property 145. 13 Even Hume spoke with contempt for the ‘populace’. He characteristically advised Adam Smith to ‘Think of the Emptiness, and Rashness, and Futility of the Common Judgements of Men ... Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude’; quoted in R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, Adam Smith (London and Canberra 1982) 96. 14 Grote himself surely made his first acquaintance with Greek antiquities from Mitford. See BL. Add. MS 29,520, esp. fols. 25-6, 34-5, 92-3. 15 Mitford, History of Greece, 4 quarto vols. (London 1784-1808, third ed.). Mitford was translated by Heinrich C. Eichstädt, Geschichte Griechenlands, 6 vols. (Leipzig 1802). 37 Chapter 2 upon modern events and become an example to their contemporaries. ‘A Grecian history’, wrote Mitford, ‘and indeed any history perfectly written ... but especially a Grecian history perfectly written, should be a political institute for all nations’. 16 A political ‘institute’ implied for Mitford not only the provision of a counterexample of political rule in the first place, but also, positively, a platform of correct ideas on the proper form of government. Keeping a consistent eye on the events of the French Revolution, both historians drew abundant analogies between the recorded experience of Athenian politics and contemporary politics. For Mitford, in particular, ‘what has been passing in France may tend to illustrate Grecian history’.17 By dwelling on the history of Athens and the detestable nature of its political institutions, historians were able to provide lengthy encomiums on the British type of government. Gillies, who characteristically dedicated his work to King George III, referred emphatically to the ‘dangerous turbulence of Democracy’, as well as to the ‘incurable evils inherent in every form of Republican policy’. The pathology of ancient Greek republicanism ‘evinces the inestimable benefits, resulting to Liberty itself, from the lawful dominion of hereditary Kings, and the steady operation of well-regulated Monarchy’.18 Thus the Athenian democracy exemplified the devastating effects of popular rule, jealousy and ambition. Like Gillies, Mitford did not judge it inappropriate to praise in the heart of his narrative British constitutional monarchy, concluding that ‘we cannot consider, without wonder, that an order of things, apparently the most natural, as well as the most beneficial, never subsisted in any country but our own’. England, he believed, through its advantageous constitution, had always avoided the pernicious consequences of internal fermentation which had destroyed Athens and Rome. 19 From the early times of Pericles, the incursion of the common man into politics made the democratic form of government excessively oppressive for the upper classes. The rich were systematically overtaxed and were subject to violations of personal liberty. Pericles should incur, according to Gillies, the blame of the political historian, for he imprudently advocated the privileges of the multitude against the aristocratic influence of the eupatridai, the rich and noble. Pericles 16 Mitford, History of Greece II 529. History of Greece II 525; see also T. Mitchell, ed. The Comedies of Aristophanes, 2 vols. (London 1820) I cl: The French mob might witness in the Athenian populace their own ‘frivolity without [their] good breeding’. 18 J. Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece, 4 vols. (London 1792-3, first ed. 1786) I iii. Gillies’s work enjoyed international reputation and it was translated into German by Johann C. Macher, Betrachtungen über die Geschichte, Sitten und den Charakter der Griechen (Bremen 1781); and Geschichte von Altgriechenland, 11 vols. (Wien 1825). It was also translated into Italian as Storia della Grecia antika, 4 vols. (Venezia 1822-1833). Gillies translated Aristotle. See Aristotle: Ethics and Politics: Comprising his Practical Philosophy, 2 vols. (London 1792). 19 Mitford, History of Greece II 526-7, and III 102-3 for the comparison between the English judicial system with the ‘imperfect’ and ‘tyrannical’ Athenian. 17 38 British Historians of Ancient Greece ‘embraced not only the interests, but adopted the capricious passions, of the multitude; cherishing their presumption, flattering their vanity, indulging their rapacity, gratifying their taste for pleasure without expense’. 20 Likewise, Mitford emphatically stressed that the rich in Athens were constantly treated with ingratitude and injustice. The Tory historian felt no hesitation in arguing that it ‘was as dangerous to be rich under the Athenian democracy as under the Turkish despotism’, since every political decision depended upon the fluctuating passions of the ‘indigent multitude’.21 Apparently, for Mitford democracy was a certain type of despotism. The Greek republics, and particularly Athens, showed disrespect for individual safety and property in domestic politics while in foreign affairs they sought to extend their imperial dominion beyond reasonable limits. Democracy for the Athenian citizenry was simply another name for intemperance and lawlessness: Isonomia merely implied moral irresponsibility and the abuse of freedom.22 Clearly, Mitford and Gillies perceived no essential differences between the character and motives of the Athenian democrats and the French rebels, or the Gordon rioters of 1780, who expressed the discontent of the working class with vandalism, anarchistic action, and disrespect for property. Mitford’s profound hostility to democracy drove him to an extravagant praise of the tyranny of the Thirty in Athens. He also inserted long passages of eulogy to Philip of Macedonia, the ‘enlightened despot’ and ‘the popular King of a free people’, but his idea to write the apology of the Persian type of government which, under Xerxes, appeared to him ‘mild and liberal’, must have astonished even conservative readers. 23 Philip the Macedonian and Dionysius of Syracuse received, in Mitford’s narrative, consistent praise, while Demosthenes was portrayed as a coward and dishonest politician. Under Philip, an enlightened despot and a model of princely clemency and disinterested virtue, Macedonia became a happily united nation. Even in ancient times, however, human wisdom produced a pattern of political rule which, despite its imperfections, stood in agreeable opposition to the idea of an all-powerful, ‘tyrannical’ popular sovereignty. Predictably, the eighteenthcentury historians wrote impassioned encomiums on ‘that wonderful phenomenon in politics and in the history of humanity, the Spartan System’, and contrasted it with democracy, the ‘form of government so intrinsically disposed to irregularity’.24 Historians were, of course, not alone in their enthusiastic pro20 Gillies, History of Ancient Greece II 97-8. Mitford, History of Greece III 21. 22 History of Greece III 477; also I 376, II 419, 517, 536; III 102. 23 History of Greece III 226; IV 415, 621. See also the apologetic biography of Philip by C.M. Olivier, Histoire de Philippe (Paris 1740). 24 Mitford, History of Greece I 198, 282. At Sparta, wrote Rollin, Ancient History II 381, ‘every thing tended to inspire the love of virtue and the hatred of vice; the actions of the citizens, their conversations, and even their public monuments and inscriptions. It was hard for men, brought up 21 39 Chapter 2 laconism. Rousseau idealised Sparta and took it as his model in his Social Contract.25 Baron d’Holbach, the least well known of the leading philosophers of the French Enlightenment, in his Système Social and elsewhere, largely drew on Sparta and Rome to depict an ideal state in which a virtuous monarch leads his people to happiness and morality.26 In Sparta, historians held, political influence had been regularly distributed between the ephors (the oligarchic or aristocratic element), the kings (the monarchy), and the assembly (the democratic element). Such distribution of political power was comparable to the organising structure of the British ‘mixed’ constitution. Drawing the parallel between the two constitutional forms, Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74) argued that the division of political power in Sparta ‘served as a check upon both, and kept the state balanced in tranquillity’.27 Lycurgus’ policy to blend together what he found best in every kind of government was conducive to the public good, and it tended to inspire love of virtue and moderation. Stanyan had already reminded his readers that the frugal and prudent Spartan under the Lycurgean constitution approached Christian morality. The balance of this admirable constitution, he maintained, ‘was held for the most part so equal, that the supreme authority did not degenerate into fierceness and tyranny, nor popular liberty start out into licentiousness and rebellion. And it is imputed to this medium betwixt an excessive subjection, and an excessive freedom, that Sparta was long preserved from those domestic dissensions, which harassed her neighbours’.28 Montagu had also approved of the constitution of Lycurgus, for in combining the virtues of all simple forms of government it was superior to that of any other Greek state. Almost unanimously, historians saw in the Spartan model, which was proved fit for long duration, an early, though unfinished, copy of the British constitution - a constitution not open to such destructive rebellions as those which had been taking place in France. Some of the conclusions of partisan historiography, and especially the association of classical republicanism with decadence, possibly derive from a reading of Montesquieu. The Athenians, according to Gillies and Mitford, understood liberty in terms of self-rule unconstrained by any legal provision. In this sense, the Athenian conception of liberty had no resemblance whatsoever to British constitutional liberty. For Montesquieu, constitutional liberty (which he believed the British citizen enjoyed) meant the rule of law under conditions that cause people to have a sense of security, both of their property and person. in the midst of so many living precepts and examples, not to become virtuous, as far as heathens were capable of virtue’. 25 On Rousseau’s attachment to Sparta, see D. Leduc-Fayett, J.J. Rousseau et le mythe de l’ antiquité (Paris 1974); and E. Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford 1969) 220-41. 26 See M. Cranston, Philosophers and Pamphleteers (Oxford 1986) 121-40. 27 Goldsmith, Grecian History I 20. 28 Stanyan, Grecian History I 95, 85-7; similarly, Montagu, Reflections 72-3; Mitford, History of Greece I 200-21. 40 British Historians of Ancient Greece Legislation, he claimed, should always outweigh the impact of social customs and individual ambition.29 Ancient democracy had been exceptionally fragile because it depended on the customs and habits of the citizens and, thus, its institutional structure did not guarantee property nor did it deter popular violence. The best form of government should be able to protect its citizens by legal means while ensuring the free expression of conflicting interests. Britain, through the separation of powers, effectively secured the true liberty of the individual. The best constitution, in Montesquieu’s view, was a system of interlocking and mutually checking powers such as that prevailed in Rome and in modern England.30 The French political sociologist identified the three parts of the legislature (King, Lord and Commons) as bodies which balanced one another for the benefit of the people. The English political system was more stable than the Roman because its aim was the liberty of the individual, which was effectively secured by the separation of functionally specialised powers and an absolutely independent judiciary. As argued above, middle-century party historians like Stanyan and Montagu had possibly identified a threat to England’s liberties from the Court, and their works intended to impart political caution. King George III sought a more positive role for the monarchy in the executive, and his settled views, for instance his opposition to Catholic emancipation, led to constant quarrels with ministers. Edmund Burke, as shown in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), felt the same threat to England’s liberties arising from the Crown’s growing interference in political struggles. While maintaining that the monarchy was the enduring source of the stability of the British political system, Burke believed that an excessive political power enjoyed by the King of England would have threatened parliamentary sovereignty and its foundational concepts, ‘mixture and balance’. The King’s practice to interfere in every department of domestic policy tended to foster the growth of factions, and factions are the evil element in a state. It is not accidental that Burke vigorously attacked the ‘popular Government’ of Athens for it represented a hell of unruly faction. The Athenians, he thought, were ‘forgetful of all Virtue and publick Spirit, and intoxicated with the Flatteries of their Orators’. Athens had been eventually destroyed because faction and internal conflict poisoned civil society. One has to remember, moreover, that An internal Dissention constantly tore to Pieces the Bowels of the Roman Commonwealth. You find the same Confusion, the same Factions which subsisted at Athens, the same Tumults, the same Revolutions, and in fine, the same Slavery. If perhaps their former Condition did not deserve that Name altogether as well. All 29 Montesquieu, Esprit des lois [1748]; trans. and ed. A.M. Cohler, B.C. Miller and H.S. Stone, Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge 1989) XI 3, 6, 13. 30 Spirit of the Laws V 14. 41 Chapter 2 other Republicks were of the same Character. Florence was a Transcript of Athens. And the modern Republicks, as they approach more or less to the Democratick Form, partake more or less of the Nature of those which I have described.31 The main assumptions of Burke’s pamphlet Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) were shortly after the French revolution embodied in partisan historiography. Burke suggested that nature gave rise to inequality; the French revolutionaries challenged natural inequality, thereby threatening the foundations of civil society. To Burke, the revolution in France was not, like the English Revolution of 1688, the cause of a cautious and limited constitutional change. It was a revolution based on simple and universal theories expounded by the Enlightened philosophers and which proposed to set aside tradition and social values of centuries, thus remodelling society on a ‘rational’ plan. All things considered, it seems that Mitford and Gillies largely combined Montesquieu’s idealisation of the British mixed constitution with Burke’s distress about the French affairs. The history and example of Athenian democracy provided the means to particularise conservative political ideology. But while Mitford’s focus was on the excellence of the British constitution, Gillies consistently highlighted the virtues of enlightened monarchy as a barrier to democratic lawlessness. Clearly, the history of Greece belongs to the reaction against the French Revolution and its intellectual background. Yet another source of influence must have been the growth of extra-parliamentary radical opposition, which proclaimed wider participation of the lower classes in government. Radicals in the last quarter of the eighteenth century argued that the Revolution settlement did not secure the liberties of people. Radical theorists and philosophers like Richard Price (17231791), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Thomas Cooper (1759-1839), Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and William Godwin (1756-1836), argued in favour of a democratically elected House of Commons, and emphasised that the mixed constitution did not, in fact, secure the rights of man. Instead, the myth of a mixed constitution provided the theoretical legitimation of inequality, permitted the promotion of sinister interests and corruption, and alienated the people from the sources of power. Voices in favour of universal suffrage, national education, the abolition of property qualifications for Members of Parliament, and other libertarian maxims were now widely heard. 32 Price’s On Civil Liberty, a work expounding universal philosophical liberalism, published in 1776 (notably, the same year as Bentham’s Fragment on Government and the American Declaration 31 E. Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society, in Ian Harris, ed. Edmund Burke: Pre-Revolutionary Writings (Cambridge 1993, second ed. 1757) 38, 40. 32 James Burgh (1714-1775), a pupil of Price, in his Political Disquisitions (London 1772) and several pamphlets demanded universal suffrage. The claim was actually introduced by John Wilkes (1727-1797) into his measures for parliamentary reform, and rejected by the Commons in 1776. 42 British Historians of Ancient Greece of Independence), largely appealed to the middle classes. By the early 1790s, almost every town in England and Scotland had a club for Constitutional Information or a Society of Friends of the People. Historians of Greece in the late eighteenth century, like Mitford and Gillies, had to challenge the rational political optimism of the Enlightenment as well as the Radical advances to power. They had to prove that republican forms of government were tested and failed because they led to anarchy and moral apathy. Political reforms, if needed, should not depend on mere abstract theories but should take into account nations’ recorded experience. It is perhaps no accident that the idea of progress, central in eighteenth-century rationalist radicalism, clashed with historicist appeals to past experience in order to invalidate people’s claim to liberty. The didactical essay of Sir William Young (1749-1815), M.P. in the Whig service between 1784 and 1806, while not reflecting strong antidemocratic bias, was neither a vindication of the tenets of contemporary radicalism. Young was arguably concerned with exposing the dangers of extremist action, on either side, while emphasizing the stabilising effect of combining loyalty to constitutional arrangements with a sufficient amount of reform in the interest of the people. Young’s historical outlook is most characteristic of the moderate political viewpoint of a section of parliamentary Whigs, with their conflicting loyalties to liberty, social order, country and constitution, especially during those revolutionary times. Predictably, in the Spirit of Athens, Young, like his fellow historians of Greece, confessed that his decision to present the history of Athens rested on the conviction that its arts, science, liberty and empire, as well as the struggles and intrigues of parties and of popular leaders, rendered the subject ‘peculiarly our own’: The struggles and intrigues of parties and of popular leaders; the alternate wisdom and caprice of the people; their ardent love of liberty and high pretensions to command, occasionally drooping in subserviency, and then again rousing from torpid acquiescence to new jealousies, new claims, and to the most vigilant and active exertion of rights and powers; the temporary rigour of a patriot administration, and the successive debility of government from a fluctuation of councils; the tendencies of the state to accession of empire, and the obstacles to continuance of foreign influence and distant dominion; the hasty increase of wealth and marine power from the sources of trade; and thereon trade introducing a spirit of dissipation and self-interest, to dissolve the very strength and prosperity which it gave birth to; private vices then carrying licentiousness into the state, and licentiousness begetting the treasons of party, and seditions of the people; - all these, and many other circumstances attendant on, or complicated with, the political career of a free government and maritime nation, are no where more 43 Chapter 2 forcibly exemplified than in the History of Athens. These are matters of reflection which I have considered as deeply interesting to a British reader.33 A key theme in Young, as in other historians, was to elaborate the means by which Britain could avoid sharing the destiny of Athens, and his work formed a declared attempt to ‘rouse public principles and public virtue, whilst I trace the history of a great and free people; and to excite political caution, whilst I conjoin causes and effects’.34 In tracing the constitutional development in Athens, Young criticised Solon for his failure to reconcile the interests of the people. But the democracy reestablished by Cleisthenes ‘was of the best kinds of republic; and the evils that ensued, in the course of Athenian history, from the flux of morals, and concomitant innovations on the original polity, are not to be placed to the account of the first institution’. And this happened because the people exercised direct power by themselves, at the expense of legal order and justice. Thus, Athens degenerated into ‘a loose and licentious state, wherein the passions of the high and mean spirited are ever at variance; wherein all the varieties of the human composition act, and are acted upon; and wherein the dissentions of the rich, the needy, and of a thousand intermediate descriptions of men, give an opening to, or rather invite, factions, intrigue, and corruption’. 35 Yet, there could be an instructive parallel between the mature Athenian democracy and the British system of government. Civil liberty, Young understood, consisted of personal security, rights and property. The British citizen enjoyed civil liberty in the same way as the dêmos in fifth-century transformed Athenian democracy had enjoyed the blessings of political liberty. But when the historian is specifically asked to judge the merits of a government, the decisive criterion should be whether or not it governs in the interest of the whole community. The distinctive merit of Periclean rule, Young believed, was that it aimed at the general happiness and prosperity. Accordingly, fifth-century Athenian democracy could be pronounced the best of ancient republics; on a like principle, Britain was by far the best modern state because its constitutional order was effectively designed to achieve justice and the good life for all. Young’s account of Athens evidently became less sympathetic in the second revised edition of The Spirit of Athens (1786). In the “Preface” he defended 33 W. Young, The History of Athens, Including a Commentary on the Principles, Policy, and Practice, of Republican Government; and on the Causes of Elevation and of Decline, which operate in every free and commercial State (London 1804; first ed. as The Spirit of Athens, being a Political and Philosophical Investigation of the History of that Republic, 1777) viii-ix. A German translation of the first ed. was published at Leipzig in the same year. Young was also the author of The Rights of Englishmen, or the British Constitution of Government compared with that of a Democratic Republic (London 1793). 34 History of Athens 138. 35 History of Athens 52, 54. 44 British Historians of Ancient Greece himself against those who called ‘the author of the History of Athens ... the strongest advocate for the republican system’. He acknowledged that he cherished ‘a predilection for the republican system, concentrating my regard to the liberties of the people, with that, to a form of government which dispenses and protects those liberties, - in the contemplation of such Republican constitution of state, as is actually existing in Great Britain ... When I state our British government to be republican, I refer to the ancient sense of the word, and to the definition of Aristotle [i.e. a mixed constitution]’. 36 Drummond, an M.P. for the Tories between 1796 and 1801, and afterwards an ambassador to the Ottoman Porte until 1809, wished that his historical undertaking might not be considered ‘trivial or useless’. The subject per se, he explained, might be insignificant, but it was worth trying to extract from it fundamental truths of law and government. Not surprisingly, Drummond’s pamphlet put forward a political theory that culminated in a passionate vindication of the mixed British constitution. The government of Sparta, he argued, ‘excelled all the republics of Greece in the distribution of the civil power. Being a government completely mixed, it displayed the advantages of each separate portion’.37 The Spartan form of rule combined the three different types of civil government (i.e., Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy). This combination can alone promote the political prosperity of a people. ‘There is indeed no form of government, which is so favourable to prudence and deliberation ... In a mixed government ... democracy takes its share in promoting the happiness of a people. It then contributes to increase the prosperity, and to secure the liberty of a nation.’38 The Tory politician considered the Cleisthenian reforms, as well as the formal restriction of the administrative power of the Areopagus initiated by Ephialtes, detrimental to the original constitution, as they unsettled the traditional balance in the state. Such an understanding of Athenian politics at the times of Cleisthenes is arguably indicative of Drummond’s dislike of contemporary Radical ideology, and reflects his fears that drastic parliamentary reforms based on republican principles would have led to a curtailment of the fixed broad-based interests of the upper classes. Yet despite his bias, Drummond, under the impact of Montesquieu’s political sociology, was generally disinclined to condemn Athenian political life, recognising that civil laws should be so adapted as to correspond to the character of the people for whom they are enacted. Solon and Lycurgus promoted legal and constitutional reforms of the sort they deemed of unique suitability to the prevalent customs, minds and temperament of their 36 History of Athens xiii-xiv. W. Drummond, A Review of the Governments of Sparta and Athens (London 1794) 61. Drummond was also the anonymous author of Philosophical Sketches on the Principles of Society and Government (London 1793). 38 Review 60-61. 37 45 Chapter 2 people. What was highly problematic in Solon’s reforms in particular was, in Drummond’s view, his imposing ‘too slight a curb on the liberty of the people’. But the wise legislator’s theory of government was imbued with ‘Patriotism, justice, prudence, honour, and moderation’. As a legislator, Solon accomplished his duty, ‘to inspire the people with the love of morality’, preservation of order and patriotism. The underlying object of Solonian reforms had been to secure happiness (which is a precondition for patriotic feelings); and happiness, according to Drummond ‘ought to be the sole object of all civil government’. 39 Yet, compared to Lycurgus, Solon was necessarily inferior: Those who admire the order, the union, and the regularity, which reign in a monarchy; who think tranquillity preferable to a false notion of liberty, obtained and preserved by continual contests; who consider the delays and the jealousies, which in a popular government too often restrain the just exercise of the executive power; who reverence the fortitude, the hardiness, the generosity, the abstinence, the modesty, and the frugality, which formed the Spartan virtues, will probably prefer Lycurgus to Solon. Those, on the other hand, who believe the people to be the best judges of their own happiness; who admire the arts, the eloquence, and the philosophy of Athens; and indeed all those who esteem it nobler to have refused a crown, in order to render a people free, than to have returned the sceptre to him, to whom it belonged by hereditary right, will think it just to transfer the laurel from the brow of the Lacedemonian, to that of the Athenian lawgiver.40 THE SPIRIT OF ATHENS IN THE AGE OF THE REFORM BILL Mitford’s History of Greece, a sustained defence of Tory ideology, enjoyed great popularity in an age of anti-revolutionary feeling. In 1808, when the fourth huge quarto volume appeared, concluding with the battle of Chaeronia, Lord Brougham (1778-1868) called it ‘the best [History] that has appeared since the days of Xenophon. By calling it the best, we mean that it is the strongest in quality, which is the cardinal virtue ... of historic composition, - trustworthiness’. Despite this preliminary encomium, Brougham would find Mitford’s reconstruction of the history of Athens eventually prejudiced and unsatisfactory. He believed, however, that Mitford was correct in arguing that Solon introduced several checks, such as the Areopagus and the Senate of Five Hundred, with a view to suppressing the disorders of democracy that already existed, even though the privileges of the mob defeated his purpose. In Brougham’s words, the Athenian republic fostered the existence of ‘a dicephalous monster’, i.e., the unprincipled orator and the plundering general. Significantly, the Whig M.P., who devotedly advocated popular education and supported the anti-slavery movement, 39 40 Review 69-70, 106-107. Review 186-7. 46 British Historians of Ancient Greece thought that Mitford misrepresented Macedonian politics and unduly glorified Philip, concluding that it is ‘rather unfortunate that the story of the Grecian republics should have been told by one who has so many anti-republican partialities’. 41 A few years afterwards (1824), Lord Macaulay wrote that Mitford ‘enjoys a great and increasing popularity ... Mr. Mitford has almost succeeded in mounting, unperceived by those whose office it is to watch such aspirants, to a high place among historians .... To oppose the progress of his fame is now almost a hopeless enterprise. Had he been reviewed with candid severity when he had published only his first volume, his work would either have deserved its reputation, or would never have obtained it’. 42 Macaulay’s disappointing conclusion seemed at the time quite reasonable. It was written in the same year that William Ralph Churton (d. 1828), fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, won the first prize at Oxford for his essay on Athens and Rome, which was written in the shadow of Mitford’s historiographical spirit. When the Areopagus lost its formal power, Churton asserted, ‘licentiousness was no longer rebuked or discountenanced: for Pericles ruled by corruption, while he maintained his own integrity unimpeachable’. 43 The established reputation of Mitford would be contested, however, by two liberal predecessors of Grote. The Reform Bill gave rise to new historical narratives that provided effective substitutes for Mitford’s flamingly pro-monarchical standpoint. The first author who contested the influence of Mitford was Edward Lytton Bulwer (1803-1873), the distinguished novelist and political reformer. 44 It is relevant to mention that Bulwer frequented the utilitarian circle and Charles Austin was his contemporary at college. He was also a member of the debating society formed by J.S. Mill in 1825, and frequently spoke with admiration for Bentham.45 Bulwer supported the Reform Bill in 1831, and in the third reformed Parliament he was elected for Lincoln. However, when he returned to Parliament in 1852, it was with the Conservatives. In 1836 he published two large volumes, entitled Athens, its Rise and Fall, which he left incomplete, despite his announcement of another two volumes. The reason for the unfinished project was the appearance of Bishop Thirlwall’s consummate History of Greece. The author immediately acknowledged the inferiority of his own production and ceased H.P. Brougham, “The History of Greece by William Mitford”, Edinburgh Review 12 (1808) 478, 487, 517. 42 Macaulay, “On Mitford’s History of Greece”, in Lady Trevelyan, ed. Miscellaneous Works of Lord Macaulay, 5 vols. (New York n.d.) IV 470; first published in Knight’s Quarterly for November 1824. 43 W.R. Churton, “Athens in the time of Pericles, and Rome in the time of Augustus’, The Oxford English Prize Essays (Oxford 1830) I 86. 44 Grote was of course the first who contested Mitford in the Westminster Review (1826). See chapter 3. 45 See L. Stephen, “Bulwer, E.L.”, D.N.B. (1893) XXXIV 380-87; and J.S. Mill, Autobiography 76, 119. 41 47 Chapter 2 further writing. Bulwer recognised that the history of the Greek republics ‘has been too often corruptly pressed into the service of heated political partisans’, and he wished his readers to acknowledge that ‘whatever [his] own political code, as applied to England, [he] nowhere sought knowingly to pervert the lessons of the past to fugitive interests and party purposes’. 46 Ancient democracy, in particular, could not be a model to the moderns, for the idea and practices of representation were distinctly foreign to it. Furthermore, the existence of vast working classes along with a large enslaved population, harshly treated even in a democratic polis like Athens, made the parallel all that more implausible. Bulwer’s politics, different indeed from old-fashioned toryism, were never of the sort the Radicals expounded. His position is reflected in his general remarks about the politics of other cities apart from Athens. Wavering between conservatism and liberalism, Bulwer acknowledged, for instance, the historical necessity of the tyrannies in ancient Greece. Without the tyrants, he argued, democracies might never have been established. ‘There are times in the history of all nations when liberty is best promoted - when civilisation is most rapidly expedited - when the arts are most luxuriantly nourished by a strict concentration of power in the hands of an individual, - when the despot is but the representative of the popular will.’ Bulwer (already forgetful of his warning against parallels) also argued that the ephors in Sparta acted as the representatives of the people, and, therefore, they should be seen in the light of the ‘soundest philosophy of the representative system’. 47 Bulwer’s work is divided into two parts, one historical and the other dealing with the arts and literature of the Athenians. The plan of a literary section already forms a glaring innovation. Former party historians were not particularly concerned with the literary and intellectual aspects of the ancient Greeks. Bulwer aspired to correct this deficiency. In his examination of the Spartan constitution, the novelist condemned the existence of a powerful body elected for life, the Gerousia, consisting of veterans and retired men, who unfortunately regarded their office as a life reward. The ephors, on the other hand, ambitious men in the prime of life, were the focus of the popular power: ‘Like an American Congress, or an English House of Commons, it prevented the action of the people, by acting in behalf of the people.’ 48 Representation prevented noisy and often fruitless discussions in the agora of Athens. The presence of ephoralty would have sufficed to develop all the best principles of government had it been assisted by the kings and the Gerousia, in a harmonious co-functioning system. Yet, the excessive power of the irresponsible elders led Sparta to narrow and disastrous foreign and domestic policies. 46 Bulwer, Athens, its Rise and Fall, with views of the Literature, Philosophy, and Social Life of the Athenian people, 2 vols. (London 1837) I viii. 47 Athens I 250, 210. 48 Athens I 208. 48 British Historians of Ancient Greece Bulwer’s analysis of the constitutional changes in Athens had a good grounding in ancient sources, and in many respects was sound. Solon, in his view, confronted an established oligarchy of birth which he prudently managed to replace with an aristocracy of property. Cleisthenes widened its basis from property to population, and weakened the oppressive influences of wealth, by establishing ‘the ballot or secret suffrage, instead of the open voting’. 49 In order for his reforms to be effective he had to abolish the Areopagus, which was a popularly hated constitutional bulwark of the aristocratic party of Athens. Nonetheless, the aristocratic party could still express the interests and the principles of its numerous members in the open assembly. Political parties in Athens, Bulwer believed, were not simply parties of names and men, as Mitford had argued, but parties of principles too. Most importantly, We must not suppose that in the contests between the aristocratic and popular parties, the aristocracy was always on one side. Such a division is never to be seen in free constitutions. There is always a sufficient party of the nobles whom conviction, ambition, or hereditary predilections, will place at the head of the Popular Movement; and it is by members of the privileged order that the order itself is weakened. Athens in this respect, therefore, resembled England, and, as now in the latter state, so then at Athens, it was often the proudest, the wealthiest, the most high-born of the aristocrats that gave dignity and success to the progress of democratic opinion.50 Bulwer’s didacticism culminates near the end of his second volume. It is essential to bear in mind, he argued, that there were two major weaknesses of Athenian policy which accelerated Athens’ decline: first, by relentlessly seeking to expand its empire democratic Athens wasted much of her wealth and energy without receiving real gains; what was worse, the excessive burdens the empire imposed on the subject cities caused frustration and discontent and stirred up local revolutions. Secondly, the unchecked and completely irresponsible action of the people on certain occasions created instability and opened prospects for tyrannies. In modern times, the Press and representation could remedy this fault. For imperialist Britain at the age of the Reform Bill, Athens’ ‘vices’ and their causes could be highly instructive. As Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867), the Tory historian of Europe51 and, naturally, one of Bulwer’s most severe conservative critics, confessed, Britain was inclined to impose enormous burdens on the Colonies and especially on West India’s agricultural produce: ‘And if the present 49 Athens I 330. Athens II 322. 51 See his History of Europe: from the Commencement of the French Revolution in MDCCLXXXIX to the Restoration of the Bourbons in MDCCCXV, 10 vols. (Edinburgh and London 1839-43), and History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852, 8 vols. (Edinburgh 1854-59). 50 49 Chapter 2 democratic ascendancy in this country should continue unabated for any considerable time ... it will infallibly see its colonial empire break off, and consequently its maritime power destroyed, by the injustice done to, or the burdens imposed on, its colonial possessions.’52 Sparta, according to Bulwer, the historical exemplar of conservatism, flourished and decayed, having committed serious crimes and atrocities as an imperial power. But the grounds of the attack on Sparta are several: most importantly, Lacedaemonians contributed nothing to the intellectual progress of humankind. Athens, itself a historical symbol of change and progress, left a magnificent cultural legacy to future generations. But in Athens the true blessing of freedom was rightly placed - in the opinions and the soul. Thought was the common heritage which every man might cultivate at his will. This unshackled liberty had its convulsions and its excesses, but producing unceasing emulation and unbounded competition, an incentive to every effort, a tribunal to every claim it broke into philosophy with the one - into poetry with the other - into the energy and splendour of unexampled intelligence with all. Looking round us at this hour, more than four-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution we have just surveyed, - in the labours of the student - in the dreams of the poet - in the aspirations of the artist - in the philosophy of the legislator - we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from the liberties of Athens and the institutions of Solon. The life of Athens became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world.53 Bulwer was received with rather mixed feelings. Daniel Keyte Sandford (17981838), Professor of Greek at Edinburgh, saw Bulwer’s work as an attempt to avoid pressing ‘classical history into the service of partisan warfare’. ‘We should have liked to see’, Sandford wrote, ‘the memory of such rubbish [implying Young’s Athens, and Drummond’s Review] entirely swept away by the advanced learning and improved judgement of the present generation’. Yet Bulwer, despite his promises and his exquisite imaginative style, tended, in Sandford’s view, to treat the Athenians ‘too tenderly’. First, he defended their conduct against their ‘great deliverers’ - Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles and Kimon. Though possibly there was much that was secret in the affairs which led to the successive banishment of these men, ‘we surely see enough to satisfy us that, under a republican government, the blind and envious folly of the multitude will usually rather face the chance of danger, and cut off the best sources of strength, than endure the contact of individual superiority, founded upon whatever grounds of genius or virtue’. Secondly, Sandford argued, Bulwer sought to extenuate ‘the shabby policy of Ostracism’. This political device, directed against individual 52 53 A. Alison, “The Athenian Democracy”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 42 (1837) 52. Bulwer, Athens I 355-6. 50 British Historians of Ancient Greece eminence was at best ‘a blunt confession of the weakness inherent in democracies’. 54 Similarly, the Fraser’s reviewer attacked Bulwer on the grounds of uncontrollable prejudice and of becoming the uncritical apologist of an ‘illnatured rubble’. ‘But let him [Bulwer] not take credit for his impartiality, nor boast of his not having perverted the lessons of the past to fugitive interests, when almost every page displays the cloven foot, and his anxiety to recommend democracy as the form of government the best suited to a people, who in their naval power, mercantile habits, and political institutions, are the very reflection of those who lived in the Piraeus, the Wapping of London, or ascended the stone of the Pnyx, the counterpart of the hustings of Covent Garden.’ 55 Another reviewer, William Bodham Donne (1807-1882), sometime librarian of the London Library and essayist on drama, was highly critical of Bulwer’s style and analysis of ancient literature. He praised, however, the novelist for his political insights and his ability to understand and explain the uniqueness of the Greek experience. For instance Bulwer, according to Donne, rightly emphasised, unlike his predecessors, the differences between the tyrannies that preceded the Persian wars and those that came after them. The age of Peisistratus was a transitional period in which, under his supervision, people enjoyed greater unity and solidarity than could have been obtained within the context of old party rivalries of Attica. The social and intellectual movement of this period prepared the administration of the great reformers of the fifth century. Further, Donne agreed with Bulwer in defending the Athenian people against accusations of ingratitude, arguably exemplified in the banishment of great leaders. Ostracism had been a lenient form for removing the regime’s opponents; and had it been possible to apply this measure in contemporary political conflicts, much blood and violence would have been spared. 56 The most decisive revolution in Greek historiography prior to Grote was brought forward by Connop Thirlwall, colleague of Julius Charles Hare (17951855) and William Whewell (1794-1866) at Trinity College, Cambridge. With them, he introduced into the field of Greek historiography the ideas and methods of German Romanticism. Interestingly, Thirlwall’s name is found among the members of J.S. Mill’s Debating Society. Mill himself confessed that on hearing him for the first time, and ‘[b]efore he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I have ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him’. 57 Thirlwall’s intellectual abilities and the unabated rationalism and the solidity of his knowledge have been widely commented on by D.K. Sandford, “Bulwer’s Rise and Fall of Athens”, Edinburgh Review 65 (1837) 162-3, 166-7. Sandford’s conception of Athens is revealed in “The Character of the Athenians”, Edinburgh Review 61 (1835) 323-41. 55 Anon., “Bulwer’s Athens”, Fraser’s Magazine 16 (1837) 348. 56 W.B. Donne, “The Rise and Fall of Athens”, British and Foreign Review 7 (1838) 65-6, 73-4. 57 Mill, Autobiography 75. 54 51 Chapter 2 his various acquaintances. Some of them, however, occasionally referred to a disagreeable aspect of his character, his ‘icy coldness’, which they also identified in his historical commentary. Augustus J.C. Hare (1834-1903) admitted that ‘Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw’.58 Thirlwall was elected to a fellowship at Trinity, and on Hare’s departure in 1832, he became assistant college tutor. His resolute stance in favour of the admission of Dissenters at the English Universities which arose two years later, caused the animus of Thomas Turton (1780-1864), Regius Professor of Divinity and afterwards Bishop of Ely, which eventually led him to resign his post. The Whigs, who were then in power, appreciated his courageous advocacy and he was offered the living of Kirby-under-Dale in Yorkshire and, in 1840, he was appointed Bishop of St. David’s in Wales.59 His unremitting devotion to his parochial duties, did not prove an obstacle to his accepting the invitation by Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, from its foundation until 1840, to write a History of Greece for the popular Cabinet Cyclopaedia.60 He originally intended to produce two or three volumes of popular narrative, but he found it impossible to deal with the complexities and requirements of this subject within such a limited space. The final product, published between 1835 and 1847 in eight volumes, is an epoch-making work.61 Thirlwall’s History of Greece is now almost entirely forgotten, but in that generation posed a serious challenge to the Tory interpretation of Mitford. The Bishop’s avowed liberalism and the results of the interdisciplinary science of antiquity, the Altertumswissenschaft, which he largely incorporated into his work, together with a climate of passionate European philhellenism due to the Greek War of Independence in the early 1820s, gave an entirely new direction to A.J.C. Hare, The Story of My Life, 6 vols. (London 1896-1900) I 437; some hints on Thirlwall’s character also in G.D. Boyle, The Recollections of the Very Rev. G.O. Boyle, Dean of Salisbury (London 1895) 72-3. Thomas Carlyle found Thirlwall ‘a most sarcastic, sceptical, but stronghearted, strong-headed man, whom he had a real liking for’; see J.A. Froude, Carlyle in London (New York 1884) I 141. 59 For details on Thirlwall’s life and work, see especially E.H. Plumptre, “Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David’s”, Edinburgh Review 143 (1876) 281-316; G. Huntington, “Lighter Phases of a Great Mind”, Temple Bar 76 (1886) 188-97; W.L. Collins, “Bishop Thirlwall’s Letters”, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 131 (1882) 189-203; John Willis Clark, “Thirlwall, Connop”, D.N.B. (1898) LVIII 138-141, and Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere (London 1900); John Morgan, “Life of Thirlwall” in Four Biographical Sketches (London 1892); and W. Reid, Life of Lord Houghton (London 1890). Thirlwall’s importance for nineteenth-century historiography has never been fully appreciated by classical scholars. 60 D. Lardner was the editor of the huge and successful Cyclopaedia, which from 1830 to 1844 published 134 vols. 61 A second ed. of the History of Greece appeared between 1845 and 1852. Parts of it were also translated into German by L. Schmitz in 1840, and into French by A. Joanne, Histoire des origines de la Grece ancienne (Paris 1852). 58 52 British Historians of Ancient Greece discussions of ancient Greek politics and civilisation. Thirlwall, of course, was neither a committed utilitarian nor an enthusiastic activist. Within the Church, he tried to promulgate liberality of spirit, which he himself manifested in the case of Bishop Colenso, whose sceptical conclusions about the dates of the original writing of the Pentateuch were widely condemned as blasphemous. He was also remembered to have spoken before the House of Lords for a compulsory system of secular schools, the civil rights of the Jews and the disestablishment of the Irish Church.62 The methodology applied in the History made it a work that significantly departed from the prevailing model of a politically oriented historiography. This was true not because Thirlwall did not express his sympathies or political predilections, but because he was always prepared to see through to the other side of the tunnel, and careful to control his partiality. His calm and symmetrical narrative paved the way for the reappraisal of Athenian democracy and its institutions. Bulwer’s tentative and rather cursory defence of Athenian democracy is replaced in the work of Thirlwall by a well-documented and sophisticated analysis of its development and working. The conventional ‘declamation on the jealous, cruel, and faithless temper of democratical despotism’ ignores the fact that cases of atrocity and actions morally detestable occur under any form of government.63 Political misbehaviour was by no means peculiar to democracy. Modern writers, argued Thirlwall, treated Greek history ‘as a vehicle for conveying their views on questions of modern politics’ on the basis of ideas never enunciated or practised in the Greek republics. 64 Party historians, for example, generally overlooked the fact that the Greeks had never developed a theory of representation. Athenian democracy demanded full participation of the citizen body, which enjoyed equal rights. But participatory democracy, it should be remembered, gradually degenerated into ‘ochlocracy, or the dominion of the rabble’. The administration of the commonwealth came to be regarded, not as a service, in which all were interested, but for which some might be qualified better than others, but as a property, in which each was entitled to an equal share. The practical application of this view was the introduction of an expedient for levelling, as far as possible, the inequality of nature, by enabling the poorest to devote his time, without loss, or even with profit, to public affairs ... A farther application of the 62 All these issues are examined in the biography of the historian written by J.C. Thirlwall, Connop Thirlwall, Historian and Theologian (London 1936). They are recurring themes in his “Charges”, in Remains Literary and Theological of Bishop Thirlwall, ed. J.J. Stewart Perowne, 2 vols. (London 1877). See also Essays, Speeches and Sermons by Connop Thirlwall, ed. J.J. Stewart Perowne (London 1880), esp. the sermon dedicated to C.J. Hare, “English Education for the Middle Classes” 367-384. 63 Thirlwall, History of Greece, 8 vols. (London 1835-47) III 456n., italics in the original. 64 History I 403. 53 Chapter 2 same principle was ... to increase the number, and abridge the duration and authority of public offices, and to transfer their power to the people in mass. On the same ground, chance was substituted for election in the creation of all magistrates, whose duties did not actually demand either the security of a large fortune or peculiar abilities and experience. In proportion as the popular assembly, or large portions detached from it for the exercise of judicial functions, drew all the branches of the sovereignty more and more into their sphere, the character of their proceedings became more and more subject to the influence of the lower class of the citizens, which constituted a permanent majority. And thus the democracy, instead of equality which was its supposed basis, in fact established the ascendancy of a faction.65 There was nothing to prevent Athenian democracy from falling into some sort of tyrannical rule, except by giving ‘property so much weight ... as would have sufficed to counterbalance the influence of mercenary motives. Another safeguard against popular levity would have been obtained, if the qualification required for admission to the Council had been newly regulated on a like principle’. 66 If democracy, however, resulted in the abolition of real equality in Athens, in Sparta the constitutional arrangements were totally ineffective in guaranteeing private property. Complete egalitarianism, absolute subordination of the citizen to the state, restriction from every kind of profitable industry, a warlike discipline and the extreme simplicity of education, inevitably cramped intellectual and civil progress.67 Despite his gloomy conclusions on the practical deterioration of democracy into ochlocracy, Thirlwall was generally positive regarding Athens’ most hated institutions, like ostracism and the ecclêsia. But like his conservative predecessors, he criticised the Athenians for the heavy taxes imposed on the rich for the ‘mere amusement of the less opulent, under the system of liturgies’.68 On many controversial issues the Bishop of St. David’s kept almost annoying neutrality, usually expressed in two-faceted propositions. For example, his theoretical justification of the function of the demagogues in Athens is combined with a rigid scepticism of their tactics. While recognising that Cleon had been unfairly treated by Thucydides, he did not hesitate, like earlier historians, to call him a ‘boisterous, impudent, dishonest, ferocious’ demagogue’. His account of the Athenian character affords another specimen of his ‘middle position’: if the Athenian people, he contended, were ‘fickle, passionate, often unjust ... it was still History I 410-11; see also III 66-7 for his critique of the ‘misthos ecclēsiastikos’. History IV 228. 67 Thirlwall’s contemporary discussants over Sparta were J.K.F. Manso, Sparta, 3 vols. (Leipzig 1800-1805); K.O. Müller, Geschichten hellenischer Stämme und Städte, 3 vols. (Breslau 1820-24); and K.H. Lachmann, Die spartanische Staatsverfassung in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrem Verfalle (Breslau 1836). 68 History IV 218. 65 66 54 British Historians of Ancient Greece always capable of mercy and pity; a compound of generosity and meanness, and of numberless other contrasts’. In considering Socrates’ fate, he claimed that when the old sage was accused, a spirit of intolerance prevailed in Athens, though he added that taking into account the peculiarity of the philosopher’s ideas, it was much more surprising that he ‘should have been so long spared’.69 Thirlwall’s indecision and wavering viewpoint reflected, perhaps, the feelings of the liberal bishop at a transitional political period, when traditional privileges and old values were at stake. Himself a liberal in politics, a bishop in the higher ranks of the Church (and, therefore, member of the House of Lords), Thirlwall presents an interesting amalgam of a character that shared in both the idea of progress and the belief in traditional values, convention and hierarchy. Thus his appreciation of literary and political Athens is blunted by his criticism for allowing the people en masse to rule the state while suppressing the propertied class. Liberal reform, in his view, and the enjoyment of liberty to which everyone is entitled as God’s creature, should not be associated with the idea of unconditional equality, for people are naturally unequal. Despite his balanced and often indecisive position (G.C. Lewis characteristically complained that he exercised ‘his ingenuity in evading a decision of the question’70), Thirlwall made a considerable advance in Greek historiography. His History of Greece was the first history written in the spirit of ‘scientific’ criticism, displaying the virtues of careful judgement and sound scholarship. 71 He thought, of course, that history was not entirely a value-free intellectual engagement, and from the destiny of Themistocles, Miltiades or Socrates, he extracted lessons for contemporary edification, thus reiterating a view which had been expressed long ago by generations of historians. Thirlwall rated his work much below that of Grote, and thought he had ‘little reason to be proud of it’. 72 On the appearance of Grote’s two first volumes he felt incumbent on himself to write to the historian, his old school fellow at Charterhouse, a letter, dated 21 June 1847, an extract of which is worth reproducing: I will now only say that my expectations, though they had been raised very high, were much more than fulfilled by your first two volumes; and in its progress the work appears to me to have been continually rising, not perhaps in merit, but in value. And when I consider that the most interesting part of your subject lies still 69 See History IV 214-6, 227, VI 273. G.C. Lewis, Letters to Various Friends (London 1870) 147. 71 The History, was reviewed by H. Merivale, “Thirlwall’s History of Greece”, Edinburgh Review 62 (1835) 83-108 (only vol. I); and by the anon. author “Sparta and Athens. Greece at the Breaking out of the Peloponnesian War”, Fraser’s Magazine 24 (1841) 127-39. This author vindicated Sparta, arguing that her system derived from the original Jewish constitution. 72 See Letters Literary and Theological of Connop Thirlwall, ed. J.J. Stewart Perowne and L. Stokes (London 1881) xiii. 70 55 Chapter 2 before you, I cannot doubt that the feelings of admiration and delight with which I have hitherto accompanied it, will grow stronger and stronger as it proceeds. I should have been ashamed of myself if those feelings could have been stifled or abated by my necessary consciousness of the great inferiority of my own performance. When I reflect on the very unfavourable condition of a gradually enlarged plan and other adverse circumstances under which it was undertaken and prosecuted, I may well be satisfied with that measure of temporary success and usefulness which has attended it, and can unfeignedly rejoice that it will, for all highest purposes, be so superseded.73 Grote wrote in the “Preface” of his History that had Thirlwall’s work appeared a few years earlier, he would never have embarked on his project. Obviously, the statement was meant to express Grote’s sympathy with the bishop’s scholarly contribution, which he highly esteemed as compared to Mitford’s work. However, great differences both in argument and approach exist between Grote and Thirlwall.74 In Thirlwall, the glory of Marathon faints in a calm and unimaginative narrative; Athens’ Sicilian affairs lack the dramatic flavour of Grote’s commentary; the constitutional reforms are described without a real claim to critical depth; and there is no profound and explicit vindication of ancient liberalism. But even ignoring these differences as insubstantial, one has only to consider the apotheosis of Alexander the Great. Alexander’s conquests were for Thirlwall highly beneficial to the vanquished, and a real blessing to the world. For Grote, the Macedonian conqueror was a semi-barbarian who accelerated the decline of classical Greece, and irretrievably destroyed democratic Athens. Bishop Thirlwall died in August 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave with Grote, who had died four years earlier. Thirlwall and Grote were unquestionably the two Victorian historians who opened new avenues in Greek historiography, the one with moderation and temperate criticism as his guiding principles, the other with the uncompromising boldness and paradox of a philosophical radical’s outlook. CONCLUSION From the early eighteenth century until the time Thirlwall published his seminal History of Greece, the idea of Athens changed significantly. Mitford and the bishop of St. David’s worked in entirely different ideological contexts and their final products attest to the chasm that separates the age of the Reform Bill and the Napoleonic era. It is worth observing that when the final edition of Mitford’s History appeared in 1838, Lord Redesdale, felt obliged to append ‘an apology’ for 73 H. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote 173-4. See the interesting comparison drawn by E.A. Freeman, “The Athenian Democracy”, in Historical Essays (London 1889, second series, third ed.) 125-7. 74 56 British Historians of Ancient Greece his brother’s monarchical prejudices as well as for the various misinterpretations committed in his desire to oppose revolutionary doctrines. But it was more than the nature of a political bias that made the difference. It was no longer acceptable to ignore the results of German scholarship. Thirlwall’s interlocutors are not Mitford and Gillies, whom he dismissed as early as he mentioned them, but Wolf, Droysen, Müller, K.F. Hermann, Böckh, Niebuhr, and many others, as his copious notes and critical appendices abundantly show. The works of Stanyan, Montagu and Goldsmith treated ancient Greek history as a vehicle for edification. Didacticism typically prevails in their compilations, which are largely written in the moralising spirit of Rollin. The destiny of ancient republics could raise, in their judgement, reflections on the inestimable virtues of the constitution established by the ‘Glorious Revolution’, now threatened by parliamentary faction and loose public morality. After all, the hierarchical society based on social status and property had survived the Revolution with minor concessions and readjustments. Their fears of disruptive constitutional imbalances derived from internal, domestic causes - the policy of the Crown and parliamentary factions, and the growing ideology of liberty. The generation of Mitford and Gillies had to face attacks of both parliamentary radicalism and extraparliamentary ideological pressures. The dissemination of enlightenment ideas and the appeal to reason to justify popular claims to liberty, religious toleration and freedom of conscience essentially provided a new ethical meaning to claims for political reforms. The Revolution in France and the execution of Louis XVI early in 1793 made a deep impression on the minds of men of status and property, and their fears that revolutionary ideology could be transplanted to the island were now becoming imminent. The historians of Greece in the early 1780s form a vital part in the conservative defence of the mixed constitution. The constitution as it existed, it was argued, effectively protected property and economic distinctions, while preserving liberty and social order. Allowing more personal freedoms to the multitude would create a government unstable and corrupt, as Athens had been. For these historians, democracy was despotism. The application of the democratic principle of government appeared to them as the exact equivalent of mob rule and terror. The rule of the dêmos was anarchical, the rule of envy and passion. Democracy ignored the ranks of society: it meant conflict between the upper and lower classes. The works of Mitford and Gillies, however, are not to be read simply as ideological responses to pressing social and political questions; they certainly merit a place in the history of classical scholarship. Mitford’s biographer, W.W. Wroth, rightly wrote that ‘Mitford’s history for many years remained popular, and had the merit of supplying a laborious English work on a comparatively neglected subject’.75 As Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-1892) observed, ‘Mitford was a 75 W.W. Wroth, “Mitford, William”, D.N.B. (London 1894) XL 87. 57 Chapter 2 bad scholar, a bad historian, a bad writer of English. Yet we feel a lingering weakness for him. He was the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing’.76 Interestingly, Mitford was translated into German (Jena 1800, by H.L. Eichstädt) and his work received the praise of the historian Arnold Hermann Heeren (1760-1842). Heeren remarked that Mitford had been superior in the abundance and authenticity of materials; but Gillies surpassed him in the proper conception of antiquity. 77 By that time, of course, the Germans still had a long way to go in the field of Greek political historiography. Gillies had been influential abroad, and his History was translated into French and German (Basle 1790, Vienna 1825, New York 1852). But he was never widely read at home, as Mitford had been. Ironically, perhaps, because Gillies was often more reluctant to distort facts or to give vent to conjectures simply to prove his political convictions. He was most concerned with a scholarly presentation of a history of Greece based on all available sources and his familiarity with contemporary French and German scholarship is evident throughout. He did not hesitate to admit that the Greek miracle in literature and the arts should be attributed to the freedom individuals enjoyed under a democratic regime. His prejudices did not obscure the cultural brightness of Athens. He was not an uncritical eulogist of Philip, and he believed that ‘after the battle of Chaeronaea, there remained no further hopes of resisting the conqueror the dignity of freedom was forever lost, and the gloom of night and tyranny descended and thickened over Greece’. 78 Young and Drummond, despite the certain distance that separates their ideological viewpoints, share in common the spirit of historiographical pamphleteering. Young’s defence of Athens had been motivated by a vague reverence for the Greek spirit of liberty, but he never made, nor did he intend to, a comprehensive attempt to conceive the genuine historical background of democratic sentiment in antiquity. Like Drummond, he read the political history of Athens through the spectacles of a parliamentary activist, but unlike him he insisted on the advantages of immediate suffrage and choice of the people, who should enjoy certain rights and powers. Young was much influenced by Enlightenment philosophical historiographers, and acknowledged that the great purpose of history is ‘to teach by example’.79 He spoke with admiration for Solon, who wanted to ‘humanize the great Leviathan’, and boldly defended ostracism against those who condemned it ‘because they were partizans of despotism from habit, or enemies to freedom from prejudice: every political writer of sound intellect, adequate learning, and unfettered genius, hath paid the tribute of praise E.A. Freeman, “Grote’s History of Greece”, North British Review 25 (1856) 143. A.H.L. Heeren, A Manual of Ancient History (Oxford 1829) 118-9; original in German as Hanbuch der Geschichte der Staaten des Alterthums (Göttingen 1810). 78 Gillies, History of Ancient Greece IV 230. 79 Young, Athens 3-4. 76 77 58 British Historians of Ancient Greece to ostracism’.80 He was not, however, willing to approve of the extreme egalitarian reforms of Cleisthenes and Pericles, for political reform had to be kept within the limits prescribed by practical considerations: too much liberty for the people would upset constitutional order and create a tyranny of the masses. Drummond, on the other hand, was a Tory voice, and philosophical radicalism and the revolutionary spirit were anathema to him. He praised Sparta for its constitution that secured the independent function of every form of government, banished unnecessary luxury and made people happy. Young and Drummond stand as two representative political antipodes at a period of immense domestic economic and industrial changes, rigorous discussion on constitutional and political reforms, and revolutions abroad. Bulwer continues partisan historiography in the 1830s. His work constitutes an almost unconditional eulogy of democratic Athens and its cultural heritage. With Thirlwall, Mitford’s conservative construction is decisively shaken. As Turner observes, Mitford had so completely condemned ‘the character of the Athenian state and so widespread was the acceptance of his views that he had in effect also established the grounds on which the reputation of Athens would have to be restored’.81 Thirlwall’s History forms the bridge between the antidemocratic tradition and the restoration of Athens in the liberal atmosphere of Victorian Britain. The ground for George Grote had been prepared. 80 81 I.e. Montesquieu; Athens 89n. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 204. 59 

Conclusion In reviewing Grote’s History of Greece soon after the appearance of the twelfth and final volume, Freeman hailed it as ‘one of the glories of our age and country. Honourable as it is to the intellectual, it is still more honourable to the moral qualities of its author. His unwearied research, his clearness of vision, his depth and originality of thought, are more easily to be paralleled than his diligent and conscientious striving after truth, and the candour with which he marshals in their due order even the facts which tell most strongly against his conclusions’.1 One of Grote’s nineteenth-century biographers wrote that ‘probably a more attractive history of Greece will, in process of time, be written, but such a task has only been made more possible by the firm and solid foundation which George Grote has laid’. In the same spirit, Lewis wrote to Grote in March 1856 that all ‘other “Histories” of Greece are superseded by your work; and those who treat the subject hereafter must take your treatment of it as their starting point’. Interestingly, more than a hundred years later, Finley could still maintain that the History of Greece, as written by the ‘liberal and banker George Grote ... was the first major modern work on the subject (and one of the greatest ever written)’. In the early 1960s, Clarke diagnosed that Grote’s History ‘has not been replaced by any new English work of comparable scope and quality’, to add that ‘we still await a Grote of the twentieth century’. More recently, Chambers observed that today, ‘in English this 12- volume work has for rivals only four one-volume histories, one of them dating essentially from 1900; and the time when anyone will challenge it with a treatment ever remotely comparable is surely far away’. 2 Grote’s multi-volume History enjoyed an unrivalled success in both Britain and Europe. In the long term its effect on Greek historical scholarship proved very enduring. It requires little effort to explain why the Victorian Radical has preserved his supremacy in the field of Greek historiography (even though his techniques are not the same as those employed by professional historians today). The first reason can be traced to his sound scholarship and the distinctive merits of his large enterprise such as: the clarity of his statements; the tendency to scrutinise every scrap of evidence, often exposing the prejudices of his sources; his critical faculty in dealing with the value of authorities; the moderate tone of Freeman, “Grote’s History of Greece” 172. MacIlwraith, The Life of George Grote 29; H. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote 225; Finley, Aspects of Antiquity 29; Clarke, George Grote 128; see also A.R. Burn, Pericles and Athens (London 1948) 244: ‘The best [history of ancient Greece] in English is still (sad to relate) that of Grote’; Chambers, “George Grote’s History of Greece” 1. Chambers cites: J.B. Bury, A History of Greece (London 1904); N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Greece (Oxford 1959); R. Sealey, A History of the Greek City States (Berkeley, L.A. and London 1976); and J.V.A. Fine, The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History (Cambridge and London 1983). 1 2 Conclusion his argumentation, either in criticising an adversary or expounding a new idea; his intellectual integrity shown in his readiness to confess that a problem superseded his power to solve it, either due to the absence of sufficient testimonies, or, rarely, because there were many conflicting common-sense statements; and, finally, the erudition and comprehensive learning exhibited in all his works. Grote not only revealed an astounding mastery of ancient source material but he also carefully studied and cited the greatest part out of the huge bibliography published in Germany. The second reason for the liberal historian’s enduring popularity takes us back to pre-Grotean Greek historiography. The works of his learned predecessors provide us with useful perspectives into the ideological fights of the late eighteenth century. However, with their recurring denunciations and moral condemnation of the turbulent despotism of the dêmos and their omission to trace the origins and development of the Greek past on its own social and political terms, they can hardly appeal to our sympathy as scholarly productions. In their zeal for political propaganda, eighteenth-century historians failed to realise the differences in atmosphere and outlook in different ages. For the historian and the sociologist their polemical writings are indeed valuable as parts of the long chain of antidemocratic cultural expression. They seem, however, to have made no distinctive contribution towards raising the subject of Greek history above spiteful political pamphleteering. Thus, the narrative histories of the so-called party historians of ancient Greece cannot stand comparison with Grote’s critical and thoroughly documented narrative. The third reason for the continuing admiration for Grote by modern intellectual historians and classical scholars leads us in quite another direction, and is related to a substantial concurrence with him on matters of liberal ideology. It is worth expanding briefly on this issue. We must remember that Grote’s work on ancient Greece was, to a certain degree, a continuation of Enlightenment philosophical historiography, merged with German historismus and Comtean positivism. A historian equipped with Grote’s intellectual apparatus would place among the priorities of his craft a scrupulous accuracy in properly tracing the causes and effects of events, a philosophical temper in recording and interpreting facts (on the basis of the ‘fundamentally unchangeable laws of human nature’), and a consistent detachment from religious dogma in the examination of the cultural and ethical phases of past ages. The implication that flows from the concept of the permanence of the laws of human nature is clear - historical experience can, in a certain way, be regarded as a series of edifying illustrations of immutable social and political truths. Thus, for a historian with Grote’s outlook, the exploration of the successive movements and manifestations of human societies involved a great deal of normative interest: a historical study had to have a pragmatic bearing upon contemporary moral and political discourse. In other words, a good history of 270 Conclusion Greece had to combine what Momigliano assumed Grote’s work did, ‘passionate moral and political interests, vast learning, and respect for the evidence’. 3 Indeed, lively political interest, anxiety about securing factual accuracy, and a fixed insistence on verifying source credibility (despite often being blocked by a lack of sufficient or reliable evidence) constitute prominent features in Grote’s historical narrative. Hence his large-scale project combines a laborious struggle to produce a reliable documentary account of Greek affairs with the assumption that the classical heritage is a property for the purpose of contemporary political debate. His lively presentation and vision of Athens, without betraying any sense of romantic nostalgia, reflected a view that the great Athenian experiment in participation and equality was politically educative. More specifically, for the liberal historian the paradigm of Athenian democracy might have appeared useful in terms of providing support for radical political reform. Grote’s interpretations and his employment of historical antecedents for contemporary emulation were to a certain degree determined by the social, political and intellectual circumstances prevailing in his times. Hence his work was vastly different in results from the eighteenth-century politically engaged historiography. Party historians, as shown in chapter two, allowed their prejudices to dictate their interpretations of classical authors and institutions in order to promulgate contemporary ideals of a reactionary character, without going deeply into the roots of historical evidence and ignoring the interaction of social and political factors. The feeling that there were historical patterns for the moderns’ destiny, which a proper study could enable them to perceive, gave historians a sense of direction. Mitford, for instance, the most representative and influential party historian in the late eighteenth century, revealed his counter-revolutionary sentiment and his preference for the ideal ‘mixed constitution’ in dry, clear-cut references to the British form of Government and the French rebels while he was illustrating the Greek institutions. Gillies, as the Royal Historiographer of Scotland, was naturally the defender of the glory of the king and the constitution. Grote belongs to an intellectual tradition which, despite being largely informed by a firm moral and no less dogmatic political philosophy, represents firm loyalty to reason and evidence against custom and passion. In the present study, I have attempted to show how Grote, equipped with the austere rationality of the utilitarians and sharing in their optimism for the improvement of the world through the discovery of clear incontestable ideas, presented to his wide readership a work that effectively started a new epoch in Greek historical studies. Significantly, however, the profound liberalism that produced the History urged Eduard Meyer and other critics to claim that it was not a history but an apologia for Athens.4 3 Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History 11. Cf. G. Huxley, “George Grote on Early Greece”, in George Grote Reconsidered 24: ‘[Meyer’s] assertion is doubly mistaken, not only because ... the work was a sustained exercise in the critical 4 271 Conclusion Despite the hyperbole, we can perfectly understand the reasons behind Meyer’s assertion. For Grote’s work cannot be detached from the intellectual framework and the political discourse of nineteenth-century liberalism. It cannot be forgotten that Grote actually belongs to a great movement that marked significant new departures in politics, legislation and institutions. In setting out to examine the ideas and institutions of ancient Greece, he naturally brought with him a set of formidable controlling preconceptions. In the History of Greece, these influences are prominently manifest in his tendency to combine evidence derived from different centuries in order to establish his judgement. Further, they are clear in his consistent application of contemporary ethical and philosophical ideas and concepts in discussing classical issues of universal interest. Having said that, Grote’s modern reader is eventually forced to make a rather paradoxical admission, namely, that the History would never have initiated a new period in Greek historiography had it not been ideologically ‘biased’ in favour of the Athenian democrats. 5 Grote brought to his historical work the bias of a practising Radical politician. But it was partly the pervasiveness of the Benthamite outlook that made possible the remarkable insights displayed in marshalling the relevant facts of Athenian history. It was partly the liberalism that breathes from Grote’s pages that instigated Momigliano’s encomium, cited in the first lines of this study. Could Grote have been able to cut the bridge with the conventionally hostile antidemocratic tradition in dealing with Athens in the absence of this ‘bias’? Would he have changed, as Roberts rightly observed, ‘the shape of the debate about Athens down to our own time’? 6 Probably not. After many centuries of derision and condemnation, the fifth-century Athenians, the alleged prototypes of ancient liberals, were judged by a scholar predisposed to present their history and the origins and growth of their constitution, civilisation, and political and social ethos, in a distinctively positive and sympathetic way. For modern scholars, either communitarians, liberals or conservatives, who increasingly consider the political experience of classical Athens as an important tool for broadening the ideals of contemporary democracy and revitalising study of historical testimonies, but also because the structure of the narrative is designed to show the superiority of representative government over monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny or despotism. It is not so much an apology for Athens as a passionate, and thoroughly documented, exposition of the merits of democracy.’ 5 W. Smith’s observation is still true, “George Grote” 130. Smith argued that Grote’s philosophical background and his political career ‘enabled him to see and teach what, like all great lessons, seems so simple when once learnt, that the most refined and intellectual people that ever lived could form and govern their states on principles very strange to us, and even follow the leadership of Cleon and the teaching of the Sophists, without being madmen or fools, or, at the least, bugbears to all of sound faith in politics and philosophy’. 6 J. Roberts, “The Creation of a Legacy: A Manufactured Crisis in Eighteenth-Century Thought”, in J.P. Euben, J.R. Wallach and J. Ober, ed. Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy (Ithaca and London 1994) 96. 272 Conclusion citizenship,7 Grote would appear to be a legitimate predecessor. The appeal of Grote in the twentieth century has been significant. The substantial scholarship of his works (despite the fact that subsequent archaeological and textual research has corrected a number of his results) as well as the ideology that underpins them have rendered him attractive and no less suitable to the liberal transformations that took place during the second half of this century. It is not an exaggeration to say that on several issues, especially those of a speculative character, or those implicating critical analysis of classical texts, one can still treat Grote as a contemporary scholar. His arguments, such as those related to the sophists, the demagogues, Socrates, and broadly the ideological and constitutional framework of ancient democracy, were taken up in this century and exploited from different perspectives in several monographs. To illustrate, in the last sixty years, Grote distinctly survives in the works of Gomme, Untersteiner, Havelock, Ehrenberg, Jones, Finley, Guthrie, Mossé, Kerferd, Connor, Meiggs, Hansen, Stockton. 8 The list is inexhaustible. In fact, it would require a separate study to trace the impressive influence of Grote on twentieth-century scholarship. Let it be observed that a particular phase of the ideological appropriation of Grote’s philosophical argument in this century can be found in the studies forged from the horrors of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s. Grote was then considered a predecessor for a generalised intellectual hostility towards the authoritarian Plato. 9 But this was quite untrue. It is now widely accepted that the authoritarian, profascist Plato of Popper, Crossman and many others, was just that: a product of the post-war concern for discovering the theoretical foundations of racism and the dreadful Realpolitik. Grote would have never accepted the title of an antiPlatonist. And modern Platonic scholarship owes a debt to Grote for far different reasons than antipathy to the philosopher’s political claims. Indeed, in the Plato For more on this issue along with bibliography, see K. Demetriou’s review article, “Democracies Ancient and Modern” Polis 15 (1998) 83-112. 8 To cite the works of scholars who followed Grote’s path would require a separate work. See selectively, A.W. Gomme, The Population of Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C. (Oxford 1933), More Essays in Greek History and Literature, ed. D.A. Campbell (Oxford 1962); M. Untersteiner, I sofisti (Torino 1949); Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics; Ehrenberg, The Greek State; Jones, Athenian Democracy; C. Mossé, La Fin de la démocratie athénienne (Paris 1962), Histoire d’une démocratie, Athènes, des origines a la conquête Macédonienne (Paris 1971); Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy; Meiggs, The Athenian Empire; Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement; Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge 1983), Aspects of Antiquity; M.H. Hansen, The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford 1987), and numberless articles on the working and ideology of Athenian democracy; D. Stockton, The Classical Athenian Democracy (Oxford 1990); Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens. 9 See W. Fite, The Platonic Legend (New York and London 1934) 4; R.H.S. Crossman, Plato ToDay (London 1937) 301; B. Farrington, Science and Politics in the Ancient World (London 1939) 132; A.D. Winspear, The Genesis of Plato’s Thought (New York 1940) 307-312, 315-7; and Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies. 7 273 Conclusion and the other Companions of Sokrates, Grote, already being of an advanced age, appears rather impatient to expound his own theories of ethics and politics. In the early 1860s, the influence of classical utilitarianism on Grote’s thought, with its emphasis on general happiness and the system of laws that could promote it, was supplemented by the locus classicus of modern liberalism, Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859). The result, which manifests in the Plato, was a more intense defence of freedom of individuality and a faith in toleration as the cornerstone of a progressive society. In the tolerant atmosphere of Athens, Grote emphasised in the Plato, individual liberty harmoniously co-existed with the subjection of sinister interests to collective happiness. Plato, by contrast, in his constructive dialogues envisioned the suppression of ‘all individuality, either of interest or sympathy or sentiment’. It seems clear, that Grote would have approved of Plato’s political vision had the legal, educational and social arrangements been so designed as to effectively harmonise the happiness of individuals with the interests of the whole. Grote’s ‘liberal partiality’ explains to a certain degree the existence of discrepancies and incongruities in his study of Plato. Sometimes he seems to be wavering between a passionate admiration and a fervent dislike of the philosopher. However, it has been a common misinterpretation of Grote to argue that he unconditionally admired the negative and disliked the positive Plato. A close reading of the Plato cannot, in my opinion, substantiate such a view. The tension between the searching and the positive Plato, that is the champion of individual freedom on the one hand and the authoritarian ‘priest’ on the other, is considerably mitigated whenever Grote’s political views correspond with Platonic ideas. To go a step further, it is worth observing that the question of the influence of central Platonic principles of politics on the construction of the utilitarian scheme of government in the early nineteenth century remains largely unsettled. 10 Grote was one of the first scholars, and certainly the most important, whose work marked, as one of his most distinguished adversaries confessed, ‘the inauguration of a new era of Platonic criticism’. 11 At the time Grote embarked on his Plato, the philosopher was not an object of analytical study in the British universities, even though there were a number of good editions of single dialogues, such as those of Campbell (Theaetetus) and E. Poste (Philebus), or, the On this issue, see J.D. Mabbott, “Is Plato’s Republic Utilitarian?”, Mind 46 (1937) 468-74; J.L. Creed, “Is it wrong to call Plato a Utilitarian?”, Classical Quarterly 28 (1978) 349-65; and R. Barrow, Plato, Utilitarianism and Education (London 1975). 11 Cope, Plato’s “Theaetetus” and Mr. Grote’s Criticisms 3. Significantly, the great generation of early twentieth-century Platonists, like A.E. Taylor, E. Barker and G.C. Field, to mention only a few names, took Grote as their point of departure in several of their discussions. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work (London 1926) vii, ‘tried to tell the reader just what Plato says, and made no attempt to force a “system” on the Platonic text’. In this, he was assisted by ‘Grote’s great work’. For Grote’s influence on modern Platonic scholarship, see also the classic works of G.C. Field, Plato and his Contemporaries (London 1930); E. Barker, Greek Political Theory: Plato and his Predecessors (London 1918); D. Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas (Oxford 1951). 10 274 Conclusion finished but not yet published until a few years afterwards, scholarly editions of the Phaedrus and the Gorgias by Thompson. Even for us, however, reviewing the quarrel between Grote and his contemporaries remains relevant and timely because the methodological, analytical and historical questions raised by this debate are still present.12 Grote, with his historical instinct and solid reasoning managed, against a longestablished background of Platonic criticism, to bring to light much that was entirely new. The underlying purpose of his study was, not surprisingly, to examine Plato’s contribution to ‘reasoned truth’. Dismissing from the outset the Neoplatonic versions of Plato, he attacked his major target, the standard German interpretation that converted the Platonic dialogues into a model of theoretical perfection. The systematic prejudice of the Romanticists, Grote believed, rendered Plato one-sided according to a scholar’s subjective interests, whereas Plato was an unmatched dramatist, an exceptional poet, a rare philosophic genius, a rhetor and a theologian. Systematisation overlooked the complexity of Plato’s philosophical apparatus. Grote’s central idea was that the Greek philosopher was too complex to work out in one or two straightforward ways. More than a hundred years after the appearance of Grote’s work on Plato, the question of whether the dialogues show a unified doctrine, an evolving system, or a set of contradictory ideas remains largely unsettled. The existing variety of interpretative approaches to Plato confirms, in effect, Grote’s legacy. In Grote’s judgement, unanimity of conceptual understanding, agreement about intricate Platonic questions, consensus of judgement on the chronological and disciplinary development of Plato’s activity as a writer of dialogues, would be foreign to the philosopher’s multifarious character. Of course, the development of Platonic studies never excluded the attempt to systematise, to put Plato’s dialogues in a chronological or philosophical order. In this respect, the division between the early, middle and mature Plato along the lines of the ‘developmentalist’ school of interpreters approximates Grote’s understanding, though the discovery of a safe scheme would appear to him untenable. 13 The ‘unified’ theories he would definitely reject. Further, since Grote, Plato has been examined from different perspectives, but with equal scholarship: the dramatist and the poet Plato sometimes overshadows the political philosopher and the dogmatist. In the huge literature of the last fifty years, Plato has been examined from the angle of logic, Guthrie places Grote’s Plato, along with the works of Zeller and Wilamowitz, amongst the few ‘indestructible’ pieces on the history of Platonic interpretation, History of Greek Philosophy IV xv. 13 According to Kahn Grote’s genuine historical instinct helped him anticipate modern results regarding the chronology and arrangement of the dialogues. Kahn compares the conclusions reached from stylistic analysis by Campbell, Ritter, Blass and von Arnim in the late nineteenth century, with Grote’s ordering, based solely on judgements about content. Grote’s arrangement, Kahn concludes is ‘impeccable’ from the modern point of view, with serious mistakes regarding only three dialogues: the Republic, which he placed too late; the Cratylus and the Menexenus. See Kahn, “George Grote’s Plato and the Companions of Sokrates” 44-6. 12 275 Conclusion metaphysics, and theology with intense interest. Yet, no aspect can be claimed with certainty to have monopolised Plato’s own attention. This uncertainty perhaps explains why the history of Platonic interpretation is still being written. All things considered, the fourth and final reason for Grote’s continuing appeal, either on the scholarly or the ideological level, is that the fruits of his positive and methodical scholarship shaped the development of twentieth-century Greek historiography and Platonic criticism. Thus, it would be useful to close this study by briefly summarising the results of Grote’s contribution. Grote was the ‘great historian of Athens’ (as nineteenth-century scholars called him) not only because he first rendered the working and ideology of Athenian democracy intelligible, but also because the ancient liberal ideal as actualised in the fertile environment of Attica was throughout his studies, historical and philosophical alike, a constant source of reference and inspiration. To be sure, Plato’s political thought is criticised in the light of Periclean Athens. The freedom of the philosopher to expound his critical discourse, to deride populist politicians, and eventually to construct an ideal system (based on totally abstract notions of what constituted true justice or equality) that ran fundamentally counter to the ideas and practices of his native state, was a freedom secured to him by the democratic constitution of Athens. Plato’s philosophy was a result of that creative impulse a liberal state bestows on gifted individuals, even though that impulse may sometimes take forms that work to undermine democracy. The sophists are considered part and parcel of the Athenian society: their works epitomised the ideals of democracy - progressiveness, open-mindedness, and toleration. They answered a pressing social and political need. Within a democracy, rhetoric naturally emerged as the only acceptable means of obtaining the consent of the citizens. Rhetoric was not simply the ‘art of words’, an empty literary device as defined by reactionary thinkers, like Aristophanes, Plato, or Aristotle. Its aim was persuasion, and the means used were based on rational argument. The sophistic practical and useful instructions pertaining to the requirements of social and political life promoted faith in discussion and hence co-operation and mutual respect. In the repressive illiberal society which Sparta exemplified and where decisions were enforced by the arbitrary will of an oligarchy, the sophists had no place. In the demagogic activity throughout the post-Periclean period Grote saw nothing of the intrinsic baseness and immoralism which earlier historians commonly perceived. Instead, he linked that activity with the development of democratic consciousness and social mobility, drawing the analogy between the ancient demagogue and the opposition leader of the nineteenth century. The demagogue, normally a competent orator-politician, advocated the interests of the people against the sinister interests of the aristocrats and particular political clubs. He was enterprising and innovative and, accordingly, diametrically unlike political leaders such as Nicias who, as they belonged to the old families of the 276 Conclusion eupatrids, were fruitlessly rigid in the performance of their religious and other conventional duties. Men like Cleon or Hyperbolus were bold enough to bring political offenders to justice, irrespective of their social origins, while keeping a strong check upon the holders of important offices. Grote, moreover, instead of accepting the long established account of Athenian political life as driven by dark conspiracies, anarchy and misrule, and the Athenian character as filled with envy and ingratitude, argued that the people of Athens had developed a unique system that combined liberty and constitutional allegiance. In the democratic atmosphere of Athens, individual life was respected, private property guaranteed, and justice impartially administered. In this context, Grote was the first to expand on the merits of ostracism, pointing to its effects on cultivating what he called ‘constitutional morality’. For Grote, the Athenian state was a remarkable phenomenon in the history of politics inasmuch as it was largely based on the freedom of speech, isêgoria and parrhêsia. As legislation and political decisions were the result of discussion, the minority felt bound to acquiesce in the general will. If Athens’ unique position in history consisted of its intellectual and cultural supremacy, this was only due to her political freedom. Athens did not deny conferring its freedom even to her subject allies. Instead of joining the critics of Athenian imperialism, the liberal historian became the champion of its maritime empire, dwelling on its practical advantages for the Greek people and associating with it the fate of classical civilisation. By his very existence, Socrates symbolised the idea of individual liberty, which the Athenians were not obliged to sacrifice to the state. Nowhere but in the tolerant climate of fifth-century Athens could Socrates have been allowed to employ his irritating and often offensive method of cross-examination. From the Athenian perspective, Socrates was justly condemned because he exhausted the patience and forbearance of his fellow-citizens. In Athens, nobody would have ventured to condemn him merely because of his teaching. But his conviction in his religious mission, alongside his declared preference for a ‘science’ of politics in which only the few and capable could be involved, was received as undermining the roots of the democratic constitution. And the Athenians, Grote contended, were zealously faithful to their constitution. Running counter to an entire tradition, Grote understood Socrates as not being radically antagonistic to the sophists. Their teaching techniques were much the same while in social philosophy they seem to have commonly recognised the relative nature of Goodness. Significantly, however, they differed as to the extent of harmonising their teaching with the current conventions. Socrates fearlessly questioned conventional belief. He was a genuine Radical. The sophists, in Grote’s account, do not emerge as radicals (as has been erroneously argued by the historian’s critics), but as democracy’s conservative functionaries. There was a certain amount of scepticism in sophistic culture but this scepticism was a reflection of the intellectual pursuits of the age. Socrates continued and variously 277 Conclusion extended sophistic humanism. Like them, he concentrated more on the individual rather than on society, and with his dialectic prepared the way for the ‘science’ of ethics. Both Socrates and the sophists tried to emancipate the individual, but whereas the sophists tried to do this by teaching the citizens how to effectively participate in public life (to be good citizens according to the accepted vision of citizenship), Socrates taught them to exercise their independent judgement even against ‘sacred’ forms of traditional conviction. Grote’s approach to Plato was twofold. He emphatically praised the philosopher for preparing the ground for philosophical investigation through his masterful exemplification of Socratic dialectic in most dialogues. In his lengthy critical analysis of the constructive pieces, however, Grote claimed that despite their significance in the history of political thought, these dialogues do not properly belong to philosophy. In them, Plato is a utopian Athenian thinker who dissented from the established ethical, cultural and political sentiment. Grote’s unorthodox treatment naturally provoked an intense reaction by contemporary scholars who considered Grote as ‘philosophically inappropriate’ to understand Plato’s lofty idealism. The criticism is right provided one accepts the traditional conception of Plato, which Grote set to upset. Grote first examined the external historical evidence for the received Platonic canon and defended the authenticity of all the dialogues transmitted from antiquity on Thrasyllus’ distinction between the Dialogues of Search without affirmative results and the Dialogues of Exposition, where positive doctrines are expounded. In doing so, Grote challenged the long-standing interpretation of Platonism as a fixed body of dogma, a view that minimised the tentative and less systematic aspects of the corpus. He also addressed a severe and valuable criticism to the extremely ambitious reconstructive schemes of German scholars who, by eliminating all incompatibilities and contradictions that exist in Plato’s dialogues, argued in favour of an independent, premeditated philosophical scheme. Eliminating all incompatibilities meant in effect that a large number of minor and less conclusive dialogues were judged inferior to the rest and declared spurious. Grote might not have succeeded in persuading us as to the authenticity of all minor dialogues, but it was his sagacious protest that put an end to the ‘liberty’ of rejecting the Laws or the Protagoras as spurious. The distinction between the searching and the affirmative phase of Plato allowed Grote to insist on the existence of a considerable degree of inconsistency in the Platonic scheme. The Platonic corpus, Grote argued, was an aggregate of multifarious works, variable in form and purpose. In the ‘searching’ group, Plato left us deliberately inconclusive works, which reflected a remarkable awareness of the diversity of human intellectual experience. In them, Plato followed the genuine path of logical inquiry and adhered to critical and analytical methods. Freedom of thought was thus firmly vindicated. On the other hand, when the philosopher propounded a positive doctrine, he regrettably dismissed rational 278 Conclusion Socratic dialectic and appeared in the guise of a priest. The expository stage no longer involved philosophy - the quest for ‘reasoned truth’ which Socrates so vividly exemplified and which Grote himself pursued throughout a lifetime. 279 

Index of Names A Ackermann, Constantin, 163n Alison, Archibald, 49, 50n Annet, Peter, 138 Anster, John, 245 Ast, Friedrich, 192-5 B Bacon, 22n, 133, 171, 173, 182n, 184, 187n Bain, Alexander, 2n, 8, 9, 11- 2, 19n, 258-9n Beauchamp, Philip, 13 Beloch, Julius, 252 Bentham, Edward, 133 Bentham, Jeremy, 1, 8-9, 11-17, 20, 22, 24-5, 28, 124-6, 162, 165, 178, 183, 185, 234n Blackie, John Stuart, 159, 166, 167-8, 262, 268 Blackley, William L., 196n Blackstone, William, 24, 36, 37n Blakey, Robert, 263 Bleckly, Henry, 264 Boase, George Clement, 11 Böckh, August, 71-2, 74, 166, 222n, 246 Bolgar, R.R., 132, 137n Bonitz, Hermann, 193-4 Brandis, Christian August, 168-9, 191n, 193, 235n Brougham, Henry Peter, 46, 47n Brucker, Johann Jacob, 156, 191n Buckler, J., 26 Buller, Charles, 4 Bulwer, Edward Lytton, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 59 Burges, George, 174 Burke, Edmund, 41, 42 Burns, James H., 8, 15-6n, 67n, 77, 185n Bury, John Bagnell, 264, 269n Butler, William Archer, 163-4, 167, 171-2, 185 C Caird, Edward, 259, 260n Cameron, Charles Hay, 11 Campbell, Lewis, 173, 186, 258-9, 260, 273n, 275n Cary, Henry, 174 Chambers, Mortimer, 12, 26, 63, 269 Champlin, James Tift, 246 Chubb, Thomas, 138 Churton, William Ralph, 47 Clarke, Martin Lowther, 1n, 131, 132n, 230n., 269 Clinton, Henry Fynes, 65, 83, 159 Cobden, Richard, 3 Colenso, Bishop, 53 Collins, Anthony, 138 Comte, Auguste, 70, 75, 76n, 77, 89 Connor, W.R., 128, 129n, 273 Cooper, John Gilbert, 144, 145n Cooper, Thomas 42 Cope, Edward Meredith, 260-62, 264n Creuzer, Georg Friedrich, 73 Crossman, R.H.S., 273n Cousin, Victor, 170, 171, 172 Curtius, Ernst, 250, 252 D Davies, James, 11-2 Davies, John L., 174 Davis, Henry, 174 de Ste Croix, G.E.M., 128, 129n Diels and Kranz, 189 Dobson, William, 168, 192n Donne, William B., 51, 255 Droysen, Johann Gustav, 254 Drummond, William, 45-6, 50, 58-9 Duff, William, 134-6, 157 Dunbar, George, 166 Duruy, Jean Victor, 252-3 E Eastlake, Lady, 2 Ehrenberg, Victor, 129-130n, 273 Index of Names Eichstädt, H.L., 58 Emerson, George H., 248 Evans, Frank B., 132 F Farrington, Benjamin, 273n Felton, Cornelius Conway, 246, 251n Fenn, Robert, 2n, 9, 22n, 175n, 178 Ferguson, Adam, 9, 67n Ferrier, James Frederick, 159, 160 Finley, Moses I., 128, 265n, 269, 273 Fite, 273n Forchhammer, P.W., 241n Forster, 204n, 226n, 238n Freeman, Edward Augustus, 57, 247, 248n, 250, 254-5, 269 Funck-Brentano, Th., 217n G Geddes, James, 134-6, 155n, 157 Gibbon, Edward, 37, 132n, 152n Gifford, Edwin Hamilton, 263 Gillies, John, 37-43, 57-8, 102, 105, 107, 116n, 150, 171n, 245, 271 Gladstone, 7-8 Godley, Alfred Denis, 266 Godwin, William, 42 Goldsmith, Oliver, 35n, 40, 57, 105, 122n Gomme, Arnold Wycombe., 273 Gomperz, Theodor, 178n, 266 Goodwin, William Watson, 248, 254n Grant, Alexander, 261-2 Green, George Washington, 6n, 11 Grey, Charles, 4 Grey, Richard, 155 Grote, Harriet, 2-3, 6, 11, 13n, 62-3, 70n, 187n Grote, John, 254 Gunn, William M., 251 Guthrie, W.K.C., 204n, 209n, 218n, 236n, 273, 275n 308 H Hallam, Henry, 8 Hampden, Renn Dickson, 164-6, 238n Hansen, M.H., 129n, 273 Hare, Julius C., 159 Hare, Thomas, 256 Hartley, David, 11, 22, 23n Havelock, Eric A., 129n, 273 Headlam, James Wycliffe, 247 Heeren, Arnold Hermann, 58, 166 Hegel, 11, 218n Heller, W.F., 230n. Hermann, Gottfried, 72, 82n Hermann, Karl Friedrich, 192-5 Heyne, Christian Gottlob, 72 Hobbes, Thomas, 133, 149 Holm, Adolf, 252 Horsley, Samuel, 131 Hume, David, 14, 18n, 25, 131, 150, 217, 229n, 236n Hutcheson, Francis, 9 Huxley, George, 272n J Jackson, John, 154-5 Jacobs, F., 230n Jebb, Richard, 251 Jenkyns, Richard, 159 Jones, A.H.M., 128, 273n Jowett, Benjamin, 159, 160, 165, 167, 170, 259, 260, 267n, 268 Jubert, Léo, 258 K Kahn, Charles H., 198n Kant, 11, 156, 184 Kerferd, G.B., 217n, 273 L Lamb, Henry W., 4 Lardner, Dionysius, 52 Leland, Thomas, 27 Index of Names Lewes, George Henry, 160, 171-2, 246n, 257 Lewin, Frances, 12 Lewis, George Cornewall, 247, 250, 269 Locke, John, 11, 36, 133, 149, 151n, 152, 184 Lobeck, Christian August, 73 Lossius, J.C., 230n M Macaulay, 6, 238n Macfait, Ebenezer, 136-8, 149, 157 Mackintosh, James, 15, 210n Maguire, Thomas, 259 Mahaffy, John Pentland, 251, 254n Malthus, Thomas Robert, 10n, 24-5 Manso, J.K.F., 54n., 85 Mazlish, Bruce, 10 Meiggs, Russell, 129, 273 Meyer, Eduard, 247 Middleton, Conyers, 155 Mill, James, 1, 3, 8-10, 12, 16-7, 20, 24, 28, 61-2, 66-7, 70, 76, 89, 124-6, 143, 156, 162, 168, 175-6, 185, 191, 206, 230n. Mill, J.S., 6, 8, 25n, 47, 51, 77, 106, 148, 172, 176, 185, 215, 243, 248, 250, 257, 274. Millar, John, 9, 67 Mitford, 37-46, 49, 52, 56-9, 61-2, 64-6, 67-9, 71, 79, 86, 96-7, 107, 112, 14950, 245, 246-7, 271 Mills, Joseph,145-6 Milman, Henry Hart, 247 Mitchell, Thomas, 38n, 112 Molesworth, William, 4, 5 Momigliano, Arnaldo, xi, 252, 271, 272 Monboddo, Lord, 131 Monro, David Binning, 267 Montagu, Edward Wortley., 34-6, 4041, 57 Montesquieu, 84 Moor, James, 134 Morgan, Caesar, 151-2 Mossé, Claude, 273 Müller, Karl Otfried, 54n., 71-4, 82, 845 Mure William, 74, 262 Murray, Gilbert, 263 Munk, Eduard, 194 N Nares, Robert, 146, 152 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 63n, 69-71, 73, 254n Norman, George Warde, 11, 63 O Ogilvie, John, 152 P Packard, Lewis Richard, 248 Paine, Thomas, 42 Paparrêgopoulos, Konstantinos, 253 Pater, Walter Horatio, 266 Place, Francis, 5, 63 Pococke, Richard, 155 Pope, Alexander, 136 Popper, Karl 129, 273n Poste, Edward, 275 Price, Richard, 42 Priestley, Joseph, 42, 145, 152n Pusey, Philip, 187n. R Ranke, Leopold von, 247 Reid, Thomas, 9 Ricardo, David, 1, 11, 12 Richard Carlile, 13 Riddell, James, 265, 266n Ritter, August Heinrich 156, 169-170, 172, 175 193, 195n, 204n Robertson, George C., 13 Robertson, William,, 37, 67 Roebuck, Arthur, 4 Rollin, Charles, 35 309 Index of Names Rosen, Frederick, 16, 125n Rötscher, H.T., 231n Royce, G.M., 254 S Sandford, Daniel Keyte, 50, 51n Schlegel, K.W.F., 183n., 218, 231 Schleiermacher, F.D.E., 156, 162, 1689, 191-5, 234n Schömann, Georg Friedrich, 249, 252 Sewell, William, 159-164, 170-171, 186 Shilleto, Richard, 253-4 Sidgwick, Henry, 262, 266n Smith, Adam, 9, 18, 27n Smith, Philip, 249 Smith, William, 10, 168, 187n, 248 Smith, William Henry, 248 Spencer, Herbert, 217n Spens, Henry, 134, 136, 138-140, 146, 148, 157 Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 251, 264n Stanley, Thomas, 146 Stanyan, Temple, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 57 Stapfer, P.A., 230n Stephen, Leslie, 22, 68n, 175n, 251n Stewart, Dugald, 9, 21, 67 Stock, George, 265 Stockton, David, 273 Strümpell, Ludwig Heinrich, 194 Stubbes, George, 133, 147n Sydenham, Floyer, 140-42, 148n, 191n, 217 Sykes, Ashley, 154 T Taylor, Thomas, 142-4, 156, 176-9, 181, 184-5, 186, 191n, 217 Tennemann, Wilhelm G., 156, 170n, 218, 231n Thirlwall, Connop, 1, 33, 47, 51-7, 59, 92n, 96n, 100n, 104n, 109n, 120n, 168n, 218n, 238n, 246, 248 310 Thompson, William Hepworth, 159, 163, 167, 186, 263, 267n Thursfield, James Richard, 258 Tillard, John, 154 Tollemache, Lionel, 62, 75n Toulmin, Joshua, 147 Turner, F.M., 33n, 59, 127, 132, 160, 164n, 234n, 242n Turton, Thomas, 52 Tychsen, T.C., 230n U Ueberweg, Friedrich, 194, 218n Untersteiner, Mario, 273 V Vaio, John, 1n, 26, 76n Vaughan, David J., 174 W Warburton, William, 151, 153-5 Welwood, James, 147, 149n West, Gilbert, 136, 157 Whewell, William, 51, 159, 172n Wiggers, G.G., 231n Whibley, Leonard, 246 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, 74, 247 Windelband, Wilhelm, 193n, 262 Winspear, Alban Dewes, 273n Wolf, Friedrich August, 82 Wroth, W.W., 57 Y Young, 43, 44, 50, 58-9 Z Zeller, Eduard, 193, 204n, 218n, 231, 235n Index of Names 311 

Chapter Six Aspects of Victorian Platonism, 1804-1865 By the nineteenth century, the designation ‘Platonist’ had been conferred on scholars who concentrated on the philosopher’s religion and ethics. This tendency, not irrelevant to the failure of the eighteenth-century British Platonists to form a school with certain interpretative orientation analogous to that of the German Romantics, considerably delayed the development of Platonic studies as an academic discipline. At the universities, a few dialogues (usually those directly related to Socrates’ life) were studied for their literary and grammatical interest. 1 If Plato was read, he was read purely for translation purposes, and such a treatment of the dialogues did not function as a stimulus for further critical reading. Clinton, who had been at Christ Church early in the nineteenth century, complained that when he was at Oxford ‘Greek learning was perhaps at the lowest point of degradation’, and Plato had been neglected among other classical authors.2 As Richard Jenkyns remarks, ‘Plato began exciting interest at Cambridge in the 1820s. He did not appear on the syllabus at Oxford until 1847; twenty years later he dominated it’. 3 In fact, the philosopher appeared even later on the syllabus. It was the activity of Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) at Balliol in the forties more than anyone else which surpassed in enthusiasm and scholarship that of his predecessors, and paved the way for scholars reverting to the Greek philosopher.4 The teaching of Plato at the universities actually began in the second quarter of the century. J.C. Hare, William Whewell, and William Hepworth Thompson (1810-1886) taught and discussed Plato extensively at Cambridge, while William Sewell (1804-1874) was introducing Plato in Oxford. In Scotland, James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864) and John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895) included Plato T.B. Macaulay’s emphasis on Plato’s excellence as a narrator and exponent of ‘exquisite Greek’ in the Edinburgh Review for 1837, reflected a widely accepted idea of Plato’s significance. See Miscellaneous Works of Lord Macaulay I 428; and G.O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (London 1908) 602. 2 Quiller-Couch, ed. Reminiscences of Oxford by Oxford Men: 1559-1850 12. 3 R. Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Oxford 1980) 228. See also Clarke, Greek Studies in England: 1700-1830 112. 4 See M.R. Stopper, “Greek Philosophy and the Victorians”, Phronesis 26 (1981) 278, 284n. On Jowett’s career in Oxford see, G. Faber, Jowett. A Portrait with Background (London 1957). The Victorian interest in Plato is partly the subject of R.M. Ogilvie, Latin and Greek. A History of the Influence of the Classics on English Life from 1600 to 1918 (London 1964) 91-134; and J.E. Baker, ed. The Reinterpretation of Victorian Literature (Princeton 1950). 1 Chapter 6 as a substantial part of their general courses in the history of ancient philosophy. 5 But despite the progress, there was good reason even in 1865 to justify Jowett’s complaint that ‘there is nothing good, I fear, in English on this subject’, i.e. on Plato. Blackie exclaimed a few years earlier that Plato was not yet studied in England, concluding pessimistically that ‘[b]etween Plato and the English nation there is in fact a gulf which cannot be passed’. George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) did not exaggerate when he remarked that Plato ‘is often mentioned and often quoted, at second hand; but he is rarely read’. 6 PLATONISM VERSUS UTILITARIANISM The truth is that during the first half of the nineteenth century, books and articles on Plato began to appear on a regular basis. Like the distressed Platonists of the eighteenth century, some early Victorians believed that Platonic philosophy, rightly divined, could provide some key to the bewildering complexities of the present. Plato’s doctrines were expected to provide moral enlightenment to a generation poisoned by utilitarian ethics, organised political radicalism and libertarian maxims. As Turner rightly points out, scholars ‘saw Platonic philosophy as a vehicle for upholding vestiges of Christian or transcendental doctrines in the wake of utilitarian morality, positivist epistemology, and scientific naturalism’.7 A typical specimen of the pervasive appeal of Plato to Victorians in the second quarter of the century is the work of William Sewell. Sewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford and co-founder of St Columba’s College, near Dublin, was so impressed by Plato that he could transform the philosopher’s arguments, put forward in the constructive dialogues, into a plea for ‘Christian politics’. 8 His lectures on Plato, usually before a crowded audience, were designed to prove that the Republic was more or less a 5 J.F. Ferrier wrote extensively on epistemology, but he also delivered sophisticated lectures on ancient Greek philosophy. See Lectures on Greek Philosophy and other Philosophical Remains of James Frederick Ferrier, ed. A. Grant and E.L. Lushington, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London 1866). 6 Jowett is quoted in Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 371 n.4; J.S. Blackie, “Plato”, in Edinburgh Essays by Members of the University (Edinburgh 1857) 6; G.H. Lewes, A Biographical History of Philosophy, [1845-51] re-published in Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books, no. 16 (London and New York 1893) 186. The bibliographer William Thomas Lowndes (d. 1843), Remarks on the Life and Writings of Plato (London 1827) 34, called attention to the ‘disregard shewn to Plato in our public schools and universities’, and especially from persons ‘of general learning and intelligence’. B.B. Edwards and E.A. Park argued that Plato was unsuited to the British practical mind, unlike the Germans who ‘are purveyors of mind’ and ‘psychological adventurers’. See, Selections from German Literature (New York 1839) 3-5. 7 Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 374; on classical studies in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century, see M.L. Clarke, Classical Education in Britain, 1500-1900 (Cambridge 1959) 98-110. 8 Christian Politics was the title of a book Sewell published in 1844. On Sewell, see Richard W. Church, The Oxford Movement, twelve years, 1833-1845 (London 1891) 130. 160 Aspects of Victorian Platonism kind of prophecy of the Catholic Church. His Platonism was definitely related to his theological prepossessions, and particularly to the Tractarian movement at Oxford in the thirties. One of the goals of the Tractarians was to oppose the spread of rationalism by alerting the Church of England. In this regard, Sewell himself devoted his energies to encouraging education on strict Church principles and on a wide basis. Sewell’s overall interpretation of the philosopher was based on three assumptions. First, although Plato’s philosophy is nowhere transmitted as a coherent whole, it is only in the form of a system, developed for purely practical purposes, that any account of it can be given. The philosopher was especially concerned with constructing an ideal state, and that not in the sense of an impracticable model with only a distant relation to politics, but rather as a concrete scheme of organisation. Secondly, Athenian democracy - the ‘remorseless tyranny of the Athenian commonwealth’ – is the real clue to Platonism. Plato’s discussions of political principles were shaped by the conditions in which he lived. His themes in the dialogues were meant to apply to the problems of his own time. Finally, Plato concealed some of his doctrines from the ‘vulgar’. The establishment of the Academy, which Plato considered an instrument of education for the select minority, can be paralleled with the Church, the mysteries of which, though revered by all Christians, are nonetheless revealed only to a few disciples. The following passage elucidates Sewell’s position: The artist-like development of the philosophical system is the principle in which Schleiermacher, with great skill and insight into the character of the Platonic writings, has proposed to arrange them ... The main outlines of such a plan must coincide with that which would be formed in more direct reference to the practical object of Plato. Still I think that the connection will be more easy, and the series more natural, and, in particular ... the parts of each several dialogue will arrange themselves in greater consistency by bearing in mind throughout that the young men of Athens were the persons to whom they were expressly addressed; that the purification of their morals - the refutation of their corruptors, the Sophists - the elevation of the standard of private and political morality - the laying a firm foundation for a new national character - the cleansing, or endeavouring to cleanse, the Augean stable of the Grecian democracy - and the opening a new world of thought and feeling, as yet hidden behind the veil of a gross sensualistic polytheism, - that these, and not merely the foundation of a metaphysical school ... were constantly before the mind of Plato ...9 To a certain degree, Sewell reproduced the basic aspects of the traditional interpretation of Plato. To sum up, the philosopher developed a philosophical system largely from a reaction to the misrule of Athenian democracy and the 9 W. Sewell, An Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato (London 1841) 34. The book contains the substance of articles previously published in the British Critic, a church journal. 161 Chapter 6 ‘deadly enemy’ of the people’s morality, sophistic teaching. Equipped with the knowledge of the immutable principles of morals, founded upon the immovable basis of intuitive truths, Plato triumphed over the sophists’ extreme relativism. His philosophy was essentially religious; his object political. He was destined to be the great antagonist of the sophists, whose primary doctrine was the uncertainty of knowledge. He parodied their style, attacked their immoral character, and deplored their influence on young citizens. Furthermore, Plato had a certain place in the divine scheme. He arrived at the knowledge of sacred doctrines, such as the immortality of the soul and the after life judgement, which he taught within a private audience. ‘Whoever studies Plato’, Sewell characteristically observed, ‘is treading on holy ground. So heathens always felt it. So even Christianity confessed’.10 But despite Sewell’s dependence on tradition in analysing Plato, the influence of Schleiermacher is evident in some parts of his study. The idea of a ‘system’ running through the entire body of Plato’s works, and the argument that the Phaedrus was the first dialogue Plato wrote (prior to Socrates’ death), bear the stamp of the German philosopher and theologian. The emphasis on moral enlightenment as Plato’s top priority is rather peculiar to Sewell and the Tractarian movement, and as such was a reflection of a reactionary sentiment against empiricism and utilitarian ethics. In other words, if the sceptical, irreligious sophists were the major target of Plato’s philosophical criticism, the wise scholar of the nineteenth century should have similarly directed a ruthless criticism to Jeremy Bentham and James Mill - the modern counterparts of the arrogant sophists. The educational channel of their materialistic philosophy, the newly established University College, Sewell thought, was as detrimental to moral training as sophistic schools in Periclean Athens. The parallel between democratic Athens and England is not far-fetched: If oral instruction is diminishing, so it was at Athens; if books are multiplying upon us, and books of the most frivolous kind, so it was at Athens; if a shifting and changing of opinion has destroyed all confidence in public men, so it was at Athens; if the infection has been spread from abroad, and smuggled in, like other diseases, through the wares of Germany and France, so it was at Athens. Their sophists were also foreigners. And if their young men were the first to catch the plague, we may well look to ours. It is a painful parallel, which renders the revival, at this moment, of the study of Plato a matter of no little interest to a philosophical observer. It indicates a sense of the evil, though perhaps not of its definite form. It promises subsidiary aid, - so much aid as sound philosophy can give to sound religion, - to the efforts of the Catholic Church, which only can save the country 10 Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato 27. 162 Aspects of Victorian Platonism from the same ruin of its people and its liberties, its morals and religion, which befell the Athenians.11 Sewell’s contemporary, the Irish historian of philosophy William Archer Butler (1814-1848), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, similarly turned his eyes with awe to the ‘magnificent divine intellect’ of Plato. Following his premature death, Thompson, Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Cambridge, edited his Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy - evidence of his being taken seriously by the élite of contemporary classical scholars. 12 Indeed, Butler’s dealing with Plato was scholarly and learned, typically imbued however with religious overtones, pointing to a connection between the philosopher’s ideas and Christian dogmas. No man, Butler characteristically stated, ‘can read [Plato], and not own himself in the presence of a mighty Interpreter of the human Soul’. 13 Plato, according to Butler, presents the most permanent monument ever established by unassisted human thought. The philosopher’s popularity among Christians depends not only on the coincidence of occasional phraseology, but on a wide spectrum of intrinsically compatible doctrines, like those of the destiny of human nature and the character of the Deity. ‘Untaught ... by any supernatural instructor, [Plato] could look into his own heart and find there the image of eternity, he could see reflected in the human reason the divine, and catch from the mysterious caverns of the soul yet imprisoned in flesh, dim echoes of another world!’14 Thus, it is perfectly certain that the orientation of Platonic speculation is religious in character: You will have now perceived that in Plato, philosophy is only another name for religion; - philosophy is the love of perfect wisdom; perfect Wisdom and perfect Goodness are identified; the perfectly Good is God Himself; - philosophy, then, is the Love of God. Whatever you may think of the soundness of this reasoning, or the practicability of realizing it, you can at least perceive how susceptible was the language of Platonism of Christian adaptations; and how naturally the Evangelists, in rendering the expressions of their divine Master into the language which Plato spoke, adopted phrases analogous to those which Plato used.15 11 Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato 75-6. Thompson, himself a distinguished Plato scholar, occasionally inserted notes of disagreement, as in the case of Butler’s argument that the Phaedrus was the first dialogue written by Plato. The Cambridge scholar published the Greek text of the Phaedrus with notes and dissertation (London 1868), and the Gorgias with notes and appendix (London 1871). 13 W.A. Butler, Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, ed. W.H. Thompson, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1856) II 2. On the ‘connection’ of Plato’s philosophy with the ‘wisdom’ of the ancient Hebrews, see II 36-42. 14 Butler, Lectures II 56; see also II 242, 255. 15 Lectures II 61. The same exaltation of Plato’s prophetic powers in C. Ackermann, Das Christliche im Plato und in der platonischen Philosophie (Hamburg 1835); The Christian Element in Plato and the Platonic Philosophy, trans. S.R. Asbury (Edinburgh, London and Dublin 1861). 12 163 Chapter 6 Butler shared with Sewell the idea that Plato thought of himself as ‘a public instructor’. Inspired by a Socratic type mission of reform, he established the Academy. He thereafter committed himself to writing dialogues which he offered as a serviceable implement to the moral improvement of his contemporaries. His didactic discourses, delivered in the main through the mouth of Socrates, were instrumental in exposing the mischievous sophistic theories. In the early dialogues, Socrates triumphantly exposes ‘the discordance of Polytheism with the unity of religious morality’. He exposes ‘the long-winded and pompous Protagoras; the declamatory Gorgias’ and, indeed, all who comprised this ‘class of pretenders’. In the dogmatic pieces, however, Plato assumes a veil of intentional obscurity because, by that time, he developed a system of divine truths about the unity of Being, comprehensible only to a select group of students. These truths were the complete antithesis to the superstitious polytheism of his era, as well as a formal disavowal of absurd theories then in vogue, as for instance ‘pre-existence and transmigration’. Admittedly, Butler observed, such absurd theories make their appearance in a popular and accessible manner in the dialogues, but they are introduced for the education of the masses. It should not be forgotten that the Republic is ‘truly a large University’. Plato’s philosophical universe of ideas is related to God; more precisely, it is a structure and a system raised to promote the principles of the eternal and immutable laws. Such a solid philosophical ‘universe’ is uniquely valuable, Butler concluded, especially in times of the ‘dangerous excess’ of Utilitarianism ‘into which the present and the last age (especially in our own country) have universally fallen’. 16 The philosophical analyst of Christianity, the Bishop of Hereford, Renn Dickson Hampden (1793-1868), who had taught at Oxford in the thirties just prior to Sewell, similarly espoused the transcendental interpretation of Plato. In his work, Plato is distinctly christianised. 17 Plato, Hampden believed, gave an inspired battle against the ‘corruption and evils’ of his generation. The philosopher felt a ‘strong disgust, not unmixed with contemptuous feeling, at the state of misrule into which the democracy of Athens had degenerated in his day’, and sought retreat in calm meditations. The insolence and the excesses of factions and party spirit in democratic Athens, as well as the general contempt for law and religion, paved the way for the appearance of ‘a peculiar race of philosophers, 16 Lectures II 24-8, 302, 160. It is worth observing that at the time Hampden was teaching at Oxford another scholar of Balliol, Frederick Oakeley (1802-1880), drawing on the opposition of Plato with the sophists, invoked Plato to conduct a battle against ‘Principles eminently characteristic of the present age’; see Remarks upon Aristotelian and Platonic Ethics, as a Branch of the Studies Pursued in the University of Oxford (Oxford 1837) 37. Oakeley was the author of the Church of the Bible (London 1857), and Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement, A.D. 1833-1845 (London 1865). On Oakeley, see Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 375. 17 164 Aspects of Victorian Platonism familiarly known by the name of the Sophists’. The sophists were the natural offspring of moral chaos and political disorder. Socrates, ‘the great antagonist’ of the sophists, conducted a moral crusade against that universal corruption. Plato relates this crusade exquisitely and continues it masterfully himself in the dialogues. His whole life was in effect a battle against the principles of ‘Experience philosophy’, which he sought to replace with the immutable truths deriving from ‘Divine Authority’. The empirical system of the sophists ‘was the crying evil of those times. It had infected politics, and education, and private intercourse, as well as philosophy’.18 In Britain, utilitarian empiricism was likewise infecting the younger generation with subversive doctrines, distrust of intuition and natural affections, and a lamentable hatred for the Creator. As is known, utilitarianism was not sympathetic to religion. To a certain degree, Bentham’s atheism reinforced the instinctive reaction of conservative scholars towards utilitarian political philosophy. Characteristically, John Bowring (1792-1872), Bentham’s literary executor and a committed Unitarian, excluded Bentham’s religious writings from the Collected Works, which he edited in eleven volumes between 1838 and 1843. As already said in chapter one, Bentham published through the assistance of Grote An Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind in 1822, under the pseudonym Philip Beauchamp. The book applied a destructive criticism to the idea of the utility of religious belief: Religion, Bentham argued, ‘considered with reference to the present life, is not beneficial but pernicious’. Religion is conceived as holding a power radically hostile to the intellectual progress of society, and God with his alleged omnipotence as to rewards and punishments, is characterised as an irresponsible and egoistic despot. 19 In his Church-of-Englandism and its Catechism Examined and Not Paul, but Jesus, published in 1818 and 1823 respectively, Bentham criticised the Church of England for upholding the power of the ruling classes, and thus for being hostile to political reform. In placing emphasis on asceticism, at the expense of secular happiness, religion was damagingly useless. John Stuart Mill treated religion as a metaphysical and psychological phenomenon and, like any devoted utilitarian, he envisioned the secularisation of religious sentiments so that they can be socially useful. 20 To check and discredit utilitarian thought and its offspring, atheism or agnosticism, was the absorbing concern behind any initiative to resurrect Plato, until the time Jowett set out to invest Plato’s speculations with Hegelian Idealism. 18 R.D. Hampden, The Fathers of Greek Philosophy (Edinburgh 1862) 207-8, 240, 284. Hampden’s most successful work was the Essays on the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity (London 1827). On Hampden, see G.V. Cox, Recollections of Oxford (London 1868) 264-71. 19 Bentham, Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind 3, 33; similarly, James Mill, History of British India I 285. 20 See A. Ryan, John Stuart Mill (London and Boston 1974) 218-9. See Mill’s Three Essays on Religion (published posthumously, London 1874). 165 Chapter 6 Plato’s philosophy, according to Hampden, is moral and religious: ‘the beacon which it holds up to warn men of the debasing allurements of pleasure, and of the misery consequent on the indulgence of passion; and its glowing exhortations to seek for true happiness, not in externals, or by aiming at a mere human standard of virtue, but by internal purification, and by imitations of the perfections of the Deity’. 21 The religious character of Plato’s philosophy explains why Platonism remained lively even after Christianity substituted all systems of morals with its ‘unrivalled excellence’. The association of Plato with Christian ideas continued well after the fifties, partly as a reaction to Grote’s defence of the sophists and the full rehabilitation of Athenian democracy that made the History of Greece famous. Blackie, appointed Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University in 1852 in succession to George Dunbar (1774-1851), took pains in his lectures to revivify the study of the classics. He had earlier taught Latin at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where his novel teaching methods and astoundingly wide range of knowledge is said to have inspired a great deal of enthusiasm for the ancients. 22 Interestingly, Blackie spent some time at Göttingen and Berlin in the late thirties, where he came under the influence of Heeren, Schleiermacher, Böckh and other distinguished classical scholars. This influence, however, does not seem to have significantly affected his approach to the study of Plato even though it certainly left signs in his pedagogical techniques and his intense interest in the complexities of the Homeric question.23 As regards Plato, Blackie’s main attempt was to show that the Platonic theory of Good was the exact equivalent to the Christian idea of God. In his “Plato and Christianity”, the Scottish classical scholar emphasised Plato’s service to Christianity through unassisted reason. 24 In this piece of work, Blackie attacked the ‘ignorant and insolent Southern - and Englishmen are sometimes apt to be ignorant and insolent in Scottish matters - [who] might even say, that the Scottish 21 Hampden, The Fathers of Greek Philosophy 188, 195. See, Anna M. Stoddart, John Stuart Blackie: A Biography, 2 vols. (Edinburgh 1895, 3rd. ed.); and Blackie, Notes of a Life, ed. A.M. Stoddart (London 1910). Apart from his works on the classics, Blackie, who was a resolute nationalist in politics, published a pamphlet On Democracy (Edinburgh 1867), The Constitutional Association on Forms of Government: a Historical Review and Estimate of the Growth of the Principal Types of Political Organism in Europe (London and Edinburgh 1867), and Political Tracts (London 1868). See also his interesting What does History teach?: Two Edinburgh Lectures (London 1886). 23 In his Homer and the Iliad, 2 vols. (London 1866), Blackie accepted the basis of Wolf’s analysis, but attributed the unity of the poems to the revision by Peisistratus. 24 Blackie, “Plato and Christianity”, North British Review 35 (1861) 369-73; similarly, E.T. Griffiths, Plato, as read in English by an Englishman (London 1854) 43-4. Cf. T.W. Christie, Rationalism: The Last Scourge of the Church (Edinburgh 1861) 421-2, in which he attacked Plato for dethroning ‘the idolatry of sense, to erect on its ruins the idolatry of reason’; see a similarly hostile treatment of Plato by Robert Deuchar, A Brief Review of Ancient and Modern Philosophy in its connection with Scepticism and Religion (Edinburgh 1864) 178-81. 22 166 Aspects of Victorian Platonism brain is of a structure and a texture altogether incapable of Plato: it is too square, too rough, too real, too practical, too utilitarian, too much like a dish of solid ... pottage’. The ‘ignorant Southern’ should be reminded, Blackie continued, that the First Book of Discipline of the Scottish Church, under the head ‘Universities’, requires that ‘the reader of the Greek shall interpret some book of Plato, together with some place of the New Testament’. Scottish theologians clearly and correctly saw, according to Blackie, that the study of Greek literature, and especially the study of Platonic philosophy, should go hand in hand with scriptural analysis. The links between the philosopher and the New Testament had been felt and recognised by all great thinkers and theologians from the earliest ages of the Church. But now, ‘a few smart sophists of the southern division of Great Britain’ wanted to upset the traditional connection. ‘In such a state of things, Plato, like a great engineer, where tunnels are to be made, was sure to be called for, and has already appeared. Professor Jowett fights from behind this Ajax shield in Oxford; Professor Thompson and Dr Whewell in Cambridge; the late Archer Butler in Ireland, and Dr M’Cosh in Belfast. Even in Edinburgh, so long the hear-quarters amid much, no doubt, that was good - of cold economy, barren logic, and twinkling sophistry, indubitable signs of some sincere recognition of Plato have appeared.’25 Convinced that there were essential points of coincidence between Plato’s symbolic speculation and Christian faith, Blackie proceeded to present to the reader a sketch of the philosophy of the ‘great Athenian Idealist’. But his promise of a philosophical approach to the dialogues resulted in a vindication of the convergence of Plato’s system and Christianity on matters related to the Divine Nature (or the supreme causative principle); the Nature of Man (or the origin, character and value of human ideas and actions); and the Philosophy of Human Life, the scheme of Providence, and future life. All these doctrines, rooted in Christian tradition and St. Paul’s teaching, as well as the principles of moral order distinctly associated with divine theology, are also firmly embedded in the intellectual system of Platonism. Not surprisingly, Blackie’s Plato emerges as the great philosophical prophet of Christianity - its philosopher par excellence. Elsewhere, Blackie attacked the dismissive view widely held about Plato, namely that the philosopher ‘was a dreamer and a fantastic speculator, who was always wandering among clouds and sunbeams’. Truly, Plato’s philosophy gave prominence to pure and unworldly emotion, and showed contempt for all inferior springs of action, such as ‘expediency, policy, utility’. Plato, in Blackie’s judgement, was ‘the great master idealist’, ‘the great apostle of idealism’ who is not to be estimated by the theory of utility.26 But it is equally important to bear in “Plato and Christianity” 369. Blackie, “Plato” 4, 9. See also John Philips Potter (1793-1861) The Religion of Socrates. Dedicated to Sceptics and Sceptic-Makers (London 1831) “Dedication”. Potter defended ‘Divine Obligation’ in the place of a ‘system of Utility’, promulgated at this ‘transitional’ period. In his 25 26 167 Chapter 6 mind, Blackie observed, that the philosopher was primarily concerned with applying his central ideas to human life. It should be pointed out that Blackie formed his basic conception of the purpose and doctrines of Platonic philosophy independently well before Grote’s interpretation; thus the results of his study of Plato cannot be considered as the product of a reaction to the conclusions of the historian. But the appearance of Grote’s Plato provoked him to publish a distinctly polemical book in which he contrasted the moral systems of Socrates, Plato and Christianity with that expounded by utilitarianism.27 In his Four Phases of Morals, James Mill is criticised for misrepresenting the intended meanings of the Greek philosopher. Mill, Blackie said, ‘studied at the University of Edinburgh in the days of the great metaphysical school ... and devoted considerable attention to Plato. I have not the slightest reason to believe that the great idealist was much known even to the best thinkers in our Scottish metropolis at that time; but if Mill did study Plato thoroughly, it must have been, as Grote has done in our time, for the purpose of not understanding him’.28 Though the religious and moral facets of Plato have attracted a great deal of interest among scholars, they did not quite monopolise it. Some scholars largely incorporated in their works the results of German Platonism, especially on questions relating either to Socrates or to the chronology and thematic distribution of the Platonic dialogues.29 Schleiermacher was, in many respects, regarded an authority. Bishop Thirlwall translated his Der Werth des Sokrates als Philosophen (1815), which appeared in the short-lived Philological Museum just three years before the appearance of the rather inelegant translation of the Introductions by William Dobson (1793?-1837).30 Schleiermacher’s interpretation was popularised in England by Christian August Brandis (1790-1867), in an article on “Plato” published in Smith’s famous Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1842). In arguing that each Platonic composition was ‘a link in a chain’, and that ‘the purport and construction of the separate Platonic dialogues depends upon our Characteristics of the Greek Philosophers: Socrates and Plato (London 1845) 37-58, Potter presented Socrates as the intellectual opponent of inductionism and experimentalism. Georgiana Lady Chatterton (1806-1876), in a popular edition of Selections from the Works of Plato (London 1862) iv, pointed out emphatically that it is not so much ‘to Plato as a writer of exquisite Greek, nor merely to Plato as a philosopher, that I ask the reader’s attention; it is Plato as a man ripe for that revelation which he seemed to foresee as if prophetically’. 27 See Blackie, Four Phases of Morals. Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism (Edinburgh 1871). He also attacked Grote repeatedly in his Horae Hellenicae: Essays and Discussions on some important points of Greek Philology and Antiquity (London 1874). 28 Four Phases of Morals 404-5. 29 A synopsis of German Platonism in K. Demetriou, “George Grote and the Platonic Revival in Victorian Britain”, Quaderni di Storia, 47 (1998) 23-33. 30 F.D.E. Schleiermacher, “The Worth of Socrates as a philosopher”, Philological Museum 2 (1833) 538-55. The essay was also published in The Apology of Socrates, the Crito, and part of the Phaedo, ed. W. Smith (London 1858, third ed.) 9-35, from which references are drawn. 168 Aspects of Victorian Platonism ascertaining the internal references by which they are united with each other’, Brandis explicitly echoed Schleiermacher’s canons of interpretation. 31 Next to Schleiermacher, Ritter’s Geschichte der Philosophie, and his work on the history of Greek and Roman philosophy, were very influential in Britain. 32 Ritter, Professor of Philosophy at Berlin and later at Göttingen, wrote extensively on Plato and his arguments largely corresponded to Schleiermacher’s interpretation. Like most scholars of his generation, the German Professor was hostile to the sophists on the grounds that they first propounded and cultivated the ‘vilest of dogmatisms’, that is, universal scepticism. Ritter described the sophists as ‘a peculiar class of men’, who made large fortunes out of the dêmos’ ignorance and political ambition. Yet, as his philosophy of history was much indebted to the Hegelian law of dialectic progress, he was inclined to treat the sophistic movement as a vital transitional moment in the history of thought. The sophists’ ‘anti-philosophical tendencies’ eventually aided the development of systematic philosophy, particularly through the attention they awakened to the idea of human cognition and the mind’s self-reflection.33 Not surprisingly, in Ritter’s scheme of classical thought, Socrates and his successors belong to the antisophist camp. Ritter’s Socrates is primarily a methodologist, yet the moral character of his conversations and his insistence on objective reality broke new ground in philosophical investigations. In setting to analyse Plato, Ritter first reflected on the question of the authenticity of some dialogues, trusting that he could form a tolerably correct judgement, ‘if with a free and unprejudiced mind we direct our chief attention to the artistical and philosophical character of each work throughout’. 34 The minor genuine works contain nothing substantial to add to Plato’s philosophical scheme and are of little value. On the other hand, the significance of the constructive dialogues cannot be doubted. Yet, the recognition of Plato’s exceptionally powerful intellect should not obscure the ungrounded and ambiguous views of human nature here and there expounded, as well as the authoritarian thrust of his C.A. Brandis, “Plato”, in W. Smith, ed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols. (London 1859) III 395. Brandis’ substantial Handbuch der Geschichte der griechisch-römischen Philosophie was published in 3 vols. (Berlin 1835-1866). See also his Geschichte der Entwicklungen der griechischen Philosophie und ihrer Nachwirkungen im römischen Reiche, 2 vols. (Berlin 1862-64). 32 A.H. Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, 12 vols. (Hamburg 1829-1853); Historia philosophiae Graeco-Romanae, with collaboration with Ludwig Preller (Hamburg 1838); Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, 3 vols. (Göttingen 1862-64). 33 Ritter, The History of Ancient Philosophy, trans. A.J.W. Morrison, 4 vols. (Oxford 1838) I 5335, 601; similarly, Johann Eduard Erdmann (1805-1892), Professor at Halle, interpreted the sophists in the light of Hegel. His Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 2 vols. (Berlin 1866) was highly esteemed by E. Caird and T.H. Green and Jowett. It was translated into English by W.S. Hough, A History of Philosophy, 3 vols. (London 1893). 34 History of Ancient Philosophy II 163. On Socrates, see 9-70. 31 169 Chapter 6 fundamental assumptions. In the examination of the constructive pieces, such as the Republic and the Laws, Ritter criticised Plato for sacrificing certain classes of men to the state, something which ‘must be decried as unreasonable and immoral’. Another crucial defect in Plato’s utopian polis is the absorption of all individuality in the general citizen body. 35 Sewell attacked the ‘rationalistic eclecticism of France’, and the sceptical systems in Europe founded on rationalism. It seems that his critique was addressed to Victor Cousin (1792-1867), even though the French philosopher is nowhere referred by name. However, Sewell’s implicit reference is sufficient indication that Cousin (considerable parts of his general philosophical works had been translated into English) must have had a certain appeal to some scholars. 36 The French scholar, apart from his purely philosophical preoccupations, published a laborious translation of Plato and considerable work on Aristotle.37 In his study of Plato, Cousin argued that no philosophy, ancient or modern, could be understood without knowing where it came from, what its antecedents were, and what system it presupposed. Plato in particular, cannot be understood without tracing the principles of his predecessors and the philosophical systems developed by his successors. Consequently, Socrates should occupy a prominent place in any scheme of Platonic philosophical interpretation. But it is not the transcendental Socrates that Cousin had in mind. Socrates produced not a dogma, but an immense philosophical movement, championing freedom of thought: Plato was Socrates’ legitimate heir. The philosopher’s age was the age of rejection and scepticism. A sort of apparent scepticism reigns too, in the philosophy of our age; a spirit, negative to excess, which betrays at once a predominating desire for reflection, and the infancy of the art of reflecting. This phenomenon is by no means new. In the beginning of the Greek philosophy, between Pericles and Alexander, the negative spirit, although strongly repressed by two men of genius so profoundly positive as Plato and Aristotle, was nevertheless fashionable; even so, since Descartes, the spirit of negation, especially in France, has checked the flight of the higher philosophy. There is nothing in this which should astonish or alarm us. Every great change in the spirit of humanity commences by hostility; but is only the point of departure of great movements, and not their end.38 35 History of Ancient Philosophy II 425-443. See V. Cousin, Introduction to the History of Philosophy, trans. H.G. Linberg (Boston 1832); Philosophical Essays, trans. G. Ripley (Edinburgh 1839), with a useful biographical note. 37 V. Cousin, Plato: Oeuvres complètes, 13 vols. (Paris 1822-40). Significantly, the project must have started at the time Cousin was at Berlin, where he sought refuge after the political events in France in 1815-1820. On Aristotle, see his De la Métaphysique d’ Aristote (Paris 1838, 2nd ed.). Cousin translated W.G. Tennemann into French, Manuel de l’Histoire de la Philosophie, 2 vols. (Paris 1829). 38 Cousin, Introduction to the History of Philosophy 54-5. 36 170 Aspects of Victorian Platonism Understandably, this argument had no chance of appealing to Butler and Sewell but rather to scholars for whom the idea of progress was not associated with decay, or scepticism with sophistry. Lewes, the positivist philosopher and literary critic, sketched an image of Plato directed chiefly against the moralising interpretations of contemporary university scholars. His Biographical History of Philosophy was an attempt to prove that abstract inquiries are, in effect, vain efforts to attain (the ever unattainable) knowledge about the ultimate nature of things. His general plan was to show how philosophy eventually became ‘Positive Science’. Interestingly, Lewes was among the few English authors who challenged the traditional view of derogation towards the sophists before Grote set out to re-establish their credentials. Nevertheless, he directed a severe critique against them for abandoning the presocratic cosmologists’ search for scientific knowledge. 39 The sophists rejected the idea of the attainability of objective knowledge and held that sense-experience was of an illusory character and, as such, could not be taken as a valid criterion of truth. Their protest against the possibility of metaphysical science was justified, but their philosophical investigations led, unlike Bacon’s, to shallow scepticism. Socrates, with the weapons of dialectic, reasserted the philosophy’s empire. 40 Lewes questioned the German attempt at reconstructing the Platonic corpus on the basis of ‘internal evidence’. Such evidence derived either from literary sources or philosophical assumptions is always deceptive, for no author has ever been able to conceive of a philosophical system at a certain time and give to it form without subsequent modifications, wavering, and even changes of mind. Furthermore, no one - even geniuses like Plato or Shakespeare - can ever produce works of equal imaginary and literary merit. Consequently, rejecting as spurious single works on the grounds of being ‘inferior’ to the master’s style is a misuse of the ‘conjectural privilege’. In Plato’s case, things are even worse, for the philosopher always contradicts himself. The reader can scarcely find a single opinion consistently held by him throughout the dialogues. ‘A consistent doctrine cannot be made out. Indeed it is questionable whether Plato ever elaborated one.’ 41 Yet, if there is no consistent doctrine in Plato, there is a firm and distinct recurring purpose. And this purpose revolves around the effective exposition and improvement of the Socratic philosophical method. Plato rightly understood that analysis and definition are key scientific tools. In consistently employing these tools to carry out his investigations, he shifted philosophy from the field of moral theorising to that of logic. Lewes, like Cousin, believed that Plato in his works (as is not 39 See also John Gillies, The Orations of Lysias and Isocrates, trans. with notes (London 1778) 1617n. 40 Lewes, Biographical History 27-9. 41 Biographical History 201. Lewes intended to insert a chapter on ‘the self-contradictions of Plato’, but he left it out for want of space (201n). 171 Chapter 6 uncommon with gifted theorists) incorporated most of the conflicting tendencies of the age, even though his results contained much that was entirely new. For instance, the philosopher was definitely influenced by the scepticism of his predecessors. Even though a sceptic himself, he tried however through the theory of objective reality (implied in the famous theory of Ideas) to mitigate the effects of scepticism. Unfortunately, in ethical discussions, the dialectician Plato predominates over the humanist. His ethical rules are deductions from certain logical premises and not from an investigation into human nature. What he proposes in ethics ‘might suit the inhabitants of another world; they are quite useless to the inhabitants of this’. In the Republic, the family and the individual are sacrificed to the state, the ‘State itself being an Abstraction. Like the Utopists of modern days, he has developed an a priori theory of what the State should be ... instead of developing a theory a posteriori, i.e. from an investigation into the nature of human wants and feelings’. 42 It is worth observing that Lewes’ analysis of Platonic philosophy was much influenced by J.S. Mill’s commentaries in the Monthly Repository (see below), Ritter’s work, and Cousin’s Cours de l’histoire de la Philosophie. All figure among his secondary sources. In many respects, his discussions contained in embryonic and imperfect form the main arguments of the forthcoming Grotean Platonic interpretation. It should be noted that in reviewing Grote’s Plato, Lewes complained that there was a general disregard of the fact that he was the originator of the ‘paradoxical’ ideas expounded in the historian’s masterpiece. The philosopher of the Inductive Sciences, William Whewell, translated Plato for English readers, avoiding in his commentaries the contemporary fashion for moral instruction, or references to the dramatic and poetic aspects of the philosopher such as those largely drawn by earlier authors. 43 Instead, one of the most ‘poetic’ pieces, the Phaedrus, loved by German classicists, is called ‘prolix, rambling, and fantastical’. Whewell distinguished between the dialogues of the Socratic tendency, which he called the ‘Anti-Sophist Dialogues’, and the constructive dialogues. He assigned the first group to Plato’s earlier career. It is important to mention that Whewell had previously published two articles on the Platonic theory of Ideas and Plato’s survey of the sciences. He was pleased to observe that Plato recently found many readers and admirers among English scholars, yet ‘there has been an air of unreality and inconsistency about the commendation which most of these professed adherents have given to his doctrines’. Platonic commentaries, Whewell argued, are distinctly polemical or replete with ‘dogmatical assertions’. One such commentary was that written by Professor Butler. Butler, however, had rightly understood that Plato’s theory of Ideas was an attempt to explain the existence of real knowledge, which is the 42 Biographical History 231, 233. W. Whewell, The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers, 3 vols. (Cambridge and London 1859-1861). 43 172 Aspects of Victorian Platonism necessary aim of all ‘cognate systems of philosophy’. ‘I conceive, then’, Whewell stated, ‘that one of the primary objects of Plato’s Theory of Ideas is, to explain the existence of real knowledge, that is, of demonstrated knowledge, such as the propositions of geometry offer to us’. From a mathematician’s perspective, thus, the theory of Ideas consists of an attempt to answer the question ‘what is the ground of geometrical truth?’, as well as ‘[h]ow is it possible that man should apprehend necessary and eternal truths?’.44 It seems that Plato, in attempting to explain the nature and possibility of knowledge, had geometrical truths in mind as the archetypes of such knowledge. Yet the philosopher’s conception of the relationship between the Ideas and the objects of thought rests on weak ground. Indeed, the arguments put forward against the theory of Ideas in the Parmenides (a dialectic tour de force), though generally insufficient, point to several contradictions that are problematic. In the concluding part of his analysis, Whewell took his readers by surprise in arguing that the Parmenides is not a Platonic dialogue, but a dialogue of Eleatic origins, erroneously ascribed to Plato. Thus, Whewell, like German scholars, believed that it is possible to maintain the genuineness of a dialogue only by an elaborate theory of Plato’s philosophical growth. In a less important piece, Whewell compared Plato with Bacon who, as is known, described the condition of the Sciences at his time in the Advancement of Learning (1605). An analogous description, according to Whewell, occurs in the Republic where the philosopher starts from the true premise that the real and ‘permanent knowledge which we thus require is to be found in certain sciences, which deal with truths necessary and universal’. Having accepted that the object of the scientist is the attainment of universal truths, Plato introduces Arithmetic as the first of the Sciences which are to be employed in this search. Arithmetic, along with Geometry and Astronomy, are not simple common disciplines, but sciences which lead to speculative truths, seen by intuition. 45 However, Plato’s insistence on a sharp and virtually unbridgeable distinction between material appearances and abstract theories was false. The philosopher ‘with his tendency to exalt Ideas above Facts, - to find a Reality which is more real than Phenomena, - to take hold of a permanent Truth which is more true than truths of observation, - attempts what is impossible. He tries to separate the poles of the Fundamental Antithesis, which, however antithetical, are inseparable’. 46 Interestingly, Whewell’s Platonism was criticised by the Professor of Greek at St Andrews, Lewis Campbell (1830-1908). Whewell, Campbell observed, ‘is not in the fullest sense a lover of Plato. Either his mind has not been cast in the same imaginative mould, Whewell, “On the Platonic Theory of Ideas”, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 10 (1864) 95-6. 45 Whewell, “On Plato’s Survey of the Sciences”, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 9 (1856) 583. Whewell defended ‘intuitionism’ against J. S. Mill’s empiricism. 46 “On Plato’s Survey of the Sciences” 587. 44 173 Chapter 6 or possibly a wholesome reaction against the high-flying interpreters has carried him a little too far. Whatever may be the cause, he does not appear to be quite an enthusiastic admirer of the Platonic wisdom, and he is not always a satisfactory interpreter of Plato’s thoughts’. 47 Another phase of the Platonic revival in the 1850s is associated with new translations of Plato done by Henry Cary (1804-1870), Henry Davis and George Burges (1786?-1864) for Bohn’s Classical Library; John L. Davies and David J. Vaughan,48 and, as mentioned above, Whewell. 49 With the exception of Whewell’s analysis, the commentaries prefixed to the translations, typically present to the reader the idealisation of Socrates and the conventional idea of Plato and Socrates as being hostile and radically antagonistic to the sophists. 50 The Apology, in Cary’s words, is with its ‘dignity and fullness of hope worthy even of a Christian’.51 Davis translated the Republic, Timaeus and the Critias, inserting a long introduction ‘on the Platonic philosophy generally’. He observed that the ‘learned of Europe’, had lately turned their attention to ‘the sublime, spiritual philosophy of Plato, in preference to the cold materialism of Aristotle’. Aristotle had hitherto been preferred to the divine philosopher because Platonism ‘which, in its spiritualising and purifying tendency, may be deemed to approach Christianity’, was always seen in the distorting light of the ‘absurd mysticism and fanatical extravagances which the New Platonists introduced in their interpretations’. The more Plato’s works are studied, Davis continued, the more ‘will his acute intelligence, practical good sense, and pure morality, become apparent, and the higher will he rise in the respect and admiration of the Christian philosopher’.52 Plato is praised for setting the highest Idea of Good, or God, as the Campbell, “The Platonic Dialogues”, Quarterly Review 112 (1862) 308. Davies and Vaughan published a new version of the Republic in 1852 (London 1925, third ed.). They admitted the difficulty of putting into order Plato’s works, even though they criticised Grote for ‘in his zeal to take Plato down from his superhuman pedestal, may be somewhat too ready to attribute to him the compositions which have been judged unworthy of so divine a philosopher’ (vi). 49 See also the scholarly editions of single dialogues: T.D. Woolsey, The “Gorgias” of Plato (Cambridge 1848); T.W. Wayte, Platonis “Protagoras” (Cambridge and London 1854); C. Badham, Platonis “Philebus” (London 1855); E. Poste, Philebus (Oxford 1860). 50 John Forster (1812-1876), historian and distinguished biographer, elaborated on this philosophical antagonism in his “Socrates and the Sophists of Athens”, Foreign Quarterly Review 30 (1843) 331-68, but he duly recognised that the sophists made a material contribution to the advancement of the science of mind. 51 H. Cary, The Works of Plato, (London 1872, second ed.) I 4. See also C.S. Stanford, trans. Plato’s “Apology of Socrates”, “Crito”, and “Phaedo” (Dublin 1835) “Preface”. 52 See The Works of Plato, 6 vols. (London 1880-85, second ed.) II i. Vol. I, trans. Cary, includes the translation of the Apol., Crito, Phaedo, Gorg., Prot., Phaedrus, Theaet., Euthyph., Lysis; vol. II, trans. Davis, includes the Rep., Tim., Critias; vol. III-VI, trans. Burges, includes (III) Meno, Euthyd., Soph. Polit., Cratylus, Parm., Symp; (IV) Phil., Charmides, Laches, Menex., Hippias Major and Minor, Ion, First Alcib., Second Alcib., Theages, Rivals, Hipparchus, Minos, 47 48 174 Aspects of Victorian Platonism keystone of all rational investigation. 53 Davis consistently ascribed to Plato a religious character and an apostolic mission, but he did not lack critical ability. He refused, for instance, to follow the German tendency to discard as spurious single dialogues on ‘internal evidence’. He regarded as not genuine the dialogues which the ancient bibliographers rejected as forgeries. His careful analysis of the Republic derived much from Ritter, whom he quoted at large. In politics, Davis did not hesitate to criticise Plato inasmuch as the philosopher ‘overlooks impossibilities in his arrangements, and sacrifices all to the one great object of sketching the idea of good as a social principle’.54 PLATO: AN ALLY OF UTILITARIANISM James Mill’s interest in ancient philosophy, and especially Plato, was never superficial. The utilitarian theorist approached the ancients with the solid scholarly apparatus he had inherited from Montrose Academy and Edinburgh University, devoted himself particularly to Plato’s works, and sought to rediscover the ethical spirit of classical antiquity. 55 Of his qualifications in Greek language and literature there is sufficient evidence. We know, for instance, that he took sessions of Greek beyond the required minimum; that he considered applying for the Greek Chair at Glasgow in 1818; and that his Common-Place Books have many references to Plato and Aristotle, and to many other ancient authors. 56 His life, according to Grote, was a striking example of one who dedicated himself to carrying out the Platonic ideal of dialectic, tou didonai kai dehesthai logôn (the giving and receiving of reasons). 57 Mill’s pursuit of the Platonic pattern, combined with a vigorous character consistently devoted to truth, explains Grote believed why he exercised a profound intellectual influence upon his numerous young disciples. Until recently, however, intellectual historians have neglected to consider the ‘Platonic side’ of Mill’s education. Mill’s philosophical influences, Cleitophon, Epistles; (V) Laws; (VI) “The Doubtful Works”, with lives by Diog. Laertius, Hesychius and Olympiodorus. 53 Cf. R. Blakey, Historical Sketch of Logic, from the earliest times to the present day (Edinburgh and London 1851) 30-31, who criticised Plato for injecting ‘logical studies’ with ‘a religious bias’. 54 Davis, Plato II xix. 55 On Mill’s ‘Hellenising tendency’, see A.W. Benn, The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London 1906) I 293-5; similarly, Bower, Hartley and James Mill 11; Stephen, The English Utilitarians II 3; and Fenn, James Mill’s Political Thought 79; Ball, ed. James Mill: Political Writings, “Introduction”; Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece 2313: According to Jenkyns, Mill ‘was reacting against those other Hellenists, the Romantics with their Byronic exaltation of the emotions; it was the achievement of the Greeks, and above all of Plato, to captivate two such different classes of men’. 56 See Mill’s letter to Thomas Thomson (22 February 1818), quoted in Bain, James Mill 166-8. In his memoirs, Lord Greville referred to Mill as ‘one of the best Greek scholars of the day’. L. Strachey and R. Fulford, ed. The Greville Memoirs: 1814-1860, 8 vols. (London 1938) III 280. 57 Grote, Minor Works 284. 175 Chapter 6 from the early years of his academic training at Edinburgh University, included the Platonis Opera, which appears several times on the list of his general reading.58 One of the best sources of James Mill’s keen interest in Plato is unquestionably his son’s Autobiography. In the young Mill’s curriculum, Plato occupies a distinctive place among Herodotus, Xenophon, and Isocrates. John Stuart, we learn, was encouraged to read the Theaetetus at the age of seven and, while still a child, read the Gorgias, the Protagoras and the Republic.59 ‘There is no author’, the younger Mill remarked, ‘to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato’. 60 James Mill must have made frequent use of ancient Greek thought to impart moral discipline, and impress upon his ‘pupils’ the model of ideal excellence. 61 Indeed, he believed that Plato’s literary remains ‘afford so remarkable a specimen of genius and eloquence ... [which] are so much adapted to sharpen the ingenuity of youth, and engender the love of science and of virtue’. 62 For Mill, the central educational objective was temperance, or sophrosynê, in the all-inclusive sense pointed to by the Greek philosophers.63 By education he meant not only formal, technical schooling, but all the influences and conditions that are conducive to creating one’s character and outlook. The Socratic mode of inquiry served in both directions: it was an unsurpassed discipline for resolving the confusions in the mind, as well as a tool for sweeping away established prejudices of centuries. As a classical scholar, Mill was not a prolific author. In fact, he left only two pieces on Plato (review articles of Taylor’s translations, published in 1804 and 1809) which, however, suffice to define the basic elements of his understanding of the philosopher. The two articles are indicative of the extent to which he was aware of the complexities of Greek grammar, but also of the meaning of the Platonic dialogues with their related intellectual background. Totally dismissive, the review of 1804 pointed out that it had been the fate of Plato to be seen through the allegorising theories and the ‘mysterious and visionary speculations’ of those ‘charlatans’ of ancient philosophy, the Alexandrian thinkers. Unfortunately, Mill maintained, it has been taken for granted that the theories of the later Platonists were the genuine exposition of Plato’s philosophical vision. Thus, even in modern times, Plato’s philosophy was blended with an audacious spirit of mysticism and See the list in Bain, James Mill 18-19. See further, Ian Cumming, “The Scottish Education of James Mill”, History of Education Quarterly 2 (1962) 162-3; and H. O. Pappé, “The English Utilitarians and Athenian Democracy”, in Bolgar, ed. Classical Influences on Western Thought, A.D. 1650-1870 295-6. 59 J.S. Mill, Autobiography 5-6, 9, 14-5. 60 Autobiography 14. 61 In Greece, wrote Mill in his Essay on Government 16, ‘human nature ran a more brilliant career than it has ever done in any other age or country’. 62 James Mill, “Taylor’s Translation of Plato”, Literary Journal 3 (1804) 449. 63 See Burston, ed. James Mill on Education 8-9, 33. 58 176 Aspects of Victorian Platonism irrationality.64 A scholarly approach was, therefore, indispensable for restoring Plato’s philosophical credentials, inasmuch as Taylor’s inept and pompous latinised translations achieved nothing in this direction. The Neoplatonists presented Plato as the most affirmative of all human beings whereas one ‘of the most remarkable features of the writings of Plato is, that he affirms nothing’.65 Plato ‘adhered to the rule of his master [Socrates]; played with the theories of others, and advanced nothing seriously himself’. Plato intended to refute the tenets and expose the ignorance of the sophists who ‘under pretence of teaching eloquence and philosophy ... filled the minds of the youth with a spirit of mere logomachy’. His fundamental objective was to encourage speculation, to give specimens of investigation, and to make his students capable of discerning and exposing fallacies. Given his emphasis on the logician Plato, it is not accidental that Mill extended his scepticism about the affirmative purpose of Plato’s philosophising even to such compositions as the Phaedo, Republic and the Laws. As he pointed out, Plato’s business in the last two mentioned works was ‘to give specimens of investigation, to let in rays of light, to analyze particular points ... rather than lay down and establish any system of opinions’.66 Even in the most serious dialogues, as the Phædo, for instance, in which several of the hypotheses to which we allude are introduced, they seem to be thrown out in a manner between jest and earnest, for the illustration of the argument, and as conjectures equally probable with any theories which could be held on the opposite side, but by no means as fixed and deliberate opinions of Plato. Perhaps they were regarded by Plato, in a light somewhat resembling that in which Sir Isaac Newton considered his aerial fluid. We doubt if they were even regarded so seriously by Plato; but the whole air of his discourse concerning them proves to us most decidedly that he did not regard them in a more serious light.67 The chief object of the dialogues in the Platonic corpus was inquiry per se; there is no system of doctrine to be found. The elder Mill, thus, ignored the distinction drawn in antiquity between the dialogues of search and those of affirmative exposition by the Alexandrian bibliographers and Thrasyllus. Disregarding this distinction, Mill implied that the dialogues are not imaginative renditions of what Socrates might have said, but more or less transcriptions of his analytical method of investigation. Unlike earlier commentators, Mill emphasised Plato’s method of philosophical inquiry, and refused to acknowledge a dogmatic side of Platonic thought. It is J. Mill, “Taylor’s Plato”, Edinburgh Review 14 (1809) 191-3. “Taylor’s Plato” 199. See J. Glucker’s useful comments, “The two Platos of Victorian Britain”, in K. Algra et al., ed. Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy (Leiden 1996) 387-9. 66 “Taylor’s Translation of Plato” 453; “Taylor’s Plato” 199. 67 “Taylor’s Translation of Plato” 453. 64 65 177 Chapter 6 interesting to observe that in the 1830s the elder Mill could declare his endorsement of certain principles of Plato’s politics inasmuch as ‘Plato’s Republic may be regarded as a development, and, in many of its parts, a masterly development, of the principle applied by Mr. Mill; that identity of interests between the governors and the governed affords the only security for good government’. But despite the substantive agreement between Plato and ‘Mr. Mill’ as to the purposes of political rule, Plato erroneously resorted to extraordinary means for the attainment of good government (such as communism and exclusion), apparently because he was ignorant of the ‘divine principle of representation’.68 Interestingly, the elder Mill wrote an article in a dialogue form in which he explicitly defended Platonic elitism. ‘We think it best’, the utilitarian philosopher argued, ‘that government should be placed in the hands of the Aristoi; not only in the sense of the Greeks, who understood by that term the Beltistoi; but in that of the moderns, who understood by it only the Rich. We only desire that it be placed in the hands of the rich upon such terms as will make them the Aristoi [aristocracy] and Beltistoi [best]’.69 This deliberate shift, from the purely inquisitive Plato to the affirmative Plato, can be ascribed to two reasons. First, the review essay of 1804 bore an especially distinct polemical character because Mill wanted to emphasise the various distortions in the Platonic exegesis of Taylor and his predecessors; thus, he would naturally overrate the aspect of Plato’s philosophy which had been mostly misconstrued or disregarded (i.e., the inquisitive, or non-dogmatic). Secondly, at the threshold of the nineteenth century, Mill was still not enlisted in the Utilitarian cause (he met Bentham in 1808) and, therefore, was not in need of Plato’s political doctrines to lend support to his understanding of social and political reform. It is not accidental that after his meeting with Bentham and the utilitarians, Mill tried to make Plato into a utilitarian by associating the principle of utility with the philosopher’s idea of the ‘good’. As Fenn points out, ‘[t]hough [Mill] was in the habit of pillaging classics [and especially Plato] for support for radical arguments in his manuscripts, he absorbed their views concerning knowledge while simultaneously rejecting the undemocratic conclusions that flow from them’. 70 In his second critique of Taylor’s Plato, Mill showed unmistakable signs of his being already proselytised to Bentham’s ‘great principle of utility’. His encounter with Bentham gave rise in the introductory pages to an interesting protest about 68 J. Mill, A Fragment on Mackintosh (London 1835) 285, 311. As Theodor Gomperz understood, the ‘sober champions of utility and severe rationalism claim Plato for their intellectual ancestor’. See Greek Thinkers [Griechische Denker. Eine Geschichte der antiken Philosophie, 3 vols. (Leipzig 1896-1909)], trans. L. Magnus and G.G. Berry, 4 vols. (London 1901-1912) II 250; similarly, D.G. Ritchie, Plato (Edinburgh 1902) 67-8. 69 See “The Ballot - A Dialogue”, Westminster Review 13 (1830) 37-8. Mill also wrote an article on education in a dialogue form, “Theory and Practice”, London Review 1 (1836) 225-234. 70 Fenn, James Mill’s Political Thought 136; see also 51. 178 Aspects of Victorian Platonism the state of classical education in England. The ‘state of classical learning, at present, in this country’, Mill wrote, ‘is by no means such as to please us;’ this is proved by the fact that good translations of ancient texts are wanting, whereas the ‘lettered nations of Europe’ have made considerable progress in supplying faithful translations. This is not the case in other departments, such as mathematics, or physics. ‘In the classical department, to which the business of English education is almost wholly restricted, England appear to stand lower than any of her neighbours.’ Scholars were showing reluctance to revise the traditional pattern of classical education which was based on translation and composition. The philosophical dimension of ancient texts remained virtually unexplored. An eminent English scholar is a man profoundly skilled in Greek prosody. This is learning, par excellence ... We are persuaded that the effect of this, upon the minds of the youth, is baneful in no ordinary degree. They must acquire a habit of looking to frivolous things. The great principle of utility is vilified and disgraced throughout the whole course of this plan of instruction ... So far as an acquaintance with the technical structure of their verse can heighten the pleasure of reading the classical poets, so far that acquaintance is desirable; but we know no other useful purpose which it serves; nor can we regard that as a very eminent one ... To this cause we are persuaded it is, that, even among the most celebrated scholars in England, it is so rare to meet with a man who has any thing like a familiar acquaintance with the orators, the philosophers, and historians of Greece. They can repeat to you, without book, innumerable passages from the poets, and here and there have dipped into other authors. But it is scarcely once in an age that a man appears, who has deeply explored the writings of the philosophers, orators, and historians, - who is acquainted, practically, with their spirit and genius, - who, in fact, has much beyond a schoolboy knowledge of the most important part of Grecian literature. The Socraticæ chartæ, those precious remains so strenuously recommended by Horace and Cicero, as the fountain of genius, to both the orator and the poet, are abandoned for the Choruses of Euripides.71 Taylor made no attempt to ameliorate this condition. In fact, he committed considerable damage inasmuch as he had not ‘translated Plato; he has travestied him, in the most cruel and abominable manner. He has not elucidated, but covered him over with impenetrable darkness’. Taylor imposed on Plato the ‘absurdities’ of Proclus and the other Neoplatonists; he popularised their misapprehension and perversions of Plato’s dialogues. 72 In the next page, Mill defined the task and implicitly the qualifications required of the scholar who would best examine and explain Plato. It is desirable to quote this passage at length, as it might have provided Grote with an almost disciplinary guideline: “Taylor’s Plato” 188-9. Mill recommended Brucker’s, Historia Critica Philosophiae for useful critical comments on the Neoplatonists. 71 72 179 Chapter 6 In the task of the man who would give to us Plato, as it would be desirable to receive him, three grand particulars are included. 1. He ought to afford us such explanations and instructions, in the way of commentary, as would suggest to us, accurately, the state of knowledge when Plato wrote, - discover to us the nature, spirit, and tendency of his writings, - enable us to follow, as easily as possible in every instance, the chain of his reasoning, - and comprehend exactly the point, whether of refutation, or of confirmation, which is pursued in the discourse. 2. He ought to give us the text of Plato, in as perfect a state, as it can now be brought to. Plato, though one of the Greek writers that has come down to us in the least mutilated condition, is one of those, to which the hand of modern criticism has done the least service; and a multitude of errors, the production of careless transcribers, many of which might be easily rectified, still interrupt the student, and impair both his pleasure and instruction. If we may speak from our own experience, we should imagine that every reader of Plato corrects his own copy for himself; and that it is only after he has thus brought his author to speak his own language, that his conversations with him attain their maximum of profit and delight. 3. He ought to convert the beautiful Greek of Plato, into beautiful English, - into language, bearing the same character, the same distinctive features in English style, that the language of Plato bore in Greek.73 John Stuart Mill, under his father’s urging and guidance, read classical literature exhaustively, but like him left no systematic work on the ancients. However, the few sources we possess, ranging from a translation of Platonic texts to substantial references regularly found in his philosophical works, suggest his crystallised views on various aspects of classical antiquity. Socrates, Plato and Athenian democracy are recurring themes in Mill’s various writings. We shall here concentrate on the younger Mill’s understanding of Plato. According to Borchardt, the fact that the younger Mill reviewed Grote’s History of Greece (to which we may add the reviews of Plato and Aristotle), provides sufficient proof of ‘J. S. Mill’s proficiency in yet another field, in addition to those in which we are used to considering him an authority’. 74 It is worth mentioning that as a preparation for reviewing Grote’s work on Plato, Mill re-read the entire Platonic corpus in Greek.75 In reviewing the texts, he displayed an exceptional acquaintance with ancient thought and historical detail. His abilities as a classical scholar are evident in his nine commentary-translations, four of which were published between 1834 and 1835 in the popular Monthly Repository [M.R.]. The “Taylor’s Plato” 191. R. Borchardt, ed. Four Dialogues of Plato, trans. with notes by J. S. Mill (London 1946) 23. Grote, on writing to Mill after the latter’s decision to review the Plato, confessed that it ‘will be an additional incentive to my industry now that I learn your obliging intention to review the book in Edinburgh Review. That will be a genuine service to the work, as well as a compliment to myself’. Quoted in H. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote 263. 75 See A. Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections (London 1882) 125. 73 74 180 Aspects of Victorian Platonism remaining pieces were published more recently from Mill’s manuscripts. 76 Those published in the M.R. are fragmentary translations of the Protagoras, Phaedrus, Gorgias, and the Apology, with the last dialogue being entirely translated. The five dialogues published in the authoritative Collected Works are the Charmides, Euthyphro, Laches, Lysis, and the Parmenides. Mill himself in his Autobiography mentioned that these extracts together with introductory analyses, though unpublished until 1834, had been written several years earlier. 77 Mill’s opening comments on the Protagoras are reminiscent of his father’s protest thirty years earlier, in his critique of Taylor. The younger Mill expressed his regret that there were no deserving commentaries in England that could facilitate the study of ‘the most gifted of Greek writers’. Instead, those who called themselves ‘Platonists’ examined Plato on the basis of a selective deduction of principles, which, in complete isolation from the totality of Plato’s intellectual vision, rendered severely distorted interpretations. The traditional exegesis was totally unreliable: ‘it is to this day a problem whether Plato had a philosophy: if he had, it certainly was not the philosophy of those who have called themselves Platonists’. Apparently, John Stuart was at this stage primarily concerned with evaluating Plato’s ‘true method of philosophising’, not hesitating to cast doubts on the existence of a system of doctrine pervading the dialogues. Subsequently, in reviewing Grote’s work, and obviously under his influence, Mill came to acknowledge the existence of ‘two complete Platos in Plato - the Sokratist and the Dogmatist’.78 There can be no doubt, however, that the dogmatic phase of Platonism appeared to him of no service to any improved view respecting philosophical analysis. The Socratic method, on the other hand, struck him as the most valuable, because it materially aided the development of philosophical reasoning. Socrates’ philosophy was not to be estimated by the truths which he himself discovered, but by the intellectual process he originated in seeking such truths. In Mill’s judgement, Plato likewise advanced and particularised the proper mode of philosophising, the proper course of enquiry, and the spirit in which such an inquiry should be conducted. In the Autobiography the title of a ‘Platonist’ is ascribed to those who were nourished on Plato’s mode of investigation, rather than to those who propounded dogmatic conclusions by resting on the least intelligible, and usually metaphysical parts of Plato’s dialogues. Even to Plato himself, these ‘conclusions’ might have 76 See J.S. Mill, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. J.M. Robson, Collected Works (Toronto 1978) XI 175-238. John Forster spoke of ‘an admirable version ... It is much the best that we have seen: indeed it is the only one that will bear the least comparison with the original’, “The Dialogues of Plato”, Foreign Quarterly Review 31 (1843) 475n. 77 Mill, Autobiography 119. M.S.J. Packe put them after his ‘crisis’, at around 1826, and as intended to produce therapeutic effect. See, The Life of John Stuart Mill (London 1954) 136. F.E. Sparshoot shows convincingly, however, that they were written later, and possibly in 1828; see Essays on Philosophy and the Classics xviii-xx. 78 Mill, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 39, 40, 415. 181 Chapter 6 appeared ‘poetic fancies, or philosophic conjectures’.79 The title deservedly belongs to those who believe in the intrinsic value of the Socratic dialectic, which is essentially a negative process. Mill declared himself a Platonist in this sense: ‘I have ever felt myself, beyond any modern that I know of except my father and perhaps beyond even him, a pupil of Plato, and cast in the mould of his dialectics.’80 The tendency of Platonic analysts to insist on a hypothetical system of doctrine in the dialogues is not, Mill contended in his On Liberty, unrelated to a contemporary trait, namely, to dismiss ‘negative logic … which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths’. 81 The Socratic elenchus, consistently applied by Plato, is the supreme means to the correction of errors that are ‘incident to the intellectus sibi permissus’.82 It leads the mind from vague generalities to particular instances and sound definitions. Socratic dialectic, Mill believed, exposes ignorance and falsehood, upsets the confident opinions of others, and aids the clarification of such concepts as justice and virtue, good and evil. Though discussions conducted in the Socratic spirit usually do not produce certified conclusions, they are highly beneficial for educational purposes. In the Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Mill characteristically maintained that Human invention has never produced anything so valuable, in the way both of stimulation and of discipline to the inquiring intellect, as the dialectics of the ancients ... To question all things; never to turn away from any difficulty; to accept no doctrine either from ourselves or from other people without a rigid scrutiny by negative criticism, letting no fallacy, or incoherence, or confusion of thought, slip by unperceived ... these are the lessons we learn from the ancient dialecticians.83 Similarly, the Protagoras appeared to Mill an excellent and accurate illustration of the ‘art of investigating truth’. The feeling that Plato did not intend to propagate any opinion or doctrine penetrates this dialogue so persuasively that it could be inferred, Mill argued, ‘that the author had not yet made up his opinions on the topic treated’. 84 Further, the Protagoras clarified Plato’s attitude towards the sophists. As we have seen, the sophists occupied no enviable position in the scholar’s estimation. At the time Mill was writing the commentaries on Plato’s 79 Mill, Autobiography 15. See The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s ‘Autobiography’ 48. 81 Mill, Essays on Politics and Society, ed. J.M. Robson, Collected Works, 2 vols. (Toronto 1977) XVIII 251. 82 Autobiography 14-5. (The phrase is borrowed from Bacon, “Instauratio Magna”, Novum Organum, The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. E.H. Spedding, 14 vols. (1857-74,) I 138, 160; see Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 310, editor’s note.) 83 Mill, Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, ed. J.M. Robson, Collected Works (Toronto 1984), XXI 229-30. 84 Essays on Politics and Society 42, 43. 80 182 Aspects of Victorian Platonism dialogues, the harsh criticism of the sophists was intensified in the works of Mitchell, the philologist and translator of Aristophanes, who characteristically described his undertaking to give an account of the sophists as a ‘melancholy task ... to follow this pestilent race into their dark recesses, and to point out by what means they endeavoured to effect that dislocation and looseness in the moral frame, which their infamous doctrines caused among the men of Greece’. 85 Mill set out to question the traditional verdict that identified the sophists with immoral travellers who invariably employed seductive reasoning. In his judgement, the sophists were reproached by those who reduced freedom of inquiry and democracy to a spurious libertarianism. The ‘modern enemies’ of the sophists had no reservations to resort to anachronisms. The opprobrious connotation of the epithet ‘sophist’, for instance, was peculiar to contemporary commentators whereas in antiquity it was only a synonym for the wise man. One very widespread way of interpreting the sophists was to invoke Plato’s derogatory views. But the philosopher was unjustly considered to have passed indiscriminate condemnation on the whole movement. His criticism of Protagoras was evidently respectful. Nothing in the dialogues pointed to Protagoras’ immorality. Considered alone, the implications of the arguments Plato put into his mouth were sound and useful. Mill’s purpose in introducing these dialogues was to ‘allow [Plato] to speak for himself’, and not to suggest any judgement on the value of the opinions which were throughout proposed. It is not possible, Mill observed, to tell with a fair degree of accuracy what are Plato’s own theories, in what order were composed, and which of them the philosopher sincerely believed. The ‘conclusions’ of the dialogues can hardly be labelled as Plato’s settled views on either political or philosophical themes. For instance, the doctrine of Utility so emphatically defended by Socrates, ‘as it ever was by Epicurus or Bentham’, could not be ascribed to Plato: ‘it is doubtful whether he had adopted, on the subject of the original foundation of virtue, any fixed creed.’ 86 According to Mill, Plato’s opinion never varied on the subject of the nature and properties of knowledge. The philosopher never abandoned the doctrine respecting the inseparableness of knowledge and virtue. In Plato, ‘morals are but a branch of intelligence’. It may be affirmed, Mill argued, that this is the only ascertainable deliberate Platonic T. Mitchell, “Panegyrical Oratory of Greece”, Quarterly Review 27 (1822) 385. See also his antidemocratic long introductory essay in The Comedies of Aristophanes, and The Clouds of Aristophanes. With Notes Critical and Explanatory (London 1838). Mitchell was much influenced by K.W.F. Schlegel (1772-1829); see Lectures on the History of Literature, trans. J.G. Lockhart, 2 vols. (Edinburgh 1818), from the original Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur, a series of lectures given in Vienna in 1812 and published in Regensburg the same year. 86 Mill, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 61. In the first page of his Utilitarianism (1863), Mill argued that the theory of the Protagoras is the theory of Utility, an idea that Grote later contested. Mill, in reviewing Grote’s Plato, revised his earlier proposition, now maintaining that Socrates expounded the doctrine of Hedonism. 85 183 Chapter 6 creed. This firm Platonic principle, the identity of knowledge and virtue (or the association of morals with tested rationality), was shared by the Philosophic Radicals as it implied a faith in education. Yet, as Mill wrote in his observations on the Gorgias, the identity of knowledge and virtue is certainly a conclusive principle, but ‘[a]ll valid arguments in favour of virtue, presuppose that we already desire virtue, or desire some of its ends and objects’. 87 The love of virtue, Mill argued, is not communicated by reasoning, but by feeling, inspiration, or sympathy. In Mill’s introductory remarks, the Phaedrus is described as a typical example of Platonic philosophical inquiry. Whatever in this dialogue concerns methods of philosophising is perfectly instructive. The remainder is not to be taken too seriously: in this part ‘there is an appearance of sportiveness, and sometimes almost of mockery’. The cornerstone of Platonic logic and metaphysics was the process of comprehending general ideas, a process that embraced correct definition through analysis. It was a process calculated to produce knowledge of a thing by apprehending it as Many and as One. In that connection, Mill argued, a great number of philosophers, including Bacon, Locke and Kant, had in effect concurred in employing the method of philosophising which Plato developed. 88 However, German philosophers disagreed with each other in that they invested the realm of ideas with varying qualities. Some ascribed to ‘Ideas’ objective existence totally unconditional, while others advocated their subjective reality, existing in the mind and thus absolutely conditional. On the appearance of Grote’s works, the younger Mill recognised that his résumé of Platonic thought could not formulate a new intellectual outline, distinct from the scheme already proposed by Grote. This fact reveals the extent of their common understanding. In a letter to Grote (11 March 1865), Mill confessed that Grote’s Plato ‘completely fulfils my hopes ... Your general conception of Plato ... seems to me completely inexpugnable’. 89 In a subsequent letter to the historian, on the occasion of his reviewing the Plato, the liberal philosopher admitted that he had not attained any higher point of view than Grote but that he hoped to reproduce it in a condensed form.90 James and John Stuart Mill concurred in the assumption that Plato’s purpose was primarily ‘negative’. The philosopher aspired to offer a pattern of philosophical investigation, and not to establish a system. They did not trouble themselves with the dogmatic pieces included in the corpus. They both protested against the ‘Plotinist’ version (in Coleridge’s words), of Plato produced by Taylor 87 Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 97, 150, 401. Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 62, 93-5. 89 J.S. Mill, The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill, ed. F.E. Mineka and D.N. Lindley, Collected Works (Toronto 1972) XVI 1010. 90 H. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote 276. See also Mill, Later Letters, Collected Works XVI 1120, 1160 (letters addressed to Grote, dated 26 Nov. 1865, and 22 April 1866 respectively). 88 184 Aspects of Victorian Platonism in the mists of his neoplatonic fervour. 91 A Platonist, in J.S. Mill’s view, is the one who adheres to dialectic (the greatest mode of philosophical method antiquity inherited to us) and not the scholar impatient to elaborate on Plato’s supposed doctrines. Plato himself might have thought of his dogmatic conclusions as poetic fancies. Both Mills, however, left much of Plato’s influence to mould their conceptions of politics and education,92 and never shared in the distressing belief of Bentham, expressed in the Deontology, that while ‘Xenophon was writing history, and Euclid giving instructions in geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense, under pretence of teaching wisdom’.93 CONCLUSION This chapter explored aspects of Platonic interpretation in early Victorian times. It has been shown that Platonic studies in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century developed two distinct, albeit interacting tendencies. Some scholars recurred to Plato’s works as the philosophical and moral antidote to utilitarian empiricism and political liberalism. Scholars like Butler and Sewell rejected the critical commentary of Taylor because it tended, in their view, to obscure Plato’s connection with Christian morals and theology. Taylor’s ‘mystical’ interpretation, based on his attachment to the Neoplatonists, was also resolutely rejected by the utilitarians. James Mill, with his two review articles of Taylor’s Plato, broke new ground by re-asserting the philosophical significance of Plato, and by defining the proper way towards translating and interpreting the philosopher. John Stuart Mill took seriously his father’s guidance and the translations and critical commentaries published in the Monthly Repository closely followed his instructions. To sum up, it is possible to speak of two Platos in early Victorian Britain: a Christianised, idealised Plato - the one called to aid in the conservation of values against a variety of ‘disrupting novelties’, to oppose empiricism and reaffirm the ‘immutable’ truths of Christian morals; and a secularised, historical Plato, the thinker who first called attention to philosophy as a rational inquiry. We should be careful, however, not to insist on a rigid dichotomy for two reasons: first, there were some scholars who did not, strictly speaking, belong to either school. The mixture of British scholars was being diversified with the rise of new intellectual 91 See Patrides, ed. The Cambridge Platonists 3. J.H. Burns indicates traces of Platonic influence in Mill’s politics. See, “J.S. Mill and Democracy, 1829-61” (I), Political Studies 5 (1957) 160, 167. See also, W. Thomas, Mill (Oxford 1985) 27; A. Ryan, J.S. Mill (London and Boston 1974) 130: ‘Mill frequently embraces the Platonic image of the happy society as one in which the people are willingly led by the wisdom of the Guardians’; Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government 113; F.W. Garforth, Educative Democracy (Oxford 1980) 22. 93 Bentham, Deontology, ed. A. Goldworth (Oxford 1983) 135. It is in this work that Bentham called Plato ‘the master manufacturer of nonsense’ (137). See also the passage quoted from his Theory of Legislation in Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece 247. 92 185 Chapter 6 and ideological influences.94 Secondly, in the 1850s, greatly improved texts and critical editions of Plato appeared - the outcome of a fruitful ongoing conversation with German Platonism. A significant aspect of the development of Platonic studies in the 1850s was the growing conscience that the interpretation of Plato had always been shaped by the impact of contemporary systems of thought. The ‘original Plato’ still remained unknown, and thus a matter of critical research. Campbell articulated this idea with precision: A few words may be added in conclusion on modern Platonism, which has at different periods become the ally of literature and art, of romantic friendships, of ‘immutable’ systems of morality, of idealizing Divinity, of revolutionary schemes of government, and of an anti-social communism. In each case only a fragment of Plato’s real meaning has been retained. Either his poetic symbolism has been treated as if it were the substance of his thought, or that which he descried as the distant goal of his forward endeavour has been isolated, and made the starting point of a mystical and abstract logic; or his resolution of the apparent fixity of the objects of sense has been turned to the denial of the reality of material substances; or a single feature of his imaginary state has been made the basis of an actual attempt to reconstruct society. By such means there is obtained only a partial and distorted image of the Socratic inspiration and the Platonic faith; which must be understood in themselves and as a whole, in order to become really fruitful ... The revival of Platonic studies has also been a marked feature of our own age; and at last it is not merely Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, or his proof of immortality, that we are studying, but Plato himself. It is true that these studies have grown up under the shadow of modern philosophy, and the interpretation of Plato and the estimate formed of his contemporaries have been coloured by the different phases of transcendentalism and eclecticism. The light which ideal thinkers reflect on their great prototype has been mistaken for his own. But there have not been wanting critics who have successfully made the effort to see Plato simply in himself, and in his relation to Greek thought and to his own age.95 Thus, Plato had always been inescapably one’s own new invention, from the Neoplatonists to Ficino, and Taylor to Sewell. This growing awareness of the ever subjective, time-bound understading of Plato, was a critical moment in the history of Platonic interpretation and, as such, addressed a challenge to Victorians to discover the original Plato from inside the walls of Athens and from within the intellectual discourse of classical Greece. To provide the true historical and intellectual picture of Plato was exactly what Grote promised to do. A comprehensive survey of the different readings of Plato, due to the diversity of the scholars’ political and philosophical interests cannot, of course, be attempted here. 95 Campbell, “The Platonic Dialogues” 344-5. Campbell included Grote among the successful interpreters of Plato. It would be interesting to compare Campbell’s passage with E.R. Dodds, “Plato and the Irrational”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 65 (1945) 17. 94 186 

Chapter Eight The Sophists and Socrates The Greek teachers known to their contemporaries as the sophists did not occupy a high place in the history of philosophy until George Grote introduced a new strain into the study of Hellenic antiquity. Typically, the sophists were presented as pseudo-philosophers who found an enthusiastic audience in the democratic atmosphere of fifth-century Athens, the centre of intellectual life in Greece, but also the seat of popular anarchy and political factionalism. Pre-Grotean writers, especially the eighteenth-century party historians of Greece, believed that Athenian democracy had been the prototype of anarchistic government like that revived across the channel, and cast aspersions on the educational and moral character of the sophists, insisting that sophistic theories contributed to the degeneracy of Athenian political life and encouraged the unruliness and ingratitude of the populace. They all attacked the sophists, obviously in their zeal to oppose the libertarian maxims of the French revolutionaries. Similarly, the commentaries of Sydenham and Taylor represented a thoroughgoing attack on the sophists. In their estimate, Plato’s idealism was designed to oppose the secularist teaching of the sophists that reduced everything to a matter of individual satisfaction. The philosophy of Plato came in good time to combat sophistic materialism, the theoretical equivalent to the tenets of the philosophes and the sceptical tendencies of empiricist scholars like David Hume. 1 The utilitarian sophists, in their judgement, fostered an individualistic culture that generated an increasingly fragmented and factional society. The people rushed to the sophists to cultivate their skills in ‘rhetorical sophistry’, which was their weapon in the courts and the assembly, and also embraced their immoral precepts. The antidemocratic historians adduced as evidence of the deplorable influence of the sophists on practical politics the atrocities committed by the Athenians throughout the fifth century against their subject-allies or against eminent native citizens. Squarely within the conservative tradition, Grote’s contemporary classical scholars recurred to the analogue between the sophists and the sceptics of their own time who unreservedly criticised traditional belief and expounded irreligious theories, thereby placing in jeopardy the inherited political and social ethos. 2 Sydenham and Taylor, The Works of Plato I lxxix, lxxxiii. See also Macfait, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Plato 3, about the ‘surprising resemblance between ... the ancient sophists and our modern sceptical philosophers’. 2 See Butler, Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy II 20-28; Sewell, Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato 18-21, 75. Th. Funck-Brentano, Les sophistes grecs et les sophistes contemporains (Paris 1879) included J.S. Mill and Herbert Spencer among the modern sophists. (Quoted in G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge 1981) 12.) 1 Chapter 8 On the other side of the English Channel German scholars were generally hostile to the sophists.3 Characteristically, Tennemann, one of the major historians of philosophy at the threshold of the nineteenth century and a distinguished Platonist, treated the sophists with profound derision. The argument of this scholar is worth quoting as it encapsulates the substance of the anti-sophist tradition in Western Europe. In his view, The rapid diffusion of all sorts of knowledge and every variety of speculative system among the Greeks, the uncertainty of the principles assumed and the conclusions deduced in the highest investigations ... together with the progress of a certain refinement which kept pace with the deterioration of their moral and religious habits, all these causes conspired to give birth to the tribe of Sophists; that is, to a class of persons possessed of a merely superficial and seeming knowledge; to the profession of which they were influenced by merely interested motives ... All they desired was to distinguish themselves by the show of pretended universal knowledge; by solving the most intricate, most fanciful, and most useless questions: and above all, hoped to get money by the pretended possession of the art of persuasion. With this view they had contrived certain logical tricks of a kind to perplex their antagonists; and, without possessing in the least degree a spirit of philosophy, they maintained all sorts of philosophical theories. The end of their system would have been to destroy all difference between truth and error.4 DEFENDING THE SOPHISTS Grote broke with the anti-sophist tradition in many ways. The sophists, he wrote in the History of Greece, Of the hostile literature, see, amongst others, Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy I 531; G. Stallbaum, Prolegomena ad Platonis Protagoras (Gotha 1840) 23-30; Ast, Platons Leben und Schriften 70-71, for his contemptuous treatment of Protagoras; Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern; W. Enfield’s presentation of the sophists, inserted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, sixth ed. (London 1823) XIX 472-4, typifies the conventional interpretation. For the nineteenth-century bibliography on the life and teaching of particular sophists, see F. Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 2 vols. (Berlin 1876) I §§ 27-32. Cf. Joseph Socher, who believed that Plato brought disgrace upon an honourable name; see Über Platons Schriften 11. One should consider also Hegel’s defence of the sophists, of which Grote might have been aware indirectly, through Bishop Connop Thirlwall. See Thirlwall, History of Greece IV, appendix 7. Zeller, mentions W.K.C. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge 1971) 11, in the first edition of his Die Philosophie der Griechen ‘was probably the last to uphold unchallenged the view that the teaching of even the best of the Sophists was bound in the end to reduce everything to a matter of individual preference and prejudice, and turn philosophy from the search for the truth into a means of satisfying the demands of selfishness and vanity; and that the only way out was that of Socrates, who sought to win back by reason a deeper, surer foundation for both knowledge and morality’. 4 Tennemann, A Manual of the History of Philosophy 87-8. 3 218 The Sophists and Socrates are spoken of as a new class of men, or sometimes in language which implies a new doctrinal sect or school, as if they then sprang up in Greece for the first time ostentatious impostors, flattering and duping the rich youth for their own personal gain, undermining the morality of Athens public and private, and encouraging their pupils to the unscrupulous prosecution of ambition and cupidity. They are even affirmed to have succeeded in corrupting the general morality, so that Athens had become miserably degenerated and vicious in the later years of the Peloponnesian war, as compared with what she was in the time of Miltiades and Aristeides. Sokrates, on the contrary, is usually described as a holy man combating and exposing these false prophets - standing up as the champion of morality against their insidious artifices.5 Plato, the historian argued, was partly responsible for the hostile traditional interpretation. The philosopher represents the sophists as superficial and deliberate deceivers who found fertile ground to cultivate their theories in the ‘degenerate’ Athenian society. Anytus in the Meno, without having seen or ascertained anything about the sophists, ‘hates them as violently as if he had sustained from them some personal injury: a sentiment which many Platonic critics and many historians of philosophy have inherited from him’. 6 Similarly, in the dialogue Euthydemus, Plato describes the teaching of the sophists ‘so incredibly frivolous’, as if it aimed solely at drawing ‘a person into absurd and contradictory concessions’. 7 Uncritically adopted by historians, Plato’s testimony, according to Grote, so profoundly partial and hostile, makes it difficult to understand how the sophists could have ever been accepted by their contemporaries. Plato’s hostility to the sophists, Grote observed, derived to a considerable extent from the fact that he radically disapproved of the principles of established morality and dissented from contemporary politics. His ‘quarrel is not less with the statesmen, past as well as present, than with the paid teachers, of Athens’. 8 His reforming and theorising trait of mind brought him into polemical controversy with all the leading agents by whom the business of politics and social activity at Athens were carried on. The ethical ideas and precepts of his times could not escape his severe criticism. As a dissenter, Plato attacked the sophists (as he attacked the most eminent politicians of his times) not as a particular sect but as one of the existing orders of society. As a theorist and a moralist who envisioned a Grote, History of Greece VIII 316. According to Henry Sidgwick, ‘[t]he old view of the Sophists was that they were a set of charlatans who appeared in Greece in the fifth century, and earned ample livelihood by imposing on public credulity: professing to teach virtue, they really taught the art of fallacious discourse, and meanwhile propagated immoral practical doctrines’, “The Sophists”, Journal of Philology 4 (1872) 289. 6 Grote, Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates II 27. 7 See University of London Library MSS 429/III (1817) fol. 138; and History VIII 353n. 8 History VIII 318. 5 219 Chapter 8 society moulded in his own imperishable doctrines, Plato attacked the sophists by complaining that such ‘teachers’ promoted subjectivism and the multitude’s licentiousness. Thus, in a consideration of the odium which they incurred in the eyes of Plato, it should be remembered, according to Grote, that the philosopher strongly disapproved of the entire structure of existing political society and scorned the involvement of the average people in government. Characteristically, the people of Athens and their society, their customs and conventions, the established ethical codes, intellectual activities and sentiments, are depicted in the Republic as inherently vicious. The professional teachers of such society, Plato believed, must be ready to meet the needs of such a depraved rabble, otherwise their teaching would be unsuitable to public mentality. Plato, Grote emphasised, thought the entire society ‘was corrupt, and all the instruments who carried on its functions were of essentially base metal. Whoever will read either the “Gorgias” or the “Republic,” will see in how sweeping and indiscriminate a manner he passes his sentence of condemnation’. It would thus be ‘not less unjust to appreciate the Sophists or the statesmen of Athens from the point of view of Plato, than the present teachers and politicians of England and France from that of Mr. Owen or Fourier’.9 Plato’s condescending view of the sophists has been, however, usually overrated. Thus another reason that gave birth to the widespread animosity towards the sophists was, in Grote’s judgement, the tendency of classical scholars to accentuate Plato’s hostility to them. Plato was definitely ill-disposed against the declared purpose of their teaching: for him, to teach the art of words (the rhêtorikê technê) meant to enable undeserving people to politically distinguish themselves by means of mere flattery and deception. But Plato’s ‘hostility’ should be qualified: in the first place, Plato must have been aware that the curriculum of the first sophistic generation was by no means confined to rhetoric. Secondly, although the philosopher was certainly one of the most violent critics of the sophists, he held some of them in great esteem. In the Protagoras, the Abderite sophist is treated with marked respect and he is made to articulate general maxims and principles that, in Grote’s view, were superior to those Socrates expounds elsewhere. The tendency of this dialogue clearly contradicts the assumption that Plato regarded the teaching of Protagoras as corrupt or demoralising. Plato, Grote argued, attacks even Gorgias with nothing worse than the teaching of how to conduct a verbal battle. The philosopher nowhere ascribes to the sophist from Sicilian Leontini corruption or intellectual incompetence. Grote’s suggestion was that even Plato’s testimony, ‘when construed candidly and taken as a whole, will not be found to justify the charges of corrupt and immoral teaching, impostrous pretence of knowledge, &c., which the modern historians pour forth in loud chorus against them’. ‘I am happy’, Grote wrote, ‘to be able to vindicate Plato 9 History VIII 354-6. 220 The Sophists and Socrates against the disgrace of so dishonest a spirit of argumentation’ which has been ascribed to him.10 The historian set himself to revalue the sophists. The traditional assessment of the sophists as both philosophically inadequate and morally blameable professors was put on trial first in the sixty-seventh chapter of the History of Greece and subsequently in the Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates. His defence of the sophists was focused on a number of critical points. These should be examined in detail. Grote’s starting point was that the men styled sophists were not a separate class, sect, or school with doctrines and principles both common to them all. Neither were they united by a common educational method. The purpose of the teaching of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hippias for instance, as well as their educational techniques varied considerably. Thus, there had never existed such a thing as ‘die Sophistik’ (that is, sophistic as an organised movement) as German scholars uniformly asserted. The sophists had their own specialities and were distinguished from one another by strong individual characteristics, evident in their teaching objectives and pursuits. 11 Moreover, the sophists could not be classified as a specific group of thinkers by virtue of a revolutionary trait traceable in their educative activity. The sophists were not the enemies of tradition. In fact, the sophistic movement was a social phenomenon internal (and friendly) to the history of Athens. They answered a demand for higher education invaluable to those seeking participation in politics. As they aimed at qualifying young men for an active life, they were bound to adapt themselves to Athenian society as it stood, accepting, and even helping to crystallise, current ethical and political sentiments. There is no evidence that they found their true vocation in life to reform the state or to discover the best theory of ethics. Their direct business was with ethical precept, not with ethical theory: all that was required of them as to the latter, was, that their theory should be sufficiently sound to lead to such practical precepts as were accounted virtuous by the most estimable society in Athens. It ought never to be forgotten, that those who taught for active life were bound by the very conditions of their profession to adapt themselves to the place and the society as it stood. With the Theorist Plato, not only there was no such obligation, but the grandeur and instructiveness of his speculations were realised only by his departing from it, and placing himself on a loftier pinnacle of vision.12 Grote’s profoundly historicist interpretation eventually established the sophists as the ‘regular teachers of Greece’. They were not innovative intellectualists, but History VIII 323, 342n. History VIII 333; Plato I 542, II 114, III 145. 12 History VIII 319. 10 11 221 Chapter 8 instead teachers and writers who faithfully adhered to the established moral sentiment and political ethos. This is not to deny the presence of sceptical elements in their teaching. Any sceptical tendencies discernible in their teachings sprang directly form the revolutionising spirit of the age, both in science (man becoming the centre of speculation), and in politics (demand for wider participation in government). In the fifth century, old values were generally subjected to the sceptical scrutiny of people’s critical power and old patterns of experience were dissolving in favour of new lifestyles.13 At the time of Pericles’ rule, a searching spirit resulting in no concrete conclusions was in vogue. The teaching of the sophists corresponded in many respects to the sceptical propensity of the age. This is especially true in the case of their epistemology and ontology. According to the texts that came to us, they were all sceptical about the possibility of certain knowledge, on the grounds of the fallibility of human faculties and of the absence of a continuous and unchanged reality to be known. In the history of ideas, however, ‘negative speculation’ was usually the point of departure for great philosophical movements. Quite often, sophistic abstract inquiries did not procure positive results; rather, they tended, like Plato’s searching/negative compositions, to strengthen the intellect and encourage genuine scientific curiosity. Historians of philosophy rejected the sophists, in Grote’s judgement, because they were inclined to disregard the importance of negative analysis in introducing man and society to the domain of philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’.14 The opprobrious and narrow connotation of the word ‘sophist’, Grote remarked, was Plato’s unfortunate invention. The philosopher addressed that epithet to all teachers who undertook for certain payment to provide information and instruction to the young Athenians on speculative, political, or moral topics. Prior to Plato however, Grote observed, the epithet sophistês was a synonym for the wise person. This accords with the fact that the name was applied to the Seven Sages, to Poets, priests, musicians, and philosophers.15 The name was applied to Solon, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Socrates and Plato, just as properly as to Protagoras, Prodicus or Gorgias. Unfortunately, ‘[t]he splendid genius, the lasting influence, and the reiterated polemics, of Plato, have stamped it upon the men 13 Böckh accused the sophists of assailing philosophy with scepticism. See manuscript notes published from his lectures, in Edwards and Park, Selections from German Literature 382. At the time Grote was publishing his Plato, Erdmann, the Hegelian scholar, argued that the sophists taught the sceptical ‘truth of subjective finalism’, whereas Socrates established the universality of objective reality, A History of Philosophy I 69-86. See also Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy I 531. 14 Plato I 260n, II 432, III 485. Lewes similarly argued that negative analysis was preparatory and essential to the positive foundation of inductive inquiry, The History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte (London 1871) I 233. 15 See Plato, Sophist 231d-e, Protagoras 317b. See also Xenophon’s definition, Memorabilia I vi 13, and Plutarch, Them. II 6. See Grote’s notes, History VIII 321-14. 222 The Sophists and Socrates against whom he wrote as if it were their recognised, legitimate, and peculiar designation.’16 Further the idea that the sophists were an organised class, sect, or a sort of conspiracy against law and morals was highly improbable. Such a class of people, as that represented in the traditional account, could hardly have survived in any time or location. Aristotle’s view that the sophists defended arguments only probable in appearance is equal to saying that the people who actually heard them taught were completely incapable of discriminating between true and false. ‘Of individuals, the varieties are innumerable: but no professional body of men ever acquired gain or celebrity by maintaining theses, and employing arguments, which every one could easily detect as false.’ 17 There is no evidence that the sophists’ profession was limited to a display of continuous eloquence, or to rhetorical instructions of how to argue with equal persuasiveness, and often by dubious means, on both sides of a topic. The idea that the sophists simply taught the art of persuasion implies that they could deceive so ingenious a people as the Athenians. It is highly improbable that a type of people like the fifth-century Athenians, who enjoyed and appreciated the dramatic poetry of Aeschylus and Euripides, the comedies of Cratinus and Aristophanes, and regularly participated in debates over the most intricate political and moral questions, would have been fooled by empty verbalisms. Consider, Grote argued, the records in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War: it is evident that despite the often fiery and bitter climate in the assembly, the Athenians used rational arguments in their speeches. Indeed, there was frequently an appeal to passions on the part of the politicians and the demagogues; the reader can sense ambition, perceive wrong judgements. Yet, simple sophistry or verbal manoeuvring is hard to find on a regular basis. The fact that we possess only mutilated fragments of their writings led to a generalised idea that the sophists were invariably sceptics. And scepticism in eighteenth-century conservative literary circles was equal to immoralism. For Grote, the liberal historian, such an equation was unacceptable. The itinerant sophists, who taught a variety of subjects, were not men to whom any corrupt purpose or immoral character could be imputed. Against the oft-repeated allegation that the evidence of history confirms the statement that the sophists propagated pernicious doctrines, thereby accelerating the decline of Athens, Grote was categorical: If, then we survey the eighty-seven years of Athenian history, between the battle of Marathon and the renovation of the democracy after the Thirty, we shall see no ground for the assertion, so often made, of increased and increasing moral and political corruption. It is my belief that the people had become both morally and History VIII 315. Plato I 543; see Aristotle, Soph. El. I 165a, and Rhet. II 1402a. See also Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy I 159-60. 16 17 223 Chapter 8 politically better, and that their democracy had worked to their improvement. The remark made by Thucydides, on the occasion of the Korkyræan bloodshed - on the violent and reckless political antipathies, arising out of the confluence of external warfare with internal party-feud - wherever else it may find its application, has no bearing upon Athens: the proceedings after the Four Hundred and after the Thirty, prove the contrary. And while Athens may thus be vindicated on the moral side, it is indisputable that her population had acquired a far larger range of ideas and capacities than they possessed at the time of the battle of Marathon. This indeed is the very matter of fact deplored by Aristophanes, and admitted by those writers, who, while denouncing the Sophists, connect such enlarged range of ideas with the dissemination of the pretended sophistical poison. In my judgment, not only the charge against the Sophists as poisoners, but even the existence of such poison in the Athenian system, deserves nothing less than an emphatic denial.18 The sophists were not a symptom of decline. Actions that appear to the historian of antiquity reprehensible were symptomatic to the political climate of the age in which they taught. In examining the sophists, it should be taken into consideration that the days of the Persian wars were gone. If the contemporaries of Miltiades did not commit actions like the massacre of the Melians it was definitely not due to their being superior, neither the result of their attachment to stronger humane principles. Rather, it was due to the fact that the Athenians were then not exposed to similar temptations and dangers such as those brought upon them by the possession of imperial power. The derogatory treatment of the sophists, Grote argued, was shaped by the scholars’ political and philosophical beliefs - beliefs that eventually obscured correct appreciation. The sophists cannot be understood without close references to the historical context of ancient democracy. They should be understood as an integral part of the new free Athens that emerged following the radical constitutional changes introduced by Cleisthenes. Their services were closely bound up with problems of practical living, with views on morals and politics. Their instructions, especially those revolving around the issue of ‘persuasive speaking’, effectively prepared the citizens of Athens for active participation in government. Protagoras was perhaps the most telling example. In the Platonic dialogue that bears his name, the sophist (in a remarkable speech that possibly is an elaboration of the material of his actual writings19) reconfirms the underlying principle of Athenian democracy, that questions of politics are in no sense technical. This argument clearly confirms his confidence in the ability of the common man to participate in government. The foundational principle of direct democracy, which Protagoras explicitly endorses in his speech, is that all people possess at least the History VIII 336-7. See Protagoras (320c-328c). The list of the sophist’s works in Diogenes Laertius IX 55, includes a title “On the Original State of Man”. 18 19 224 The Sophists and Socrates basic abilities of the political animal. In what follows, however, the sophist has to reconcile the notion of the citizens’ natural endowments with the thesis that political virtue or wisdom (politikê aretê) is teachable. This he accomplished successfully. Political virtue, Protagoras demonstrated, is taught either in a continuous process starting in infancy and involving infinite ways of learning through experiencing the rules of organised social life, or through the assistance of a specialist teacher of virtue, like himself. Like Protagoras, the most renowned sophists of the fifth century were engaged in supplementing the deficiencies of ordinary education in a variety of subjects and in training the citizens to actively participate in government. They all aimed chiefly at practical ends. In teaching someone the art of persuasion, ‘they could not but make him feel the dependence in which he stood towards those who were to be persuaded’. 20 Therefore, their teaching materially aided the democratic life of Athens by strengthening individual thinking and cultivating the citizens’ moral perceptions. The emphasis placed on the ‘art of persuasion’, in Grote’s judgement, ‘together with the strictness of the laws of debate, seem naturally to have arisen in a city where there was much freedom of thought and speech’. Plato, on the other hand, disliked the ‘art of persuasion’, inasmuch as he was deeply averse to any form of popular government, in which the citizen could freely express his views (however right or false) and encounter the free opposition of others. Plato’s censure of the sophists could be justified, Grote argued, provided that we accept, in harmony with his feelings, that ‘the social and political life of the Athenians was a dirty and corrupt business’.21 Another important dimension of Grote’s reconsideration of the sophists was his argument to the effect that the distinction usually drawn between the sophist, the teacher of rhetoric, and the dialectician was ungrounded. Both dialectic (as exemplified in Plato) and ancient sophistikê did not lead to ‘truths’. Plato consciously avoided the exposition of affirmative ideas in half of his dialogues, whereas he obtained nothing more than a semblance of knowledge in the Timaeus. In fact, Plato, like the sophists, professed to be an encyclopedist: but ‘this was an error natural to the age’. 22 Further, Plato was not only a dialectician, but also a great rhetor. Though in the Gorgias he is at pains to condemn rhetoric, the Crito is throughout an exemplification of his admirable skills in this area. To be sure, in History VIII 358. See also VIII 321n.: ‘When we try Athens by the ideal standard of Sokrates and Plato, we ought in fairness to apply the same criticism to other societies also, which will be found just as little competent to stand the scrutiny. And those who ... assume that intellectual and persuasive power in the hands of an ambitious man is an instrument of evil - which is implied in the assertion that the Sophist, to whom he owes the improvement of such power, is a teacher of evil - will find that they are passing sentence upon the leading men in the English Houses of Lords and Commons, not less than upon the prominent politicians of Athens.’ 21 See Plato II 254, and ULL MSS 429/III fol. 140, and 146, for Grote’s early objections to Plato’s arguments against rhetoric. 22 Plato II 432. 20 225 Chapter 8 his capacity as a dialectician Plato never met the demands of Socratic crossexamining elenchus - which in reality no man could. Plato’s ‘didactic theories deserve admiration’, the historian believed, but in accordance with the requirements of Socratic method, they demarcated an ideal which was barely attainable.23 A main charge levelled against the sophists, Grote continued, was that they received fees for their services. To ask or receive a fee for communicating knowledge and teaching rhetoric, was in the judgement of Socrates and Plato, ‘a grave enormity: a kind of simoniacal practice’. 24 Indeed, they were not alone in their disapproval of paid instruction. Great minds of the age also disapproved of receiving payment for teaching. Socrates, as Xenophon testifies, considered such a bargain as servitude, depriving the teacher of all free choice of persons and educational proceedings. For Grote, not only there was nothing contemptible in this practice, but also Plato’s accusation can be reversed. It should be remembered that though he never asked for fees, the philosopher ‘received presents from rich admirers like Dion and Dionysius: and there were various teachers who found presents more lucrative than fees’. 25 It might have been expected, Grote argued, ‘that modern writers would have refrained from employing such an argument to discredit Gorgias or Protagoras; the rather, as they have before their eyes, in all the countries of modern Europe, the profession of lawyers and advocates, who lend their powerful eloquence without distinction to the cause of justice or injustice, and who, far from being regarded as the corrupters of society, are usually looked upon, for that very reason among others, as indispensable auxiliaries to a just administration of law’.26 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PROTAGORAS In the context of his defence of the sophists, Grote examined the fragments survived out of a huge number of their writings, ranging from rhetoric to grammar and ethics. Not surprisingly, the historian was particularly interested in Protagoras’ fragments, such as those survived in Plato’s dialogues – albeit ‘canvassed and controverted’ – and elsewhere. The historian explored the political and philosophical implications of the Protagorean ‘man-measure’ doctrine as well as the sophist’s famous advocacy of the moral virtues (aidôs and dikê, i.e., sense of right or justice and modesty, respect for others) in the well-known myth. Plato I 305, II 258. Plato II 430; also History VIII 325-6. Plato attacked the sophists for asking and receiving fees especially in the Sophist 231d and Hippias Major 282d. 25 Plato II 430n. On this see Plutarch, Aristides I 3. Cf. Forster’s historical justification of Plato’s opposition to the practice of receiving fees, “Socrates and the Sophists of Athens”, 342. 26 History VIII 327. 23 24 226 The Sophists and Socrates Plato in the Theatetus, and particularly in the famous ‘defence of Protagoras’ undertaken by Socrates, Grote argued, flatly misrepresents the man-measure doctrine (Homo Mensura, hereafter H.M.). The Theaetetus examines the question: what is knowledge, cognition, and science? To this question, put by Socrates, Theaetetus answers ‘cognition is nothing else than sensation (or sensible perception)’. Socrates then remarks that this is the doctrine of Protagoras differently expressed, namely ‘man is the measure of all things, both of that which exists, and of that which does not exist’. Plato’s understanding of the manmeasure doctrine, that it results in the identification of knowledge with sensible perception, appeared to the historian one-sided. The Protagorean doctrine cannot be understood as imposing such a limitation. 27 Protagoras most likely wanted to affirm that ‘every object known must be relative to (or in his language, measured by) the knowing Subject: that every cognitum must have its cognoscens, and every cognoscibile its cognitionis capax’. Having in mind that the H.M. doctrine was designed to establish the principle of the relativity of knowledge, perception as well as conception are to be accounted as functions of a subject towards an object. ‘Still we must recollect that all such a priori Concepts, Intuitions, Beliefs, &c., are summed up in the mind: and that thus each man’s mind, with its peculiar endowments ... is still the measure or limit of his cognitions, acquired and acquirable.’ Consequently, the H.M. doctrine was made to encompass the whole region of human understanding: it proclaimed ‘the relativeness of all objects perceived, conceived, known, or felt’. 28 Sensible perception, as the fountain of knowledge, does not exclude the function of rational conception as a means to the formation of cognition. In other words, the doctrine maintains that a person is the subject conceiving or believing external objects. There are no objects or absolute truths without a believer. This is the great doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, implied in the H.M. dictum, and which ironically Plato himself, Grote argued (despite his formal disapproval) unfolds exquisitely in most of his dialogues. The arguments which Socrates invokes to criticise the H.M. doctrine, such as ‘it puts every man on a par as to wisdom and intelligence; and not only every man, but every horse, dog, frog, and other animal along with him. Each man is a measure for himself; all his judgements and beliefs are true; he is, therefore, as wise as Protagoras, and has no need to seek instruction from Protagoras’, are simply erroneous. The Protagorean doctrine does not imply that every opinion of every man is true, but that every opinion of every man is true to that man himself: The fact that all exposition and discussion is nothing more than an assemblage of individual judgments, depositions, affirmations, negations, &c. is disguised from See the statement of Sextus Emp., Against the Logicians I 60, which may be taken as showing that the H.M. was not confined to sensible perception: ‘dia to pan to phanein hê doxan’, etc. 28 Plato II 325-6, 328-9, 335-6; History VIII 329-330. 27 227 Chapter 8 us by the elliptical form in which it is conducted ... To deliver my own convictions, is all that is in my power: and if I spoke with full correctness and amplitude, it would be incumbent on me to avoid pronouncing any opinion to be true or false simply: I ought to say, it is true to me - or false to me. But to repeat this in every other sentence, would be a tiresome egotism ... Whether I speak in accordance with others, or in opposition to others, in either case I proclaim my own reports, feelings, and judgments - nothing farther. I cannot escape from the Protagorean limit or measure. Grote rejected the argument that by the Protagorean premises dialectical discussion is necessarily destroyed. Dialectic search operates by question and answer. Its impact is transferred to the individual subjective mind, itself the ultimate measure of truth or falsehood. Nobody and under no circumstances can escape from the region of individual judgement. Indeed, sometimes one forgets the subjectivity of his own beliefs, and consequently imagines himself an infallible authority. By contrast, Protagoras’ doctrine is the real foundation of the liberty of individual judgement. (Plato’s Socrates, Grote pointed out, as presented in the Gorgias, demands emphatically to be a measure for himself, even when all are against him.) Plato’s objections to the doctrine ‘knowledge is sensible perception’, are also highly contentious. Plato introduces a distinction between intellect and sensation (or sensible perception) which, though convenient, it is arbitrary. The propositions of our knowledge point to relations of difference, likeness, and succession, or between sensations, or facts, of sense. The Protagorean mythos, included in the Protagoras (possibly allowing the original traces of the sophist himself to be discerned) appealed to Grote as an admirable representation of the succeeding stages of the evolution of civilisation and of the mechanisms that led to the growth and propagation of common ethical and social sentiment. The myth postulates the need for a social life based on political art and on a higher ethical ideal. Grote admitted that the myth was to him ‘one of the most striking and instructive portions of the Platonic writings’. ‘If I could believe’, the historian stated, ‘that it was the composition of Protagoras himself, my estimation of him would be considerably raised’. In the myth, people’s destiny is bound up with that of the community in which they live. Protagoras’ theory of justice (dikê) and the sense of shame (aidôs), i.e. learning to act justly and respect the rights of others, was considered by Grote as equivalent to the utilitarian theory of ‘reciprocal duty and right’.29 Protagoras’ philosophy, according to Grote, far from supporting moral egoism (Plato’s most significant fault in his constructive works), tended to emphasise the relativity of knowledge, thereby rejecting the idea of a ‘Great Expert’ and the idea of justice as an end in itself. The famous myth of the sophist is an encomium of reciprocal relations between fellow-citizens. 29 Plato II 45, 47n, 84. 228 The Sophists and Socrates The Protagorean man-measure doctrine was for Grote philosophically and politically useful. First, it established the relativity of knowledge and, thus, expressed a distinct scepticism about the existence of universally valid truths. ‘No infallible objective mark, no common measure, no canon of evidence, recognised by all, has yet been found. What is Truth to one man, is not truth, and is often Falsehood, to another.’ 30 Secondly, Protagoras’ doctrine is consistent with the idea of toleration since it leaves room for ‘great diversities of knowledge, intellect, emotion, and character, between one man and another’. The fundamental assumption of the Protagorean formula is ‘autonomy of each individual mind’. 31 Thirdly, the H.M. doctrine, contrary to Plato’s assertion that it demolishes all philosophical thinking, constitutes the basis upon which philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’ can stand.32 When Protagoras said that man is the measure of all things, he meant that ‘every opinion delivered by every man is true, to that man himself’, and not, as Plato asserted, that every opinion of every man is true. In claiming that the H.M. doctrine implies a belief that all men are equally wise, Plato, again, misinterprets Protagoras. That Protagoras acknowledged differences between individuals as far as intellectual and moral ability was concerned, is manifest in his declaration in the dialogue entitled after his name that he believed himself somewhat superior to the rest in the ability to teach virtue. 33 Lastly, Plato and other philosophers before and after him never escaped the region of the Relative and the Protagorean formula. They simply passed from ‘Mind Percipient to Mind Cogitant’. In effect, the various ethical and political issues appear to be interpreted by Plato through a thorough application of the Protagorean formula.34 SOCRATES AND THE ATHENIANS The death of Socrates, as it is usually conceived and commented upon by moderns, appears a case of atrocity almost incredible. The injustice & wickedness of the proceeding, indeed, can neither be denied nor defended: yet the modern conceptions of it are both defective and erroneous, and represent it in far blacker colours than an impartial spectator of the time would have done ... The sympathy of the moderns is so preengaged in favour of Socrates, that they never consider what must have been the feelings of eminent sophists and rhetoricians, whom Socrates unmercifully encountered and exposed. These men, illustrious amidst the general public for their acuteness, eloquence and expository powers, found Plato II 360. L. Campbell earlier compared Protagoras with Hume: ‘both were content to rest within the clearly defined boundary of a ‘certain uncertainty,’ without even an aspiration after Absolute or Ideal Truth’, “Introduction” to the Theaetetus (Oxford 1861) lxxxiv. 31 Plato II 351. 32 Cf. Erdmann who argued that Protagorean ‘subjectivism destroys the meaning of all objective determinations of universal validity’, History of Philosophy I 73. 33 Plato II 352. See Protagoras 328b. 34 Plato II 358, 374n, 383n, 477. 30 229 Chapter 8 themselves inextricably ensnared by the cunning series of questions which he successively put to them ... Men of this unexampled eminence [like Protagoras and Gorgias], admired by all their contemporaries, must have been stung to the quick by the successful traps which Socrates laid for them in the dialogue: their admirers and the spectators, in all probability, shared their feelings, and exclaimed against the victories of Socrates as obtained by mere sophistical trickery. The tone of Socrates ... is altogether polemical and aggressive: he seeks purely and simply to wound and disarm an antagonist.35 The above passage is a transcript from Grote’s essay on “The Character of Socrates”, dated on Mrs. Grote’s testimony from 1825 or 1826, but possibly written before 1819.36 The ideas put forward in this early essay stand in total variance with the traditional conception of Socrates and are suggestive of Grote’s treatment of the subject a few decades later. Grote’s treatment of Socrates was as innovative as his earlier interpretation of the sophists. The historian started from the question whether Socrates was simply confused in the popular mind with the sophists, or whether Socrates himself actually used sophistic techniques and arguments. He then proceeded to evaluate the significance of Socratic dialectic from a philosophical perspective; and finally, he reconstructed from the existing sources a historical account of the life, prosecution and trial of the philosopher, which ended with a bold justification of the Athenians for condemning him to death. Let us start from the discussion over Socrates’ relationship with the sophists. The impression of the public when confronted with Socrates talking to a small groups of listeners upon a variety of subjects, rarely revealing his own sincere convictions, and constantly showing a preference for enantiopoiologia and irony, should have been that he was a most distinguished sophist. Indeed, if the sophists were ‘eristics’, as historians of philosophy supposed they were, then Socrates, in comparison with Protagoras, was decidedly the more eristic of the two. 37 In See BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 163; similarly, History IX 1, 4, 40. A few sources that dealt with Socrates in the traditional manner (of being a martyr for truth and the major antagonist of the sophists) and which Grote might have seen by that time are; F. Jacobs, Sokrates, oder, Auszüge aus den philosophischen Schriftstellern der Griechen (Jena 1808); W.F. Heller, Sokrates, Sohn des Sophroniskus (Frankfurt 1795); J.C. Lossius, De arte obstetricia Socratis (Lipsiae 1785); P.A. Stapfer, De Philosophia Socratis (Bernae 1786). Grote cited T.C. Tychsen, “Über den Prozess des Sokrates” in the Bibliothek der alten Literatur und Kunst, 1786 (see History IX 16n., 32n.). 36 See K. Demetriou, “Grote on Socrates: an unpublished essay of the 1820s in its context”, Dialogos 3 (1996) 36-50. I have argued that this essay was an earlier composition, written even prior to 1819. Grote’s handwriting as well as his style are characteristic of his earlier writings. In this essay Grote had not called attention to the Socratic method of cross-examination, as he did in the History and the Plato. It might have been James Mill’s influence that prompted him in that direction. Supposing the essay to have been composed in 1825 or 1826, such an omission would appear rather odd. Cf. Clarke, George Grote 135, who accepts the dating of Harriet Grote. 37 Plato II 428. See also III 479: ‘A person more thoroughly Eristic than Sokrates never lived.’ 35 230 The Sophists and Socrates promoting his negative analysis, Socrates very often resorted to eristic and sophistic arguments. It was Socrates, Grote maintained, who applied negative analysis to common beliefs, and not the sophists as the German scholars believed. Paradoxically, it was Socrates who employed ‘sophistry’ against the sophists. But historians ‘do not like to see Sokrates employing sophistry against the Sophists: that is, as they think, casting out devils by the help of Beelzebub’. 38 Historians of philosophy, Grote pointed out, accused the sophists of challenging every criterion of truth and morality and of applying their destructive scepticism everywhere, having nothing to offer as a substitute. Going a step further, they drew two sharply contrasting worlds, placing Socrates and the sophists in fundamental antagonism. Their understanding had its roots in their fallacious conception of a dogmatic Socrates - the supposed enemy of the sophists. 39 It appeared incredible to them that Plato’s mentor should have not developed a system of doctrines. Yet it is certain that Socrates never developed a positive philosophy. Socrates was as ignorant as others; he was superior to them in so far as he was fully conscious of his own ignorance. Socrates had no ready-made system of ethics to impart. This is why he so decisively disclaimed the office of a teacher: he was a searcher only, and his objective in discussion was to generate a painful consciousness of ignorance.40 It follows from what has been said, that Socrates can be identified with the sophists provided that one accepts not the original complimentary meaning but Plato’s pejorative connotation of the epithet ‘sophist’, a synonym for eristic. If disputation and negative analysis were to be taken as elements of the sophistic discursive apparatus, then those who were designated as ‘sophists’ were definitely lesser sophists than Socrates himself. Thus, the word ‘Sophistik’, employed by Zeller and other German scholars, should be replaced by the work ‘Sokratik’, inasmuch as the conception of sophistikê as a process of endless disputation without ever reaching affirmative conclusions best suited Socrates. The narrow (Platonic) definition of the sophist, presents Socrates as the most representative sophist, whereas Protagoras, Gorgias, and the others cannot be understood to History IX 40-4144; Plato I 260n, 395. German scholars widely concurred in regarding Socrates as the enemy of the sophists. Schlegel, in his effort to justify Aristophanes’ attack on Socrates, argued that the poet had confounded the ‘inestimable Sage with his enemies the Sophists’, Lectures I 62; also Tennemann, Manual of the History of Philosophy 88-90; G.G. Wiggers, “Life of Socrates”, in W. Smith, ed. Plato (London 1852) xv-xvi, originally Sokrates als Mensch, Bürger und Philosoph (Rostock 1807). As Zeller said, before Hegel and Grote there was a general agreement ‘in accepting Plato’s view, and looking on Socrates as the opponent of the Sophists’; see Socrates and the Socratic Schools, trans. O.J. Reichel (London 1876) 189. H.T. Rötscher, Aristophanes und sein Zeitalter (Berlin 1827) published in a popular form the Hegelian view of Socrates, as the representative of the principle of subjectivity in opposition to the idea of ‘substantial morality’, on which the Greek state was founded. 40 Plato I 288, III 472. 38 39 231 Chapter 8 perfectly fit under this heading. In another important sense, drawn directly by Plato himself, Socrates ‘is a sophist of the most genuine and noble stamp: others are Sophists, but of a more degenerate variety ... According to the characteristic of the true Sophist here [i.e. in the Sophist] given by Plato, Protagoras and Prodikus were less of Sophists than Sokrates’. 41 The sophist, said Plato in his sixth definition of the sophist (in the dialogue entitled Sophist), is the one that purifies (katharsis) the soul from passions that hinder the attainment of knowledge (doxôn empodiôn). This aspect of sophistic he calls ‘gennaia sophistikê’ which, in effect, can be fully identified with the nature of the Socratic method. The elenchus ascribed to these teachers in the Sophist was eminently characteristic of Socrates. To be sure, Protagoras was not a sophist in this sense, whereas Socrates was quite naturally a gennaios sophistês: the ‘definition which [Plato] at last brings out suits Sokrates himself, intellectually speaking, better than any one else whom we know’.42 All things considered, Grote argued, the points of coincidence between Socrates and the sophists are plenty and fall in two directions: first, in the use of conversational techniques to stimulate the interest of their pupils or hearers; and secondly, in their uniform understanding of the Good in terms of a relative property. (That is, to agathon is relative to some framework or a certain domain of human life.) It is the second point of commonality that warrants the assumption that the sophists were nearer to Socrates as far as their understanding of social philosophy was concerned. ‘The religion of Sokratês, as well as his ethics, had reference to practical human ends. His mind had little of that transcendentalism which his scholar Plato exhibits in such abundance.’43 Xenophon, according to Grote, provides convincing evidence of Socrates’ intensely practical interests. He emphatically shows that Socrates taught that justice should be an end sought for its consequences and that the Good should be equated with the useful or beneficial.44 The Xenophontic doctrine of Socrates implies that ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ are only relative; that is to say, their assessment depends on the consequences they have for the security and happiness of society. 45 But this was also the language largely attributed to Protagoras and Prodicus. It appears that the sophists were in agreement with Socrates (or Socrates with them) whereas Plato, in holding justice to be an end in itself, contradicted his mentor. Plato II 43. Plato II 430-31; see Sophist 231d-e. 43 History IX 56; Plato III 505. 44 Xenophon, Memorabilia I 2, 18, IV 3. 45 ‘Those who, like these censors on the Sophists, think it base to recommend virtuous conduct by the mutual security and comfort which it procures to all parties must be prepared to condemn on the same ground a large portion of what is said by Sokratês throughout the Memorabilia of Xenophon’, History VIII 341n. 41 42 232 The Sophists and Socrates The Xenophontic historical Socrates does not maintain a strictly individual hedonism, like the Platonic Socrates of the Protagoras. Apparently, Grote observed, the selfish theory of morality is Plato’s invention, used for the implementation of his political and metaphysical theory. It should not be understood, however, that the historian adhered solely to Xenophon’s testimony. Grote assumed that the Xenophontic practically-minded Socrates, the philanthropic preceptor who inculcated self-control, temperance, piety, duty to parents and so on, and the Platonic Socrates, who ruthlessly criticised commonplace ideas, were to a certain extent interrelated: Socrates’ crossexamination and his ‘theorising negative vein’, were applied in a preceptorial form, to bear on practical conduct. 46 Xenophon worked out and immortalised Socrates as a teacher whereas Plato elaborated on the Socratic negative dialectic. However, there was an important difference between Socrates and the sophists. As Socrates felt unsatisfied with the established customs and conventions, he directly and consistently put them to the trial of reason. Socrates’ missionary pursuit of reason, expanded by Plato in writing, distinguished him from the sophists whose aim was to influence their own age rather than to address problems of universal concern. But the fact that the sophists sought to teach their contemporaries does not make them corrupt teachers. ‘As they aimed at qualifying young men for active life, they accepted the current ethical and political sentiment, with its unexamined commonplaces and inconsistencies, merely seeking to shape it into what was accounted a meritorious character at Athens. They were thus exposed, along with others - and more than others, in consequence of their reputation - to the analytical cross-examination of Sokrates, and were quite as little able to defend themselves against it.’ 47 Plato, of course, exaggerated the tension between Socrates and the sophists, and accordingly generated the idea of a radical antagonism that presumably coloured their conversations. If Socrates had no doctrine or views of his own capable of development into a detailed system, how can he have any importance in the history of philosophy? The point of chief importance in Socrates as a philosopher, Grote believed, consists in his ‘negative’ trait of mind: it is fundamentally rooted in his method of inquiry, in his intellectual humility, in his expressed dissatisfaction with the commonly received ideas on matters of conduct, and not in the positive results of his investigations. Yet it would be wrong to suppose that Socratic analysis, which was primarily intended to clear the mind from confusion and contradiction, was performed ‘with a view to finality in the negative’; instead, it constituted ‘the first stage towards an ulterior profit - as the preliminary purification indispensable to future positive result’: it pointed to an ideal of knowledge still unattained but progressively attainable through the right application of dialectic. Socrates never 46 47 Plato III 562. History IX 51. 233 Chapter 8 ascended beyond logical definition and dialectic cross-examination, nor did he assume the role of a moral preacher in the sense of having a definite moral system to communicate to his audience. 48 In Plato’s Apology, Socrates emphatically declares that he was unable to communicate positive instruction. His declaration, more often interpreted in terms of being a specimen of Socratic eirôneia (irony), was the source of many misconceptions surrounding the character of the philosopher. Socrates’ repeated assertion that he possessed ‘neither positive knowledge nor wisdom in his own person, - was frequently treated by his contemporaries as ironical. He was not supposed to be in earnest when he made it ... This interpretation of the character of Socrates appears in the main to be preferred by modern critics’.49 By not taking Socrates’ confession of ignorance as sincere, one cannot understand why Socrates brought upon his person so much hostility. The Athenians hated him partly because they disbelieved his claim that he possessed no knowledge. Unlike the sophists, who accepted the current ethical and political sentiment, Socrates, the Athenians believed, pretended to be ignorant in order to undermine authority from within and thus ridicule the established beliefs, such as those related to the gods, the mysteries, love, and the like. In his “Essay on Socrates”, Grote argued that the tone of his [Socrates’] discussions was eminently calculated to render him unpopular. The scope and tendency of his remarks was altogether sceptical: leading to no determinate or positive conclusion: suggesting difficulties on all sides, and resolving none: inculcating the necessity of subjecting all opinions to a vigorous enquiry: and impugning without reserve all authority, whether of poets, of teachers, or of ancestors ... [A]ll confidence in received opinions is undermined: nor is any thing offered beyond dark hints for the discovery of better ... The philosopher leaves his hearers in a state of conscious ignorance and self-mistrust: he has puzzled, unsettled, and humiliated them. He intends this indeed as a prelude to ulterior instruction, wherein positive results are to be established and enforced. But the public could not to be privy to these final parts of the process: they were witnesses chiefly to the striking dialectic assaults, to the upsetting of settled and dogmatical opinions ...50 Plato I 323. For Schleiermacher, Socratic dialectic aided the formation of the idea of science as a distinct subject of consciousness. See “The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher” 552-3. Turner believes that Grote ‘thought Socrates’ role in Greek intellectual development was reminiscent of the role Bentham had played in English legal philosophy. Socrates had awakened the “analytical consciousness” of his fellow citizens’, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 293. Of course, one should observe that Bentham, an extremely ‘positive’ philosopher, did not simply do what Socrates had done. 49 Plato I 291. See also Grote’s ingenious analysis of the Platonic Clitophon. 50 BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 164. In the History, Grote argued that Socrates was a sceptic about physical questions, but certainly not about human affairs. In this respect, Socrates was ‘the reverse of a sceptic’. Grote meant that Socrates never intended his logical analysis and dialectical manoeuvring to be taken as ends in themselves. He wanted to disintegrate in order to reconstruct. 48 234 The Sophists and Socrates Grote believed that Socrates produced a movement not a dogma. There was never such a thing as a ‘Socratic system’ but there was a Socratic spirit. This spirit led to scepticism, doubt and uncertainty. It marked the rise of individual distrust of unexamined faith and public orthodoxy; it was ‘warfare against the confident persuasion of knowledge, upon topics familiar to every one’. The Socratic crossexamining elenchus was applied to testing general terms and implicit faith; it tended to disempower sentiment while promoting reason and encouraging subjective reflection and individual conviction. 51 The cardinal object of Socratic conversation was to create individual searchers after truth. It advocated the free employment of human critical reflection upon the current system of beliefs. It can be argued that Socrates was Grote’s philosophical hero. If the sophists had practically enforced democratic feeling and widened the scope of education, Socrates enlarged the sphere of philosophic thought and advocated, in a way unparalleled in history, the right of dissenting from King Nomos. Further, it was Socrates who directed attention to ‘Ethical Science with its appropriate End’ (the end being ‘the good and happiness of social man’). Socrates was the first to see that as in each profession there is always an end to be attained, so in social life there should be a grand and all-comprehensive End, namely ‘the security and happiness, as far as practicable, of each and all persons in the society’. Socrates, Grote believed, brought to notice the objective and intellectual view of ethics, as distinguished from the subjective and emotional. Socrates further proved that obeying or sympathising with the general sentiment did not always mean intellectual concurrence. Socrates succeeded in opening the ‘field of Ethics to scientific study’.52 To study Ethics, or human disposition and ends, apart from the physical world, and according to a theory of their own, referring to human good and happiness as the sovereign and comprehensive end; to treat each of the great and familiar words designating moral attributes, as logical aggregates comprehending many judgements in particular cases, and connoting a certain harmony or consistency of Still the tendency of his speculation, i.e., the ruling effect of his conversation upon others, was sceptical. 51 Plato I 322, 399-400; History IX 34-5. In this respect, Grote criticised Socrates for his one-sided conception of Virtue (Virtue=knowledge), which eliminated the sentimental function of human character. Plato erroneously applies this intellectualist doctrine in his politics. Grote’s criticism, obviously based on utilitarian standards, was not unlike Aristotle’s who believed that Socrates was wrong in equating practical wisdom with knowledge. See Nicomachean Ethics VI.xiii.3-4; Magna Moralia I.xxxiv.25 (1198a.10-12). 52 History IX 37, 48, 52; Plato I 257, II 513. Cf. Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der griechisch-römischen Philosophie II 40-2; and Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen II 61-4. Brandis did not admit that Socratic ethics had relevance to human happiness, whereas Zeller accepted this as a fact but he tried to show that Socrates’ theory was different from that expounded by the sophists. 235 Chapter 8 purpose among the separate judgements; to bring many of these latter into comparison, by a scrutinising dialectical process, so as to test the consistency and completeness of the logical aggregate or general notion, as it stood in every man’s mind: - all these were parts of the same forward movement which Socrates originated.53 Having examined Socrates’ ‘disagreeable’ and ‘distressful’ activity as an eccentric thinker, it is not hard to detect the basic reasons accounting for the public animosity towards him. For the people he conversed with, Socrates was the most persevering and acute eristic of the age. To the mass of his contemporaries Socrates appeared to be an expert disputationist who derived pleasure from indiscriminately opposing any affirmative conviction. His tendency to convict of ignorance everyone was most unpopular and it provoked violent enmity against him. It can be fairly assumed that most of the Athenians wished to get rid of him.54 Thus, in the year 399, at the age of seventy, the philosopher was brought to trial and condemned to death on a charge of introducing new divinities and of corrupting the young. Grote’s imaginative historical reconstruction of Socrates’ life and the proceedings up to his condemnation to death was designed to correct the picture of the trial drawn by several commentators – a picture definitely drawn ‘in far blacker colours than an impartial spectator of the time would have done’. 55 The Athenians by their decision incurred the odium of historians. Why they did so is not hard to find out, provided that a few points are taken into consideration. First, the generally accepted idea of Socrates has been formed exclusively from the writings of his most enthusiastic pupils and may therefore be thought suspiciously partial evidence. The historian possesses no court records or other independent sources, except some general allegations. We thus have a sort of partial biography ‘subject to such deductions of memory, intentional decoration, and partiality’.56 Socrates’ devoted disciples present him as just and virtuous History IX 26. History VII 95; Plato I 258-9. Laertius mentions that owing to his vehemence in argument ‘men set upon him with their fists or tore his hair out; and that for the most part he was despised and laughed at’, gelasthai katafronoumenon, II 21; once he was also kicked. 55 BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 162. The idea of an ‘impartial spectator’ is Adam Smith’s and Hume’s. 56 History IX 4. ‘We are familiar with all his virtues and excellences, with the justification for his weaknesses, and with the triumphant refutation of all the charges advanced against him. His peculiarities appear to us softened and coloured over by a friendly pencil: a puerile superstition is transformed into an amiable weakness: a malicious pleasure in humiliating and torturing antagonists is disguised under the exterior of exemplary modesty and self-degradation’, BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 162. Laertius indeed refers to Socrates’ ‘disdainful, lofty spirit’, to hyperoptikon and megalofron, II 28. See also History VII 83-4. Guthrie remarks, like Grote, that ‘our information has to be taken mostly from men who not only knew him well but were his devoted admirers, and may therefore be thought suspiciously partial witnesses’, Socrates (Cambridge 1971) 69. 53 54 236 The Sophists and Socrates beyond any reasonable measure. Of the particular circumstances of his private life we know very little. Except on two occasions, his name does not appear in the political history of Athens. He served as an hoplite at Potidaea, at Delium and at Amphipolis. He did not fill a political office until 406 B.C., the year of the battle of Arginusae, in which he was a member of the boulê, and one of the Prytanes the day when the proposition of Callixenus against the six generals was submitted to the public assembly. Plato alone is not of great assistance in reconstructing a faithful picture of the master. Plato, a great speculative genius, largely employed Socrates as the spokesman for his own opinions. How much in the dialogues can be safely ascribed to the philosopher, either as a picture of the man or as a record of his teaching, cannot be decided with certainty. We can accept the picture given in the Apology, the Crito, and partly in the Phaedo, but one should be very cautious about socratising the views expounded in the Republic and the cosmic theories of the Timaeus. Of the ethical dialogues, ‘much may be probably taken to represent Sokrates more or less platonised’. On the other hand, Xenophon, a man of action, concentrates almost exclusively on those Socratic conversations that had a bearing on practical conduct. Plato, on the contrary, neglects the practical side of Socrates’ teaching and relates the theoretical activity of the master. Who, then, was the real, historical Socrates? According to Grote, features in common between Plato’s and Xenophon’s versions of the philosopher provide evidence that such features were real, or such incidents really occurred: ‘The two pictures ... do not contradict each other, but mutually supply each other’s defects, and admit of being blended into one consistent whole. And respecting the method of Sokrates - a point more characteristic than either his precepts or his theory - as well as respecting the effect of that method on the minds of hearers - both Xenophon and Plato are witnesses substantially in unison ... It is fortunate that our two main witnesses about him, both speaking from personal knowledge, agree to so great an extent’. Socrates turned to the study of moral and political phenomena. ‘The motives which determined this important innovation as to subject of study, exhibit Socrates chiefly as a religious man and a practical, philanthropic preceptor - the Xenophontic hero. His innovations, not less important, as to method and doctrine, place before us the philosopher and dialectician - the other side of his character, or the Platonic hero; faintly traced indeed, yet still recognised and identified, by Xenophon.’57 The historicity of the Aristophanic Socrates remains also a question to be settled. The picture of Socrates in the Clouds, though ‘assuredly a gross caricature’, must have borne some resemblance to the generally derogatory accepted idea of the philosopher, otherwise the comedy could not succeed ‘as a piece of wit’. In this play, Socrates (the innovative master of a sophistic 57 History IX 4,5, 22. 237 Chapter 8 phrontistêrion) is called by the Clouds a ‘high priest of the finest nonsense’, a ‘meteorosophist’. The implication is that Socrates was interested in the researches of the atheistic natural philosophers. This is attested, Grote argued, by both Plato and Xenophon who agreed that Socrates attended the lectures of the physical philosophers in his younger days. By identifying the cosmological theorists with Socrates, Aristophanes ‘must have suited his picture to the preconceptions of the mass of spectators’.58 The comic poets adapted their dialogues to what they actually saw or heard of Socrates. 59 For Grote, though the modern critic was not bound to interpret Socrates in the light of the Aristophanic version (just as he was not required or even warranted to consider the sophistic movement on the basis of Plato’s account of it), he should be ready to recognise that the comic poet’s satire would have incorporated historical features of Socrates easily identifiable by his contemporaries. Secondly, it should be recognised, that Socrates incurred the wrath of the Athenian people because his negative dialectic tended to undermine their morality and religion, their cherished customs and ideas. Socrates, like Plato, was ‘an isolated and eccentric individual, a dissenter, not only departing altogether from the character and purposes general among his fellow-citizens, but also certain to incur dangerous antipathy, in so far as he publicly proclaimed what he was’.60 Judging from what they saw, ‘they could treat him only as a proselytising sceptic a character likely to be very odious to them’. His monotonous method of conversation and his unvarying illustrations rendered him contemptible to the ordinary listener; what is worse, he had not the air of being in earnest when he spoke. His ‘homely illustrations derived from the commonest objects, seemed at first absolutely ridiculous: and his extreme ugliness added to the ludicrous effect’.61 It may be said that, by the accepted standards of Athenian life, Socrates was a solitary antisocial individual, to a considerable extent antipolitical, and by his very appearance a stranger to the established aesthetic criteria. Thirdly, historians of philosophy commonly neglected to examine the political grounds of the trial. The fragments of evidence that survive suggest that Socrates 58 BL Add. MSS 29,522 fols. 162-3. Plato I 534; History VII 86. Cf. Forster, “Socrates and the Sophists of Athens” 364; Thirlwall, History of Greece IV 246-52; Hampden, The Fathers of Greek Philosophy 353, 357. 60 Plato I 303; see also BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 165: ‘People wondered at him as an eccentric and out-of-the-way thinker.’ 61 BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 165. Lord Macaulay’s feelings can be paralleled to Grote’s: ‘I do not much wonder at the violence of the hatred which Socrates had provoked. He had evidently, a thorough love for making men look small. There was a meek maliciousness about him which gave wounds which must have smarted long, and his command of temper was more provoking than noisy triumph and insolence would have been’, quoted in R.N. Cross, Socrates the Man and his Mission (London 1914) 135-6. 59 238 The Sophists and Socrates disapproved of the whole basis of democracy as then understood at Athens.62 Everyone, he believed, was by nature fitted for a particular job. He never believed that ordinary people had the mind or the character that would allow them to obtain such powers of judgement necessary for participating in government. He never believed that the rubble could check misgovernment. Like Plato, believing in the art of politics (thus confining the function of political ruling within a small circle of experts), he ‘did not harmonize either with oligarchical or democratical persons’. His belief that the functions of government should be operated by those who knew the best way to exercise them contradicted the ideology of democracy and must have contributed to his condemnation. It was absurd, Socrates believed, to choose public officers by lot when no one would trust an unprofessional medical doctor to cure his disease. Socrates here is liable to the same criticism that applies to his ethical doctrine, i.e., his disposition to make the intellectual conditions to account for political fitness and expertise. His political doctrine is utopian and idealistic; possibly, it is similar to the one depicted in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (authoritarian, or monarchical under law; the king is called the ‘shepherd of the people’). His activity as a philosopher, though strengthening the critical intellect of his hearers, tended to undermine the idea of political liberty as that materialised within the democratic atmosphere of Athens. Further, his earnest conviction about his ‘religious’ mission and his dictating daimonion, must have appeared to the Athenian public to be an offensive heresy: a desertion of the recognised gods of Athens and, thus, politically dangerous. Socrates must have appeared to his fellow citizens not simply as a sophist-philosopher, but also as a religious missionary pretending to philosophise. Such a ‘mission’ was antireligious or non-religious, and did not comply with the social standards of Athenian life. All things considered, Grote concluded, the wonder is not that the indictment was finally presented but that such an indictment had not been presented long before. To be sure, ‘[n]owhere else except at Athens could Socrates have gone on until seventy years of age talking freely in the market-place against the received political and religious orthodoxy’.63 Only in the tolerant climate of democratic Athens could the eccentric Socrates survive: It was this established liberality of the democratical sentiment at Athens which so long protected the noble eccentricity of Sokrates from being disturbed by the 62 It is worth observing that even fifty years after the trial Aeschines addressed the following words to an Athenian jury: ‘You put to death Socrates the sophist, because he was shown to have been the teacher of Critias [Sokratên ton sophistên apekteinate]’, Against Timarchus 173. 63 Plato II 493; History IX 60-61; BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 164. The same wonder is today expressed by T.C. Brickhouse and N.D.Smith in Socrates on Trial (Oxford 1989) 23; I.F. Stone, “Why did they wait until he was seventy?”, in his Trial of Socrates (Boston and Toronto 1988) 133-9; L. Versenyi, Socratic Humanism (New Haven and London 1963) 156. 239 Chapter 8 numerous enemies which he provoked. At Sparta, at Thebes, at Argos, Milêtus, or Syracuse, his blameless life would have been insufficient as a shield, and his irresistible dialectic power would have caused him to be only the more speedily silenced. Intolerance is the natural weed of the human bosom, though its growth or development may be counteracted by liberalising causes; of these, at Athens, the most powerful was, the democratical constitution as there worked, in combination with diffused intellectual and aesthetical sensibility, and keen relish for discourse.64 But was Socrates really a danger for the constitution? Xenophon and Plato write that Socrates’ accusers attacked him on the grounds that he encouraged the young citizens to despise the established constitution, thereby becoming lawless and violent in their conduct. There is sufficient evidence warranting the assumption that Socrates always obeyed the law and there is no testimony that he participated in oligarchic revolts. It seems, Grote concluded, that the court was misguided and confused by those disapproving critics (present in every society and age) who want to silence dissenting voices. Anytus and Meletus, Grote observed, were the archetypes of those intolerant modern critics who without reservations prosecute someone on the grounds of ‘public libel’. That Socrates should be tried and found guilty as a corrupter of youth is, the historian confessed ‘a grave and melancholy fact in the history of mankind’. ‘Yet when we see upon what light evidence modern authors are willing to admit the same charge against the Sophists, we have no right to wonder that the Athenians - when addressed, not through that calm reason to which Sokrates appealed, but through all their antipathies, religious as well as political, public as well as private - were exasperated into dealing with him as the type and precursor of Kritias and Alkibiades.’65 Finally, on the explicit testimony of Xenophon and on the internal evidence of Plato’s Apology, Socrates brought upon himself the capital sentence partly by his own concurrence. The Athenian dicasts, instead of hearing a man addressing them with reverence and soliciting their feelings of clemency, ‘now heard themselves lectured by a philosopher who stood before them like a fearless and invulnerable superior, beyond their power, though awaiting their verdict’. He made no preparations for his defence, which was in effect a sign of a markedly offensive self-exaltation. He strongly believed that a prolonged life in disrepute and shame would be no benefit either to him or to his friends. Hence, instead of proposing a reasonable penalty after he was found guilty, he proposed subsistence in the Prytaneum at the public expense, which was one of the greatest honorary distinctions the Athenians used to confer as a token of gratitude. This proposal History 60-61; also 87: ‘In any other government of Greece, as well as in the Platonic Republic, Sokrates would have been quickly arrested in his career, even if not severely punished’, etc. 65 History IX 69. 64 240 The Sophists and Socrates would naturally be received as a deliberate insult, ‘a defiance of judicial authority, which it was their duty to prove, to an opinionated and haughty citizen, that he could not commit with impunity’. 66 Socrates, in Grote’s judgement, behaved in such a way because he had the highest idea of his divinely apostolic mission. He possibly expected that his defence at the trial would be the most striking lesson presented to his disciples and the people of Athens. It would prove to them that a sincere conviction should not be abated by fear and human weakness; that what mattered more was the application of the elenchus upon pretensions of infallibility, and that reason should always prevail over sentiment and prejudice. Socrates would not place in jeopardy his elenchtic or cross-examining missionary plan simply to save his life. An amalgam of religious, political, and social reasons thus led the Athenians to condemn Socrates. Though an act of intolerance, it came as an inevitable result. 67 Tested by Athenian social and political standards, Socrates was guilty. Of course it should be remembered, Grote argued, that while not sympathetic to democracy Socrates accepted the city. But his theory of politics was in substance apolitical: he ‘approved neither of democracy nor of oligarchy’. In the dramatic scene of the Crito, Grote saw Socrates trying to reconcile two distinct elements: constitutional allegiance and Socratic individuality. 68 Thus perished the ‘parens philosophiæ’ - the first of Ethical philosophers; a man who opened to Science both new matter, alike copious and valuable - and a new method, memorable not less for its originality and efficacy, than for the profound philosophical basis on which it rests. Though Greece produced great poets, orators, speculative philosophers, historians, &c., yet other countries, having the benefit of Grecian literature to begin with, have nearly equalled her in all these lines, and surpassed her in some. But where are we to look for a parallel to Sokratês, either in or out of the Grecian world? The cross-examining Elenchus, which he not only first struck out, but wielded with such matchless effect and to such noble purposes, has been mute ever since his last conversation in the prison; for even his great successor Plato was a writer and a lecturer, not a colloquial dialectician. No man has ever been found strong enough to bend his bow; much less, sure enough to use it as he did. His life remains as the only evidence, but a very satisfactory evidence, how much can be done by this sort of intelligent interrogation; how powerful is the History IX 74, 78. Plato II 493; History IX 87-8. P.W. Forchhammer, in his Die Athener und Sokrates. Die Gesetzlichen und der Revolutionär (Berlin 1837) argued that Socrates deserved the punishment because he was a heretic and a traitor. Grote rejected his conclusions. Hegel also believed that the accusation against Socrates was just; see Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E.S. Haldane and F.H. Simson, 3 vols. (London 1894) I 426. 68 Plato I 302-304. On Grote’s analysis of the Crito and its relation to the Apology, see Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton 1984) 11n., 54-60. Kraut points out Popper’s indebtedness to Grote as far as his interpretation of Socrates’ philosophy and life is concerned (206). 66 67 241 Chapter 8 interest which it can be made to inspire - how energetic the stimulus which it can apply in awakening dormant reason and generating new mental power .69 CONCLUSION In order to understand the sophistic movement, it should be remembered that it was a movement bound to be affected by the surrounding political changes. In the sophists’ time, political power was in the hands of the people. It was also a period of expanded intellectual inquiry, and of discussions on topics of moral and political importance that had never been discussed before. The sophists helped the community to realise itself by turning attention to social issues and ethics. They answered a social need. At that time, the people’s need was for civic awareness, learning, and the ability to speak effectively before the assembly. The sophistic training was thus firmly connected with the idea of freedom and participatory democracy. Further, by their teaching the sophists promoted a more extensive education - interestingly the utilitarians’ perceived instrument against exclusionary politics.70 To depreciate the sophistic movement meant, for Grote, to undervalue in toto fifth-century philosophical enlightenment, which paved the way for the magnificent intellectual atmosphere of the fourth century. Plato’s antagonistic position towards the sophistic movement created the antisophist tradition in western scholarship. Yet, even Plato’s treatment of the sophists, Grote argued, was not flatly derogatory. Notwithstanding his disagreement with them on certain ethical and political questions, he respected individual sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias. But the zeal of Platonic scholars and antidemocratic historians translated this antagonism into a war between idealism and materialism, honesty and falsehood, saintly and diabolical morals. Grote’s reader may be led to conclude that the historian admired the sophists and disliked Plato.71 In fact, modern scholars are inclined to believe that Grote’s sympathetic treatment of the sophists was dictated by his desire to give an historical justification to contemporary philosophical radicalism. This is wrong and points to a common misinterpretation of Grote’s intentions. Grote, in the first place, did not see the sophists as the prototype of Benthamite radicals. The sophists, he argued, did not attack current beliefs. They did not conceive an inHistory IX 81. History VIII 319, 326, 336. According to Laertius IX 50, Protagoras, who was appointed by Pericles to enact laws for the Athenian colony at Thurioi in 444 B.C., enacted a law which provided basic education for all at public expense. See J.V. Muir, “Protagoras and Education at Thourioi”, Greece and Rome 29 (1982) 20. 71 See for instance Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, 392, 396; Sparshott, “Introduction” to J.S. Mill’s Essays on Philosophy and the Classics xxii, xxxiii; Borchardt, ed. Four Dialogues of Plato 21. 69 70 242 The Sophists and Socrates depth reform of legal or political structures. They reproduced the ethical norms of the society in which they taught. Further, no common tenets or philosophical principles could be discovered in their teaching. The following passage shows that for Grote Plato was much more close to the identity and characteristics of the Philosophical Radicals rather than the commonplace sophists: The hostility of Plato against these teachers ... may be explained without at all supposing in them that corruption which modern writers have been so ready not only to admit but to magnify. It arose from the radical difference between his point of view and theirs. He was a great reformer and theorist: they undertook to qualify young men for doing themselves credit, and rendering service to others, in active Athenian life. Not only is there room for the concurrent operation of both these veins of thought and action, in every progressive society, but the intellectual outfit of the society can never be complete without the one as well as the other. It was the glory of Athens that both were there adequately represented, at the period which we have now reached.72 Grote’s account of Socrates’ life and teaching was drawn with his typical fidelity to evidence and reversed the traditional reception. Grote’s account will disappoint, however, one who tries on the basis of the accounts put forward in the History and the Plato to elicit a picture of perfect consistency. In the former work, it was Socrates the prophet of utilitarian thought and the originator of ethical ‘science’ that attracted a great deal of Grote’s attention. In the latter work (and possibly under the influence of J.S. Mill’s neo-utilitarian individualism), it was Socrates the disputationist, the eristic and the revolutionary methodologist that almost monopolised his interest. A synthesis of these accounts will produce a pluralistic picture of Socrates. Socrates was a sophist to a certain degree, yet not a sophist in other respects. He was foremost a negative dialectician, never seeking victory in conversation, yet he had a certain conception of how the rulers should rule, and on what principles. He was a dissenter and a radical, yet he abided by the law and the constitution. His negative interrogation might have subverted the democratic sentiment, even though democracy, Grote believed, always needs dissenters and freethinkers to sow the seed of progress and general improvement. He was justly condemned, but he hardly deserved the punishment. 72 History VIII 318, emphasis added. 243 

Chapter Seven Understanding Plato For a philosophical historian with Grote’s comprehensive outlook, the ‘speculative history of the Hellenic race’ was the essential ‘sequel and supplement’ to the History of Greece. A work on Plato and the Socratic companions would dwell on individuals and the philosophical tendencies of the age, theorising and reasoning, as contrasted with the collective social and political manifestations gathered from the texts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, archaeological discoveries and epigraphs. In the History, Grote devoted a whole chapter to the ‘impressive and eccentric personality of Sokrates: a character original and unique, to whose peculiar mode of working on other minds’, the historian confessed, he scarcely knew a parallel in history. Socrates was the architect of an abundant series of dialogues (called after him ‘Socratic’) composed by many different authors, ‘among whom Plato stands out as unquestionable coaryphæus’. It is to these dialogues, which form the ‘dramatic manifestation’ of Greek philosophy, and particularly the compositions written by Plato, that the Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates was devoted.1 A dialogue, according to Grote, ‘is a process containing commonly a large intermixture, often a preponderance, of the negative vein: which was more abundant and powerful in Sokrates than in any one’. In discussing the Platonic dialogues, the historian was determined to bring this negative vein in the foreground. The dialectic discourse emphasises the value of philosophy as a searching process, not as the generator of normative recipes for ethics and politics. The connection of the Socratic dialogues with philosophy is clear: Philosophy aims to be reasoned truth in contradistinction to ‘truths’ originated in tradition or 1 Grote was over sixty years old when he embarked on his Plato project. Harriet Grote, writing to her sister, F. Eliza von Koch at Stockholm (13 October 1861), mentioned that her husband ‘is working steadily at his Plato book since 1856, but Lord knows when it will go to press’. It actually took ‘eight long years of labour and study’. See The Lewin Letters. A Selection from the Correspondence and Diaries of an English Family, 1756-1884 II 243, 253. The historian, as his huge manuscript notes testify, must have started preparations much earlier. W. Smith, remembered ‘him telling us that he read through the greater part of Plato in a Committee room of the House of Commons, while waiting for his less punctual colleagues … [and] noticing frequently that Philip Pusey who was as punctual as himself in attendance of the Committee, filled up the vacant time in reading a work of a similar form, he found, upon inquiry, that they were both studying Plato’; “George Grote” 111. See P. Pusey, “Plato, Bacon and Bentham”, Quarterly Review 61 (1838) 462506, a piece possibly reflecting his discussions and disagreement with Grote. The elderly historian himself did not expect that his work on Plato would have many readers, ‘as for approving readers’ - he wrote to J.S. Mill in December 1862 - ‘they will be few indeed’. See The Personal Life of George Grote 161, 263. Chapter 7 other ‘sacred’ authorities. Socrates had introduced a method of inquiry which was a complete revolution in philosophical investigations. He ‘placed the negative in the front of his procedure’, placing emphasis and substantive value on the crossexamining elenchus. In classical Athens, Socrates found people entertaining confident beliefs, people pretending to possess real knowledge, without ever attempting to define and particularise that knowledge. 2 Socrates undertook to expose this false persuasion of knowledge with missionary zeal. Such are the peculiar features of the Sokratic dialogue, exemplified in the compositions here reviewed. I do not mean that Sokrates always talked so; but that such was the marked peculiarity which distinguished his talking from that of others. It is philosophy, or reasoned truth, approached in the most polemical manner; operative at first only to discredit the natural, unreasoned intellectual growths of the ordinary mind, and to generate a painful consciousness of ignorance. I say this here, and I shall often say it again throughout these volumes. It is absolutely indispensable to the understanding of Platonic dialogues; one half of which must appear unmeaning, unless construed with reference to this separate function and value of negative dialectic.3 Having introduced the reader to the spirit of Socratic philosophising, which must have prompted and inspired the greatest part of Plato’s dialogues, Grote, in the first chapter of his book, attempted to reconstruct from the surviving pieces of evidence and the scanty fragments available to him an intelligible representation of presocratic philosophy. The early Greeks were satisfied to believe that all phenomena were linked to supernatural causes. The first cosmologists (or physiologoi), from Thales to Democritus, dissociated scientific investigation from theological bias and the mythical bent. Their object had been the structure of the universe as it existed, and they sought to find an explanation of it in the externally determined changes or movements. Thus, in matters related to the development of corporeal existence, physical causes took the place of supernatural agencies. Thales believed that water was the primordial substance, the elementary constituent, or archê; the Milesian Anaximenes regarded air as the primary generating cause; Empedocles advocated the doctrine of ‘the four elements’ and postulated one force called Philia to explain the attraction of different forms of matter, and another force called Neikos (Strife) to account for their separation. The obscure and extremely metaphorical Heracleitus believed in a ceaseless process of generation and destruction. Grote discussed at length the impressive theory of Anaxagoras regarding Nous, or Mind, along with his astronomical and Grote cited Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. xvi 57, ed. 1823 (see Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates I x), as providing an illustration of what Socrates attempted to do: ‘Gross ignorance descries no difficulties. Imperfect knowledge finds them out and struggles with them. It must be perfect knowledge that overcomes them.’ 3 Grote, Plato I ix. 2 188 Understanding Plato physical doctrines; the Democritean atomic theory and its relation with Parmenidean phenomenology. His account of presocratic thought was perhaps the best possible at the time, considering the fact that he lacked indispensable tools such as the edition of Diels and Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1934-38) and similar sources.4 In the second chapter, entitled “General Remarks on the Earlier Philosophers – Growth of Dialectic – Zeno and Gorgias”, Grote contrasted the ideas of the presocratic cosmologists with popular impressions concerning nature. In the imaginative and often ingenious cosmological researches, one can see ‘the growth and development of scientific curiosity, but also the spontaneity and exuberance of constructive imagination. This last is a prominent attribute of the Hellenic mind, displayed to the greatest advantage in their poetical, oratorical, historical, artistic productions, and transferred from thence to minister to their scientific curiosity’. None of the Greeks’ contemporaries, such as the Babylonians or the Egyptians, though diligently engaged in the observation of the heavens and astronomical phenomena, presented similar intellectual progress. Connecting together various facts with a number of interpretative principles was definitely a step forward. For Grote, the liberal historian, the existence of many and different interpretations applied on factual reality should be considered an advantage as it ‘lessened the mischief arising from the imperfections of each, increased the chance of exposing such imperfections, and prevented the consecration of any one among them’.5 In studying Plato and his contemporaries it should be remembered, Grote argued, that all these cosmological theoretical constructions were still in circulation. Yet dialectic refutation as a method of philosophising, which was prepared by the Eleatic Zeno and formally originated with Socrates, must have considerably lowered the appreciation of cosmological theories as it turned attention to man and society, topics henceforward treated as the most worthy of discussion. In the remaining second half of the second chapter, Grote entered into a discussion of Zenonian philosophy as a prelude to his examination of the Socratic method. Through his puzzles and paradoxes respecting motion and the ontological pro-Parmenidean arguments, Zeno brought to light a new method, the method of contradictory propositions: It is the opening of the negative vein which imparts from this time forward a new character to Grecian philosophy. The positive and negative forces, emanating from different aptitudes in the human mind, are now both of them actively developed, and in strenuous antithesis to each other. Philosophy is no longer exclusively confined to dogmatists, each searching in his imagination for the Absolute Ends of Nature ... It is no longer sufficient to propound a theory, either in obscure, oracular See L. Paquet, M. Roussel and Y. Lafrance, Les Presocratiques: Bibliographie analytique (18791980), 2 vols. (Montreal 1988-89). 5 Plato I 93, 94. 4 189 Chapter 7 metaphors and half-intelligible aphorisms, like Herakleitus - or in verse more or less impressive, like Parmenides or Empedokles. The theory must be sustained by proofs, guarded against objections, defended against imputations of inconsistency: moreover, it must be put in comparison with other rival theories ... The weapon of negation, refutation, cross-examination, was wielded for its own results, and was found hard to parry by the affirmative philosophers of the day.6 Chapter three elaborates on the particulars of Plato’s life, recreating a lively account of the philosopher, despite the scanty and poorly attested information that comes from antiquity. The political surroundings of Plato are distinctly brought to light: the battle of Arginusae, the defeat at Aegospotamoi, the tyranny of the Thirty, the intervention of the Spartans and the restoration of democracy. The years from 409 to 403 B.C. formed a period of severe sufferings and great political events for the Athenian people. A young citizen like Plato, entering his eighteenth year of age in 409, must have been occupied in military service, if not abroad, then in defence of Attica. His position on the Athenian democracy of the late fifth century was one of disapproval. The future philosopher saw with suspicion the unfettered sovereignty of the people and deplored the practice to extend political freedom to all citizens. Like all Athenian citizens of aristocratic origins (the eupatrides), Plato had political ambitions, as he himself admitted in the biographical Seventh Letter. His encounter with Socrates, however, would change his life forever. He immediately abandoned the composition of lyric and tragic poetry in which, considering the poetic flavour of the dialogues, he should have been extremely gifted. We are told, Grote observed ‘that he burned these poems, when he attached himself to the society of Sokrates’. 7 The condemnation of his master led Plato to a temporary retirement in Megara, where he devoted himself exclusively to philosophy. The interval of thirteen years, between the death of Socrates and the opening of the Academy, were spent partly in Athens and partly travelling abroad, perhaps in Egypt, Italy and Sicily, where he might have come under the influence of the Pythagoreans. Under the name of ‘Academy’, Plato founded in 386 ‘the earliest of those schools of philosophy, which continued for centuries forward to guide and stimulate the speculative minds of Greece and Rome’. The chapter on the “Platonic Canon” that follows, shows that Grote’s approach to Platonic philosophy was partly inspired and partly shaped by his reaction to two schools of interpretation, implied in his criticism addressed to the various Platonic critics who ‘seem to regard Plato so entirely as a spiritual person … that they disdain to take account of his relations with the material world, or with Plato I 110. Interestingly, as mentioned in chapter one, Grote composed poems in his youth and Harriet Grote complained that his meeting with James Mill and Bentham led him to sacrifice his poetic imagination to rigid intellect. 6 7 190 Understanding Plato society around him’.8 The first interpretation, which Grote in the footsteps of James Mill rejected from the outset, was the exegetical transcendental construction of the Neoplatonists. The Neoplatonists, Grote argued, ‘introduced a new, mystic, and theological interpretation, which often totally changed and falsified Plato’s meaning’. 9 Grote’s main discussants were, however, the German classical scholars and philologists, who comprised the second school of interpretation. The Victorian Platonist was the first scholar who fully introduced in Britain the rich German Platonic scholarship. As his copious notes and appendices indicate, Grote carefully read the works of contemporary German scholars but seldom approved of their methods or conclusions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Plato was the final product of Grote’s disagreement with the distinguished German scholars, and as such cannot be understood without systematic references to them. Therefore, before turning to examine Grote’s approach and interpretation it is necessary to give a brief account of early nineteenth-century German Platonism. GERMAN PLATONISM AND GROTE German scholars exulted in the variousness of method and approach to Plato’s works. The nineteenth century saw in effect an explosion of scholarly enterprises to arrange and interpret the dialogues. Despite the great number of works depending on different methodologies, we can broadly identify two schools of interpretation. The first school was represented by the Platonis restitutor, Friedrich Schleiermacher. 10 Schleirmacher’s leading hypothesis was the systematic interdependence of Plato’s dialogues: Plato had a premeditated philosophical scheme which he gave form throughout three symmetrical progressive stages of his writings. Each transition was supposed to be a preparation for the next stage. Plato’s system, Schleiermacher believed, obeyed the standards of logical sequence, avoiding argumentative or conceptual incompatibilities. Thus, the philosophy of Plato could only be appreciated by the scholar best able to estimate ‘the pervading presence of a purpose in the connexion of his writings’. Plato advanced his philosophical theories in accordance with a preconceived, systematic scheme from which he never digressed. This system could be detected as a ‘natural sequence and a necessary Plato I 201. Plato I 170. Grote ignored Taylor altogether, even though he cited Sydenham approvingly on several occasions. The names of Sewell, Butler, and Hampden, who largely associated Plato with the doctrines of Christianity, are also never mentioned. For the old argument respecting the identification of Ideas with God’s thoughts, see inter alia, G. Stallbaum, Platonis Parmenides (Leipzig 1839) 266; H.F. Richter, De ideis Platonis (Lipsiae 1827); Brucker, The History of Philosophy I 234-6; and Blakey, Historical Sketch of Logic. 10 The expression is borrowed by Brandis, “Plato” 395. See F. Schleiermacher, Platons Werke, 6 vols. (Berlin 1804-1828). 8 9 191 Chapter 7 relation in these dialogues to one another’. 11 Schleiermacher deliberately omitted any comment not directly related to the study of the texts (like details of Plato’s life), obviously with a view to minimising the tentative and less systematic aspects of Platonic philosophising. The second school, the Historical or Developmentalist, was represented mainly by Karl Friedrich Hermann (1804-1855), Professor in the University of Heidelberg and Schleiermacher’s most consistent adversary. His premises and assumptions were vastly different from Schleiermacher’s. Hermann held that Plato’s philosophy fell short of a well-planned structure. Plato did not follow a preconceived plan for his entire written dialogues. It is impossible that Plato, being open into the influences of an intellectually productive age, busy during a long life in teaching and working out his philosophical ideas, should not have undergone ‘a development’. About half of the dialogues are documents revealing the various stages of this intellectual development which culminate in the other half, that is, in the purely dogmatic works. Hermann asserted that Plato’s affirmative philosophy, as distinguished from the Socratic, was acquired gradually throughout his life and reflected the enlargement of his intellectual horizon as well as the perfection of his literary style.12 Thus, the defects of the earlier works are perfectly explicable, provided that we admit that the genius of Plato could not reach its full height in the first years of his activity as a writer. It is worth observing that a third hermeneutic approach was introduced by Friedrich Ast (1778-1841), a prolific classical scholar and one of Schleirmacher’s earliest opponents. Ast’s hypothesis was not strictly historical, like Hermann’s, but ‘aesthetic’. Plato, he argued, sought above all aesthetic perfection. In Ast’s view, Plato did not confine his creativity within the narrow limits of systematic thought; on the contrary, his object was many-sided and his role was sometimes that of a poet or an artist and at other times that of a philosopher. In Plato, the ideal was joined with the actual, the mythic with the dialectical. Science and philosophy were bound up with religion. Platonism, according to Ast, ‘cannot be regarded as a system ... [O]ne finds in Platonism the germ of all systems without itself being the foundation of any; for it is the idea of philosophy, the focus of its particular forms, the immovable sun of its planetary changes. Platonism is idealistic, without being itself apparently idealism; it is realistic, without being realism’.13 Each composition was in itself a self-contained whole not necessarily See Schleiermacher, Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato, trans. William Dobson (Oxford 1836) 45-6, 5, 18. See W. Lutoslawski’s remarks on Schleiermacher, The Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic (London 1897) 48-9. 12 Hermann, Geschichte und System der platonischen Philosophie (Heidelberg 1839) 368-98. Hermann was known in Britain mainly through his Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten, trans. as Manual of the Political Antiquities of Greece historically considered (Oxford 1836). 13 F. Ast, Platons Leben und Schriften (Leipzig 1816) 4-5; translation is quoted in Edwards and Park, Selections from German Literature 380. Ast was the author of the Lexicon Platonicum, 3 vols. (Lipsiae 1835-38), and the editor of the Platonic Dialogues, 9 vols. (Leipzig 1819-27). 11 192 Understanding Plato connected with the remaining dialogues. The Platonic dialogues, Ast maintained, were neither internally connected nor progressively arranged. Plato’s principal aim was to implant in the minds of his listeners the concept of exhaustive research and not to nourish their intellects by a stringent dogmatism. It will be seen that Ast’s treatment was partly an anticipation of Grote’s. Grote recognised that Ast’s general view of the Platonic canon resembled his own more than with that of any other critic, but the truth is that their agreement was limited to the basic understanding of the dialogues. While Ast’s theoretical standpoint did not logically allow the rejection of any Platonic dialogue as spurious on the grounds of internal or external reasons, he eventually rejected twenty-one dialogues attributed to Plato in the traditional canon. 14 Schleiermacher and Hermann established two different approaches to Plato which were more or less adopted by contemporary scholars. Scholars who had accepted the basic premises of Schleiermacher’s interpretative pattern disallowed many dialogues as spurious. Schleiermacher argued that the Platonic dialogues had long been disarranged. To restore them to their natural chronological order, scholars had first to determine the genuine pieces, the pieces written by the master himself. The new arrangement should have been based on ‘internal reasons’, that is, on the hypothesis of a systematic unity of purpose and a process of regular development in the mind of Plato traceable throughout the dialogues. Naturally, this tendency led to a dramatic curtailment of the Platonic corpus. The Historical school followed the Systematic as far as rejection was concerned. The latter school rejected some works mainly because they were not supposed to fit into the progressive requirements of Plato’s scientific ends. The Historical school, on the other hand, assumed that some dialogues were inferior to the rest in matter and execution, and were thus discarded as spurious. The minor dialogues were commonly treated as having trivial or no philosophical significance. 15 Eduard Zeller (1814-1908), the Hegelian author of the monumental Die Philosophie der Griechen,16 Ritter and Brandis, accepted in the main the ‘systematic’ theory of Schleiermacher, though each one of them developed different general schemes respecting the authenticity of the dialogues. 17 Hermann Grote, Plato I 174n. W. Windelband followed closely Ast in arguing that ‘the dialogues are not scientific treatises, but works of art’. Yet, like Ast, he rejected thirteen dialogues, which ‘are certainly not genuine’, History of Ancient Philosophy, trans. H.E. Cushman (London 1900) 179181. 15 Hermann rejected as spurious the Theages, Alcibiades II and the Epinomis. Ast rejected, among others, the Apology, Crito, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Lysis, and, of the greatest works, the Meno and the Laws. 16 Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen: ihrer Charakter, Gang, Hauptmomente und Entwicklung, 3 vols. (Tübingen 1844-52, reprint 6 vols., Hildesheim 1963). 17 Ritter detected, like Schleiermacher, three periods in Plato’s philosophical activity; see History of Ancient Philosophy I 184-7. He rejected, on the grounds of spuriousness, the Theages, Hippias Major, Epistles, Epinomis, Alcib. II, Hipparchus, Minos. Zeller rejected the Laws, Platonische 14 193 Chapter 7 Bonitz (1814-1888) followed closely Ast in arguing that Plato’s affirmative aspect of philosophising had been overestimated. Many of the doctrines attributed to the philosopher were never clearly proclaimed in the dialogues. Nor was a systematic unity to be found because each dialogue had in itself a purposeful individuality, relevant to Plato’s fundamental objective which was to cultivate the negative process of investigation. 18 Ludwig Heinrich Strümpell (1812-1899) was similarly sceptical about the possibility of reconstructing the order of the Platonic compositions (if such order ever existed in Plato’s mind), however careful the examination of the scanty evidence would be. 19 A rather paradoxical attempt to place the dialogues in a new systematic order can be found in the work of Eduard Munk (1803-1871), who proposed to order the dialogues as if Plato’s aim in writing them was to create an extensive biography of Socrates. Thus, each dialogue had a certain place according to the apparent age of Socrates at the supposed date of the dialogue. The Phaedo, for instance, should be assumed to be the last dialogue for the reason that it represented the death of Socrates. 20 Later in the century, Friedrich Ueberweg (1826-1871) tried to reconcile the theory of Schleiermacher with the historico-developmental assumptions of his opponents, asserting that Plato did not frame a philosophical system early in his life but in a period subsequent to his visit to Megara. Therefore, it is vain to search for a preconceived scheme pervading Plato’s earlier compositions.21 At this point, it should be observed that the majority of German scholars took for granted that Plato wrote dialogues when Socrates was still alive with a view to ‘dramatising’ his life and teaching.22 Along with this, classical scholars believed that Plato had from his early years planned out the whole of his literary activity. Hence his Studien (Tübingen 1839). The Laws was also rejected by G.F.W. Suchow, Die wissenschaftliche und künstlerische Form der platonischen Scriften (Berlin 1855) 414; and Ackermann, The Christian Element in Plato and the Platonic Philosophy 31. Schleiermacher’s contemporary, Joseph Socher rejected the Politicus, Parmenides, Sophist, Charmides and the Critias, Über Platons Schriften (München 1820) 262-91. 18 H. Bonitz, Platonische Studien (Wien 1858) 5, 8-9, 74-6. 19 L.H. Strümpell, Geschichte der praktischen Philosophie der Griechen vor Aristoteles (Leipzig 1861) 293-5. 20 Munk, Die natürliche Ordnung der platonischen Schriften (Berlin 1856). 21 F. Ueberweg, Untersuchungen über die Echtheit und Zeitfolge platonischen Schriften, und über die Hauptmomente aus Platons Leben (Wien 1861) 108-112. For this work, Ueberweg was awarded the prize offered by the Academy of Sciences of Vienna in 1860 for a new investigation as to the authenticity and chronology of Plato’s works. Ueberweg denied the authenticity of the Parmenides, and his doubts were soon afterwards extended to the Sophist and Politicus. He was followed by C. Schaarschmidt, Die Sammlung der platonischen Schriften, zur Scheidung der echten von den unechten untersucht (Bonn 1866). 22 See Diogenes Laertius III 35: ‘They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates exclaimed, “By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about me!” For he had included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said.’ See also III 38: ‘There is a story that the Phaedrus was his first dialogue’. 194 Understanding Plato dialogues were an unbroken series of compositions, presenting the exposition of doctrines that pre-existed in his mind. Schleiermacher, for instance, believed that the philosopher developed his theory of Ideas at so early a period in so far as it is shown in the early dialogues. The first dialogue ever written by Plato was widely considered to be the Phaedrus, which served as an introduction to the entire intellectual edifice. 23 Grote’s statement of disagreement encapsulated the drift of the German approach and it is worth citing at length: That in 406 B.C., and at the age of twenty-three, in an age when schemes of philosophy elaborated in detail were unknown - Plato should conceive a vast scheme of philosophy, to be worked out underground without ever being proclaimed, through numerous Sokratic dialogues one after the other, each ushering in that which follows and each resting upon that which precedes: that he should have persisted throughout a long life in working out this scheme, adapting the sequence of his dialogues to the successive stages which he had attained, so that none of them could be properly understood unless when studied immediately after its predecessors and immediately before its successors - and yet that he should have taken no pains to impress this one peremptory arrangement on the minds of readers, and that Schleiermacher should be the first to detect it - all this appears to me as improbable as any of the mystic interpretations of Jamblichus or Proclus. Like other improbabilities, it may be proved by evidence, if evidence can be produced: but here nothing of the kind is producible. We are called upon to grant the general hypothesis without proof, and to follow Schleiermacher in applying it to the separate dialogues.24 Notwithstanding their disagreement about the arrangement and order of the various dialogues, the German Platonists generally agreed on the essential characteristics of Plato’s philosophy. Their practice to reject the authenticity of single dialogues resulted from a pre-established idea of Plato’s literary perfection and logical development. In this respect, they assumed the existence of an overall purpose (strictly philosophical, artistic or aesthetic) in Plato’s writings. In effect, they all believed that any scheme of Plato’s development was likely to be true if it agreed with their leading hypothesis. For Schleiermacher the leading hypothesis was a systematic connection of the dialogues; for Hermann it was Plato’s development from Socratism to Platonism. It is clear, however, that they all practically conceded to the idea of a set of literary, stylistic and philosophical 23 Ast followed Schleiermacher in placing the Phaedrus first in the chronological order of composition. Ritter similarly considered the Phaedrus and Protagoras to be the first dialogues Plato wrote. A.B. Krische, “Über Platons Phaedrus”, in Göttinger Studien for 1847 (Göttingen 1848) 930-1065; and C.R. Volquardsen, Platons Phaedrus, Erste Schrift (Kiel 1862), believed that the Phaedrus was a dialogue of Plato’s youth, written during Socrates’ lifetime. H. Usener, “Abfassungszeit des platonischen Phaidros”, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 35 (1880) 13151, presented the Phaedrus as written some years before the death of Socrates. 24 Plato I 187. 195 Chapter 7 features present in the Platonic corpus. The precise point of disagreement between the opposing groups was basically the degree of systematic form which they were willing to bestow to those features. Grote’s position towards German Platonic interpretation was outright critical. He focussed his criticism on two aspects: first, he criticised the assumption of the existence of an integral system running throughout Plato’s philosophical edifice; and, closely linked to this, he rejected the practice of discarding, on the grounds of the ‘internal feelings’ of each reader, a great number of Platonic dialogues. Grote especially attacked the tendency to underestimate the minor or inconclusive dialogues, and the concomitant tendency to discard them as forgeries. 25 He criticised the German approach for using contemporary philosophical ideas to analyse Plato’s dialogues. Yet the dogmatic superstructure so confidently developed by German classical scholars, together with their scepticism about the importance and authenticity of many minor dialogues, was for him an extra incentive to look for answers based on both textual and external evidence. In criticising the systematic approach, Grote did not of course intend to minimise Plato’s philosophical importance. On the contrary, he intended to emphasise Plato’s importance in terms of his contribution to the development of ‘philosophy as reasoned truth’. Pure Platonism, in his judgement, the Platonism which should animate the spirit of research and encourage reflection, was that of the negative dialogues, the dialogues which constituted monuments of free thought and established a philosophical method, not a dogma. THE NEGATIVE VEIN OF PLATO The first thing a reader notices upon reading Plato’s dialogues, Grote observed in his introductory comments, is their great variety of theme and purpose, a fact that poses great difficulties in resolving all the dialogues into a unified whole. Because of this astonishing variety, authors in antiquity (Cicero for example) described the philosopher as a sceptic who never reached positive results. Contemporary authors, by contrast, conceived of Plato as a philosopher who had certain opinions to expound with authority and proof. Indeed, Grote continued, Plato is affirmative in some of his dialogues. But in the greatest number of them, the philosopher provides no opinions on the questions raised. The dialogues offer no proof that the philosopher took great interest in producing a compact body of ‘results’ to be learned by his audience. Instead, Plato exemplifies a process of inquiry, seemingly Schleiermacher, William L. Blackley (1830-1878) argued, ‘perceived the incongruity of attributing to an author so far-seeing and so artistic as Plato those minor insignificant dialogues’; see “The authenticity of the works of Plato”, Fortnightly Review 2 (1867) 273. It is worth observing that Grote, in the History of Greece, seems to have rejected the authenticity of minor Platonic dialogues; see History IX 11n: ‘The Pseudo-Platonic dialogue Theages...’, etc. See also BL Add. MSS 29,516 fol. 10: ‘Plato (or the author of the Cratylus, whoever he is ...’. 25 196 Understanding Plato fruitless, often unnecessarily long. In most dialogues, traditional views are refuted and Socrates’ imaginary companions are humiliated, admitting their confusion and ignorance. If there is something consistent in the dialogues, Grote believed, this is the protest against forward affirmation, a pure and unconditional defence of the locus standi for the negationist and objector. Yet Plato’s readers require positive results announced, and positive evidence set before them, in a clear and straightforward manner. They are intolerant of all that is prolix, circuitous, not essential to the proof of the thesis in hand. Above all, an affirmative result is indispensable ... In the mean time, I may observe that if philosophers are to be estimated by such a scale, he [Plato] will not stand high on the list. Even in his expository dialogues, he cares little about clear proclamation of results, and still less about the shortest, straightest, and most certain road for attaining them ... The authoritative character of a philosopher is disclaimed.26 The subjects of special investigation and the often contradictory ideas embedded in the greater number of Plato’s dialogues testify, according to Grote, to the author’s conception of philosophy as a search for truth. Plato ‘feels a strong interest in the process of enquiry, in the debate per se’. The philosopher rightly estimated inquiry as valuable in itself. The dialogues primarily aim to form inquisitive, testing minds. All of Plato’s particular discussions seem to be directed with a view to creating the ‘dialectical power, and the solution of the immediate topic of inquiry becomes a secondary object’. The philosopher aspires to impart to his readers an interest in the process of dialectical inquiry ‘which he evidently felt in his own bosom’. What he achieved in this direction ‘constitutes ... one of his principal titles to the gratitude of intellectual men’.27 The searching element in Plato is preponderant in all dialogues without exception; to be sure, it is present in almost all expository dialogues. But a free and unconditional searching spirit stands alone in the dialogues of search. Against the ‘systematic prejudice’ of the German classicists, Grote suggested that the dialogues should not be forced into an artificial unity. Each dialogue should be judged by itself without assuming a consistency between them as an a priori postulate.28 The Platonic corpus, Grote suggested, is an aggregate of multifarious works, variable in form and purpose. Plato’s character is essentially many-sided. It is in truth scarcely possible to resolve all the diverse manifestations of the Platonic mind into one higher unity; or to predicate, about Plato as an intellectual person, anything which shall be applicable at once to the Protagoras, Gorgias, Plato I 237. Plato I 274, 237, 276. 28 Plato I 497, II 290. 26 27 197 Chapter 7 Parmenidês, Phædrus, Symposion, Philêbus, Phædon, Republic, Timæus, and Leges. Plato was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and inquisitor, mathematician, philosopher, poet (erotic as well as satirical), rhetor, artist - all in one: or at least, all in succession, throughout the fifty years of his philosophical life. At one time the exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, manifesting itself in a string of ingenious doubts and unsolved contradictions: at another time, he is full of theological antipathy against those who libel Helios and Selênê, or who deny the universal providence of the Gods: here, we have unqualified confessions of ignorance, and protestations against the false persuasion of knowledge ... - there, we find a description of the process of building up the Kosmos from the beginning, as if the author had been privy to the inmost purposes of the Demiurgus. In one dialogue the erotic fever is in the ascendant, distributed between beautiful youths and philosophical concepts, and confounded with a religious inspiration and furor which supersedes and transcends human sobriety (Phædrus): in another, all vehement impulses of the soul are stigmatised and repudiated, no honourable scope being left for anything but the calm and passionless Nous (Philebus, Phædon). Satire is exchanged for dithyramb, and mythe, - and one ethical point of view for another (Protagoras, Gorgias). The all-sufficient dramatising power of the master gives full effect to each of these multifarious tendencies.29 Accordingly, Plato’s works appeared to Grote like the polycephalous animal of mythical antiquity, which was in one body but comprised a lot of separate parts. 30 Instead of forcing the diverse compositions into an imaginary order on the basis of a philosophical plan, the historian dwelt on them as purposeful in themselves, assuming that in each dialogue an element of Plato’s character predominates. In other words, Plato can be characterised as a poet in the Symposium, a sceptic in the Parmenides, a dogmatist in the Republic and the Laws, a religious mystic in the Timaeus, a rhetor in the Crito, a critic of rhetoric in the Gorgias, and as a moral philosopher in the Protagoras. Despite this highly pluralistic conception, Grote’s exposition of Plato’s dialogues did not lack systematic classification. In his lengthy examination of the Platonic canon, the historian argued that the classification suggested in antiquity by Thrasyllus of Alexandria, the court astrologer of Emperor Tiberius (reigned from 14 to 37 A.D.), was the only one that truly reflected Plato’s historical and philosophical character. Moreover, the Thrasyllean organisation of the corpus had the advantage of presenting to us how the philosopher was understood in those remote times. Grote’s extensive discussion of the Thrasyllean scheme was a critical response to the controversy over the authenticity of the Corpus Plato I 214; III 20. C.H. Kahn succinctly calls Grote’s idea of Plato’s dialogues a ‘generous pluralism’ which, for a philosopher ‘for whom unity was of such supreme intellectual importance’, would be rather displeasing. See, “George Grote’s Plato and the Companions of Sokrates”, in George Grote Reconsidered 57. 29 30 198 Understanding Plato Platonicum which originated in late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century Germany and survives until the present day. 31 Grote examined the scraps of evidence concerning Plato’s life, and all the surviving commentaries on the dialogues, concluding that there is a strong presumption in favour of the authenticity of the catalogue transmitted from antiquity in the Thrasyllean classification. In antiquity, according to Diogenes Laertius, there was a unanimous agreement as to which of the Platonic dialogues were genuine and which were spurious. 32 Laertius cites the nine tetralogiai of the dialogues (groups of four dialogues each) according to the division suggested by Thrasyllus (III 57-61). These are: (1) Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo; (2) Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Politicus; (3) Parmenides, Philebus, Symposium, Phaedrus; (4) Alcibiades I and II, Hipparchus, Rivals; (5) Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis; (6) Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno; (7) Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Menexenus; (8) Cleitophon, Republic, Timaeus, Critias; (9) Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Epistles. 33 In his detailed account, Grote argued that all available evidence shows that Thrasyllus classified the dialogues in accordance with the divisions made by the scholars and grammarians of Alexandria. Such a classification is extremely valuable in reconstructing the history of the transmission of the manuscripts, inasmuch as the Alexandrine scholars probably possessed the integral corpus that was transmitted to their library by Demetrius of Phalerum. The historian claimed that Plato’s manuscripts (i.e., finished dialogues, unfinished fragments, or preparatory sketches) had been preserved in the 31 The authenticity of single dialogues had been, of course, doubted in antiquity too, e.g., the Hipparchus was rejected by Aelian, Various History VIII 1-2. Laertius also states that ‘some say that Philippus of Opus ... was the author of the Epinomis’, III 37. Panaetius, the Stoic, rejected the Phaedo as not worthy of Plato. Further, Proclus denied the authenticity of the Republic and the Laws; see P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago and London 1933) 452. 32 See Laertius III 62: ‘The following dialogues are acknowledged [omologoumenôs - a word denoting the existence of common agreement] to be spurious.’ Some of them were the Eryxias, Sisyphus, Axiochus, Demodocus, Definitions. The anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed. L.G. Westerink (Amsterdam 1962), provide evidence that the ancients were very much interested in classifying and ordering the Platonic works. 33 See the remarks of A-H. Chroust, “The Organization of the Corpus Platonicum in Antiquity”, Hermes 93 (1965) 41; and R.G. Hoerber, “Thrasyllus’ Platonic Canon and the Double Titles”, Phronesis 2 (1956) 13. The problem of the corpus is examined in some detail, with bibliography, by H. Erbse, Geschichte der Textüberlieferung (Zürich 1961) 219-21, 258-60. See also the older, but still useful study of H. Alline, Histoire du Texte de Platon (Paris 1915). It is worth observing that M. Dunn, “Iamblichus, Thrasyllus and the Reading Order of the Platonic Dialogues”, in R.B. Harris, ed. The Significance of Neo-Platonism (New York 1976) 59-80, defended the internal coherence of all the tetralogies, as contrasted with the partial divisions of the corpus by the Neoplatonists. The Neoplatonists were eclectic in their treatment of Plato’s works. Plotinus indeed confessed his preference for a few dialogues only; see R.F. Hathaway, “The Neoplatonic Interpretation of Plato: Remarks on its Decisive Characteristics”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1969) 20-22. 199 Chapter 7 Academy as sacred memorials. 34 It was very likely that soon after Plato’s death an authoritative, academic edition of his collected works was brought to light by his most eminent pupils.35 Demetrius, the agent of Ptolemy Soter and contemporary of the Scholarchs of the Academy who succeeded Plato immediately after his death, paid experts to make exact copies of the corpus preserved in the library of the Academy.36 The librarians of Alexandria, among them Aristophanes of Byzantium, classified the writings of Plato and published them with ‘critical symbols’, that is, indicating possible defects in the text. It should be emphasised, Grote remarked, that the thirty-six dialogues, recorded in the Thrasyllean classification, were regarded as genuine by the Neoplatonists as well as by Ficinus and Serranus. Grote approved of the broad division of the corpus into the dialogues of Search and those of Exposition in the traditional scheme as it corresponded to the two basic sides of Plato’s philosophical character: the searching/inquisitive or negative, and the dogmatic or positive. According to Grote, there are thirty-three dialogues, nineteen of Search and fourteen of Exposition. Purely of the first category are the Meno, Laches, Charmides, Lysis, Euthyphro, Theatetus; perfect specimens of expository affirmation are the Timaeus and Epinomis, where all negative criticism is absent. Some dialogues are of mixed character, like the Republic and Pheado, where search is combined with dogmatic exposition, whereas the Apology, Menexenus and the Epistles do not belong to either head. The distinction between the negative and the dogmatic pieces was fundamental to Grote’s interpretation. It not only determined the order in which the dialogues were examined (the ‘negative’ group is examined first), but it also, granted Grote’s declared preference for the ‘searching’ pieces, predisposed the reader to the critical evaluation attached to each dialogue under examination. Further, the distinction served Grote’s analysis in three particular ways: first, it was used to attack the German theory of a preconceived plan in Platonic philosophy; secondly, See Plato I 134-5. On the question of book-collection in the fourth century B.C., see E.G. Turner, Athenian Books in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. (London 1952), and on early Greek book-collectors, E.A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library (London 1952) 8. Grote quoted F.W. Ritschl, Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken (Breslau 1838; reprint Amsterdam 1970). One of Grote’s secondary sources was also Gustav Parthey, Das Alexandrinische Museum (Berlin 1838), which is one of the books the historian donated to the library of the University of London. 35 Plato I 134-6, 146. Aristotle’s works on the other hand, Grote observed, in lieu of such an authoritative edition, suffered considerable mutilation. Thus, the Aristotelian testimony as a criterion of Platonic authenticity is objectively inadequate. On the story concerning the Aristotelian corpus, see Laertius V 5, and Strabo, Geography XIII 608-9. 36 Grote’s assumption of an ‘Academy edition’, which was probably the work of the first generation of Plato’s pupils, was accepted by R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford 1968) 65-6; J.A. Philip, “The Platonic Corpus”, Phoenix 24 (1970) 306; F. Solmsen observes that ‘the tendency is to revert to the idea of a standard edition issued by the Academy, at a time not too distant from Plato’s death’, “The Academic and Alexandrian Editions of Plato’s Works”, Illinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 102. 34 200 Understanding Plato to call attention to the historical factor in reconstructing Plato’s scheme - a factor commonly neglected if it could divert the reader from the ‘essential unity’ of that scheme; and thirdly, to emphasise his own conception of the scope and role of philosophy, which obviously stemmed from the views of the Philosophic Radicals and revolved around the importance of testing and criticising (philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’). Plato in his youth ‘considered that the Search after truth was at once the noblest occupation, and the highest pleasure, of life ... Towards the close of his life ... the love of dialectic ... died out within him. He becomes ultra-dogmatical’.37 In the negative dialogues (the purely Socratic) Plato recognised the full liberty of dissenting reason, essential to any philosophical debate, whereas in the expository dialogues he praised passive recipient minds, blindly obedient to external rules. The positive dialogues should not be taken as designed to furnish answers to difficulties proclaimed in the negative. 38 Plato’s dialogues systematically contradict each other and a system of philosophy cannot be extracted from these pieces.39 Plato was a philosopher whose two currents of speculation, the affirmative and the negative, were independent of each other. According to Grote, ‘Plato’s affirmative philosophy is not fitted on to his negative philosophy, but grows out of other mental impulses, distinct and apart’. The affirmative theory is ‘neither generated, nor adapted, with a view to reconcile the contradictions, or elucidate the obscurities, which the negative Elenchus has exposed ... Thus it is that the negative cross examination, and the affirmative dogmatism, are ... two unconnected operations of thought: the one does not lead to, or involve, or verify, the other’.40 The ‘negative vein’, admirably exemplified in most of Plato’s compositions, is in effect a prerequisite to the development of any philosophical scheme. True philosophising combines ‘the free antithesis of affirmative and negative’. The negative analysis supported since antiquity the development of philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’, because it brought into question social and ethical topics. 41 Philosophy as reasoned truth is radically opposed to unreasoned, emotional beliefs, generated by traditional authority and subjective sentiment. Having said that, Grote addressed a critique to everyone who could not see that the history of Plato II 393-4; see also I 279. Cf. Schleiermacher, Introductions 18-9; Whewell, The Platonic Dialogues for English Readers III vii. German critics had generally overlooked the importance of the negative aspect of Plato’s thought, not by denying that there was a kind of negativism in Plato, but by the argument that a negative dialogue was the natural preparation for a positive one. 39 Plato II 455, 472, 619-20. Further, one should not expect to discover a positive doctrine from dialogues so enigmatic as the Parmenides, II 318n. 40 Plato I 270, 292. 41 Plato III 485. In defending this view Grote quoted J.S. Mill, who in his System of Logic, ed. John M. Robson, Collected Works, 2 vols. (Toronto 1973) VIII v.i.1, argued that ‘the philosophy of reasoning ... must comprise the philosophy of bad as well as of good reasoning’. 37 38 201 Chapter 7 science had always contained periods of ignorance and dispute and that, on subjects connected with man and society, ‘this period of dispute and confusion continues to the present moment’. 42 Dissent is desirable, Grote argued, and negative experimentation, i.e., research without demonstrable results (or debate without reaching unanimity) is much better than the enforcement of particular dogmatic beliefs on others. The first condition of philosophy as reasoned truth is dissent from traditional authority. Several eminent poets and philosophers of early Greece, like Pindar and Xenophanes, had this freedom of individual judgement to a greater or lesser degree. The various theories of the cosmos expounded by the Ionian and Eleatic philosophers were the product of individual dissent from established ideas. In the fifth century B.C., dialectic as a twofold process of question and answer was cultivated by Zeno and Socrates. Never before had the authority of Pindaric ‘King Nomos’ had to face such an enemy as the Socratic cross-examining elenchus. The traditional, unreasoned sentiment had to face the attack of individual, critical reason. Grote recited with excitement Socrates’ answer to Polus in the Gorgias: ‘You, Polus, bring against me the authority of the multitude, as well as of the most eminent citizens, who all agree in upholding your view. But I, one man, standing here alone, do not agree with you. And I engage to compel you, my one respondent, to agree with me’ (Grote’s translation). The Socratic method laid in effect the foundation of a genuine scientific function, pursuing exact definitions of general and moral terms, such as knowledge, Justice, Law, Courage, Holiness. Now it was essential to demonstrate, against the German view of a preconceived systematic synthesis, the unity of a plan embedded in each ‘negative’, or Socratic dialogue. The minor dialogues, Grote maintained, are often inferior in style and construction, and deal with a variety of themes essentially unrelated to each other; usually, they conclude with a negative comment or simply with a question. In the Euthyphro, for instance, an ethical dialogue of search, the question on the general constituent feature of ‘holiness’ proves too perplexing for either Socrates or his interlocutor to answer, and the dialogue breaks off without any specific result. In examining the Charmides, Grote argued that the dialogue ‘is a good illustrative specimen of [the] Dialogues of Search ... It proves nothing: it disproves several hypotheses: but it exhibits (and therein consists its value) the anticipating, guessing, tentative and eliminating process, without which no defensible conclusions can be obtained’. 43 The Laches, which deals with the definition of sophrosynê (temperance, moderation), also concludes without providing any tenable explanation or positive result. Moreover, often Plato does not adapt the end of his dialogues to the beginning. This is due to the philosopher’s awareness of the perplexity of the dialectical 42 43 Plato I 494, III 478. Plato I 492. 202 Understanding Plato method as a process to the discovery of truth. Plato’s reluctance to submit any explanation amounts to an implicit confession of his inability to do so. In Grote’s words: ‘Plato is a searcher, and has not yet made up his own mind: this is what he himself tells us, and what I literally believe.’ Plato recognises that the searching spirit is of greater importance to philosophical debates than the conclusion itself. Plato ‘is anxious to set forth what can be said against a given conclusion; even though not prepared to establish any thing it its place’. To be sure, the philosopher was more ingenious in uncovering logical difficulties than competent in solving them. For instance, the difficulties of the logical puzzles introduced in the Parmenides finally superseded his power of working them out: he ‘had tied a knot so complicated, that he could not himself untie it’. 44 For this reason, it is pointless to search for definite answers to particular problems raised by Plato. Grote himself admitted in his “Preface” that, ‘where I find difficulties forcibly dwelt upon without solution, I imagine, not that he had a good solution kept back in his closet, but that he failed in finding one’. In Grote’s estimation, there is a chasm separating the ‘expository’ and the ‘searching’ Platonic works. The latter category embraces purposefully inconclusive dialogues that reflect a remarkable awareness of the diversity of human intellectual experience. In them, Plato follows the genuine path of logical inquiry and adheres to critical and analytical methods. Freedom of thought is clearly vindicated. On the other hand, when Plato propounds a positive doctrine he proceeds from self-justifying maxims, overlooking any survey or comparison of particulars. In expounding a positive doctrine, Plato is more of a priest than a rational philosopher. In his positive dialogues, Plato seems to have forgotten the objections forcibly put forward in the negative. The second stage, that of exposition, no longer refers to philosophy as ‘reasoned truth’: Socratic inquiry vanishes under Plato’s doctrinal authority and self-appealing infallibility. Grote, thus, distinguished between the dialogues of Search and Exposition, ascribing to each respectively one of Plato’s intellectual traits, namely, the searching (which the historian admired) and the affirmative, which he usually disapproved. Between these two groups of dialogues Grote detected trivial interrelations, and between the dialogues of the same group he found unimportant affinities basically confined to the similarity of style. The historian also considered those dialogues in which Socrates appears in an affirmative role, as for instance the Republic, to be substantially Platonic or anti-Socratic. Grote doubted whether in the possession of sufficient evidence Plato’s narrative and Socrates’ actual conversations would have been proved identical. 45 The whole of Platonism is not an expansion and completion of Socratic ideas. Plato is not to be considered as always endorsing the opinions which he ascribes to Socrates; besides, he might 44 45 Plato I 246, II 278, 297. Similarly, see Schleiermacher, “The worth of Socrates as a philosopher” 546, 554-5. 203 Chapter 7 have imagined some conversations for the sake of his own argument. Grote warned the reader not to take the words of the Platonic protagonists literally: ‘Many of the persons cross-examined bear historical names: but I think necessary to warn the reader, that all of them speak both language and sentiments provided for them by Plato, and not their own.’46 Plato is not to be trusted for his historical accuracy. Hence, in the historian’s view, (a) the dogmatic emphasis in the Phaedo, the categorical generalisations, as well as the contempt for rational evidence are not Socratic; these features are essentially Platonic. To be sure, the Phaedo is philosophically opposite and antithetical to the Apology.47 (b) It is difficult to believe that Socrates would have approved of Plato’s argument in the seventh book of the Republic, to the effect that the young should not embark on philosophical inquiries or make use of the method of dialectic because they would be tempted to argue for argument’s sake. 48 (c) Further, Socrates cannot held two contradictory conceptions of Justice. In the Republic, Socrates was made to maintain that Justice was good in itself, whereas in the Apology (a dialogue Grote regarded as ‘a report, more or less exact, of the real defence of Sokrates’), he asserts that justice was a potential source, or cause, of happiness to the just agent (ex’ aretês chrêmata).49 (d) The Timaeus was definitely not written in the Socratic spirit. In effect, this dialogue perfectly presents the ‘dogmatical pole of Plato’s character’.50 (e) Most importantly, Plato might not have endorsed the theory of Socrates propounded in the Protagoras. Socrates, on the contrary, on the historical testimony of Xenophon, had advocated this theory. 51 According to Grote, the theory of the Good upheld in the Protagoras contradicts the corresponding theory of the Gorgias. In the former dialogue, Socrates elaborately asserts that ‘the Good is identical with the Pleasurable, and the Evil identical with the Painful: in the Gorgias, Sokrates holds ... that Good is essentially different from Pleasurable, Evil from Painful. What the one affirms, the other denies’.52 Plato I 290; also II 36n. A warning which is still important to remember. Plato II 196. 48 Plato III 239 (see Rep., VII 537). 49 Plato I 158n., III 128. On the historicity of the Apology Grote possibly followed Schleiermacher. The German philosopher argued that this dialogue intended ‘simply to exhibit and record in substance the real proceedings of the case’; see his introduction to the Apology. Grote was in agreement with Schleiermacher from the early 1820s. See BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 17. John Forster agreed with Schleiermacher, “The Dialogues of Plato”, Foreign Quarterly Review 31 (1843) 472. As W.K.C. Guthrie remarks, History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols. (Cambridge 196281) VI 72, in Zeller’s time this was the ‘prevailing view’. 50 Plato III 247. The entire Timaeus, however, is ‘well worthy of study, as the conjectures of a great and ingenious mind in the existing state of knowledge and belief among the Greeks’, III 283. 51 Plato III 562: ‘It is to him [Xenophon] that we owe, in great part, such knowledge as we possess of the real Sokrates.’ Xenophon’s limited philosophical knowledge, according to Grote, makes him superior in terms of historical accuracy. Cf. Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy II 42. 52 Plato I 208. 46 47 204 Understanding Plato Grote’s idea of Plato appears to stand in marked contrast with the interpretations of his predecessors in Germany. For Grote, ‘[m]any of [Plato’s] philosophical speculations are nearly allied to poetry’ and not to a fixed premeditated system; Plato was both a sceptic and a dogmatist; Plato’s ‘ratiocinative force is much greater on the negative side than on the positive’; his character was, in effect, an aggregate of distinct and even diverse elements. The reader should be thus prepared to meet varying points of view in ‘travelling through the numerous Platonic dialogues’. 53 Apparently, Grote’s picture of Plato was not the one that would make a ‘traditional’ Platonist proud of the master. If Grote however appreciated Plato, it was largely due to the remarkable diversity of character and the richness of philosophical argument which he discovered in the dialogues. In the first place, Grote explicitly believed that either the mystical and theological exegesis of Plato’s philosophy, or the systematic and perfectionist interpretation, tended to obscure its exceptional position in the history of Greek thought. Grote admired Plato exactly because, his primary object being to protest against uncritical affirmation, he cared little about the exposition of results. In disclaiming the authoritative, positive character of philosophy and strengthening its negative arm, Plato asserts the free action of the individual mind. Nowhere in ancient literature except in Plato’s Gorgias, Grote maintained, ‘is the title, position, and dignity of individual dissenting opinion, ethical and political ... so clearly marked out and so boldly asserted’. Even in dialogues that appear to be purely affirmative, Grote sometimes found germs of philosophical scepticism, as for instance in the Phaedo. In that dialogue, Socrates is made to announce the immortality of the soul, but noticeably not as a dogma or imperative orthodoxy. Socrates there ‘sets forth his own conviction, with the grounds on which he adopts it. But he expressly recognises the existence of dissenting opinions: he invites his companions to bring forward every objection: he disclaims all special purpose of impressing his own conclusions upon their minds ... He entreats them to preserve themselves from becoming tinged with misology, or the hatred of free argumentative discussion’. 54 Further, Grote rejected the view that Plato’s fundamental task was that of teaching ‘absolute truths’ by means of intuition. Plato’s ethical speculations had nothing to do with ‘the mental intuitions and instincts, assumed by various modern philosophers as common to all mankind’. For Grote, the Plato of the Theatetus was a sensationalist who, as the Phaedrus also proves, was not seriously engaged in preaching an ‘Absolute’. 55 If Plato sought to indoctrinate his pupils ‘we cannot well imagine that he would have left Plato I 115, 212, II 297, 224. Plato II 151, 155. 55 See Plato II 373, 262: ‘To modify this “Absolute,” according to the varieties of the persons addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute and excellence.’ 53 54 205 Chapter 7 his purpose thus in the dark, visible only by the microscope of a critic’. 56 Thus Grote rejected the traditional view of a Platonic esoteric philosophy. ‘I see no proof’, Grote claimed, ‘that Plato had any secret or esoteric philosophy, reserved for a few chosen pupils’.57 In the context of his dialectical inquiries, Plato brings to light distinctions and definitions that proved instrumental in the development of Logic. He is always concerned to impress upon his pupils an exact conception of the meaning of general terms and propositions. Moreover, Plato’s theory of recollection (anamnêsis) is comparable to the law of Association, as that illustrated by James Mill. Sensations and impressions caused by external factors or incidents, Plato argues, give rise to a process of recovering ideas. According to Grote, Plato stated for the first time in the history of thought, ‘the important psychological doctrine of the transference of affections by association from one object to others’. 58 Most importantly, Plato was the first who conceived, albeit dimly, that Utility should constitute the criterion for testing laws and ethical action. ‘I perfectly agree’, Grote admits, ‘with the doctrine laid down by Sokrates in the Protagoras’. 59 The Protagoras is the only dialogue that provides a clear answer to the question ‘what is the Good’, and what is the object of political science. Finally, Plato’s theory of education and the relevant technique used, i.e., the use of ‘trial, error and exposure’, appeared to Grote of great value in enhancing intellectual discipline. PLATO’S POLITICS AND THE DOGMATIC VEIN So great is the value of the negative process in Plato, that one is apt to ask: what is the worth of the affirmative side of his teaching, especially that concerned with politics and morals? In Plato’s magnum opus, the Republic, Grote primarily saw the individual suppressed under the assumed infallibility of the philosopher king. In this great constructive scheme, suppression of individuality ‘and conversion of life into a perpetual, all-pervading, drill and discipline - is a favourite aspiration always present to Plato’. 60 However, to understand Grote’s critique of Plato’s politics, one has to turn to his earlier work, the History of Greece, where Athenian democracy is rehabilitated after centuries of derision and glorified as the first liberal state in the history of mankind. In Grote’s mind, Plato’s political utopia and the ideals and practices of democratic Athens inevitably contrasted. In his “Life of Plato” and earlier in the History, Grote surveyed at length Plato’s unsuccessful political undertakings. The first was related to Plato’s entanglement in the political affairs of his native city. The philosopher was See History VII 129. Plato I 231n. 58 Plato I 523; see James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind ch. XXI and XXII. 59 Plato II 81. 60 Plato III 443. 56 57 206 Understanding Plato distinctively an Athenian aristocrat who shared numerous conventional ideas with the members of his class and apparently saw Athens’ defeat by the Peloponnesians as a sign of her inadequacy to meet the political and moral needs of the age. When the revolution of the Thirty broke, the youthful Plato hoped that he might have played an active role under the new political regime. The Thirty had undertaken, as they professed, to eliminate all the evil elements from the city and to introduce reforms conducive to the improvement of domestic and foreign policy. For Grote, however, their plans amounted to keeping Athens subordinate to Sparta and Lysander. The philosopher Plato, he argued, ‘then a young man about twenty-four years old, of antidemocratical politics, and nephew of Kritias was at first misled, together with various others, by these splendid professions’.61 Though eventually Plato understood their selfish motives, his enthusiasm for their policy in the beginning contributed materially to strengthen their hand. ‘He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, filling him with disappointment and disgust.’62 Secondly, Grote dealt at length with Plato’s relationships with Dionysius the younger, the despot of Syracuse. He pointed out the immense influence of Plato on Dion, Dionysius’ associate. Plato’s ability to work upon the minds of young people was impressive. He was a man not only of alluring eloquence and irresistible intelligence, but also of practical abilities. Dion’s education under Plato as well as his company with the sophists of the age changed his feelings about tyranny. Thus, he persuaded Plato to enter into communication first with the elder Dionysius and try to impart to him the ‘wisdom of ruling’. It is well known how disrespectfully Plato was treated and how fortunate he was to escape from Syracuse. After the death of the elder Dionysius, Dion managed to gain the confidence of the younger Dionysius. Dion, knowing ‘the wonderful magic of Plato’s conversation when addressed to young men’, sent a message urgently inviting the philosopher to assist him in promoting his plans for reform.63 Plato, anticipating the great prospect that opened for philosophy, departed again immediately for Syracuse. This time he was treated with cordiality and respect, though he had to face the hatred of some of Dionysius’ attendants. For a moment, ‘Plato seemed to be despot of Syracuse’; such was the admiration and esteem expressed towards him. But the philosopher dealt with Dionysius in a totally inappropriate way. ‘With all reverence for the greatest philosopher of antiquity, we are forced to confess that, upon his own showing, he not only failed to turn the situation to account, but contributed even to spoil it by an unseasonable vigour.’ Instead of trying to convince Dionysius to take political measures advantageous to the suffering people of Syracuse, Plato postponed action until Dionysius would attain intellectual maturity. When Dionysius himself announced his will to History VIII 213. Plato I 119. 63 History XI 60. 61 62 207 Chapter 7 transform his despotism into a limited kingship, Plato did not encourage him: ‘First go through your schooling, and then do all these things; otherwise leave them undone.’64 Dionysius soon became weary of education and, even worse, started on the advice of his courtiers suspecting Plato and Dion of treasonous plans. Grote acknowledged Plato’s failure ‘with sincere regret’. Plato, despite his good intentions, had not used his opportunities to their best advantage. Dionysius’ future policy became harsher and his tyranny more oppressive.65 Dion’s tragic end was the epitome of Plato’s unsuccessful efforts to put into practice his political ideas. When Dion sought a political career in Syracuse, he had been prepared by the education and the instructions he received in the Academy. Quite naturally, instead of promoting and securing the restoration of basic democratic principles, he imagined himself as a permanent philosopherdespot. The Academy filled his soul with a strong antipathy towards democracy and reinforced his preference for ‘a Lacedaemonian scheme of mixed government’. His political schemes were rigorously opposed. At this particular juncture, Dion misconceived of himself as being in a position to establish a despotic government. He became strongly hated and immeasurably unpopular. Kallippus, who was a member of Plato’s Academy, eventually had him assassinated. Interestingly, Grote’s account is one in which disapproval of the philosopher’s conduct in Athens at the end of the fifth century alternates with a ‘sincere regret’ at his failure in Syracuse. In fact, we witness this wavering, or inner conflict, throughout the book. For instance, the historian maintained that Plato admired the Spartan constitution, but he never trusted its effects on human character. Plato left to posterity works in which the freedom of dissenting opinion had been vindicated in a manner unparalleled in history, and yet at other times the philosopher favoured the suppression of individuality. In political philosophy, Grote admired Plato’s radicalism, manifest in his scepticism about received and unexamined opinions, and his urging that undisguised reason should prevail when civil and moral issues were being considered. But Grote disapproved of the strictures cast on Athens and its politicians. When the historian’s two great objects of admiration, the Athenian democracy and Platonic philosophy, appeared to conflict, he supported the liberal state. 66 The contrast was inescapable: History XI 64, 66-7. History XI 68: ‘I make these remarks upon him with sincere regret; but I am much mistaken if he did not afterwards hear them in more poignant language from the banished Dion, upon whom the consequences of [his] mistake mainly fell’; see also Plato I 210n and II 490. 66 As one of the most learned critics of Grote’s Plato, L. Campbell, aptly observed, ‘[Grote] has reached a part of his work ... and he looks back with unmistakeable regret from Plato and the Academy to Thucydides and the Athenian people’, “Grote’s Plato”, Quarterly Review 119 (1866) 153. 64 65 208 Understanding Plato Athens exhibited marked respect for the sanctity of the person ... - much equality of dealing between man and man - much tolerance, public as well as private, of individual diversity in taste and character - much keenness of intellectual and oral competition ... All these elements, not excepting even the first, were distasteful to Plato. But those who copy the disparaging judgment which he pronounces against Athenian manners, ought in fairness to take account of the point of view from which that judgement is delivered. To a philosopher whose ideal is depicted in the two treatises De Republicâ and De Legibus, Athenian society would appear repulsive enough. We learn from these two treatises what it was that a great speculative politician of the day desired to establish as a substitute.67 The principle of intolerance, Grote argued, ‘was usually left dormant at Athens: philosophical debate continued active and unshackled, so that the school of Plato subsisted in the city without interruption for nearly forty years until his death’. Yet at the close of a long life, Plato, replete with dogmatic vigour, disallowed all liberty of philosophising to others. The philosopher envisaged his ideal as a substitute for Athenian democracy. Unlike the sophists he dissented from society, ‘both democratical and oligarchical, on some of the most fundamental points of public and private morality’. He longed for the ‘radical reform of the state, on principles of his own, distinct from every recognized political party or creed’. 68 Apparently, Plato’s two constructive pieces, the Republic and the Laws, were seen by Grote through the brightness and the political ideals of Athens, and tested by the logic of liberal utilitarianism. Of the philosophical arguments Socrates is made to put forward in the Republic, Grote vigorously criticised the conception of Justice as an end in itself. According to Plato, ‘Justice per se ... is the cause of happiness to the just agent, absolutely and unconditionally’. This conception is entirely self-regarding: looking to the conduct of each individual alone as it affected his own happiness and not as it affected the happiness of others. Plato might have been led to this theory by a significant fallacy committed in the Republic, namely, the analogy between the order of human society and the order of the soul.69 In the same way, Plato in the Philebus inconsistently discusses ethics upon principles of cosmology or ontology and draws the parallel between man and the cosmos. In Grote’s judgement, self-denial and self-sacrifice are empty words in Plato’s theory. Thus, the historian had no hesitation to side with Thrasymachus who argued that ‘justice is the good of another’ (Rep. 343c).70 Plato III 434. Plato III 426; also II 144-5, III 189, 459-60, History VII 738. 69 Plato III 129, 133, 142; II 586, 610. Guthrie remarks that the fallacy of the Platonic parallel did not escape Grote’s criticisms in his ‘splendid chapter on it [the Rep.] ... which should still be read’, History of Greek Philosophy IV 444. 70 Plato III 133, 136. On the question of what Thrasymachus proposes to constitute justice, i.e., another’s good or the interest of the stronger, and relevant bibliography, see T. Irwin, Plato’s 67 68 209 Chapter 7 In defending the idea of justice in a self-justifying sense, Plato contradicts his own theory regarding the genesis and foundation of society. No people, Plato argues in the impressive account given in Books II to IV of the Republic, were ever completely self-sufficing in the practical or moral sphere of life. Nor could the Platonic philosopher, Grote in turn argued, be called happy without reference to an object or source of happiness which would conform to the expectations or feelings of his fellows. Any theory of justice, (dikaiosynê) is necessarily conditioned by the special circumstances and the character of a given society. This comes out most clearly in the case of Socrates. Socrates, to be sure, did not enjoy the favour of his fellow-citizens. His ‘justice’ was not recognised in Athens (on the contrary, he was considered an ‘unjust’ person, and that explains his condemnation): thus to ‘call him happy, would be a misapplication of the term, which no one would agree with Plato in making - least of all the friends of Sokrates in the last months of his life’. 71 Most significantly, the egoistic moral theory of Plato missed a proper recourse to the crucial principle of social reciprocity. By contending ‘that the performance of obligations alone, without any rights, is delightful per se, and suffices to ensure happiness to the performer’, Plato ignores the essential meaning of ethical sentiment. In tracing out the implications of Plato’s ethical reasoning, Grote argued that the ‘authoritative terms right and obligation lose all their specific meanings’.72 To act in a certain way might not be a source of selfish delight and yet be conducive to the comfort and security of society. We need not suppose, however, that the selfish theory of morality was peculiar to Plato. The ancient moralists, the historian argued in his Fragments, ‘committed the mistake of looking at morality exclusively from the point of view of the individual, and not from the point of view of society’. 73 Closely related to the question of ancient self-regarding ethical theory, was Grote’s treatment of Plato’s conception of Utility expounded in the Protagoras through the mouth of Socrates. In this dialogue, the historian believed, Plato again fails to take account of the individual as a member of a state in which reciprocity exists as a prerequisite for social union. Plato’s doctrine, as put forward at considerable length by Socrates, proposes a strictly selfish calculus of pleasures and pains. But for the computation to be correct, according to Grote, it ‘must include, to a certain extent, the pleasures and pains (security and rightful expectations) of others besides the agent Moral Theory (Oxford 1977) 289 n.23. Grote criticised Plato’s conception of justice as an end in itself (the doctrine of the all-sufficiency of virtue to the happiness of the virtuous agent, whatever may be his fate in other respects), as reproduced by Francis Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. (London 1755), and Sir James Mackintosh, Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (Edinburgh 1830). 71 Plato III 154, 441. 72 Plato III 159, 137. 73 Grote, Fragments on Ethical Subjects 33. 210 Understanding Plato himself, implicated in the consequences of his acts’.74 Similarly, in the Gorgias, ‘[t]hat step of Plato’s reasoning, in which he asserts, that the wrong-doer when justly punished suffers what is profitable or good - is only true if you take in ... the interests of society as well as those of the agent. His punishment is certainly profitable to (conducive to the security and well being of) society: it may possibly be also profitable to himself, but very frequently it is not so’.75 In discussing the Gorgias Grote recurred to the same theme, pointing out the arbitrary line drawn between the individual and his fellows - the society and his interests. In this dialogue, Socrates argues that the man who inflicts whatever miseries on another, even when they are deserved, is not to be envied; the man who inflicts them undeservedly is miserable himself. In addition, he is more pitiable than the innocent victim since to commit injustice is much worse that to suffer it. By Socrates’ theory, the Macedonian king Archelaus was the most wretched of men. But Socrates, according to Grote, was wrong in asserting that Archelaus had been in a bad mental state simply because his activities were found to be morally repugnant: personal feeling is not the proper measure of morality. The ultimate arbitrator is society itself, its collective interests and general happiness. In this respect, Grote criticised the conventional treatment of the Gorgias as a superior dialogue of Plato’s mature age - a treatment designed to discredit the Socratic moral theory of the Protagoras. The identity of the pleasurable with the good, Grote said, and the painful with the evil, was extremely unwelcome by Platonic commentators who preferred to regard Socrates’ proposition as a sort of jest or mockery against the sophist Protagoras. The standard interpretation praised the Gorgias for defending the idea of a superior Good existing independently of pleasures and pains (that is, the ‘vulgar’ ends of someone’s life). Indeed there is nothing more remarkable in the Gorgias, than the manner in which Sokrates not only condemns the unmeasured, exorbitant, maleficent desires, but also depreciates and degrades all the actualities of life - all the recreative and elegant arts, including music and poetry, tragic as well as dithyrambic - all provision for the most essential wants, all protection against particular sufferings and dangers, even all service rendered to another person in the way of relief or of rescue - all the effective maintenance of public organised force, such as ships, docks, walls, arms &c. Immediate satisfaction or relief, and those who confer it, are treated with contempt, and presented as in hostility to the perfection of the mental structure. And it is in this point of view that various Platonic commentators extol in an especial manner the Gorgias: as recognizing an Idea of Good superhuman and supernatural, radically disparate from pleasures and pains of any human being, and incommensurable with them: an Universal Idea, which though it is supposed to cast Plato II 83. For Bentham on ‘security’, see Harrison, Bentham 244-5, 248-9: ‘Security is “the principal object of law”, the “inestimable good, the distinctive index of civilisation”.’ 75 Plato II 110. 74 211 Chapter 7 a distant light upon its particulars, is separated from them by an incalculable space, and is discernible only by the Platonic telescope.76 Plato, in his constructive pieces, assumed ‘the sceptre of king Nomos’, and attempted by suppressing all varieties of emotion and intellect to produce a type of character peculiar to his estimate of life and conduct. His model was the idealised Spartan state, yet with still greater restrictions on freedom. His authoritarianism ‘oversteps all the reasonable aims and boundaries of the political office’. The political plan sketched in the Republic, in particular, was in Grote’s judgement defective in three major respects. First, its strict authoritarianism reduced the polis to an aggregate of officers and commanders rather than citizens: ‘a sort of military bureaucracy.’ The individual was deprived of private feelings and interests. The citizen was guided and controlled by the ‘religion of the Commonwealth’, destined to be reduced to a ‘special machine, unfit for any other purpose than its own’. The Plato of the Republic appeared to Grote an alien figure. The philosopher of the Academy seems to have eventually fallen into the same blind conservatism of Meletus and Anytus: ‘Neither the Sokrates of the Platonic Apology, nor his negative Dialectic could be allowed to exist in the Platonic Republic.’ Secondly, Plato’s great educational vision was unfortunately restricted by a conservative advocacy of the natural inequality of abilities. Thirdly, his authoritarian point of view assumed as a matter of fact the positive feelings of the people comprising the polis. But would they be willingly obedient? Willing obedience is one of the major achievements of a well-organised and skilful policy.77 The same criticism applies also to the Laws, in substance a continuous and uninterrupted authoritarian monologue. The same inflexible dogmatism and neglect of individual judgement; the same mechanistic conception of human needs and desires, and a profound contempt for separate property and family, shape the Platonic vision. The governing spirit of the Platonic city in the Laws was imbued with a self-satisfied infallibility that called to mind the spirit of ‘mediaeval Catholicism and the Inquisition’. ‘If the Magnetic community had become a reality, the solitary cells of the Platonic Inquisition might have been found to include Anaxagoras, and most of the Ionic philosophers, under the first head of heresy; Aristotle and Epikurus under the second; Herodotus and Nikias under the third.’78 Socratic elenchus is in reality abolished and Socrates himself could not be allowed to exist in the Platonic community. Grote, in a manner that reminds us of his disappointment in the politically degenerate Athenians of the late fourth century, now expressed his sorrow for Plato’s dogmatic theology of the Laws. Plato II 130-131. Plato II 138; III 211, 187, 215, 240. 78 Plato III 413. 76 77 212 Understanding Plato We seem to be under a legislation imbued with the persecuting spirit and selfsatisfied infallibility of mediæval Catholicism and the Inquisition. The dissenter is a criminal, and among the worst of criminals, even if he do nothing more than proclaim his opinions. How striking is the contradiction between this spirit and that in which Plato depicts the Sokrates of the Phædon, the Apology, and the Gorgias! How fully does Sokrates in the Phædon recognise and respect the individual reason of his two friends, though dissenting from his own! How emphatically does he proclaim, in the Apology and the Gorgias, not merely his own individual dissent from his fellow-citizens, but also his resolution to avow and maintain it against one and all, until he should hear such reasons as convinced him that it was untrue!79 Socrates, a dissenter from received opinions, had his path marked out in individual speculation. In the Platonic polis, however, dissenting individuals are not allowed to exist; the right to personal judgement is prohibited, and its place is taken by the corrective discipline of the lawgiver. But to ‘such a mind’ as Socrates, judged Grote, the fullest liberty ought to be left, of professing and defending his own opinions, as well as of combating other opinions, accredited or not, which he may consider false or uncertified. The public guidance of the state thus falls to one class of minds, the activity of speculative discussion to another: though accident may produce, here and there, a superior individual, comprehensive or dexterous enough to suffice for both. But the main desideratum is that this freedom of discussion should exist: that room shall be made, and encouragement held out, to the claims of individual reason, and to the full publication of all doubts or opinions, be they what they may: that the natural tendency of all ruling force, whether in few or in many hands, to perpetuate their own dogmas by proscribing or silencing all heretics and questioners, may be neutralised as far as possible. The great expansive vigour of the Greek mind - the sympathy felt among the best varieties of Greeks for intellectual superiority in all its forms - and the privilege of free speech, on which the democratical citizens of Athens prided themselves - did in fact neutralise very considerably these tendencies in Athens. A greater and more durable liberty of philosophising was procured for Athens, and through Athens for Greece generally, than had ever been known before in the history of mankind.80 CONCLUSION The general impression left to the reader after going through Grote’s work, is a Plato without consistent doctrines, at best a two-faced Plato. There is no point delivered by Plato upon which one can say ‘the philosopher taught so and so’. The variety either of style, method, or opinion in the dialogues is unlimited. This 79 80 Plato III 409-411. Plato II 143-5. 213 Chapter 7 variation is basically due to the intrinsic value the philosopher consistently attached to investigation and discussion. It is also the result of the dramatic form of Plato’s works. In addition, one should consider the philosopher’s diverse influences, especially at a time most fertile in intellectual discourse. Hence Plato, Grote maintained, can be understood through a fragment by fragment reading and not by concentrating on the alleged entirety of a philosophical scheme. Plato, in Grote’s view, is not consistent even in the employment of the Socratic method. The cross-examination and the negative procedure of the master are quietly, yet resolutely, set aside in the dialogues of exposition. In the Laws, Socratic spirit is crushed under the overwhelming spiritual authority of a wise few. The professed ignorance of Socrates, his proclaimed incapacity to teach anything except ‘that he only knows he does not know anything’, is in the constructive pieces sacrificed to the altar of a new and sterner King Nomos - this time more formidable and more authoritarian in its application as it is invested with a philosophical and theological dogma. Plato’s evening hour was passed in a spirit of anti-Socraticism. The prohibition of dialectic in the seventh book of the Republic appeared to Grote analogous to the charge of Anytus and Meletus against Socrates before the Athenian court. Socrates’ prosecutors wanted to hinder him from inducing the youth of Athens to question received opinions, because in doing so he was leading them to fancy themselves superior to the authority of King Nomos. In establishing a new order in which everyone would blindly follow the rules of the infallible king or the wise elite, Plato eventually becomes himself a prosecutor of the Socratic spirit, the spirit he so exquisitely defended and exemplified in the greatest part of his dialogues. Despite the remarkable variety of style and the diversity of ideas he found in Plato, Grote proceeded to arrange the dialogues in two large groups: the dialogues of Search and the dialogues of Exposition. But the historian was not determined to trace out that distinction to its full consequences. In the process, the distinction did not consistently render a dichotomous philosophical scheme. Instead Grote treated the dialogues of each category as presenting several, independent, and often contradictory ideas and propositions. Even a group, or category of dialogues, was not dealt with as a homogeneous aggregate of compositions. 81 At other times, the assumed gap separating the two groups was entirely forgotten, and some dialogues were treated as partially belonging to both classes - as for instance the Republic. (The first book in this dialogue, according to Grote, is clearly ‘searching’, whereas the remaining books are predominantly expository.) At other times, Grote’s interpretation tended to minimise the disapproving impressions created by the distinction between the Plato of the early negative compositions and the Plato of the dogmatic pieces. Plato is actually aware that he See G.H. Lewes’ remarks, “Mr. Grote’s Plato”, Fortnightly Review 2 (1865) 10. Cf. Whewell, who criticised Grote for being influenced by the German systematic prejudice, “Grote’s Plato”, Fraser’s Magazine 33 (1866) 40, 43. 81 214 Understanding Plato is not philosophising in the dogmatic pieces (in them he is a ‘well-intentioned preceptor’82); he intentionally abandons valid philosophising for the sake of founding a politeia based on firm legislative principles. Refutation and negation could continue ad infinitum without ever reaching positive results, and this is not what Plato - in his anxiety to reform society - was determined to do. Plato sets aside the marvellous quest for reasoned truth (carried out in the negative pieces) and expounds, in the so-called constructive pieces, principles of imperative universality. But in doing so, he was aware that he departs from the philosophical requisites of his master Socrates. Consequently, as the constructive pieces do not, properly speaking, belong to philosophy, they should not be open to rigid philosophical criticism. As a utilitarian, Grote found much to admire in Plato’s dialogues.83 Of the ‘searching’, Socratic dialogues, he praised the critical disposition and the inquiring intellect; the stimulus afforded to individual judgement and the exhaustive examination of stored-up opinions of centuries. His eulogy of Plato’s negative dialogues (as providing a full philosophical justification of liberty of thought as against convention and social prejudice), as well as his disapproval of the dogmatic writings in which the suppression of dissenting minorities is implicated, reflects, in my view, the influence of J.S. Mill’s essay On Liberty, published in 1859, at the time Grote’s Plato was still in preparation. Of the ‘affirmative’ dialogues, Grote approved of Plato’s theory of education, even though he understood that the philosopher is not the finest source for arguments concerning the abilities of the masses to reach a high standard of enlightenment. Further, Grote praised the philosopher for anticipating the principle of Utility, despite the narrowly egoistic connotation given to it. ‘In thus taking leave of Plato’, Grote wrote in his concluding remark on the Laws, ‘at the close of his longest, latest, and most affirmative composition, it is satisfactory to be able to express unqualified sympathy with this main purpose’, i.e., the ‘security and happiness’ of the community. In commenting on the Republic, Grote confessed that ‘[l]ooking to ideal perfection, I think Plato is right’, especially in postulating that the intrusion of sinister interests would corrupt the ruling class. 84 Earlier in the History, Grote spoke of the influence of Plato on the young Dion in a manner worth reproducing: ‘The influence of Plato during his youth stamped his mature character ... Still, Dion had no experience of the working of a free and popular Plato III 159. It was certainly not by accident that on the title page of his Plato, Grote inserted a passage from the Republic in which the Greek philosopher says ‘for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings, That the useful is noble and the hurtful is base’. Grote cited the passage in the original Greek. See Republic 457b (Jowett’s translation). See Grote’s “Notes and Extracts from Commonplace Books”, Posthumous Papers 165, 195. Like his mentor, James Mill, Grote conceived of Plato in many respects as an ally of the Philosophic Radicals. 84 Plato III 459, III 211-2. 82 83 215 Chapter 7 government. The atmosphere in which his youth was passed, was that of an energetic despotism; while the aspiration which he imbibed from Plato was, to restrain and regularise that despotism, and to administer to the people a certain dose of political liberty, yet reserving to himself the task of settling how much was good for them, and the power of preventing them from acquiring more.’ 85 To understand Grote’s interpretation of Plato’s politics correctly, it should be kept in mind that the utilitarian scholar approved of the end of Plato’s vision while rejecting the means, as the constitutional machinery put in service oversteps the legislator’s authority. This partial agreement explains to a certain degree his mixed feelings and wavering about Plato’s ideas and reforming plans, feelings that are not overshadowed by his orderly and forceful analysis. 85 History XI 133. 216 

Preface and Acknowledgments The first study I ever read on Grote was Arnaldo Momigliano’s Inaugural Lecture at the University College London, delivered on 19 February 1952. Momigliano concluded his lecture with these memorable words: ‘When all is said, it remains true that Grote possessed the all-redeeming virtue of the liberal mind. He was determined to understand and respect evidence from whatever it came; he recognized freedom of speech, tolerance, and compromise as the conditions of civilization; he respected sentiment, but admired reason. One can take some pride in being either a teacher or a pupil in the College which for more than forty years provided so many joys and so many tribulations for George Grote.’ 1 Why one should be so ‘proud’ of a Victorian scholar, however intelligent and inventive, and thus how this enthusiastic statement was to be interpreted, was one of the first issues that would keep for a while recurring in my mind. In the process, and while I was going through Grote’s multi-volume treasure house, I came to understand quite clearly the grounds for this assessment. The following book is a revised and considerably expanded version of my 1993 University College London doctoral thesis George Grote on Plato and Athenian Democracy. In the preparation of the text, all chapters have been transformed and new parts have been added. In rewriting the book, I have also tried to remove subtitles, generalised statements, and tedious material typical to a thesis. Yet glimpses of that material may still be traced, I hope not to a tiresome extent. I incorporated both new bibliographical references and ideas, foreshadowed in journal articles produced in the last four years, especially: “The Sophists, Democracy, and Modern Interpretation”, Polis 14 (1995) 1-30; “In Defence of the British Constitution: Theoretical Implications of the Debate over Athenian Democracy in Britain, 1770-1850”, History of Political Thought 17 (1996) 280-297; “The Development of Platonic Studies in Britain and the Role of the Utilitarians”, Utilitas 8 (1996) 15-37; “Grote on Socrates: an Unpublished Essay of the 1820s in its Context”, Dialogos 3 (1996) 36-50; and “George Grote and the Platonic Revival in Victorian Britain”, Quaderni di Storia, 47 (1998), 17-59. Due to the rather wide scope of this study, I have also tried to give to the chapters a form of ‘selfcontained wholes’. Thus, each chapter usually includes separate introductory section and conclusion. For instance, chapters two, five, and six, while dealing with the reception of Athens and the interpretation of Plato in Britain during the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century as a prelude to the treatment of Grote’s scholarship, I hope stand virtually independent by themselves. 1 A. Momigliano, George Grote and the Study of Greek History (London 1952) 20. Preface and Acknowledgments The present study has enormously profited from many journal articles and monographs. From the last decade, I single out the masterful work of F.M.Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London 1981); the valuable response to Turner by M.R. Stopper, “Greek Philosophy and the Victorians”, Phronesis 26 (1981) 267-285, and R. Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Oxford 1980). More recent works that have been influential in various ways on my study are those of P. Spahn, “George Grote, John Stuart Mill und die antike Demokratie”, in Der klassische Utilitarismus, ed. U. Gähde and W.H. Schrader (Berlin 1992) 145-171; T. Roberts’ Athens on Trial (Princeton 1994); J. Glucker, “The Two Platos of Victorian Britain”, in K.A. Algra, P.W. van der Horst and D.T. Runia, eds. Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy (Leiden, New York, Köln 1996) 385-406; M.F. Burnyeat, “The Past in the Present: Plato as Educator of Nineteenth-Century Britain”, in A.O. Rorty, ed. Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives (London and New York 1998) 353-373; and the learned articles of M. Chambers, G. Huxley, C.H. Kahn and J. Vaio, that appeared in W.M. Calder III and S. Trzaskoma, ed. George Grote Reconsidered. A 200th Birthday Celebration with a First Edition of his essay “On the Athenian Government” (Hildesheim 1996). The works of C. Stray have been impressively informative and have enriched my perspective on the appropriation of the classics in Victorian times. Two of his most recent works that should be particularly cited are “Culture and Discipline: Classics and Society in Victorian England”, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1996) 77-85; “`Thucydides or Grote?´: Classical Disputes and Disputed Classics in Nineteenth-Century Cambridge”, Transactions of the American Philological Association 127 (1997) 363-371. Last, but not least, I would like to make a reference to the work of M.L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (London 1962) which has always been invaluable. The underlying aim of the original research that started in the winter of 1989 was to show the ways in which Grote managed to start a revolution in the history of Greek political thought. My methodology was to provide an account of the ideological uses of ancient Athenian democracy and Platonic philosophy in preGrotean (especially eighteenth-century) literature, and then proceed to the particulars of Grote’s own contribution. Having done this, it would have been easier to show that the publication of his History of Greece (1846-1856) and the Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates (1865) effectively marked a point of departure from a long established tradition of antidemocratic historiography, an idealised Socrates, an idealised Sparta, a long ‘calumniated sophistic race’, and a conception of a ‘divine’ and ‘ethereal’ Plato. In revising the thesis, the above aim and scope of the work (as the ‘table of contents’ indicates) remained substantially the same. However, in setting out to revise the book I encountered queries not clearly present at the time I embarked on the thesis as a student of political science. For xii Preface and Acknowledgments instance, how far is the present work a study of the nineteenth-century ideological reception of classical Greece? How far does it belong to the mainstream of the socalled study of the ‘appropriation of the classics’, that is, the study of the ways ancient political experience and philosophy were employed in the service of contemporary controversies? To a certain degree, dealing with Grote implies in an inescapable sense that one is involved in that sort of study. Indeed, his work is a store of scholarly information, both factual and speculative, but also important in itself as a source of classical Rezeptionsgeschichte in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, however, I believe that by closely adhering to the idea that every facet of human experience is socially constructed historians of classical scholarship tend to exaggerate the correspondence between a scholar’s interpretations and the social and political surroundings.2 This tendency inevitably results in treating past literature solely as the exact embodiment of particularised intentions, as a refined expression and extension of ideological debates.3 Accordingly, abundant hypotheses (presented as objective accounts) are drawn respecting what scholars working under the impact of factors embedded in their historical contexts should have wanted to emphasise or to prove in their interpretations. In the case of Grote, contextualist interpretations have indeed been very fashionable. He himself was a deeply ‘contextual’ scholar. A lifelong committed utilitarian (even his aversion for ornamental and picturesque flights reflects Bentham’s aim in writing, that of expounding ideas clearly in order to be convincing), he was energetically involved in Victorian politics and life (see chapter one). 2 In the history of political ideas, the debate over the proper method of reading past texts has been interminable; see, selectively, W. Harrison, “Texts in Political Theory”, Political Studies 3 (1955) 28-44; J. Dunn, “The Identity of the History of Ideas”, Philosophy 43 (1968) 88-116; Q. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, History and Theory 8 (1969) 3-53; M. Leslie, “In Defence of Anachronism”, Political Studies 18 (1970) 433-77; R. Ashcraft, “On the Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory”, Political Theory 3 (1975) 5-25; N. Wood, “The Social History of Political Theory”, Political Theory 6 (1978) 345-67; I. Shapiro, “Realism in the Study of the History of Ideas”, History of Political Thought 3 (1982) 535-78; C.J. Nedermann, “Skinner’s State: Historical Method and Traditions of Discourse”, Canadian Journal of Political Science 18 (1985) 339-52; C.G. Ryn, “Knowledge and History”, Journal of Politics 44 (1982) 394-408. See also, E. James, Political Theory: Introduction to Interpretation (Chicago 1976); J.G. Gunnell, Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass. 1979); C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts: An Essay on Political Theory, its Inheritance, and the History of Ideas (Princeton 1985). 3 F.M. Turner, according to P. Green, Classical Bearings. Interpreting Ancient History and Culture, (Berkeley, L.A., London 1989) 36, showed that ‘the Victorians, almost without exception, used the ancient world as back-up material for their own social, moral, religious or political prejudices, while at the same time allowing those prejudices totally to dictate the interpretations they formulated of classical authors and institutions: that even (or perhaps especially) the most high-minded of them were ready to ignore, suppress, distort or domesticate any feature of Greek society that appeared patently at odds with their chosen vision. It is a bleakly pessimistic view of human intellectual endeavour; and there is, alas, a horrible degree of truth to it’. xiii Preface and Acknowledgments But apart from the above, there is another intriguing problem that emerges in any thoughtful examination of Grote. The insistence of contemporary scholars on tracing the influence of time-bound political discussions on the construction of the classical past and vice versa, entails, in the case of Grote, something of a paradox. The standpoint and the context from which Grote wrote are not those of a scholar of our own time, and yet we feel at home with him. We cannot be unsympathetic to his defence of the democratic Athenians; we admire his bold rehabilitation of the humanitarian sophists, and we applaud his account of the ‘new politicians’ the pioneering demagogues. This means, perhaps, that Grote belongs to an ideological heritage which, despite so many changes taking place around us, in the age of rapid globalisation, is still with us. Given the substantial agreement of mainstream contemporary thought with Grote’s fundamental political principles, one has to face the problem of how critically adequate is any modern interpretative approach so closely based on the ideological mirror of our own experience. Predictably, this ideological commonality would hamper ‘objective’ judgement.4 The reader may reject the above observations as inapplicable to Grote’s case. As an interpretative reconstruction of classical Greece, it could be argued, Grote’s works primarily refer to the history of culture and classical scholarship rather than to the history of political ideas. Yet in their examinations of Grote, classical scholars have been largely seeking the aid of the interpretive insights of political theory. The increasing interdisciplinarity of the social sciences in recent years creates not only a ‘common ground’ of research and reference, but also common methodological and cognitive dilemmas. These problems, which I touch on in a very preliminary and incomplete way here, and which could possibly form the subject matter for a separate work in the future, determined also the form of the revisions made to the dissertation. In J.T. Roberts draws attention to the problems created by any author’s own time-bound vision of reality in interpreting past literary productions. See Athens on Trial (Princeton 1994) xii: ‘When an author writes about intellectual genealogy, an ineluctable paradox cuts him or her off from all others, for if what Niccolò Machiavelli or James Madison or Benjamin Constant said about Athens needs to be placed in the context of his individual perspective, then of course my own views must be placed in the same context; and how can I cite the wisdom of Mark Hulliung on Machiavelli or Sheldon Wolin on Madison or Stephen Holmes on Constant, as if a birthdate after 1900 somehow guaranteed objectivity and omniscience - something my discussion of recent critiques of Athens ... makes perfectly clear I do not believe?’ And below (16): ‘It is probably safe to say that all scholars, whether historians or biologists or political scientists, perceive themselves as openminded and impartial students of their subject matter ... When I suggest, therefore, that I bring to this enterprise an openness and objectivity lacking in some of my predecessors, no reader has any reason to place faith in my claim.’ According to A. Marwick, The Nature of History (3rd ed., London 1989) 21, those ‘who argue that the accounts of historians are socially constructed, are determined by the era and society in which the historians are living, do tend to claim for themselves the ability to penetrate through the sham façade of objectivity and to be able themselves to present something approaching objective accounts’. 4 xiv Preface and Acknowledgments preparing the text for the publisher, the guiding principle was to retain the initial purpose of the project when it started, namely, to provide both a historiography of Grote’s ideas and an anatomy of his contribution in a way that would allow him to the best possible degree to ‘speak for himself’ (to use one of John Stuart Mill’s favourable expressions). However, and especially in the new material incorporated into the book, there is much relevant to the ideological reception of Athens and Plato, handled, I hope, in a cautious and not dogmatic way. I would particularly like to thank my colleague Savvas Katsikides (University of Cyprus) for his insistence and moral encouragement to revise the thesis for purposes of publication in the series Koinon: Sozialwissenschaftliche Interdisziplinäre Studien. The initial project was supervised by Frederick Rosen (Director of the Bentham Project, University College London, and General Editor of the Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham). The impressive abilities of this scholar, in either conducting his researches or dealing with his various duties as a teacher and a friendly advisor have definitely stamped my perceptions of academic scholarship. I am also deeply indebted to Peter Nicholson (University of York) for intellectual stimulation in 1988-1989 while, with patience and kindness, he discussed with me several questions of Platonic philosophy. It was in the context of these discussions that I turned to Grote who, from the distant nineteenth century, lent support to my hypothesis of the authenticity of the Platonic Minos and Hipparchus. Paschalis M. Kitromilides, whom I remember with gratitude, was responsible for turning my attention to the pursuit of political philosophy while an undergraduate at the University of Athens. I should also like to express my deep gratitude to James H. Burns, Professor Emeritus of the History of Political Thought, University of London, who as one of the examiners of the original thesis kindly suggested to me ways to improve the accuracy and elegance of my argument. Robert B. Todd (University of British Columbia) has constantly over the last two years communicated to me many of his original ideas and unfailingly updated me with useful recent publications on classical issues and the history of ideas. Needless to say, no one is accountable for the errors that remain in this study except myself. Finally, it needs to be emphasised that without the financial support of the A.G. Levendis Foundation the original research would never have been attempted. Also, my special thanks go to the staff of the British Library (Manuscripts Section) and the Library of the University of London for their co-operation and readiness to help. xv 

CONTENTS Foreword by Professor Frederick Rosen vii Preface and Acknowledgments xi ONE 1 The Scholar and the Radical 1 Appendix: Ancient and Modern Education 29 TWO British Historians of Ancient Greece, 1739-1847 33 THREE Grote’s History of Greece (I) 61 FOUR Grote’s History of Greece (II) 91 FIVE The Quest for Wisdom: Plato and Socrates in 18th Century Britain 131 SIX Aspects of Victorian Platonism, 1804-1865 159 SEVEN Understanding Plato 187 EIGHT The Sophists and Socrates 217 NINE The Reception of Grote 245 Conclusion 269 Bibliography 281 Index of Names 307 ix 

Foreword George Grote’s standing as the leading Victorian historian of ancient Greece and interpreter of Plato and Aristotle is now secure and remains very high. In this excellent study of Grote’s life and work, Dr. Kyriacos Demetriou reveals why this is the case. Dr. Demetriou also explores with great effect Grote’s role as a leading utilitarian, a follower of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, and a friend of John Stuart Mill. Like the younger Mill, Grote edited and produced in his twenties a volume of Bentham’s writings, Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, published in 1822 under the pseudonym of Philip Beauchamp. He remained throughout his life committed to the utilitarian theories he associated with Bentham and James Mill. His History of Greece was indebted in a number of respects to the famous History of British India, published by James Mill in 1817. The extent to which J.S. Mill admired and used Grote’s writings has been made fully evident for the first time in the volume containing Mill’s writings on Grote in the new Toronto edition of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Volume XI: Essays on Philosophy and the Classics). Grote has an additional importance to modern utilitarianism than these links suggest. As Dr. Demetriou amply demonstrates, Grote held a mirror up to utilitarianism and found its reflection in ancient Greece. He located the authentic roots of modern utilitarianism, not in the Epicurean tradition much admired by David Hume and Bentham, but in the Socratic elenchos of the Platonic dialogues, the educational achievements of the Sophists, and the main institutions of Athenian democracy. Paradoxically, Grote is admired nowadays not as a leading utilitarian thinker, but as an ancient historian and classical scholar, and his revolutionary views about ancient Athens and the character of its institutions have become the commonplaces of much contemporary classical scholarship. As we are the heirs of Grote’s achievements and accept many of his arguments as assumptions for our own work, it may be difficult to appreciate the revolution in classical studies he initiated. As J.S. Mill pointed out, ‘there is hardly a fact of importance in Grecian history which was perfectly understood before his reexamination of it’ (XI. 328). Grote overturned the traditional view of Athenian democracy as a narrow, unstable and oppressive society without individual liberty. He was responsible for changing the general assessment of the Sophists from that of unscrupulous and subversive fraudsters to important educators of the children of the leading figures in Athens and other cities. He re-interpreted the role of the demagogues in Athenian democracy and the place of ostracism. He paid due attention to the importance of religion in Athenian life and the equal importance of Plato in rejecting many of its common features. He explored the moral character and psychology of major characters in Greek history in an entirely vii Foreword novel manner, but with scrupulous attention to empirical evidence. His accounts of Socrates and Plato’s philosophy are still used as part of the ongoing attempts by philosophers and classicists to come to terms with numerous problems in interpreting the Platonic dialogues. Dr. Demetriou’s account of Grote’s work in these respects shows both the originality of Grote’s achievement and why he was able to make such an important conceptual leap in historical understanding. But even if one grants the importance of Grote’s work in ancient history and philosophy, there remains the mirror of modern thought he created in his writings. Unlike many twentieth century writers, he did not use the Greek experience, as would a prophet, to call upon the modern philosopher to return to his or her roots. His mirror worked in a different manner, as he used the analytical and empirical dimensions of utilitarian philosophy as tools to examine ancient texts to reveal meanings that, for political and religious reasons, had been obscured for centuries. Grote was able to bring an account of Greek democracy and Socratic philosophy to a world prepared by the utilitarians to find it compatible with its own approaches to philosophical problems and its growing commitment to democratic ideas and institutions. To his credit, he did so without ignoring those aspects of ancient thought and philosophy which were hostile to modern utilitarianism. This ancient Greek dimension to modern utilitarianism remains important, if only to counter those who reduce utilitarianism to simple calculations of consequences in terms of pleasure and pain associated with the early chapters of Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Like J.S. Mill, though in a different way, Grote showed that utilitarianism was not a narrow philosophy and the Philosophic Radicals not a peripheral sect. Furthermore, Grote showed that the experience of Athenian democracy could inspire the same regard for the public good that was the hallmark of the utilitarian tradition. Dr. Demetriou’s study takes us back and forth between ancient thought and modern philosophy, and, through Grote, reveals how nineteenth century utilitarianism could find in ancient thought the earliest statement of its objects, which in turn revealed all that was worthy in modern utilitarianism as well as in ancient thought itself. Frederick Rosen Professor of the History of Political Thought Director of the Bentham Project Director of the Centre for Politics, Law and Society University College London viii 

Chapter Five The Quest for Wisdom: Plato and Socrates in eighteenth-century Britain Lord Monboddo (1714-1799), a professed admirer of ancient philosophy and opponent of the rationalist mainstream of eighteenth-century Enlightenment, diagnosed in a letter to Samuel Horsley (24 July 1780), that the ‘great obstruction ... to all Ancient Philosophy, in this country, is first the want of the knowledge of the language of it; and secondly the hold which the wretched philosophy of David Hume, has got of the minds of men here’.1 Monboddo, the eccentric author of the widely read Antient Metaphysics (1779-1799), believed that the ancients, and especially Plato, could provide the means to counteract the sceptical trends of modern science. In his view, the ancients were far superior to the moderns in philosophical and scientific accomplishment because they never advocated the sufficiency of subjective judgement, and instead firmly believed that mind has an autonomous existence and operates continuously in matter. His own age, he contended, was sadly declining and the key to a successful social and political resurrection was ‘the study of ancient men and manners by those who govern us’. Monboddo’s criticism is the best introduction to this chapter as it encapsulates the rationale for scholars turning to Plato in the eighteenth century. The period that lies between the late Renaissance and the Romantic age has often appeared to classical scholars as barren ground for Platonic studies. It is partially true that during the eighteenth century Plato’s name remained in eclipse. Since the age of the so-called Cambridge Platonists, who linked Platonic thought with the metaphysical exegesis of the ‘Divine Plotinus’, Proclus and Iamblichus, the philosopher had little appeal to academic scholars. In Oxford, students were expected to read Forster’s edition of five dialogues, namely, the Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Lovers and Euthyphro,2 whereas at Cambridge Plato was generally neglected or received with profound hostility. 3 As Clarke argued long ago, Plato 1 Quoted in W. Knight, Lord Monboddo and Some of his Contemporaries (London 1900) 118. N. Forster, ed. Platonis Dialogi (Oxford 1745). See L.M. Quiller-Couch, ed. Reminiscences of Oxford by Oxford Men, 1559-1850, Oxford Historical Society Series (Oxford 1892) XXII 137. Some dialogues were of course recommended for outside reading. The Timaeus was always among Plato’s most appealing pieces; see A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass. 1936) 45-51, 339. 3 Charles Crawford (b. 1752), fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge, published A Dissertation on the Phaedon of Plato: or the Dialogue of the immortality of the soul. With some general Observations (London 1773), which is throughout hostile to Plato. Crawford argued that ‘the credit which Plato has acquired in the world is the greatest satire upon the understanding of mankind’ (xvi). ‘I hope’ he wrote, ‘if I do not by the following remarks raise a contempt for 2 Chapter 5 was unfashionable because an age of common sense was not prepared to accept a philosophy associated with abstruse doctrines and mysticism. The neoplatonic implications that still surrounded Plato’s works discouraged new and independent approaches. On another level, the rise of nationalism and political radicalism created a social and cultural context that no longer depended on classical Greece. Instead, the eighteenth century, as Turner argues, turned to Rome and its republican tradition to support the virtues of a mixed constitutional order. 4 Bolgar similarly observes that eighteenth-century scholars ‘did not turn to the classical heritage for information or guidance as their predecessors had done, but used appeals to antiquity propaganda-fashion to justify contemporary political or cultural programmes’5. The eighteenth century was an epoch of conflicts within society, of rapid and often violent political change, in which traditional structures were broken to pieces. The age was characterised by a firm belief that the world could be improved by applying reason to social and political questions. The example of Greece could not provide an inspiration to break away from the political and social restrictions of the old regime. In this political and intellectual atmosphere, the credentials of the classical heritage had been questioned. However, the idea of Plato having no disciples in Britain during this period should not be pressed too hard. Even though a complete translation of Plato appeared only in 1804, there was no lack of translations and editions of single dialogues and selected texts. In fact, there was increasing study of Plato during the eighteenth century which, as Evans argued more than fifty years ago, cannot be ignored by anyone who wishes to understand the re-emergence of Platonism as a literary influence in the Romantic age.6 During the eighteenth century, more than twenty editions appeared, singly or in groups. Of the English versions, the greatest number included in the traditional canon was translated for the first time. 7 Plato’s works, to be able to make the Man detested’ (xxi). He went on to attack Plato for being homosexual. In discussing Plato’s dialogues he often inserted exclamations like ‘O incredibilem Audaciam! O Impudentiam Praedicandam!’ On the perceived sterility of classical studies in eighteenth-century Oxford, see the personal recollections of Gibbon, Autobiography (London 1914) 40-51. According to Adam Smith ‘in the university of Oxford, the greater part of the publick professors have ... given up altogether even the pretence of teaching’, quoted in D.D. Raphael, Adam Smith (Oxford 1985) 10. See also Campbell and Skinner, Adam Smith 24-6, 43. 4 F.M. Turner, “Why the Greeks and not the Romans in Victorian Britain?”, in G.W. Clarke, ed. Rediscovering Hellenism: The Hellenic Inheritance and the English Imagination (Cambridge 1989) 61-81. See also in the same volume, P. Wilson, “High Pindaricks upon stilts’ 23-41. 5 R.R. Bolgar, ed. Classical Influences on Western Thought, A.D. 1650-1870 (Cambridge 1979) 8; M.L. Clarke, Greek Studies in England: 1700-1830 (Cambridge 1945) 112. See also John H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy (New York and London 1931) 13. 6 F.B. Evans III, “Platonic Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century England”, Modern Philology 41 (1943) 103. 7 A selective list would include: Plato’s Dialogue of the Immortality of the Soul [Phaedo], trans. Lewis Theobald (London 1713); Edmund Massey, ed. Platonis de Republica, Greek and Latin, 2 132 The Quest for Wisdom Towards the end of the first half of the century, certain scholars stood out against the neglect of Plato, claiming that a philosophical anatomy of his religious and ethical doctrines as well as the discovery of the underlying purpose of his political writings could help correct the ‘faults and ills’ of the age. These scholars projected an idealistic appreciation of Platonic thought that aimed at disseminating moral caution. As George Stubbes (1697-1737), fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, argued, Plato’s philosophy ‘contains all the Secrets of Political as well as Moral knowledge, and comprehends the entire Theory of Government’.8 On the other hand, Bacon, Hobbes and Locke were often criticised for defending the mechanical theory of the universe and, along with it, the sovereignty of the senses against the essentially unchangeable system of moral truths. The arguments of the empiricist philosophers, Platonists believed, had a pernicious influence on the traditional ethical and political code of the Britons. Thus, the ancients, and particularly Plato and Socrates, were called to aid a moral crusade against the supposedly deleterious effects of modern philosophy and science. On the other hand, Platonists saw the sophists as the counterparts of contemporary sceptical theorists, whose innovations threatened the moral foundations of society. In the new approaches to Plato, rationalism was criticised for having a negative impact upon ethics and religious beliefs. Platonic tenets, on the other hand, were expected to promote sound moral and political views. The “Advertisement” prefixed to the edition of Pericles’ Funeral Oration and Plato’s Menexenus by Edward Bentham (1707-1776), Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford, is a representative example of the tendency to invoke classical antiquity as an instrument for edification. Plato’s philosophy in particular, Bentham argued, could promote patriotism, Christian charity, good nature, and encourage the preservation of a balanced constitution: It is indeed the duty of those who, in directing the course of ingenuous education, are apt to pay a particular regard to classical studies, occasionally, and by proper examples, to point out their usefulness, and thereby shew the probability there is of deriving from thence many substantial advantages. This they owe to their own vindication, and to the encouragement of young Gentlemen in that closeness of application which is necessary to give success to their literary pursuits ... At the same time, let them enrich their imaginations, let them strengthen and correct their judgments by a proper attention to the liberal sciences and modern histories. Using these means, it will not be long before they may venture to enlarge their flights, vols. (Cambridge 1713); John W. Thomson, Parmenides, Greek and Latin (Oxford 1728); E. Bentham, ed. Menexenus, in Greek (Oxford 1746). Several other dialogues are mentioned in this chapter. 8 George Stubbes, A Dialogue in the Manner of Plato. On the Superiority of the Pleasures of the Understanding to the Pleasures of the Senses (London 1734) iv-v. See also, A Dialogue on Beauty. In the Manner of Plato (London 1731; reprint, New York 1970). 133 Chapter 5 and judge for themselves how far antient representations, whether historical or political, under a similitude of circumstances, may be adapted to present times: Thence they will naturally proceed to draw forth into common use such precedents, as may be regarded with reverence, and followed with success ... I hope the present publication may tend to some National Use, as well as Academical Improvement.9 PLATO THE MORALIST A lively interest in Platonic philosophy arose in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland. Henry Spens (1713-87), Minister of Wemyss, was the first to offer a translation of the Republic with an introductory essay on Plato’s relevance for the moderns. It should be noted that it was in Glasgow that the Foulis brothers (the most eminent Scottish printers of the age) addressed, in 1751, their proposal (primarily to James Moor, Professor of Greek at the local university) to supervise the first volume of Plato’s dialogues, which was to contain the Laws and Epinomis.10 The plan, clearly suggestive of the renewed interest in Plato, never progressed owing to the small number of subscribers. Meanwhile, James Geddes (d. 1748) and William Duff (1732-1815), both Scotsmen, took the initiative in directing attention to Plato’s literary excellence and poetic imagination. Geddes’ work, entitled An Essay on the Composition and Manner of Writing of the Antients, Particularly Plato, was published by Foulis in 1748. The book was primarily concerned with exposing the merits of Plato’s literary accomplishment, but also included shorter sections on his religious and metaphysical speculation, which were designed to establish the normative significance of the philosopher for the moderns. Praising Plato’s ‘rhetorical and poetic beautys’, Geddes argued that, As a philosopher, Plato shews himself always intent on finding out the truth, and laying before mankind, such important maxims, as will be highly useful in the conduct of life; whether he discourses on religion and divine matters, or on abstract points, as the nature and immateriality of the soul, on politics or morals, he so handles every subject, as always to investigate, and if possible discover and separate what is real and natural from what is fictitious and artificial ... His dissertations on divine and human affairs, end not in empty metaphysical speculation, but are calculated to kindle a love to the DEITY, and instruct us in all the various dutys of life.11 9 E. Bentham, ed. Two Orations in Praise of Athenians Slain in Battle, from the Greek with Reflexions (London 1759) “Advertisement”. Bentham’s “Reflexions” that follow (1-34) provide a typical example of the pedagogical use of the Greeks. 10 See Gentleman’s Magazine 21 (1751) 430-31. 11 J. Geddes, An Essay on the Composition and Manner of Writing of the Antients, Particularly Plato (Glasgow 1748) 96-7. The essay, left unfinished due to Geddes’ untimely death, contains his short biography. Geddes, we learn ‘studied the different branches of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and particularly prosecuted the Mathematical studies ... [Then] he studied Law ... and admitted Advocate. He practised at the Bar for several years with growing reputation’. 134 The Quest for Wisdom Plato’s style, Geddes believed, was inferior to Homer (whom Plato imitates ‘in the beautys of descriptive poetry’), though in other respects, and especially concerning religion, he was correcting and supplementing the poet’s transcendental vision. Interestingly, Geddes’ identification of the ‘true orator’ with the talented individual who advances the welfare and happiness of society by his moral activity, is the exact equivalent to Plato’s idealist conception of the true philosopher. Plato’s eloquence consisted of unfolding the ‘beauty of honesty and truth’, the pleasures of noble social affections, and the love of God. Unlike the sophists, Geddes argued, the philosopher was not an arrogant dogmatist, but he earnestly laboured to confute their false notions and presumptuous vanity. The unfortunate association of Plato with mysticism by the moderns is due to the various ‘glosses of commentators’, such as the later Platonists, who ‘commonly use a vain parade of dark and unintelligible words, they mimic the noble enthusiasm in the periods of their great Master; but are happy in nothing so much as in rendering him more obscure’. Socrates, the philosopher’s great mentor, is pronounced by Geddes the sublime hero of the age, the declared enemy of the sophists - those ‘wicked flatterers and Impostors’. The sophists, by dogmatising on several aspects of ethical questions, had spoiled and corrupted public morals: ‘Whoever is conversant in Plato’s writings, will easily perceive, how much eloquence had been prostituted by the sophists, and orators in his days. These persons studied only what would gratify the people, without considering the nature of true and genuine pleasure, they were intent on nothing but to sooth and flatter their vices and follys.’ Thus Plato, according to the Scottish scholar, following his mentor’s example, conducted a philosophical and moral mission against sophistic secularism. But unlike Socrates’ dry conversation, he thought it necessary to introduce into his dialogues rhetorical and linguistic ornaments that would enable the ‘witty and elegant Athenians’ to ‘digest a philosophic lecture’. The dialogues can indeed be distinguished between the ‘exhortative’ and the ‘explorative’; but this distinction should not obscure the essential unity and connection between them. The dialogues, Geddes believed, are all parts of a whole, in the sense that the several parts ‘are the best fund of comment on each other’.12 Duff similarly elaborated on Plato’s ‘ardor and enthusiasm of Imagination which distinguishes the Poet’. The philosophy of Plato, ‘is calculated to elevate and to expand the soul; to settle, to sooth, to refine the passions; and to warm the heart with the love of virtue’. 13 Plato’s doctrines are just an exemplification and 12 Essay 140, 73, 139n. W. Duff, An Essay on Original Genius, and its Various Modes of Exertion in Philosophy and the Fine Arts, particularly in Poetry (London 1767) 104-105. See also Robert Wood, An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (London 1769) which was translated into German by C.F. Michaelis, Versuch über das Originalgenie des Homers (Frankfurt 1773); and in French, Essai sur le génie original d’Homère (Paris 1777). 13 135 Chapter 5 proof of his speculative ‘Genius’: his contemplations concerning to on and the existence and unity of the supreme Being; his conception of the perfection and providence of the Deity; his theory concerning the causes, first principles, and generation of things, ‘and the soul which animates and actuates the whole frame of Nature’ - all these perfectly characterise a ‘Philosophic Genius’.14 Duff suggested that his readers should consult the Timaeus where they would find Plato’s inexhaustible mine of ideas regarding the soul of the world, the causes and formation of things, and all the sublime mysteries of his philosophical theology. In the same theoretical context, we can place Gilbert West (1703-1756), an Oxford graduate and intimate of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), whose translation of The Odes of Pindar accommodated an English version of Plato’s Menexenus. West, an enthusiastic admirer of Pindar, promptly recognised Plato’s ‘equal Judgement and Eloquence through the greater part of [the present] Panegyrick’. Plato’s minor mistakes, like the quite ‘unphilosophical and absurd’ idea that the Athenians sprung ‘originally out of the Earth, the very Land in which they dwelt’, should not obscure his immediate importance to modern perceptions of virtue. 15 West, along with Geddes and Duff, appreciated Plato’s imaginative style in a way that can be paralleled with the pathos of Coleridge and Shelley for Plato. Their approaches, replete with certain dogmatic beliefs, were definitely deficient in textual criticism and exegesis. While principally concerned with Plato’s ‘inspired poetry’ and literary accomplishment, they lost no opportunity to stress the ethical import of the philosopher’s speculation and its significance for the moderns. The remedial character of the appropriation of Plato’s philosophy was more emphatically exemplified in the works of their contemporaries, Spens and Ebenezer Macfait (d. 1786). Macfait, a Greek scholar and mathematician, turned explicitly to Plato for moral instruction pointing out that the ‘taste of this present age does not seem to be great for books of ancient learning; and the writings of Plato are much neglected among the rest’. 16 His main objective had been to challenge the widespread attitude of derogation towards Plato that emerged out of Duff, On Original Genius 107-112. Earlier Duff argued that ‘[t]he kind of Imagination most properly adapted to Original Philosophic Genius, is that which is distinguished by REGULARITY, CLEARNESS, and ACCURACY. The kind peculiar to Original Genius in Poetry, is that whose essential properties are a noble IRREGULARITY, VEHEMENCE, and ENTHUSIASM’ (96-7). Plato, according to Duff, combined both characteristics, a very rare occurrence in the history of ideas. 15 G. West, Odes of Pindar with Several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, translated from the Greek. To which is added A Dissertation on the Olympick Games, 2 vols. (London 1753, first ed. 1749) I 282-3. The Menexenus appears in vol. II 277-320. It is worth observing that unlike contemporary classicists, the Oxford scholar praised the Athenians, ‘unquestionably the first and greatest People of Greece’. 16 E. Macfait, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Plato. With Answers to the Principal Objections against him; and a general view of his DIALOGUES (Edinburgh 1760) 3. 14 136 The Quest for Wisdom the controversy between the ancients and moderns. 17 Plato, he argued, had been called a mystical writer because commentators deliberately concentrated on a few abstruse passages scattered in the dialogues. 18 It was never taken into consideration that interpretative difficulties mainly occur in those passages where Socrates’ most deserved pupil presents the metaphysical speculations of other philosophers, like Parmenides or Pythagoras. It is uncertain whether Plato himself adopted the opinions of the cosmologists, which he occasionally recorded. Furthermore, Plato might have wanted to conceal his most ‘unorthodox’ views from the eyes of the ignorant in order to protect himself from persecution: ‘Plato did not speak directly on certain subjects; even our SAVIOUR often spoke in parables, that he only who had ears to hear might be instructed.’ 19 To these considerations it must be added, according to Macfait, that a great part of the mysteries ascribed to Plato simply reflect the peculiar mystical preferences of his commentators, and especially those of the Neoplatonists. The reader should not expect to find in Plato crystal clear philosophical propositions. As all poetry is enigmatical, and Plato’s works constitute a sort of ‘sublime poems’, it is extremely hard to understand every passage in a strictly literal sense. Plato’s moral and political teaching, Macfait argued, was directed to assist in the development of superior mental characteristics of the people: One may venture to affirm, that the tendency of Plato’s writings is, as much as possible ... to depress pride; to inspire sobriety and moderation of sentiments; and conquer the love of paradoxes and vain glory by the love of truth. This tendency of those dialogues would alone be sufficient to recommend their merit; but it also happens, that they are extremely proper to oppose against the sceptical ungenerous philosophy that is attempted to be revived in this present age; for there is a surprising resemblance between many of the opinions of the ancient sophists and our modern sceptical philosophers; whether it be that they have borrowed from their predecessors, or that the errors of the human mind are similar in all ages.20 On the controversy see, C. Vasoli, “La première querelle des ‘anciens’ et des ‘modernes’ aux origines de la Renaissance” in Bolgar, ed. Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 15001700 (Cambridge 1976) 67-80; Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature 261-88; R.F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley 1965). For the significance of the dispute to the emergence of the Enlightenment, see P. Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York 1966). 18 Macfait attacked particularly H.S. Bolingbroke (1678-1751) who accused Plato of folly and corrupt morals. See Bolingbroke’s Collected Works, 5 vols. (London 1754-1777) IV 140-41. An early example of this treatment is to be found in Samuel Parker, A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie (Oxford 1666). 19 Macfait, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Plato 70. 20 Remarks 78. 17 137 Chapter 5 Plato’s political theory developed out of his profound dislike of democracy. The great philosopher was, in effect, primarily concerned with reforming the constitution of the state. Democracy made the naturally irresponsible citizen masses aware of their collective strength: ‘The people were becoming excessively ready to be agitated by factious orators; great fortune and merit was continually exposed to danger; in so much that we find the poor man in Xenophon’s banquet boasting of his poverty, being now not only below the rage of the Demagogues, but even dreaded and courted by the rich.’21 Plato, disillusioned at the spectacle of treachery and the intrigues of faction, retired from public life and devoted himself to the construction of a pattern of government that breathed a spirit of mildness and humanity. While the general plan of the Republic and the Laws did not eventually succeed in providing a practicable model for real life, it stands as a noble dream: One great design of his republic is to prove virtue to be the natural good, and vice the natural ill of every creature. In order to illustrate the arguments on this subject, he formed an imaginary plan of a commonwealth, that he might have opportunity of explaining the just principles of government, and showing the pernicious tendency of vice in any state. He shows how near a resemblance the character of a community bears to the characters of individuals.22 Macfait’s book was dryly received by the Monthly Review. But, despite his declared scepticism about Macfait’s abilities as a scholar, the reviewer argued that the book succeeded in vindicating Plato from ‘the charge of being mysterious and obscure’. Incontestably, the reviewer believed, the moderns would benefit from a more intensive study of the illuminating texts of the ancient philosophers. 23 Macfait was right in reclaiming the significance of classical philosophy for modern life, and especially in a period of perceived moral and political decay. While for Macfait Plato’s dialogues amply showed the detestable character of democratic government, and elaborated through the story of Socrates the shortcomings of political partisanship and the depravity of the Athenian politicians, in Spens’ long introductory essay Plato was made to take the lead against deism. It should be remembered that the eighteenth-century English deists, like Bolingbroke, Anthony Collins, Thomas Chubb, Peter Annet, and others, sought to eliminate the miraculous from theological belief, aiming at a rational faith. They rejected revelation and the doctrine of the Trinity and believed in the possibility of salvation for the heathen. Their humanistic crusade was directed against what they conceived of as obscurantism and prejudice. A great deal of the 21 Remarks 58. Remarks 94. 23 Monthly Review 23 (1760) 349-53. 22 138 The Quest for Wisdom discussions over Plato in the eighteenth century cannot be understood without reference to the controversy between the deists and their orthodox adversaries. Spens opened his introductory essay by commenting on the ‘advocates for the Ancients’, namely, those who wished to renew interest in the wisdom of ancient philosophers by establishing the coincidence of philosophical pursuits with the quest for objective reality. Sparing no harsh criticism against democratic regimes, Spens dealt with Plato as a resolute opponent of Athenian democracy and as the principal enemy of the sophists. In every democracy, he wrote, ‘the people are enemies of the good ... men, who, to serve their own ends, sooth the passions of others, and give countenance and encouragement to popular vices and corruptions’.24 The Greek sage worked indefatigably to instruct his fellow citizens in piety and virtue. But how could a heathen teach virtue? Even though Plato and Socrates did not enjoy the advantages of revealed religion, Divine Providence raised their intellects far beyond the average for their generation in order to check the lamentable progress of corruption. In the absence of God’s assistance, Plato could have never enunciated several doctrines that were compatible with revealed truths. If the ‘false pretenders to learning’ had taken pains to compare the conclusions of reasoned and revealed religion, they would have realised how close is their correspondence. Plato’s subterraneous care, so elegantly described [in his dialogues], and so universally known, may be considered as another instance of a conformity in his sentiments with those contained in Revelation. It gives us a lively representation of the ignorance and degeneracy of mankind in the present state, where numbers are busied in pursuing after shadows, as the only real and substantial goods; while they neglect the culture of the mind, and never raise their ideas to the beauty and perfection of that supreme intelligence, which is the origin and the end of all ... How wonderful is the correspondence between these sentiments, and some capital tenets in religion; and how striking is the likeness!25 As the Christian religion established a new order of things with a view to delivering people from evil, similarly Plato in the Republic, Spens argued, envisioned the construction of an ideal state for the salvation of people’s souls. In this political treatise, Plato, in a manner that recalls the doctrines of the inspired prophets and apostles, expounds the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and describes a future state of rewards and punishments. Indeed, Platonic theology shows that ‘Natural and revealed religion, though commonly distinguished, may be considered as parts of one and the same great plan of providence’. 26 Genuine philosophy, according to Spens, always promotes true religious belief. In this 24 H. Spens, The Republic of Plato in Ten Books (Glasgow 1763) xi. The Republic of Plato xxi. 26 The Republic of Plato xxii. 25 139 Chapter 5 regard, Plato (demonstrably a genuine philosopher) could have aided the young Britons to free themselves from superstition, ignorance, and all the harmful influences of modern secular theories that subverted ‘polite manners’.27 Closing his introductory analysis, Spens turned once again to the importance of the ancients. It is not easily to be conceived, how much our liberal youth, might not only enrich their language, and improve their taste in all the more elegant arts, but likewise ennoble their sentiments with reference to higher matters, by a familiar acquaintance with those models, that are transmitted to us from the most polite nations of antiquity. The taste and manner which it behooves a Briton to study and cultivate ought surely to be correspondent to these inestimable blessings he enjoys, and to those kindred conceptions of illustrious nations of old.28 At the time Plato was discussed in Scotland, the Londoner Floyer Sydenham (1710-1787) embarked on an ambitious project to translate the entire Platonic corpus into English. In 1759, Sydenham issued A Synopsis or General View of the Works of Plato, in which he put forward a thematic distribution of the dialogues and explained their philosophical interest. Between that year and 1780, he published nine translations of single dialogues. Plain indifference on behalf of prospective readers however strongly discouraged him. Thus, at the end of his translation of the Symposium, Sydenham appended a dramatic ‘Proposal for New Subscriptions’. ‘Some Persons’, he wrote, ‘who had given in to the Author’s Friends their Names as Subscribers, whether thro Forgetfulness or Change of Mind, refused to take the first Dialogues which were sent to them’, resulting in a great number of copies being left in the author’s hands.29 It was characteristic of the difficulties Sydenham faced that almost no single dialogue was printed by the same publisher. W. Sandby, H. Woodfall, William Richardson, Baker and Leigh, and others were among those publishers who took the financial risk of publishing a scholarly but definitely not a popular work. It is worth observing that According to R. Garnett, ‘[t]he long disquisition upon Plato which Spens has prefixed to his translation is eminently characteristic of the eighteenth century, elegant in diction, philanthropic in intention, and devoid of real grasp or insight. It neither throws nor endeavours to throw any new light upon Plato himself ... He deplores the decay of the taste for ancient literature, and agrees with almost all contemporary writers in lamenting the luxury of the age, and the universal propensity to read for mere amusement. The perusal of the Republic, he deems, may allure the thoughtless reader’; see “Introduction” to Spens’ translation of the Republic (Everyman’s ed., London 1906). 28 The Republic of Plato xl. 29 Sydenham, The Banquet, A Dialogue of Plato Concerning Love (London 1767). The Monthly Review 36 (1767) 422-3 immediately lamented that ‘a work of such literary consequence as the translation and illustration of Plato must lie unexecuted for want of pecuniary encouragement’. 27 140 The Quest for Wisdom Sydenham, unable to get subscribers, or even to retain those who had promised to support the scheme, faced a tragic end in a debtor’s prison.30 Sydenham was a well-qualified Greek scholar and his commentaries occasionally include valuable critical reflections. For instance, drawing on the ancient distinction between the ‘sceptical’ and the so-called ‘dogmatical’ compositions, he argued that the first category embraced works that affirmed nothing and, thus, should not be taken as preparatory to themes of the constructive pieces. Further, even though he understood Platonic dialectic in the light of the conventional idea of an embittered antagonism between philosophy and sophistry, he was generally disinclined to pass indictment against the whole sophistic ‘tribe’. He distinguished between those designated sophists prior to the fifth century B.C., and the itinerant professors of rhetoric at the times of Pericles. The sophists who belonged to the latter group, in his judgement, were alone responsible for the association of sophism with vain rhetoric and fallacious reasoning. 31 Plato’s quarrel was exclusively with them. Not surprisingly, Sydenham’s ‘Philosophic Hero’ was Socrates, who, in his whole conduct, was modest ‘and careful to avoid the least Degree of Ostentation; in all his Discourse he was solicitous above all things for the Truth in every Subject, and proposed to himself That as the principal End in all his Disputes, Inquirys and Researches’. 32 Sydenham shared with the ‘friends of the ancients’ the idea that Plato’s philosophy could provide to his contemporaries normative tools for rethinking common perceptions of good and right. Virtue, consisting of order and proportion, should be inscribed in the civil constitution of every state. The end of all Platonic writings, is ‘the END of all true PHILOSOPHY or Wisdom, the Perfection and the HAPPINESS of MAN ... Thus the TWO great Objects of the Platonic Philosophy are TRUTH and VIRTUE’. This ‘perfection’ of ‘Man consists in his Similitude to this SUPREME BEAUTY; and in his Union with it is found his SUPREME GOOD’.33 Sydenham agreed with eighteenth-century Platonists in emphasising Plato’s transcendental vision which corresponded more or less to Christian theology. Plato’s Doctrine tends to prove and to illustrate these two great Truths of Universal and Natural Religion, - the First, that there is One Supreme all-perfect Being, Universal Mind, the sole Cause of all Good; - the other, that ’tis only Wisdom, or the Knowledge of this Supreme Being, thro which any Man can avoid the Pollutions of this World of Sense, and become pure enough to attain hereafter to a Divine State of Bliss in that higher world of purest mind. See E.I. Carlyle, “Sydenham, Floyer”, D.N.B. (1898) LX 245; and, J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1715-1886 (London 1888). 31 Sydenham, The Greater Hippias. A Dialogue of Plato Concerning the Beautiful (London 1759) 19n., 26-7n. 32 Banquet 10; similarly, The Second Alcibiades. A Dialogue Concerning Prayer (London 1776) 15n. 33 Sydenham, Synopsis or General View of the Works of Plato (London 1759) 13-4, 18. 30 141 Chapter 5 Following Sydenham’s death, Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), self-named ‘Platonist’, continued and completed the translation of Plato’s dialogues. His finished voluminous product of 1804 was throughout imbued with the mysticism of Iamblichus, Plotinus and Proclus. 34 In his long introduction to the Collected Works, Taylor claimed that the philosophy of Plato was and would remain forever the true ‘Bible’, revealing to the intelligent believer his mission on earth. Plato shows that corporeal life is for the wise only a preparatory stage before ascending upwards to be united with the One, where the ultimate felicity (eudaimonia) is to be found. As long as the soul inhabits the earth, it is in a fallen condition, ‘an apostate from deity, an exile from the orb of light’. The philosophy of Plato can liberate the soul from its material chains, and ‘elevate her to ethereal splendors, and place her in the islands of the blessed’, provided that the student is able to penetrate his ‘divine mania’ and esoteric dogmas - ability Taylor contended he himself possessed.35 Plato’s philosophy, may be compared to a luminous pyramid, terminating in Deity, and having for its basis the rational soul of man and its spontaneous unperverted conceptions, - of this philosophy, august, magnificent, and divine, Plato may be justly called the primary leader and hierophant, through whom, like the mystic light in the inmost recesses of some sacred temple, it first shone forth with occult and venerable splendor. It may indeed be truly said of the whole of this philosophy, that it is the greatest good which man can participate: for if it purifies us from the defilements of the passions and assimilates us to Divinity, it confers on us the proper felicity of our nature. 36 The Neoplatonists were the legitimate exponents of Plato’s ideas. Yet, Taylor complained, their texts were unjustly neglected. Instead, Platonic scholars were inclined to employ ‘regular and scientific methods’ in analysing the dialogues. In doing so, they appeared to be ‘ignorant that Plato, conformably to all the other great philosophers of antiquity, wrote in such a way as to conceal the sublimest of his doctrines from the vulgar’.37 Plotinus and his followers until the fall of the Roman Empire, attributed to Plato dogmas which were legitimately extracted 34 On Taylor see, K. Raine and G.M. Harper, ed. Thomas Taylor the Platonist: Selected Writings (Princeton 1969); on Taylor’s impact on the Romantic Movement see, K. Raine, “Thomas Taylor, Plato and the English Romantic Movement”, British Journal of Aesthetics 8 (1968) 99-123. For original sources, see Taylor’s Collectanea: or, Collections, consisting of Miscellanies inserted in the European and Monthly Magazines. With an Appendix, containing some Hymns by the same Author, never before printed (London 1806). 35 The Works of Plato, 5 vols. (London 1804) I lxiii and lxvii. 36 The Works of Plato I iii. 37 Taylor, The Commentaries of Proclus on the ‘Timaeus’ of Plato, in Five Books, 2 vols. (London 1820) I vi. 142 The Quest for Wisdom from the philosopher’s sublime speculations - destined, in Taylor’s view, to remain incomprehensible to rationalists. Granted his hostility towards rationalism, it is not surprising that in analysing Plato, Taylor found a convenient channel to attack the tendency of his contemporaries ‘to reduce everything to scientific axioms’. Taylor disapproved of mechanistic philosophy and consistently questioned the reliability of the senses in discovering unchangeable moral principles. Speaking about Plato’s theory of fate and providence, he characteristically argued that his interpretation would doubtless appear confusing and enigmatic to those readers who ‘have been nursed ... in the bosom of matter, the pupils of experiment, the darlings of sense’, and addressed his discourse to ‘those who consider experiment as the only solid criterion of truth’. 38 In his Creed of the Platonic Philosopher (1805), Taylor openly declared himself an antiChristian and a polytheist, as genuine philosophers, he thought, should be.39 His intellectual religion was Platonic in substance, for Plato, he believed, premised mind to be the primary reality of the universe, and not matter. The true philosopher is, by definition, a legitimate student of Plato, the one ‘who possesses a naturally good disposition; is sagacious and acute, and is inflamed with an ardent desire for the acquisition of wisdom and truth; who from his childhood has been well instructed in the mathematical disciplines; who, besides this, has spent whole days, and frequently the greater part of the night, in profound meditation’. 40 Taylor’s idealist vision of the true philosopher had a certain appeal to the Romantics and a wide readership in America, but it was far removed from the image of the philosopher-scientist of the new age to have any impact on the utilitarian empiricists. It was no accident that his harshest critic was the philosopher and historian James Mill who brought with him a solid background in Enlightenment Scottish education. AGE OF SOCRATISM Even though Plato appealed only to a few scholars usually outside the academic community, a fervent admiration surrounded the name of Socrates. In the eighteenth century, Socrates appeared in the guise of a saint and a martyr for truth and morality. In the common perception, Socrates was the man who resolutely opposed a sceptical philosophy of a kind that was being revived in the works of 38 The Works of Plato I lxxix, lxxxiii. Taylor, Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse: containing the Triumph of the Wise Man over Fortune, according to the Doctrine of the Stoics and Platonists; The Creed of the Platonic Philosopher (London 1805). 40 The Works of Plato I cxii. His attempt to uncover the depths of Platonic philosophy is described in verse: ‘Vent’rous I tread in paths untrod before/ And depths immense, and dazzling heights explore/ Anxious from Error’s night to point the way/ That leads to Wisdom’s everlasting day’, Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse 54. 39 143 Chapter 5 modern liberal and rationalist philosophers. His mission was to promulgate the philosophy of aretê (goodness or practical ability) and advocate the eternal moral rules against the sceptical and hedonistic maxims of the sophists. Viewed in this light, Socrates received the most elevated feelings of admiration and praise, and his image was poetically adorned in statements full of sentiment and eulogy. To the anonymous author of the Essay on the Character of Socrates, for instance, the Greek sage appeared to ‘have been created an example to man, and as a proof of the excellence at which our nature can arrive’. Socrates was ‘the highest ornament of creation, a guiltless and undaunted Soul’. 41 John Gilbert Cooper (1723-1769), a poet and a literary man, characteristically portrayed Socrates as a ‘martyr for Truth, Religion and Virtue’. Socrates was the first who did altogether apply himself to the study of Moral Philosophy ... [and] from the beginning laboured under ... Disadvantages and Difficulties, which to others would have been insurmountable. He had the Prejudices of Education first to overcome in himself, the Custom-protected Ignorance of others to enlighten, Sophistry to confute, Malice, Envy, Calumny, and continual Insults of his Adversaries to endure, Poverty to undergo, Power to contend with, and what was the greatest Labor of all, the vulgar Terrors and Darkness of Superstition to dissipate; all which, we shall find in the Sequel, he overcame with the true Wisdom of a philosopher, and the disinterested Virtue of a Patriot, the Patience of a Saint, and the Resolution of a Hero, at the Expense of all worldly Pleasure, Wealth, Power, Fame, and lastly Life itself, which he chearfully laid down for the Service of his Country; sealing with his Blood a Testimony of the Love he bore to his own Species, and his unchangeable Duty to the CREATOR and GOVERNOR of all Things.42 Socrates was condemned unjustly but for a just purpose. To posterity, he will remain a great example: Thus liv’d and dy’d this great and godlike Man, whose Life and Death was in every Respect conformable to that Idea he himself entertained of the Dignity of human Nature, our Duty to Society, and religious Service to the CREATOR of all Things. All his Actions, as well as divine Discourses, were living Precepts of Prudence, Justice, Modesty and Fortitude. In Youth he was the Son of Temperance, in Manhood the Brother of social Love, and in Age the Father of Wisdom. His 41 Anon., An Essay on the Character and Doctrines of Socrates (Oxford 1802) 5, 22. J.G. Cooper, The Life of Socrates collected from the ‘Memorabilia’ of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato (London 1749) 20-22. Cooper was translated into French, La Vie de Socrate (Amsterdam 1751). Moses Mendelssohn, whose ‘Phaedon’, or, the Death of Socrates, was translated from the German by Charles Cullen in 1789, xxxii, similarly wrote the encomium of Socrates: ‘The happiness of the human race was his sole study. As soon as any opinion or superstition occasioned an open violence, the invasion of the natural rights of men, or the corruption of their morals, no threats or persecution could deter him from declaring against it.’ 42 144 The Quest for Wisdom Politics consisted in the most unifluenc’d Patriotism, his Philosophy in the most refin’d Humanity, and his Religion in the most exalted Notions and pure Adoration of the only true God. By the first, he fir’d Mankind with the most undaunted Zeal for the Welfare of their Country; by the second, he soften’d their Hearts to the tender Feelings of Benevolence and universal Charity; and by the last, he familiariz’d their Minds to the Idea of an all-perfect DEITY, and taught them almost to anticipate on Earth the Joys of a glorious Hereafter. In each of these he was himself a great Example.43 In most works, Socrates was identified as a proto-Christian, pure and absolutely detached from worldly desires. At times of idolatry and superstition, the Greek sage taught a rational doctrine which was essentially compatible with the idea of one supreme Deity and one sovereign heavenly power. In his refusal to escape from prison and in his voluntary submission to death, scholars found a confirmation of evangelical morality and a justification for the martyrs. In a ‘Discourse Concerning Plato’, the anonymous translator of the Phaedo and Crito went even further, arguing that Socrates was taught the books of Moses and the other prophets, and through them the idea of resurrection, Providence, and other fundamental Christian doctrines. According to this author, Socrates projected himself into the sphere of religion in order to enlighten the Gentiles at the time Jewish prophets ceased to teach. Socrates transmitted to Plato this divine teaching. In effect, Plato’s theory of anamnêsis and his knowledged of future punishments were directly drawn from the writings of the prophets.44 It should be noted that the idea of Socrates as a forerunner of Christianity was so widely accepted that even the radical theorist and theologian Joseph Priestley dedicated his Socrates and Jesus Compared (1803) precisely to drawing analogies between the general manner of the lives of Socrates and Jesus, with focus on the common purport of their discourses. In his translation of Plato’s Apology of Socrates (1775), the Reverend Joseph Mills, Minister of Coubit in Lincolnshire, similarly emphasised the analogies between Socrates’ philosophy and Christian principles. The book includes a list of subscribers, most of them clergymen, an indication of the rigorous appeal of Socrates to Christianity. On the other hand, the list of subscribers is a sign of the publisher’s effort to minimise the serious financial risks still imminent in printing a text from Greek antiquity. Mills’ introductory essay recurs graphically to the old argument respecting the relationship between Socrates and primitive Christianity. Viewing Socrates as a precursor of Christian morals, Mills wrote that ‘Socrates was a Greek Philosopher, a Man of an accomplished virtue. Paganism never afforded a more admirable example ... His opinions had a peculiar tendency to 43 Cooper, Life of Socrates 167-9. Anon., ‘Phedon’: or, a Dialogue of the Immortality of the Soul. From Plato the Divine Philosopher (London 1777) iii, 78n., 164n. 44 145 Chapter 5 prepare mens [sic] minds for the truths of the gospel’. After him, Mills continued, Plato and Aristotle followed his example in teaching morality: ‘So that it may justly be supposed, that these men were raised up and designed by Providence, as instruments to reprove in some measure, and put some kind of check to the extreme superstition and wickedness of the nations wherein they lived.’45 Apparently Mills, like Spens earlier, believed that Socrates and Plato were enabled to anticipate fundamental truths through the aid of Providence, not revelation. The Apology, in Mills’ view, provided a clear example of ‘the want which the Heathens had of a clearer revelation of God’s will’. But, despite the fact that he was wanting the blessing of revelation, Socrates, in his ‘brave resolution to do his duty in the utmost danger’, anticipated the ‘noble declaration of the apostles before the corrupt rulers of the Jews ... We ought to obey God rather than men’. 46 It is worth observing that another contemporary scholar, Robert Nares (1753-1829), argued that Socrates’ superstition, shown in his unwavering attachment to his daimonion (warning voice) is evidence that the great philosopher could not entirely dissociate himself from the religious bonds of his age. Yet, Socrates’ exalted teaching, and especially his fully legitimate ‘notion of a constantly active and super-intending Providence’, were supernaturally inspired.47 Mills’ explanatory notes should be read in the light of the underlying purpose of his book, namely to demonstrate the consonance of Socrates’ thought with the moral precepts in which modern man of the eighteenth century should be instructed. Significantly, Mills’ work remains testimony to the close relevance of the classics to either biblical scholarship or moral philosophy. On issues related to classical philosophy, most eighteenth-century scholars followed Thomas Stanley (1625-1678), of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, whose History of Philosophy was still the principal authority. In his biography of Socrates, Stanley attributed to the philosopher a number of metaphysical and ethical doctrines which he compared to the sublime doctrines of Christian religion. To properly understand the religious doctrines of Socrates, Stanley believed, the reader must be able to trace the philosopher’s fundamental divergence from the views of the sophists. 48 For those who followed this line of J. Mills, Plato’s ‘Apology of Socrates’, trans. into English with Notes and an Appendix (Cambridge 1775) 1, 41, 88. 46 Plato’s ‘Apology of Socrates’ xix, 41n. 47 R. Nares, An Essay on the Demon or Divination of Socrates (London 1782) 25. 48 T. Stanley, The History of Philosophy Containing the Lives, Opinions, Actions and Discourses of the Philosophers of every sect, 4 vols. (London 1655-62, fourth ed. 1743). Stanley inspired Roger Davies’s Essay in the Socratick Way of Dialogue and on the Existence of a Divine Being (London 1724), and E. Edwards, The Socratic System of Morals, as delivered in Xenophon’s ‘Memorabilia’ (Oxford 1773). Montagu, Reflections 151; Stanyan, The Grecian History II 56, and Goldsmith, Grecian History I 227, 378, argued that Socrates’ life and doctrines consisted of imperishable lessons of virtue and morality. His behaviour during his trial justifies the reader in ranking him with the Christian prophets. 45 146 The Quest for Wisdom interpretation, Socrates’ destiny and inflexible obedience to what he considered just and divine were reminiscent of Christ’s sacrifice: Socrates, in other words, was the ‘Christ of heathenism’. James Welwood (1652-1727) characteristically considered Socrates a ‘martyr for the unity of Good’. Socrates, according to this author, never abandoned his faith in the immortality of the soul and the doctrine of rewards and punishments in the ultimate court. Socrates’ knowledge of these holy affairs is proclaimed even superior to that the ‘Jews had under the Mosaic oeconomy, [and] such as come not much short of what has been revealed to us under the evangelical dispensation’. In effect, the Greek sage is a remarkable instance, ‘to what heights of religion and virtue a man may arrive, thro’ the mere force of reason, without the help of revelation’. 49 Living among the corrupt Athenian mob, Socrates struggled to bring them to the knowledge of the true God, and to accustom them to acts of piety. 50 Joshua Toulmin (1740-1815), founder of the Western Unitarian Society (1792) in his eighth and ninth Dissertations (entitled “Christ and Socrates”) drew the parallel between Socrates’ dialectic method of instruction (which he pursued everywhere and among all sorts of men), and the parables of Jesus, representing the philosopher as a ‘kind of Type of Christ to the Heathens’. Both methods of teaching were intended to illustrate moral and spiritual truths. Socrates’s mission in life was like Jesus to eliminate all evil principles, idols and superistition from people’s minds. The moderns, Toulmin emphatically pointed out, needed people like Socrates, able to provide expert guidance based on eternal moral values. 51 Turning to Socrates’ contemporaries, Toulmin observed that the democratic Athenians were singularly corrupt and vicious: to be sure, the condemnation of the sober hero was a melancholy exemplification of the unsteadiness of their character. The age of the philosopher, Periclean Athens, was the most corrupt age in the entire history of ancient Greece. Unprincipled politicians, pompous sophists, and factious parties ruled Athens and promoted corruption. Socrates deplored and resisted this corruption. Arguably, for Toulmin, as for conservative J. Welwood, The ‘Banquet of Xenophon’. Done from the Greek, with an Introductory Essay concerning the Doctrine, and Death of Socrates (Glasgow 1750) 11-12. Welwood’s translation was included in the Socratic Discourses, ed. A.D. Lindsay (London and New York 1910). 50 According to Stubbes, A Dialogue in the Manner of Plato vi-vii, Socrates’ ‘Manner was, to mingle in the Publick Exercises and Diversions of the Athenian Youth, and to insinuate himself into their Familiarity by the Charms of graceful Mirth and Pleasantry. Those of an ingenuous Disposition, or an elevated Rank, were chiefly favoured with his agreeable Instruction, as they were most susceptible of it themselves, and most capable of rendering it serviceable to the Publick. Thus he infused into them a Love of Truth and Virtue, in that early Season of Life, while their Minds were serene, and pure of Prejudice, unengaged as yet in the tumultuous Scene of Publick Affairs, and untainted with false Sentiments of Honour’. 51 J. Toulmin, Dissertations on the Internal Evidences and Excellence of Christianity: And on the character of Christ, compared with that of some other celebrated founders of Religion or Philosophy (London 1785) 170, 178-9, 185, 196. See also, anon., ‘Phedon’: or, a Dialogue of the Immortality of the Soul iii, 10. 49 147 Chapter 5 historians, the Greek sage symbolised the uncompromising scholar of the eighteenth century who wisely opposed the sceptical tendencies of a rapidly changing world and resisted the dreaded growth of the ideology of liberal individualism. Moreover, eighteenth-century Socratics believed that the spiritualism and ethical religion of their proclaimed hero could be an antidote to the fast growing Hobbesian atheism and the scientific experimentalism of their era. Ironically, in the cultural context of Victorian Britain, their hero represented exactly the object of their fear, the radical revolutionist who fought against commonplace and established ideas. The liberal utilitarians, like Grote and J.S. Mill, would treat Socrates as an advocate of individual liberty, and the conductor of proper philosophical investigations based on reason, and not metaphysics. 52 While Socrates was largely considered to have been the great apostle of enlightened morality in the age of idolatry, the sophistic school was treated as the analogue of contemporary freethinking and common-sense philosophical movements. Both ‘sophistic’ schools (the ancient and the modern) undermined conventional ideas and encouraged a new arrangement of politics based on raising the formal privileges of the common citizens. To understand how the analogy operated, one has to recall that the eighteenth century was the epoch of great social revolution. The demands of the trading world and the need for professional skills as well as the new educational system that offered more equal opportunities, especially in Scotland, raised the social status of the middle classes. Naturally, the political struggles of the day involved rivalries between the rising classes and the old aristocracy of birth and landed property that insisted on hierarchical distinctions and fixed rights and obligations. In conservative eyes, the sophists might have resembled the eighteenth-century opportunists, the intellectual radicals, whose anticipation of a new world presupposed institutional reforms based on republican principles. The ancient counterpart of the untraditional intellectuals was the sophistic ‘sect’, ‘a set of men, smitten, not with the Love of Wisdom, but of Fame and Glory’. 53 As a rule, the sophists were indiscriminately grouped under the odious characteristic of being a set of corrupt professors and pretentious intellectualists. Explicitly or otherwise, the sophistic movement was associated with the growth of Athenian liberalism. The itinerant professors found a most responsive audience in the democratic atmosphere of Periclean Athens, since democracy is inherently aggressive and competitive. They systematically proclaimed the individualist theory of ethics, which pronounces each individual the standard of what is right. Within this licentious atmosphere, the sophists had a prominent role to play. Democracy was a constitution naturally aggressive and the citizens, according to Spens, ‘grew daily more and more insolent ... This gave rise to a set of men, who See, A.W. Levi, “The Idea of Socrates: The Philosophic Hero in the Nineteenth Century”, Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956) 89-108. 53 Sydenham, The Greater Hippias 10. 52 148 The Quest for Wisdom pretended to be teachers of politics, and eloquence, and who undertook for hire, to make any one, in a short time, a consummate orator, philosopher, and statesman. These were the Sophists, a vain and conceited set of men, who were void of all real ability’.54 Macfait’s judgement on the sophists was typically linked to a critical view of democratic Athens: ‘The Athenian form of government, being a pure Democracy, was imperfect, and many abuses crept in through length of time.’ The sophists’ profession was extremely profitable in the context of a licentious environment, which was replete with ‘intrigues of faction’. 55 Socrates was the great opponent to the sophists and other pseudo-philosophers of his era. The sophists were treated with respect by the Athenians and, as enjoying several privileges arising out of their stance as political instructors, they easily managed to bribe Aristophanes, ‘a mercenary, witty poet’, to ridicule Socrates on the stage, thus turning the people against him. 56 Sophistic utilitarian philosophy and the teaching of the sufficiency of empirical facts in the formation of cognition eventually made the citizens of Athens arrogant and disputatious. Having in mind the intellectual traditions that shaped the character of the Athenian people in the fifth century B.C., scholars warned the nation of the revival of universal scepticism in modern times. The individualist political argument expounded by Hobbes and Locke, and the secular tendencies of the philosophes, they argued, could only be contested by employing the wisdom of the ancients, and particularly of Socrates. After the events of the American and the French Revolutions, however, arguments were mostly crystallised around the political import of ancient experience. As shown in chapter two, Athenian democracy was brought to light to serve as a negative constitutional experiment. The works of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, scholars believed, were designed to criticise a constitutional machinery that bestowed the monopoly of power on the ignorant and indigent populace. This critical discourse was now increasingly becoming relevant to Britain and France. Socrates fell victim not only to the machinations of the sophists but also to political misrule and the intolerant public ethos, in the same way as deserving individuals perished in the hands of the French rebels. The treatment of the sophists in the works of the eighteenth-century antidemocratic historians was, on the whole, eminently hostile. Not surprisingly, William Mitford discerned a polemic between Socrates and the sophists. The philosopher’s opposition to the popular professors of political deception resulted in his condemnation, a crime of the most atrocious nature. Crimes of this sort, Mitford argued, had since been condemned by religion and morality, ‘till a singularly profligate faction in France, with the impudently arrogated title of 54 Spens, The Republic of Plato x. Macfait, Life of Plato 58; similarly, Welwood, Doctrine and Death of Socrates 24. 56 This argument was originally put forward by Aelian, Various History II 13. Eighteenth-century Socratic apologists found it convincing and largely reproduced it. 55 149 Chapter 5 philosophers, lately attempted to give new vogue’. 57 Socrates’ unique abilities ‘lay in the purity and usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw, and the steddiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties’.58 Mitford’s argument that Socrates’ ethical standpoint linked him to the Christian philosophy of life was, as shown above, typical to the age. John Gillies similarly attacked the sophists for cultivating Pyrrhonian scepticism. However, ‘our present business’ he observed, ‘is only to remark the destructive effects immediately resulting from their tenets ... In Athens their frauds were detected, and their character unmasked by Socrates’. 59 PLATO THE THEOLOGIAN It has been shown so far that as the eighteenth century progressed, Platonic philosophy was invoked to attack contemporary trends in science and philosophy as well as to provide a remedy to the moral paralysis that allegedly plagued the moderns. The critical temper and the resultant focus on individual liberty as a moral property constituted the political manifesto of the Enlightenment. Scholars’ understanding of Plato’s ideas was shaped by the position they took on contemporary political and religious issues. Religion, it should be remembered, was also put to the trial of reason. Voltaire advocated a complete materialism, and Hume declared that religion might be ‘pernicious to society’. 60 Predictably, Plato became the centre of a debate designed to prove the supremacy of Christian revelation over natural theology. As Jacob Bryant (1715-1804), the prolific author on philosophy and mythological issues, observed, what Plato urged on questions of theology, ‘does not at all take off from the necessity of revelation, and the interposition of divine goodness for the improvement and salvation of man’. 61 Set in the perspective of Christian theology, Plato was seen in a much less favourable light. What is relevant to the present examination, however, is the recurring employment of Plato’s intellectual and moral ideas for contemporary purposes. Platonic theology had been of course a long-debated issue, but in the eighteenth century the discussion was motivated by different intellectual and ideological impulses. The roots of the eighteenth-century debate over Plato’s connection with Christianity can roughly be traced to the 1740s, in a climate of reaction to the claims of the seventeenth-century Platonists. The Cambridge Platonists perceived 57 Mitford, History of Greece III 473. History of Greece III 104. 59 Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece II 134-5. 60 See Hume’s Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. T.H. Green and T.H. Grose, 2 vols. (London 1875) II 315-7. 61 J. Bryant, A Treatise upon the Authenticity of the Scriptures, and the Truth of the Christian Religion (London 1788) 7. 58 150 The Quest for Wisdom in Plato several doctrines compatible with Christian theology. 62 Eighteenthcentury scholars admitted, like the Cambridge scholars, that Christian sages, as for instance St. Augustine, generally acknowledged the existence of a few common elements between Plato’s reasoned speculations and the primitive divine theology. Plato’s rejection of materialism, his belief in the primacy of psychê (including the immortality of the soul and the mythical pictures of future rewards and punishments), a large part of the cosmogony of creation in the Timaeus by a benevolent power, and the concept of theodicy in the tenth book of the Laws, were indeed sound metaphysical beliefs. Yet, insistence on this common ground could be a mighty weapon in the hands of modern ‘infidels’ and heretics, who explicitly questioned the absolutely true tenets of Christian theology. In the judgement of Christian apologists, emphasising compatibilities or analogies tended to substitute the immutable dogmas of the Scripture with an exclusive appeal to reason and material causality.63 The debate over the correspondence between Plato’s religious thought and Christian theology received a new impulse in the context of the Enlightenment and the dissemination of deistic writings. Scholars in defence of traditional orthodoxy had either to disclaim the compatibility of Platonism with the intrinsic logic of Christian dogmas, or to demonstrate that this compatibility, if real, was simply the oldest proof that Christian theology derived its force out of reasoned speculation. On the other hand, liberal and broad-church theorists throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries espoused the natural Platonic religion of Socrates.64 On both occasions, Plato’s name was significantly implicated. A representative figure in the debate was the polemical author William Warburton (1698-1779), bishop of Gloucester, who was indefatigable in his efforts to refute the theory of a correspondence between the theological systems of Platonism and Christianity, thus supporting the doctrine of the unique nature and all-powerfulness of revelation. 65 Similarly, a later author, Caesar Morgan (1750?1812), did all he could to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity did not 62 See Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London 1678) 590-91, “How Plato’s Trinity, one Entire Divinity”. On the Cambridge Platonists, see W.R. Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (London 1926) 48-65; and C.A. Patrides, ed. The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge 1980) 1-41. 63 An early manifestation of the tendency to replace revelation with reason is John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (London 1696). Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) shares also in this tendency. 64 See Paul Shorey, “Plato and Christianity”, in Platonism Ancient and Modern (California 1938) 86-7. 65 Warburton wrote a defence of revealed religion in his View of Lord Bolingbroke’s Philosophy (London 1754). On Warburton’s life, see L. Stephen, “Warburton, William”, D.N.B. (1899) LIX 301-311, and on his work, character and environment, L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London 1962, first ed. 1876) I 292-315. 151 Chapter 5 originate in Plato’s mystical writings. 66 Plato, Morgan argued, never intended the term to agathon to express a person, i.e. the Supreme Being, the first Person of the Trinity, but rather the final cause of things. It can thus justifiably be inferred, in Morgan’s view, that a trinity of persons of divine nature was the genuine doctrine of the primitive Christian Church. 67 Nares also, in his Essay on the Demon of Socrates (1782), tried to disprove the alleged internal affinity between Platonic philosophy and Christian theology. Plato, Nares argued, though early inured to the pure Socratic doctrine of the substantial oneness of God, afterwards mixed that teaching with the ‘absurdities’ of Pythagoreanism. John Ogilvie (1732-1813) on the other hand, believed that Plato was enabled by means of strict reasoning to anticipate the enlightened theology in some important ways. The Athenian philosopher, Ogilvie asserted, should have some idea of the Trinity. Moreover, Plato’s conception of the origin and nature of evil (a theme hotly discussed in the eighteenth century) as an accident, not a principle - ‘a transient alienation from order and rectitude, occasioned partly by appetites of which matter is the parent, and partly by weakness and human imperfection’ - impressed Ogilvie, as it seemed to him essentially in harmony with Christian notions. Yet, Ogilvie never doubted the superiority of revelation over other mental faculties that supposedly facilitate a proper understanding of the world. In effect, his work formed an attempt to provide a defence of the credibility and reasonableness of the doctrines of Christian religion by showing their compatibility with the unassisted power of reason - a power distinctively present in the Platonic texts. 68 To a certain degree, Ogilvie’s Theology of Plato is a late eighteenth-century attempt to exhibit the religious aspects of Plato’s philosophy: The theological doctrines of Plato, which make a figure by far the most conspicuous in his multifarious writings, relate principally either to God, in the characters of the creator, parent, and governor of his creatures; - to the Universe, and to Man, the inhabitant who is best known to us, as being his workmanship; - to Evil, as originating in causes that are consistent with the divine perfections and 66 C. Morgan, An Investigation of the Trinity of Plato and of Philo Judaeus, and of the Effects which an Attachment of their Writings has upon the Principles and Reasonings of the Fathers of the Christian Church (Cambridge 1853, first ed. 1795) iii, 150. On the doctrine of trinity and its association with some of Plato’s philosophical distinctions, see C.C. Webb, Studies in the History of Natural Theology (Oxford 1915) 223-5. 67 Cf. E. Gibbon, who attacked the doctrine, arguing that it was copied by the Jews who had settled in the Alexandria of the Ptolemies, and who diligently cultivated and ‘embraced with ardour the theological system of the Athenian sage’, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776-78] (London 1895, first ed. 1776-1778) I 572. J. Priestley, The Doctrines of Heathen Philosophy compared with those of Revelation (Northumberland 1804) 127-8, ascribed the doctrine of trinity to Platonic influences. 68 J. Ogilvie, The Theology of Plato Compared with the Principles of Oriental and Grecian Philosophers (London 1793, reprint Hildesheim 1975) 16-8, 38, 62; on Plato’s theory of the origin of evil see 138-65. Cf. Anon., ‘Phedon’: or, a Dialogue of the Immortality of the Soul 10, 38. 152 The Quest for Wisdom providence; - and, finally, to the pre-existent state of man, the immortality of the soul, and the nature of that reward or punishment of which it will finally participate.69 The discussions about the connection between the fundamental principles of Platonism and the divine tenets of Christianity necessarily involved a growing tendency to examine the so-called esoteric nature of Plato’s teaching. Of course, in the works of bishop Warburton, the idea of Plato’s esoteric doctrines was linked with wider philosophical and political implications. Vague passages in Plato’s writings were treated as hints to some of his agrapha dogmata (unwritten doctrines), such as those of Aristotle’s reference in De Anima (404b) and Physics (209b). Warburton assumed that Plato, by nature an abstruse author, must have had some plausible reasons in presenting some of his philosophical ideas in a clear and unambiguous manner. The inevitable question was: ‘did he, after all, approve of these ideas?’ Bishop Warburton argued that the dialogues in which Plato vindicated doctrines that appeared to be substantially compatible with those of Christianity were of an exoteric character, designed to deceive the populace and serve practical and civil purposes. It should be observed that in his treatise Alliance between Church and State (1736), Warburton claimed that the state must consider religion in terms of its ability to promote general utility, and not in proportion to the particular truths it could possibly enunciate. The state enters into alliance (contract) with the church for reasons of political expediency, offering protection to it through its legal machinery. In return for this protection, the church abandons its rights as an independent power. This argument, favourably received at the time by the Crown, formed in fact a critique of the separation of religion from politics. Going back to Plato, Warburton’s basic postulate was that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments was necessary to the well being of civil society. Plato, believing in the usefulness of this doctrine, advocated it in a distinctly popular manner, even though he rejected its philosophical validity.70 Utility, and not truth, was the end of ancient religion. Consequently, to deceive for the public good was for the ancient Greeks a perfectly appropriate practice. The ancient philosophers had no reservations saying one thing when they thought another. This was the so-called twofold doctrine: the external and the internal: ‘A vulgar and a secret one’. Those philosophers who openly taught the doctrine of a future state had an internal, 69 The Theology of Plato v. Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated, on the Principles of a Religious Deist, from the Omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation, 2 vols. (London 1738) I 353-5, 385. Broadly, in this work Warburton answered the deists’ argument that the absence of any inculcation of the doctrine of a future life in the Mosaic writings proved the lack of their being of divine authority. 70 153 Chapter 5 esoteric philosophy, quite opposite to it. Plato borrowed the double doctrine from Egyptian and Pythagorean circles. Of all the Egyptian Inventions, and Pythagoric Practices, nothing pleased him more than that of the double Doctrine and the Division of his Auditors into the Exoteric and Esoteric Classes: He more professedly than any other, avowing those Principles, on which that Distinction was founded, such as, - that it is for the Benefit of Mankind, that they should be often deceived - that there are some Truths it is not fit the people to know - that the world is not to be entrusted with the true Notion of God.71 Hence Plato himself believed in the eternity of the soul (a doctrine which he upheld in his esoteric teaching), but the doctrine of rewards and punishments he must have rejected inasmuch as he discussed it always in a distinctly popular manner.72 Warburton’s bold arguments gave rise to a controversy over the nature and character of Plato’s philosophy that cannot be extensively discussed here. Some authors renounced his ideas altogether. Arthur Ashley Sykes (1684-1756), a latitudinarian divine, objected to what he considered a deliberate simplification: ‘Who can read [the Gorgias], and conceive that Plato did not really believe a State of future Punishments and Rewards?’73 John Tillard also published a pamphlet, in 1742, to prove that the ancient philosophers truly believed in a future life, a thesis that instigated Warburton to publish a highly contemptuous response. Plato in particular, according to Tillard, everywhere spoke his real sentiments, either related to practical politics or to ‘sublime Truths, such as the Nature of God, a Providence, A Future State, &c.’ 74 An immediate response to Warburton came from John Jackson (1686-1763), whose major assumption was that even though no religion could be supported without the belief in a future state, ‘civil society might subsist without it’. Jackson accepted the idea that Plato had a twofold teaching, but he refused to admit that the philosopher could have ever rejected the 71 Divine Legation I 351. Warburton, A Critical Inquiry into the Opinions and Practice of the Ancient Philosophers, concerning the Nature of the Soul and a Future State, and their Method of teaching by the Double Doctrine (London 1747) 95-8. 73 See A.A. Sykes, Principles and connexion of Natural and Revealed Religion Distinctly Considered (London 1740) 399-400; and An Examination of Mr. Warburton’s Account of the Conduct of the Antient Legislators, of the Double Doctrine of the Old Philosophers, of the Theocracy of the Jews, and of Sir Isaac Newton’s Chronology (London 1742). 74 J. Tillard, A Reply to Mr. Warburton’s Appendix, in his second volume of the Divine Legation of Moses (London 1742) 59-60. Earlier Tillard published a pamphlet with the title Future Rewards and Punishments believed by the Ancients (London 1740), which was a direct reply to Warburton. See also J. Bate, Remarks upon Mr. Warburton’s Remarks. Tending to shew the ancients knew there was a future state (London 1745). 72 154 The Quest for Wisdom doctrine of rewards and punishments. 75 According to Jackson, the difference between the exoteric and esoteric teaching of Plato consisted of a variation in the degree of philosophical complexity. In the exoteric teaching, some notions are represented vulgarly. In the esoteric, the same ideas are discussed and analysed in a subtler philosophical manner. For Warburton, the division implied distinct and contrary elements (opposite propositions), whereas for Jackson it meant only two different explanations of the same notion, respectively addressed to different categories of audience. The concept of the esoteric nature of Platonism seems to have predominated, though interpreters differed as to which principles in Plato were truly esoteric. It might be interesting to observe, in passing, that Warburton, who was generally intolerant of any difference of opinion, attacked vigorously his numerous critics, amongst them Conyers Middleton, Richard Pococke and Richard Grey, in his vitriolic Remarks on several occasional Reflections, two parts of which appeared in 1744-45. The book is full of damnatory epithets, such as ‘bigots’, ‘freethinkers’ and ‘libertine scribblers’, that must have definitely increased the list of his fierce enemies.76 The controversy over the dichotomy of Plato’s dialogues between the esoteric and the exoteric was primarily linked to a theological undertaking to dissociate Christianity from the philosopher’s ‘rational prophesies’ and to provide a firm basis for the superstructure of revealed religion. Furthermore, Plato’s philosophy was in the eighteenth century implicated in debates over the proper relationship of politics with the established forms of religious authority. Influential thinkers, like Warburton, resorted to Plato’s work to demonstrate that interference of religion in the affairs of the state should be kept within the limits prescribed by a calculus of common utility. The state, he argued, needed only a secular religion, not metaphysics. This is what Plato emphatically showed by declaring politically useful what he considered theologically wrong. 75 J. Jackson, The Belief of a Future State proved to be a Fundamental Article of the Religion of the Hebrews. And the Doctrine of the Ancient Philosophers concerning a Future State, shewn to be consistent with Reason, and their Belief of it demonstrated (London 1745) 65-75. See further, A Farther Defence of the Ancient Philosophers, concerning their Doctrine and Belief of a Future State (London 1745), esp. 10-12. Geddes also criticised Warburton’s idea of a twofold teaching in Plato, Essay 138-77. 76 See Warburton, Remarks on Several occasional reflections; in answer to Dr. Middleton, Dr. Pococke ... and others. Serving to explain divers passages in the Divine Legation, objected to by those ... LEARNED WRITERS (London 1744-45). For Warburton’s works, see R. Hurd, ed. The Works of William Warburton, which contains an account of the life, writings, and character of the author, 7 vols. (London 1788-94). 155 Chapter 5 CONCLUSION In 1804, the entire Platonic text appeared in English. This year can be considered the beginning of a new era in Platonic studies in two ways. First, Taylor’s rendition of Plato, in spite of its poor explanatory essays and latinised mistranslation, nonetheless provided an incentive for the interested scholar to turn to the original sources and discover for himself the philosophical dimension of Plato’s doctrines. James Mill’s unsympathetic reception of Taylor’s work (see chapter six) is indicative of the growing conscience regarding the redundancy of earlier interpretations, based primarily on moral and religious interests. In Germany, on the other hand, the exploration of the Greek classical heritage had been long a fruitful intellectual pursuit. Friedrich Schleiermacher published the first volume of his German translation of Plato the same year that Taylor’s English translation appeared. But his approach and style were radically different from those of the English ‘Platonist’. The two works indeed seem to be as unsimilar as two works of different cultural contexts can be. Taylor was most likely ignorant of Schleiermacher’s accomplishment, but other British scholars were not. At the threshold of the nineteenth century, several translations of German works, like those of Wilhelm G. Tennemann (1761-1819), Johann Jacob Brucker, August Heinrich Ritter (1791-1869), and others, made their appearance. In the late eighteenth century, Brucker, with his insistence on the distinguishability of genuine Platonism and its subsequent spurious imitations, provided an antidote to Taylor’s tendency to treat Plato and Neoplatonism as an integral, dogmatic body.77 Tennemann subjected Plato to a philosophical analysis on Kantian terms and opened new avenues for the exploration of ancient thought. His real objective was to establish parallels between Plato and Kant, but this proved an advantage as it helped him to deal with Plato as a philosopher stricto sensu. Thus he explored such themes as the method of dialectic, the development of the Platonic universe of ideas, and the issue of the authenticity of some dialogues conventionally ascribed to the Athenian philosopher. 78 Though the new approaches to the history of classical scholarship were not received automatically in Britain - partly because they were known mainly through fragmentary translations, and not through an original reading of the German text - they bestowed a novel light on any dealings with the ancients. 77 J.J. Brucker, The History of Philosophy from the Earliest Times to the beginning of the Present century, 2 vols. (London 1819). Trans. and abridged by W. Enfield from the original Historia Critica Philosophiae a mundi incunabulis ad nostram usque aetatem deducta, 4 vols. (Lipsiae 1742-44). 78 See Tennemann, System der platonischen Philosophie, 4 vols. (Leipzig 1792-5). His Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Leipzig 1820) was trans. by A. Johnson, A Manual of the History of Philosophy (Oxford 1832). 156 The Quest for Wisdom In this chapter, I have sought to shed some light on the appropriation of Plato in eighteenth-century Britain. It has been shown that Platonic philosophy was largely employed as a means of opposing the sceptical trends and the political individualism that sprung out of the Enlightenment. To a certain degree, Plato’s name was invoked to assist in the articulation of a response to the ‘enemies of the ancients’, and, thus, the discussion examined above might be treated as a presentation of a particular phase of the famous quarrel between the ancients and the moderns in eighteenth-century Britain. Following the modernists’ powerful assault against the apotheosis of the past, classical learning is again embodied in contemporary discussions, reclaiming its widely disputed authority. The appeal of Plato in Scotland, especially during the second half of the century, can be explained in terms of a reaction against rationalism and its revolutionary social implications. Considering the fact that the Scottish Enlightenment started almost simultaneously with its French counterpart, it seems natural that Plato made his appearance in a rather conservative guise first in Scotland before moving southward. 79 The underlying assumption was that studying the Greek philosopher could be a vehicle for moral education in an era of collapsing traditional values and bankrupt morality. The optimism of the modern world was expressed in Enlightenment liberalism with its central assumption that each individual could, in principle, make sense of the world. The goal and vision of this movement were pregnant with the most radical and ‘subversive’ implications for the established political order, for religion, ethics and social values. Eighteenth-century Platonists refused to succumb to the spirit of individualism, the modern scientific ethos and its broad atheist conclusions. For them, change had been associated with decay instead of improvement. Eighteenth-century Platonism, however, never developed into a coherent academic engagement. British Platonists were often amateurs in classical studies, sharing very little in intellectual pursuits. Approving or disapproving of Plato’s tenets depended on the interests that lay behind their projects. Geddes, West, and Duff approached Plato from the perspective of his literary accomplishment. Others, like Macfait and Spens, called attention primarily to Plato’s morals and politics, placing emphasis on Plato’s relevance for the moderns. At the same time, the involvement of Plato in theological debates rarely resulted in a favourable treatment of his philosophy. Even worse, the controversy over Plato’s mysticism, and the theological nature of the debate concerning Plato’s esoteric doctrines, arguably deterred prospective Platonists - scholars who might have approached the Greek philosopher with good prospects for critical analysis. Overall, there is sufficient material lending support to the idea that Plato’s name still had a certain appeal. But it was not an age in which the seeds of Platonism could find a fertile 79 See A.C. Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early Victorian English Society (London 1986) 1-34. 157 Chapter 5 soil. On the other hand, Socrates always found a responsive audience and scholars keen to explore aspects of his extraordinary, ‘heroic’ personality. Socrates, after all, was a long established legend. Eighteenth-century Platonism, with its consistent appeal to conventional virtues of social and individual discipline, contributed to the ideological contest of the age. The idealised Socrates exemplified the uncompromising wise man and the incarnation of the true philosopher, against the self-interested, liberal revolutionist. Most importantly, eighteenth-century Platonists, in their fundamental disapproval of the condescending ideas of the moderns regarding antiquity, variously prepared the way for the rediscovery of Plato in the century that followed. 158 

Chapter Four Grote’s History of Greece (II) At a time when several Greek states were ruled by hereditary monarchies and exclusive aristocratic families, or by despots who replaced them by force, Solon, the Athenian legislator, introduced a new political idea: the idea of giving to the community the right to have a voice in government and the ability to determine its own future. In pre-Solonian Attica, as in many other states of Greece, political power had been concentrated in the hands of a class of hereditary nobles (the eupatrides) who systematically resorted to corruption and temporary alliances in order to satisfy private interests. The people were everywhere reduced to poverty and political servility. Solon’s great innovative principle called for the promotion of participatory democracy and the diffusion of political power to all eligible to have a share. Solon, in Grote’s mind, represented the best tendencies of his age, combined with much that is personally excellent; the improved ethical sensibility; the thirst for enlarged knowledge and observation...; the conception of regularised popular institutions, departing sensibly from the type and spirit of the governments around him, and calculated to found a new character in the Athenian people; a genuine and reflecting sympathy with the mass of the poor, anxious not merely to rescue them from the oppressions of the rich, but also to create in them habits of self-relying industry.1 The Athenian legislator found a state ruled by an eupatrid oligarchy and divided by violent factions, aggravated by the extreme misery and sufferings of the poorer freemen. The poor were oppressed by heavy debts, often driven from freedom to slavery. In the eyes of Grote, the liberal historian of Greece, preSolonian Athens offered ‘a sad and repulsive picture, presenting to us political discord and private suffering combined’. Solon, himself an ‘eupatrid of middling fortune’, might have easily made himself a despot, yet he renounced such an opportunity and took extraordinary measures to mitigate the sufferings of the unprivileged populace of Attica (such as the seisachtheia, or literally ‘shaking off the burdens’, and the restoration of full privileges to those who had been condemned by the archons to atimia, loss of civic rights).2 Entrusted with public 1 Grote, History III 366. History III 310. Grote analysed the causes and effects of seisachtheia, and found analogous occurrences of this measure in antiquity and Europe. Seisachtheia could be used as an example of the oppression of the rich by the poor. Yet, Grote observed (III 328), the ‘mass of the Athenian people identified inseparably the maintenance of property in all its various shapes with that of their laws and constitution. And it is a remarkable fact, that though the admiration entertained at Athens 2 Chapter 4 confidence, he proceeded to make several constitutional changes that promoted the liberties of the people. Solon’s reforms, Grote believed, helped in the correction of legal and political inequalities, and restored tranquillity and concord in Athens, even though they afforded only a limited expression to the popular will. Indeed, it could be said that Solon’s reforms and the abolition of the old regime brought about a ‘moderate oligarchy’, and not a full democracy as was commonly argued. To suppose that Solon anticipated and even provided for the periodical revision of his laws, such as those in operation during the time of Demosthenes, ‘would be at variance ... with any reasonable estimate either of the man or of the age’. 3 To distinguish the Solonian constitution from the democracy of Pericles and the regime of the fourth century is ‘essential to a due comprehension of the progress of the Greek mind, and especially of Athenian affairs’. 4 Solon’s social and legal reforms laid the indispensable foundation for democracy which matured after a series of changes stretching over a period of more than a century. Earlier historians, Grote argued, failed to present the various stages of growth, the conditions of society that accompanied and justified each change, and the changes’ effects on existing opinions and manners. They also totally neglected to analyse the impulse or resistance that each stage afforded to the energies and mentality of the people. Instead, they a priori criticised the Athenians for being a turbulent and fickle mob easily misled by demagogues and ever rushing into extreme experiments. If the historian judged the Athenians with this pattern of gradual change in mind, it would appear obvious that during Pericles’ rule, or at the time Ephialtes set out to introduce radical constitutional reforms, there was always a strenuous party of resistance and a living memory of past oligarchic cruelties. On the other hand, despite the new dangers, democracy in the fourth century was in theory and practice firmly established. This distinction should not be neglected by any historian who wishes to correctly assess the current of public sentiment and the reaction of the citizens of Athens in the fifth century towards unpopular acts committed by members of the eupatrid families. Solon established, in effect, a timocratic system in which the rights, honours and functions of the citizens were distributed according to the rateable property of each. He preserved and even enlarged the powers of the old senate of Areopagus for Solon was universal, the principle of his Seisachtheia and of his money-depreciation was not only never imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that one debasement of the coin succeeded another’. 3 History III 337-8. At Grote’s time, the name of Solon was often connected with the entire political and constitutional regulations of Athens as they stood between the age of Pericles and Demosthenes. Grote referred especially to Wilhelm Wachsmuth, Hellenische Alterthumskunde des Staates, 2 vols. (Halle 1844-46) I 46, 47; Friedrich W. Tittmann, Darstellung der griechischen Staatsverfassungen (Leipzig 1822) 146; Eduard Platner, Der Prozess und die Klagen bei der Attikern, 2 vols. (Darmstadt 1824-25) II 28-38; and Thirlwall, History of Greece II 46-57. 4 History III 343. 92 Grote’s History of Greece (II) by conferring upon it a censorial inspection over the lives of the citizens. He advanced the democratic cause by establishing the boulê of Four Hundred members who were taken in equal proportions from the four tribes, and regularised the meetings of the ecclêsia, where every Athenian citizen had an equal vote. It was Solon ‘who first gave both to the citizens of middling property and to the general mass, a locus standi against the Eupatrids. He enabled the people partially to protect themselves, and familiarised them with the idea of protecting themselves, by the peaceful exercise of a constitutional franchise’. Reflecting on the functions of the popular assembly, Grote observed that to ‘impose upon the Eupatrid archon the necessity of being elected, or put upon his trial of after-accountability, by the rabble of freemen (such would be the phrase in Eupatrid society), would be a bitter humiliation to those among whom it was first introduced; for we must recollect that this was the most extensive scheme of constitutional reform yet propounded in Greece, and that despots and oligarchies shared between them at that time the whole Grecian world’. 5 Solon’s broadening of the powers of Areopagus might have been intended, first to mitigate this sense of humiliation, and secondly to make the archons’ powers appear of vital political significance and, consequently, acceptable to the people. Thus, Solon’s reforms created a ‘mixed’ constitution in which conservatism and democracy were inextricably blended. The major drawback under this system was the exclusion from individual office of the majority of the citizenry. Such great inequality of political privilege, Grote observed, helps to explain the weakness of the Solonian government in repelling the aggression of Peisistratus. On the other hand, renewed popular reaction to Solonian exclusiveness, that doubtless favoured the aristocrats, instigated the reforms of Cleisthenes. By replacing the four old Attic tribes and the phratries by the system of ten new tribes composed of local demes, Cleisthenes managed to confer on the people extensive political functions and reinforced the sovereignty of the citizen-body. Grote drew extensively on Solon’s economic measures, trade regulations, and penal law to throw light upon the general condition of Athens at that time, inserting independent reflections on the effect of the various reforms on the social and political habits of the Athenians. Not surprisingly, he particularly praised the provision that enjoined a citizen who remained inactive and neutral in a stasis (sedition) to be dishonoured and disfranchised (a ‘law’ which Grote compared to ostracism, even though the latter was applied to remedy the ‘premonitory symptoms’ associated with party disputes while the former was meant to attack an already developed disease). The sooner every citizen declared his attachment to one of the contending parties, the earlier peace was likely to prevail. Political apathy would facilitate the revival of tyrannical regimes. By highlighting the 5 History III 340, 341. Cf. Mitford, History of Greece I 282: By restoring the Areopagus Solon hoped to provide ‘a powerful weight in the balance against the uncertainty and turbulence of democratical rule’. 93 Chapter 4 importance of some positive sentiments on the part of the citizens, this law helped to strengthen foundational principles of democracy, such as the idea of personal responsibility and of having a share in the social and political community. When the people conceived themselves as sovereign under democratic institutions, to which they positively and energetically adhered, this ‘precautionary’ law naturally came to an end.6 After the expulsion of the Peisistratids who succeeded Solon, Cleisthenes proceeded to skilfully introduce revolutionary measures that reinforced the democratic system. Though he preserved all the main features of the Solonian constitution, the Athenian reformer made a number of substantial modifications. For instance, the probouleutic, or ‘pre-considering’ senate of Four Hundred became a senate of Five Hundred, and its functions were considerably enlarged. The members were selected by lot, which was the Cleisthenean devise equalising the chance of gaining office between rich and poor. 7 Instead of the military power being vested exclusively with the polemarch archon, one general from each tribe was annually elected to assist him. Significantly, under the Cleisthenean constitution, the people received the real attributes of sovereignty by being called into direct action as ‘dikasts’ (judges) or jurors. 8 The powers of the ecclêsia were extended by increasing the frequency of its meetings. The citizens were thus, trained to the duty both of speakers and hearers, and each man, while he felt that he exercised his share of influence on the decision, identified his own safety and happiness with the vote of the majority, and became familiarised with the notion of a sovereign authority which he neither could nor ought to resist. This was an idea new to the Athenian bosom. With it came the feelings sanctifying free speech and equal law - words which no Athenian citizen ever afterwards heard unmoved: together with that sentiment of the entire commonwealth as one and indivisible, which always overruled, though it did not supplant, the local and cantonal specialties. It is not too much to say that these patriotic and ennobling impulses were a new product in the Athenian mind, to which nothing analogous occurs even in the time of Solon.9 Cleisthenes’ reforms re-constituted society on a democratic basis and infused into the Athenian mind a true liberal spirit. While under Solon’s constitution, only members of the first and the richest class (the Pentakosiomedimnoi) were eligible for the archonship, Cleisthenes extended eligibility to the first three classes. Nevertheless, in Grote’s judgement, even the Cleisthenean constitution did not 6 History III 354-6. History IV 315. Yet election, Grote pointed out, would have been a more democratic option as it could allow the poor citizens, the majority, to interfere with their ‘suffrage’. But such an option would have the serious disadvantage of excluding the lower classes from eligibility. 8 Cleisthenes prudently ‘took the people into partnership’, History III 339; see Herodot. V 69. 9 History IV 312. 7 94 Grote’s History of Greece (II) establish a perfect democracy, for the fourth class of the Solonian division, the thêtes (who constituted the numerical majority), were still excluded from all individual offices. Indeed, despite the progress in democratisation, there were substantial limitations in the constitutional innovations of Cleisthenes. First, the court of Areopagus survived the extensive reforms without material losses. The Areopagites, who earlier generously supported the Peisistratids, received with hostility the constitutional changes introduced by Cleisthenes. But despite Cleisthenes’ wishes, a drastic curtailment of the functions of the Areopagus was not yet possible. Its formal power was still considerable and, worst of all, it became the focus of the party of oligarchic resistance and thus a real threat to democratic institutions. ‘We thus see’, Grote observed, ‘how it happened that the past archons, when united in the senate of Areopagus, infused into that body the sympathies, prejudices, and interests of the richer classes’. 10 Secondly, though Cleisthenes created the popular dikastêria (courts of justice), he still recognised the archons as judges to a considerable extent, and the third archon as joint military commander along with the stratêgoi, or Generals. Thirdly, under the Cleisthenean constitution, the archons were elected annually by the body of citizens and not appointed by lot, the fourth class of citizens (the thêtes) still being excluded from the archonship and other official posts. It was only after the battle of Plataea that the archonship was opened to all classes of Athenian citizens upon the proposition of Aristeides. With this measure, rich and poor Athenians were completely equalised in the possession of political advantages in a way that has rarely been seen in the history of mankind. Of course, Athenian democracy required special qualifications for the stratêgoi, but the sovereignty of the people was secured by the introduction of the dokimasia, or preliminary examination of their life, character and potentials. Thus the power of deciding the competence and efficiency of administrators, and checking the performance of their various duties, still rested with the people who acted as the ultimate arbitrators and sovereign body through a sophisticated constitutional mechanism. Stronger expressions than those of Herodotus (V 78-91), cannot be found to depict the rapid improvement wrought in the Athenian people by their new democracy. Of course this did not arise merely from suspension of previous cruelties, or from better laws, or better administration. These indeed were essential conditions, but the active transforming cause here was, the principle and system of which such amendments formed the detail: the grand and new idea of the sovereign People, composed of free and equal citizens - or liberty and equality, to use words which so profoundly moved the French nation half a century ago. It was this comprehensive political idea which acted with electric effect upon the Athenians, creating within them a host of sentiments, motives, sympathies, and capacities, to which they had before been strangers. Democracy in Grecian 10 History IV 321. 95 Chapter 4 antiquity possessed the privilege, not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of creating an energy of public and private action, such as could never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience.11 The Athenian constitution became truly democratic in the times of Ephialtes and Pericles when the privileged upper-class members of Areopagus encountered a decisive opposition. Depriving the magistrates and the Areopagus of their former judicial and legislative functions and passing these functions on to the popular courts of justice, to the Council of Five Hundred and to the Assembly, constituted the epitome of the democratic changes that originated with Solon. But Grote would not admit that the propertied classes, after the transference of the functions and role of the Areopagus either to the Council or to the dêmos and the popular courts, were in any way offended or deprived of their political rights. It is very important to remember that part of the established idea of Athenian democracy was that under it the ‘higher ranks’ were severely oppressed by a ‘despotic multitude’.12 Indeed democracy, Grote acknowledged, meant heavier expenses and larger taxes, but it never deprived the rich of the opportunity to form political clubs, the hetairies (aristocratic political associations), which were always sources of opposition. Mitford maintained that these clubs were organised by the noble and wealthy as a protection against the ‘oppression of democratical despotism’.13 These political associations Grote argued, were not ‘defensive’ political units in the strict sense, but took the form of organised clubs which had certain programs of action and worked to undermine democracy. 14 These oligarchic clubs eventually conspired with Alcibiades to originate the Oligarchy of Four Hundred that brought Athens close to absolute ruin. 15 Drawing on the policy of oligarchic parties in Athens during periods of transition and crisis, Grote reconfirmed the recurrent utilitarian proposition that if the interests of social groups and persons are not in harmony with the interests of the state, then actions against liberty and the common welfare should be expected on a regular basis. 11 History IV 345. Mitford, History of Greece II 114; see also the observations of Thirlwall, History of Greece IV 218, and A. Böckh, The Public Economy of the Athenians 785. 13 Mitford, History of Greece II 434. 14 In an early essay entitled “Liturgies of the Athenians”, BL Add. MSS 29,520 fols. 57-8, Grote argued that the liturgies and chorêgies were ‘sources of advantage and power to the rich as a body’. Solon, who distributed the liturgies among the members of the three classes, deprived the majority of the people from an important source of influence, History III 334. Thus, Grote showed that the rich citizens, by financing certain religious festivals or by maintaining a trireme in seaworthy condition for a year, actually turned a financial hardship to a political advantage. 15 See also Aristotle, Athenian Constitution XXXIV 3 (a work not available to Grote), for the role played by the hetaireiai in supporting the oligarchy of the Thirty in 404. 12 96 Grote’s History of Greece (II) Granted that a reconciliation of interests is not easy even under favourable circumstances, it is understandable that the Athenian reformers would need some extraordinary measures to strengthen political stability and cultivate a sense of commonalty. One of these measures was the widely reproached institution of ostracism which, according to Grote, originated with Cleisthenes. 16 Grote’s predecessors uniformly copied Plutarch, who in the Life of Themistocles, defined ostracism as an unjust measure originated by that ‘jealousy which delights to humble the eminent’.17 In a more pragmatic way, Thucydides attributed its establishment to fear and insecurity. 18 Historians from antiquity to the age of Grote condemned in ostracism the evils of the ‘tyranny of the mob’: a furious populace could, at any time, put into exile the most eminent men of Athens. Mitford’s interpretation characteristically rendered ostracism ‘a peculiar mode of repressing the dangerous superiority which great abilities and superior character might acquire in a republic’. 19 Overall, ostracism was the standard example used by anti-democratic authors in order to exhibit the ‘inherent’ defects of a democratic system of government. The Tory historian and his followers, however, would not have commented so frequently on the institution of ostracism ‘if the erroneous accusations, against the Athenian democracy, of envy, injustice, and illtreatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination’. 20 It is important to point out, Grote argued, that ‘without this protective process none of the other institutions would have reached maturity’. The institution of ostracism was engendered by the necessity of creating in the multitude that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality - a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution, enforcing obedience to the authorities acting under and within these forms, yet combined with the habit of open speech ... [and] a perfect confidence in the bosom of every citizen, amidst the bitterness of party contest, that the forms of the constitution will be not less sacred in the eyes of his opponents than in his own. This co-existence of freedom and selfimposed restraint - of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the 16 Plutarch, Arist. VII 2, ascribed the institution of ostracism to Cleisthenes. On whether ostracism was Cleisthenic, see D. Kagan’s still interesting “The Origin and Purposes of Ostracism”, Hesperia 30 (1961) 393-401; R. Thomsen, The Origins of Ostracism (Copenhagen 1972) ch. III. For bibliography on the discussion of ostracism and its origins from Grote until the middle of this century, see A.R. Hands, “Ostraca and the Law of Ostracism: Some Possibilities and Assumptions”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 79 (1959) 69-79; and P. Karavites, “Cleisthenes and Ostracism Again”, Athenaeum 52 (1974) 326-36. 17 Plutarch, Them. XXII; also Nicias XI 1; Arist. XII. 18 Thucyd. VIII 73. 19 Mitford, History of Greece I 423; II 392. 20 History IV 330. 97 Chapter 4 persons exercising it - may be found in the aristocracy of England (since about 1688) as well as in the democracy of the American United States.21 Political liberty arises when the agent is in a condition to actually engage in deliberation and discussion about the state’s future policies. However, the minority must eventually submit to the will of the majority. Obedience to constitutional arrangements by all is guaranteed when there is a perfect confidence that, despite party contests, these arrangements will be solemnly preserved. Ostracism was a fundamental democratic lesson concerning the formation of self-imposed limits to ambition. This measure tended to safeguard the ‘co-existence of freedom and self-imposed restraint - of obedience to authority with unmeasured censure of the persons exercising it’.22 It is in this context, Grote believed, that ostracism must be understood. In the infancy of Athenian democracy, ostracism provided the means to prevent the recurrence of tyranny. It was a measure well suited to a society in which constitutional allegiances had not yet matured and in which powerful men were still likely to overthrow the law. Prospective usurpers of political power would have had to face the united majority of the citizenry. On the other hand, ostracism’s careful procedure and the lenity of the sentence, along with the immunity granted to the victim’s family and property, addressed the political difficulties of the period without resorting to violence. 23 Most importantly, the provisions that attended the institution of ostracism show, according to Grote, that the Athenians respected individual life and property.24 Admittedly, ostracism entailed a reasonable amount of distress and hardship for the convicted, but it proved beneficial to the community as it deterred pernicious staseis, thereby contributing to the stability of the Athenian democracy in the fifth century. Once democratic feeling and constitutional morality were firmly established and the rule of the dêmos was no longer threatened by prospective tyrants, ostracism ceased to operate. In the course of Athenian history, ostracism proved a prudential and powerful weapon in the hands of democracy. To elaborate his understanding of ostracism, Grote discussed at length the recorded cases when a vote of the ‘precautionary antidote to despotism’ was invoked. The first case concerned the known rivalry 21 History IV 321, 324-5. See Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws xii 19,29, for a defence of ostracism as a mild and reasonable measure. 22 History III 372. 23 Grote was probably wronged in his assumption that a person was ostracised only if at least 6,000 valid ostraka (which the historian confused with oyster shells) were cast against him, History IV 327-8. Of course there is a difference of opinion among ancient authorities, but is seems more reasonable to assume that a person was ostracised provided that at least 6,000 valid ostraka were handed in during the eighth meeting of the ecclêsia. 24 On these provisions see Aristotle, Athenian Constitution XLIII 4; Plutarch, Arist. VII 4-6; Diod., XI 55. 1-2, 87.1. 98 Grote’s History of Greece (II) between Themistocles and Aristeides which preceded in time the banishment of Cimon and Thucydides. The rivalry between the two chiefs became so bitter and menacing that it virtually threatened the peace of the city. The peace, Grote argued, was preserved mainly by the employment of ostracism. Similarly, the banishment of Cimon, which Plutarch so vehemently criticised, sustained democracy and helped to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.25 The pro-Spartan Cimon and his oligarchic party became very influential at the time Pericles and Ephialtes were co-operating to abridge the excessive censorial and judicial authorities of Areopagus. The reason for Cimon’s banishment was not, of course, the growing political influence of his party. He was banished when he had already lost the confidence of the Athenians, particularly after the humiliating dismissal of the Athenian troops from Laconia where they went, on his advice and in spite of the strenuous opposition of Ephialtes, to aid the Spartans in reducing the revolted Helots.26 It was very likely that Cimon would have taken any measure to regain his lost influence, even at the cost of the democratic constitution. Amidst the bitterness of political contest, which consequently arose, his opponents proposed a vote of ostracism. The vote ended in the expulsion of Cimon. On this occasion, Grote observed ‘we see the ostracism invoked to meet a period of intense political conflict, the violence of which it would at least abate, by removing for the time one of the contending leaders’. 27 On another occasion, equally significant in the course of Athenian history, Thucydides - son of Melesias - was condemned to ostracism in 443. After the death of Cimon, Thucydides skilfully organised the oligarchic party (hoi oligoi). Pericles had to face a persistent opposition. The aristocratic party now formed a compact group and its members attended regularly the public discussions, ‘sitting together in a particular section so as to be conspicuously parted from the Demos’. As a result, a strenuous contention arose between the party of Thucydides and that of Pericles (hoi polloi). Thucydides accused Pericles of disgracing Athens in the eyes of the Delian confederacy by having usurped the treasure from Delos under the pretence of greater security. Instead of prosecuting the struggle against the Persians, Athens used the confederate funds for the decoration of Athens by new temples and costly statues. Pericles replied, in a way that satisfied Grote, that Athens had fulfilled its promises: the Persian danger had ceased to be imminent. Yet Athens, according to the Athenian statesman, should have continued in accordance with the initial regulations to demand a tribute as a reserve sufficient to guarantee for the future the security of the confederacy. As the protectress of Hellenism, Athens was both entitled and bound to employ the surplus for rendering itself supreme by improved fortifications, works of art, and cultural activity. Pericles’ intentions, Grote argued, were principally directed towards 25 Cf. Mitford, History of Greece I 550. See Thucyd. I 101-102. 27 History VI 13. 26 99 Chapter 4 exalting Athens into something greater than an imperial city. He was imbued with ‘Pan-hellenic’ sentiments, and in strengthening and ornamenting Athens he hoped to make it ‘the centre of Grecian feeling, the stimulus of Grecian intellect, and the type of strong democratical patriotism, combined with full liberty of individual taste and aspiration’.28 Pericles’ response had not, however, succeeded in mitigating the oligarchic opposition. The party struggle became bitter and no less violent and it would have resulted in catastrophic political convulsions had the Athenian constitution not provided for the resolution of a conflict between two opposite and nearly equal party leaders. A vote of ostracism was invoked. Thucydides, having accepted the challenge, was banished and subsequently his party broke up. THE DEMAGOGUES The Athenian democracy was sustained by an effective constitutional mechanism, but no less by the involvement of talented or charismatic individuals in the procedures of policy-making. Part of the traditional conception of Athens, which Grote tried to upset, was that the demagogues were politically irresponsible, violent and immoral in their actions. ‘As Grecian history has been usually written’, Grote stated, ‘we are instructed to believe that the misfortunes, and the corruption, and the degradation, of the democratical states, were brought upon them by the class of demagogues, of whom Kleon, Hyperbolus, Androklês ... stand forth as specimens. These men are represented as mischief-makers and revilers, accusing without just cause, and converting innocence into treason’. 29 The most ill treated demagogue prior to Grote’s study was Cleon, whom the historian Thucydides and Aristophanes accused of being opportunistic and of having corrupted the people. 30 In the works of Grote’s predecessors, Cleon was represented as the exact embodiment of the ruinous characteristics that spoilt traditional values, and transformed the self-denying republic of the Persian war into the tyrannical republic of the Peloponnesian war, and the decayed state of the fourth century.31 Taking Cleon as the most representative example, the 28 History VI 63, 65. See Plutarch, Pericles XII 1-7. History VIII 37. 30 For Thucydides, III 36, Cleon was remarkable for the ‘violence of his character’. Aristophanes attacks Cleon in the Knights, 45, 75, 626-9, 758, calling him ‘the greatest rogue and liar in the world’ - panourgotaton kai diabolotaton tina. According to Grote, Thucydides ‘has forgotten his usual impartiality in criticising this personal enemy’, History VII 48. 31 Stanyan in calling Cleon ‘rash, arrogant and obstinate, contentious, envious, and malicious, covetous and corrupt’, exhausted all his depreciatory adjectives, The Grecian History 379. Even the calm bishop Thirlwall rendered him a ‘master of impudence’, who professed himself the friend of the poor, but ‘cherished their envy and jealousy of the rich, and accustomed them to consider their personal interests as the sole end of the state’, History III 186-7. See also C.A. Wheelwright, “Preliminary Observations upon the Knights”, The Comedies of Aristophanes (Oxford 1837) 290. 29 100 Grote’s History of Greece (II) demagogues were indiscriminately presented as motivated by self-interest, lust for power and wealth. To satisfy their selfish ends, they deceived a constantly vulnerable multitude, oppressed the noble, and paid no regard to the dictates of humanity. Grote, in turn, would argue first that Cleon’s policy resembled that of Pericles and was typical of an imperial rule; and secondly, that the demagogic function per se was of great importance to the working of the newly born democracies. In his analysis of the demagogic phenomenon, Grote argued that Cleon belonged to a new class of politicians, those who emerged from the world of business, trade and manufacture, and were the major political antagonists of the privileged by birth. Enrichment by trade was not a sufficient condition, however, to guarantee political power. The new politicians, who emerged in the times of the Peloponnesian war, had to distinguish themselves by their rhetorical and broadly intellectual abilities in order to become ‘leaders’ (as the etymology of the word demagôgos originally signified). Cleon was one of them. His case was exceptionally interesting since he combined an aristocratic position with a strong and genuine democratic sentiment. 32 Let us examine in some detail how and on what occasions Grote defended the demagogue Cleon. The first occasion was the important debate over the penalty to be imposed on Mytilene, which revolted from Athens (428/7 B.C.), and the action to be taken to ensure against similar revolts in the future. Cleon advised the Athenian assembly that a decision should be taken to the effect that all the adult males of this disloyal state should be killed, and the women and children sold as slaves. According to Grote, Cleon would, on this occasion, find in the assembly an audience hardly less violent than himself. Thus, he could easily persuade his fellow citizens that anything approaching mercy to the Mytileneans was treason to Athens. The demagogue at first succeeded in persuading the Athenians, but the next day the discussion was re-opened and a milder decision was taken. Sheer political expediency cannot, of course, justify such a brutal and cynical decision as that taken on Cleon’s proposal. But the demagogue, Grote observed with typical political realism, was not the only one determined to punish the revolted Mytileneans. In addition, the Athenians had sufficient reasons to feel indignant towards them. Having no ground of complaint against Athens, as they themselves admitted before the Peloponnesians at Olympia, the Mytileneans justified their revolt by vaguely invoking the possibility of oppression in the future. More irritating, however, was their decision to revolt against Athens at that particular juncture, that is at the time the Athenians were suffering a horrible pestilence, an invasion, and the high cost of war. Apart from these reasons, the Mytileneans had been the first to invite a Peloponnesian fleet across the Aegean and to warn the enemies of the Athenians of the supposed dangers of their imperialism. Nothing more than this, Grote contended, would have been required to kindle the most 32 See Grote’s picture of Cleon, History VII 48-57. 101 Chapter 4 intense wrath on the part of the people of Athens. Finally, Cleon’s proposal for the punishment of the Mytileneans was not extraordinary but simply reflected the severest penalties imposed by the generally accepted laws of war in ancient Greece.33 Next, Grote turned to the case of Sphacteria (425 B.C.). The object of the enterprise, to take as prisoners the Spartan hoplites of the blockaded Sphacteria, appeared extremely hard to Nicias and other eminent generals. The Spartans were supposed to resist to the point of death, as they had done in Thermopylae, and, therefore, the quarrel with Sparta would have been inflamed anew. Nevertheless, the appointment of Cleon as general appeared highly advantageous to his opponents. They could expect but two things, both positive: either to get rid of Cleon, which was most likely in their anticipation, or to capture the island with the Spartans killed or alive. 34 Cleon, entrapped in the manoeuvres and the tactics of his political antagonists (especially those who belonged to aristocratic clubs, the upper-class Nicias amongst them) could not refuse his appointment as general without being humiliated. It should be noted, however, that no further military action might have been necessary had the Athenians accepted the proposals of Sparta for peace. But at the urging of Cleon the Spartan proposals were rejected as unsatisfactory. Earlier historians vigorously criticised the rejection of the peace terms of Sparta. In Gillies’ opinion, this ‘arrogant demagogue’ succeeded in persuading the people to reject an ‘advantageous peace with Sparta’. 35 Grote steadfastly denied that the terms proposed by Sparta were in any sense profitable to the Athenians. On the contrary, the terms were calculated for Sparta’s own purposes. Grote described, with his characteristic political instinct, the Athenian sentiments and reaction, as well as the whole proceedings until the dismissal of the Lacedaemonian envoys. The course proper to be adopted by Athens in reference to the proposition, however, was by no means obvious. In all probability, the trireme which brought the Lacedæmonian envoys also brought the first news of that unforeseen and instantaneous turn of events, which had rendered the Spartans in Sphakteria certain prisoners, (so it was then conceived) and placed the whole Lacedæmonian fleet in their power; thus giving a totally new character to the war. The sudden arrival of such prodigious intelligence - the astounding presence of Lacedæmonian envoys, bearing the olive-branch and in an attitude of humiliation - must have produced in 33 History VI 269-71. See Thucyd. III 12 History VI 346. This is what Thucydides himself says, IV 28. Thucydides, according to Grote, ‘seems to consider that the death or disgrace of Cleon would have been a greater benefit to Athens than the victory and capture of the Laced[aemonia]ns at Sphacteria’, BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 336. 35 Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece II 281, 286. According to Mitford, this ‘turbulent orator’ encouraged the ‘despotic multitude’ of Athens to decide the fate of the Spartans on Sphacteria, ‘the most meritorious of the Greek nation’, History of Greece II 168, 185. 34 102 Grote’s History of Greece (II) the susceptible public of Athens emotions of the utmost intensity; an elation and confidence such as had probably never been felt since the reconquest of Samos. It was difficult at first to measure the full bearings of the new situation, and even Periklês himself might have hesitated what to recommend. But the immediate and dominant impression with the general public was, that Athens might now ask her own terms, as consideration for the prisoners in the island.36 Of this tendency, Cleon made himself the emphatic representative. This talented demagogue was a politician who (‘like leading journals in modern times’) often appeared to guide the people because he already knew their feelings and expectations. Cleon demanded the restoration of lost conquests in exchange for the soldiers captured in Sphacteria. This was quite reasonable, Grote argued, for a state that enjoyed at this particular juncture considerable practical advantages. The demagogue’s resolute position against peace is not to be blamed: ‘On the present occasion, he doubtless spoke with the most genuine conviction; for he was full of the sentiment of Athenian force and Athenian imperial dignity, as well as disposed to a sanguine view of future chances.’ The Athenians’ only mistake, the historian judged, was their ‘over-estimation of the prospective chances arising out of success’; but nobody is justified in assigning this event to democratic folly. Over-estimation of their chances ‘to a degree more extravagant than that of which Athens was now guilty, is by no means peculiar to democracy. Other governments, opposed to democracy not less in temper than in form - an able despot like the Emperor Napoleon, and a powerful aristocracy like that of England - have found success to the full as misleading’. 37 Cleon carried on successfully the enterprise in Sphacteria and became the author of the most important success of Athens throughout the Peloponnesian war. Nicias, and those who were attached to the Spartan ideal of political rule, would have betrayed Athens and agreed to a peace disadvantageous to its foreign policy. Cleon, being on this memorable occasion an opponent of peace, derived no personal interest, as Thucydides wants us to believe. Let it be observed, Grote remarked, that the peace finally concluded in 424-3 under Nicias’ auspices was ill-judged and highly disadvantageous to Athens. At this time, Athens should have instead prosecuted the war in Thrace, preventing Brasidas from advancing further. On the other hand, the policy recommended by Cleon was entirely compatible with that of Pericles.38 The originality of Grote’s conclusions cannot be evaluated unless we consider that they had to be drawn against the ‘sacred’ voice of Thucydides, whose accounts the historian consistently subjected to a critical examination. The historian of the Peloponnesian war as well as the comedian Aristophanes, Grote 36 History VI 338. History VI 338, 340. 38 History VII 64-6. 37 103 Chapter 4 argued, had a bitter personal grudge against the demagogue. In effect, Thucydides had strong reasons to forget ‘his usual impartiality in criticising this personal enemy’. It should be remembered that Athens lost Amphipolis, ‘the first jewel of her empire’ due to Thucydides’ negligence. Having been appointed joint commander along with Eucles in Thrace, he was in command of a squadron at Thasos (an island out of all possible danger) at the crucial moment of Brasidas’ attack of Amphipolis. Consequently, Athens and its empire sustained a most serious and irreparable blow. The historian was subsequently banished on the proposal of Cleon - incurring justly, in Grote’s view, a verdict of guilty, for he proved shortsighted and incompetent to protect a place that was of material importance for the advancement of the Athenian strategic plans. Amphipolis, being situated near the mouth of the Strymon, would have enabled the Athenians to check the east-west route.39 On the other hand, to judge Cleon on the basis of the Knights of Aristophanes is as fair as judging Socrates on the testimony of the Clouds.40 It is known that Cleon indicted Aristophanes for wrongdoing towards the Athenians and their Council because he satirised them when foreigners were present at the Great Dionysia. Grote’s bold defence of Cleon against the dominant view must be seen in the light of his reflections on the role and function of the demagogues in ancient democracies. The radical politician and historian of ancient Greece could not resist drawing the analogy: the demagogues could find their modern counterpart in the leaders of opposition parties. It may be conceded that Cleon was a man of fierce political antipathies, a bitter speaker endowed with a violent temper and even occasionally dishonest in his relations with political rivals, but ‘[t]hese are qualities which, in all countries of free debate, go to form what is called a great opposition speaker’.41 Cleon was exceptionally qualified for this role, and in the course of his career he often defended those who had suffered wrong (he was truly a ‘prostatês tou dêmou’). Men of wealth might purchase advice by a professional rhetor on how to conduct an eloquent speech before their judges, but a poor citizen could only resort to Cleon or Hyperbolus to obtain suggestions and, sometimes, their ‘auxiliary’ speech. But most importantly, Cleon and other demagogues helped the people to emancipate themselves from the political control of the nobles, who by using either bribery or influence (or simply by taking advantage of the social sentiment towards them), were always able to have their narrow interests promoted. Grote emphasised that in Athens there existed ‘To say, with Dr. Thirlwall, that “human prudence and activity could not have accomplished more than Thucydides did under the same circumstances”- is true as matter of fact, and creditable as far as it goes. But it is wholly inadmissible as a justification, and meets only one part of the case. An officer in command is responsible not only for doing most “under the circumstances,” but also for the circumstances themselves, in so far as they are under his control’, History VI 418. 40 History VII 49-51. See also Aristophanes’ Acharnians 377-82 for hostile references to Cleon. 41 History VII 52. 39 104 Grote’s History of Greece (II) several powerful anti-popular groups, ready to conspire when the circumstances were safe and tempting, as for instance during the period preceding the oligarchy of Four Hundred. The leaders of these groups, men of uncommon ability, required nothing more than the extinction or silence of the demagogues, to be enabled to subvert the popular securities, and get possession of the government ... They [the demagogues] formed the vital movement of all that was tutelary and public-spirited in democracy. Aggressive in respect to official delinquents, they were defensive in respect to the public and the constitution. If that anti-popular force, which Antiphon found ready-made, had not been efficient, at a much earlier moment, in stifling the democracy - it was because there were demagogues to cry aloud, as well as assemblies to hear and sustain them ... I here employ the term demagogues because it is that commonly used by those who denounce the class of men here under review: the proper neutral phrase, laying aside odious associations, would be to call them, popular speakers or opposition speakers. But by whatever name they may be called, it is impossible rightly to conceive their position in Athens, without looking at them in contrast and antithesis with those anti-popular forces against which they formed the indispensable barrier, and which come forth into such manifest and melancholy working under the organising hands of Antiphon and Phrynichus.42 The demagogues have been presented by historians as turbulent and warlike whereas they were in principle opposed to war. The demagogues had nothing to gain from the prosecution of war. And if the Athenian Cleophon, like Cleon earlier, managed to persuade the assembly to reject the peace terms proposed by Sparta in 410, it was because he was committed to the interests of his country. In his decision, Grote believed, Cleophon was not wrong. After the restoration of democracy (succeeding the oligarchy of the Four Hundred), and following the victorious battle of Kyzicus, the distressed Spartans proposed peace with Athens. Cleophon firmly opposed their proposals for peace, which in the end were rejected. Historians, Grote believed, attacked Cleophon because they were unable to abstract from their minds the final chapter of the war: in 410 B.C. new opportunities were arising for the Athenians. Cleophon acted patriotically, having nothing personal to gain. Nicias, Cleon’s major rival, was praised by eighteenth-century historians for his superior rank and his allegedly excellent character. Posterity, as Gillies stated, ‘will for ever lament the fate of Nicias the most pious, the most virtuous ... man of the age in which he lived’. ‘All wise and compassionate men’, wrote Oliver Goldsmith, ‘could not forbear shedding tears at the tragical fate of ... Nicias, who, of all men of his time, seemed least to merit so ignominious and untimely an end’. Not surprisingly, Grote upset this picture, asserting that Nicias should be 42 History VIII 38. 105 Chapter 4 remembered as the man who brought about the ruin of Athens.43 And the fact that this man caused the ruin of Athens is neither accidental nor destitute of political lessons. It shows how an imposing respectability, emanating from certain characteristic qualifications (rank and wealth) that generally attract people’s admiration, can create illusions resulting in fatal political decisions. 44 In this case, the Athenians had over-confidence in Nicias and this was perhaps the greatest mistake they ever committed. Their dreams, ambitions and their defences perished in the harbour of Syracuse. Their mistake was the result of their inability to anticipate that a man like Nicias could show so much imprudence and incapacity. Grote’s picture of Nicias is one of mixed feelings, yet explicitly critical: If we were judging Nikias merely as a private man, and setting his personal conduct in one scale, against his personal suffering on the other, the remark of Thucydidês would be natural and intelligible. But the general of a great expedition, upon whose conduct the lives of thousands of brave men as well as the most momentous interests of his country depend, cannot be tried by any such standard. His private merit becomes a secondary point in the case, as compared with the discharge of his responsible duties, by which he must stand or fall ... Admitting fully both the good intentions of Nikias and his personal bravery, rising even into heroism during the last few days in Sicily, it is not the less incontestable that, first, the failure of the enterprise, next, the destruction of the armament, is to be traced distinctly to his lamentable misjudgment. Sometimes petty trifling, sometimes apathy and inaction, sometimes presumptuous neglect, sometimes obstinate blindness even to urgent and obvious necessities, one or other of these, his sad mental defects, will be found operative at every step, whereby this fated armament sinks down from exuberant efficiency into the last depth of aggregate ruin and individual misery ... The man whose flagrant incompetency could bring such wholesale ruin upon two fine armaments entrusted to his command, upon the Athenian maritime empire, and ultimately upon Athens herself, must appear on the tablets of history under the severest condemnation.45 Not even the most eloquent demagogue would have created this fatal and blind over-confidence. For Grote, Nicias was a man of mediocre intellect and poor rhetorical powers, yet highly respected for his inaccessibility to pecuniary corruption (a common vice among the leading citizens of Athens and Sparta 46) as well as for his rigidly pious and religious life. Unfortunately, his grand defects as 43 Gillies, History of Ancient Greece II 402, 411; Goldsmith, Grecian History I 304; see also Mitford, History of Greece II 380-81, 385. 44 J.S. Mill defined Grote’s idea as ‘the theory of dependence’, which presents the relation between the upper and lower classes as one of ‘affectionate tutelage’. Mill wished to see the working class progressively reluctant to be led by the ‘mere authority and prestige of their superiors’. See D.F. Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Government (Princeton 1976) 83. 45 History VII 370-71. See Thucyd. VII 86. 46 History VI 26. 106 Grote’s History of Greece (II) a general were in the eyes of his fellow-citizens overshadowed by his socially approved habits. Grote thus contrasted the demagogues, who directly appealed to the citizens by offering to protect their interests, with politicians whose social status and vague profession of concern for the state won them respect. The latter could attain a lofty, yet perilous, position in the city. Contrary to those who had argued that the demagogues caused the corruption, the misfortunes, and even the decline of the democratic states, Grote argued that the demagogues were the ‘living organs’ of democratic institutions; they ‘formed the vital movement of all that was tutelary and public-spirited in democracy’. The demagogues rendered great service to democracy by defending the people’s rights, often exposing oligarchic conspiracies. Hyperbolus for instance, the Athenian exile who resided in Samos during the attempts of Peisander and his partisans to subvert the Samian democracy, resisted the oligarchic plans, sacrificing his life to the cause of popular liberty. The self-denying Hyperbolus ‘represented the demagogic and accusatory eloquence of the democracy, the check upon official delinquency; so that he served as a common object of antipathy to Athenian and Samian oligarchs’.47 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE To restore the good name of Athens, Grote had to show against the prevailing view that as an imperial power the democratic state did not exploit or systematically oppress the subjects-allies. Far from endorsing the judgement of Mitford and Gillies that Athens’ dependencies suffered from the ‘covetous ambition’ of the Athenian people, Grote maintained that there was only a little feeling of actual discontent among the citizens in the subject-allied cities: ‘the feeling towards Athens was rather indifference than hatred’.48 The most consequential error committed by earlier historians, Grote observed, had been to identify imperial Athens with Athens the leader of the Delian League, as if the city of Pericles aimed right from the beginning at establishing an empire. Such ‘systematic anticipation of subsequent results is fatal to any correct understanding, either of the real agents or the real period; both of which are to be explained from the circumstances preceding and actually present, with some help, though cautious and sparing, from our acquaintance with that which was then an unknown future’.49 An impartial historian should distinguish between the confederacy of Delos, with Athens as president, and the Athenian empire which 47 History VIII 24, 38. See Grote, History V 390. Cf. Mitford, History of Greece I 554; Gillies, History of Ancient Greece II 90-101. 49 History V 383. 48 107 Chapter 4 grew out of it.50 After the battles of Plataea and Mycale, organised maritime activity was of vital importance. The Persians still occupied crucial posts in the Aegean and Thrace. The recollection of Persian cruelties and the likelihood of a new coordinated attack should have formed a pressing motive for the Greeks to be united and prepared. Athens legitimately took the presidency inasmuch as its maritime power was by far the greatest. The first years of its leadership must have been years of active, unabated warfare against the Persians. The transition from the Athenian hêgemonia to the Athenian archê (in Thucydides’ words) extended over a considerable period of time. What can be said with certainty, on the basis of the ascertained sequence of events, is that the whole development was completed before the Thirty years’ Peace (444 B.C.). It was initially stipulated that the members of the Delian synod should provide personal military service to Athens, but after a few years many members became weary of personal service. The root cause of the change in the nature of the alliance, Grote argued, was the fluctuating allegiance of the allied cities. The members themselves, as Thucydides testifies, persuaded the Athenians to substitute money-payments for personal service. Henceforward, the position of Athens as well as the feelings of her citizens changed. When the confederate states became weary even of paying their tribute, they endeavoured to separate themselves from the alliance. But seceding or disobedient states were treated as guilty of treason or revolt. Accordingly, the Athenians, possibly in conjunction with the synod, disarmed the revolters who successively became their subjects. This drastic change in the nature of the Delian League emerged out of a complexity of circumstances and, given the problem of documentation, it is difficult, Grote believed, to define with historical precision the steps whereby changes actually began or were implemented. The allies ‘slid unconsciously into subjects, while Athens, without any predetermined plan, passed from a chief into a despot’.51 Yet Grote’s historical sense did not allow him to ignore that there were two reasons justly causing discontent among the subject allies. First, the Athenians acted against the principle of political autonomy: the norms and experience of Greek life were completely averse to a prolonged alliance of this character. The polis in antiquity was an autonomous entity in which the people were the sovereign decision-makers, responsible for their own destiny. Secondly, Athens, having defeated the Persians, began to employ the funds and the force of her subject-allies either to promote its predominance throughout Greece or to embellish the city with expensive sculptures and other pieces of art. Naturally, the allies received with suspicion this development, as they had nothing to gain themselves. Admitting the ‘injustice’ of Athens in acting as a polis tyrannis, Grote 50 History V 380-388. See Thucyd. I 97-99. History V 388. ‘We did not gain this empire by force’, says Thucydides’ Pericles, ‘it came to us at a time when you were unwilling to fight on to the end against the Persians’ (I 75). 51 108 Grote’s History of Greece (II) maintained that the Athenian predominance and the enforcement of its maritime potentiality was necessary to protect the Aegean sea, because the Persians were still very powerful. On the other hand, the use of a part of the tribute for domestic improvements that could elevate Athens to a superior cultural power would only have a positive impact on her relations with the allies, as it could soften the ‘humiliating sense of obedience’. 52 On those two issues, the allies had obvious reasons for complaint. Historians however, in Grote’s view, were wrong to place too much stress on the unpopularity of the Athenian empire. Compared with the Spartan empire of the fourth century, with its cruel and omnipotent harmostes (commanders, local governors), the Athenian imperial government was by far superior. Actual discontent among citizens in the dependent cities was particularly limited. Indeed, Grote continued, it is incontestable that the instigators of revolts against the Athenian rule were usually small groups of ambitious upper-class citizens, or prospective tyrants who could rely on Persian assistance. 53 The aristocratic parties were always ready to shake off the dominance of Athens, but there is evidence that they received little support from the people. For instance, during the Athenians’ siege of Melos in 416, which ended with ‘one of the grossest and most inexcusable pieces of cruelty combined with injustice which Grecian history presents to us’, the Melian leaders admitted the envoys sent by Athens to a private conversation and disregarded the feelings of the general assembly. 54 In his account of the revolt in Chios, which similarly started against the will of the general population, Grote remarked that ‘[c]ontrary to what is commonly intimated by historians, we may observe, first, that Athens did not systematically interfere to impose her own democratical government upon her allies - next, that the empire of Athens, though upheld mainly by an established belief in her superior force, was nevertheless by no means odious, nor the proposition of revolting from her acceptable, to the general population of her allies.’ 55 And it was not only that the general population was commonly averse to revolt. As the affairs in Samos demonstrated, the people actually welcomed the dominance of Athens, which they saw in terms of a protective force against local oligarchic cruelties. Similarly, the unfortunate struggle with the Mytileneans started with the governing propertied oligarchy and not by the majority of the people of the island, who had always been friendly to Athens. The Athenian empire, at the peak of its power during the democratic administration of Pericles, was for Grote clearly beneficial to the allies. First, the 52 History VI 64-66. History VI 80. 54 History VII 156, 161; see Thucyd. V 84. Also History VIII 256: ‘The bloodshed after the recapture of Mitylênê and Skionê ... are disgraceful to the humanity of Athens, and stand in pointed contrast with the treatment of Samos when reconquered by Periklês.’ 55 History VII 390-91. Cf. Thirlwall, History III 47-8. 53 109 Chapter 4 maritime protection of the Aegean was advantageous to the development of free trading relations that reached western regions. Secondly, and most importantly, the empire aided the diffusion of democratic consciousness among its subjects and fostered a deep antipathy to tyrannical regimes. The people in the subject-allied states were well aware of the dangers resulting from a relapse into despotism or from a complete change in the status quo. They would have been exposed to new enemies against whom Athens had hitherto protected them, or, if not to them, to the aggravated ambition of their own oligarchies. Thirdly, the citizens of the subject allies were not subjected to oppression, cruelty, or any extreme and unnecessary hardship. There is no sufficient evidence, Grote asserted, warranting the assumption that the Athenians were parasitic towards the allies, demanding excessive and increasing tribute from their dependencies. 56 Finally, as a result of the transference of the functions of the synod at Delos to the imperial city, Athens exercised legal authority over its allies. Any dispute among the subject-states or among their citizens was brought for trial before the Athenian courts. Though this practice must have created a great deal of discontent, it also tended to secure the administration of justice to the weakest and most defenceless citizens. 57 Far from being an unjust treatment, it allowed for equality before the law and precluded any serious acts of discrimination between the Athenians and their subjects. As the practice went on, it afforded protection against misconduct of Athenian settlers or Athenian officers who resided in their regions. Under Sparta, by contrast, the harmostes and dekarchies (the ruling councils of ten) systematically put to death innocent citizens, without at least the benefit of a trial. Aristodemus, the harmostês of Oreus in Euboea, left a deplorable example of brutal violence and unspeakable atrocities, which Sparta never redressed. Indeed we know, Grote maintained, ‘that these Spartan authorities would grant no redress, not merely against harmosts, but even against private Spartan citizens, who had been guilty of gross crime out of their own country’. 58 Athens, by contrast, had deprived her subject-allies of their autonomy, but her representatives and local administrators respected the rule of law and justice. Sparta in effect enslaved the allies, inflicting upon them sufferings virtually unjustifiable by any political principle or necessity. The Athenian empire, that remarkable phenomenon in Greek political history, broke up after the disaster in Sicily (413 B.C.). ‘During the period of its integrity’, Grote argued, ‘it is a sight marvelous to contemplate, and its working must be pronounced ... to have been highly beneficial to the Grecian world’: History V 391. Grote’s scepticism has been proved well grounded. B.D. Meritt, H.T. WadeGery, and M.F. McGregor, ed. The Athenian Tribute Lists, 4 vols. (Cambridge and Princeton 1939-53), show that not only the Athenians did not increase the amount of tribute, but they also often actually reduced it. 57 History VI 85-7. 58 History IX 260-61. 56 110 Grote’s History of Greece (II) But my conviction is ... that the empire of Athens was not harsh and oppressive, as it is commonly depicted. Under the circumstances of her dominion - at a time when the whole transit and commerce of the Aegean was under one maritime system, which excluded all irregular force - when Persian ships of war were kept out of the waters, and Persian tribute-officers away from the seaboard - when the disputes inevitable among so many little communities could be peaceably redressed by the mutual right of application to the tribunals of Athens - and when these tribunals were also such as to present to sufferers a refuge against wrongs done even by individual citizens of Athens herself ... - the condition of the maritime Greeks was materially better than it had been before, or than it will be seen to become afterwards. Her empire, if it did not inspire attachment, certainly provoked no antipathy, among the bulk of the citizens of the subject-communities, as is shown by the party-character of the revolts against her. If in her imperial character she exacted obedience, she also fulfilled duties and ensured protection - to a degree incomparably greater than was ever realised by Sparta. And even if she had been ever so much disposed to cramp the free play of mind and purpose among her subjects - a disposition which is noway proved - the very circumstances of her own democracy, with its open antithesis of political parties, universal liberty of speech, and manifold individual energy, would do much to prevent the accomplishment of such an end, and would act as a stimulus to the dependent communities even without her own intention.59 Athens as an imperial state demanded obedience but it never overlooked the duties and the responsibilities associated with a great empire. As an imperial city, it gave not only prosperity to its subject-allies, but also liberation from the yoke of local tyrannies and long-established oligarchies. Further, as long as the Athenian maritime power was actively present in the Aegean, no Persian invasion could threaten the Greek population of the islands. With the empire’s decline, the door opened to Persian interference and corruption, and at last facilitated the reign of Macedonia - which Grote so strongly lamented. To incorporate so many disparate states (attached to the ideology of political nonintegration or disintegration) into one system with specifically common rules and tasks, nothing ‘but the genius, energy, discipline, and democracy of Athens could have brought ... about’. 60 The overthrow of this ‘pan-hellenically’ motivated empire, never to be replaced by the poorly qualified Spartans, ultimately brought the universal ruin of Greek independence. THE CHARACTER OF THE ATHENIANS As we have seen in chapter two, the character of the Athenian people was largely the focus of criticism by Grote’s eighteenth-century predecessors in Britain. For 59 60 History VIII 257-8. History VIII 258. 111 Chapter 4 Mitford, the archenemy of Athenian democracy, life under democracy was no better than the rule of a mob which ‘delighted in accusation, prosecution, and the whole business of sycophancy’. The daily business of the law-courts according to the translator of Aristophanes, Thomas Mitchell (1783-1845), enabled the poor to get an easy salary, offering themselves as ‘informers, as witnesses, or as judges; and the idle and the ingenious found in them a perpetual source of amusement’. 61 The Athenians, further, were ungrateful to their chiefs, unstable, unlawful and intolerant of legitimate social distinctions. Pericles was frequently reproved for paving the way for decadence and laxity in morals. Grote upset the verdict, arguing that the Athenians were law-abiding citizens, steadily attached to the principles of constitutional democracy, and definitely not ungrateful towards ‘eminent’ citizens but, conversely, credulous, and in their treatment of them pathologically overtrusting.62 Earlier historians systematically recurred to the condemnation of Miltiades to exemplify the ‘fickleness and ingratitude’ of the Athenians.63 According to Grote, ‘ingratitude’ is not the proper word to characterise the reaction of the Athenians, granted that we submit the facts that preceded Miltiades’ punishment to ‘reasonable criticism’. On this occasion, the question at stake is the justice or injustice committed against the constitution and the people of Athens. It seems that, by allowing himself to be ‘intoxicated and demoralised’ by the success of Marathon, eventually Miltiades fanned the fires of unreasonably optimistic public desires for quick enrichment and power. Flattered by the admiration and deference paid to him by his fellow-citizens, he became arrogant and ambitious beyond any reasonable measure, as the expedition against Paros demonstrated. In effect, the fate of Miltiades illustrates for the historian ‘another moral, of no small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs; - it teaches us the painful lesson, how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and ambitious Greek’. 64 Thus, what is called the ‘fickleness’ of the Athenians on this occasion was nothing more than a decisive change in their estimation of Miltiades justly caused by his ‘reckless aspirations’ and unprincipled conduct. In regard to the common charge against the Athenians, that of ingratitude, the parliamentary Radical provided an explanation worth quoting to some length, in which the ‘weaknesses’ of Athenian democracy are virtually transformed into characteristic attributes of democratic regimes: Mitford, History of Greece III 476-7; Mitchell, “Greek Courts of Justice”, Quarterly Review 33 (1826) 354. 62 See History V 84. Indeed, there ‘was far greater danger, in a Grecian community, of dangerous excess of gratitude towards a victorious soldier, than of deficiency in that sentiment’. 63 Even Cicero, Republic I.iii.5, found in the maltreatment of Miltiades and Themistocles revealing instances of ‘the ficklness and cruelty of Athens toward her most eminent citizens’. 64 History V 83. For Miltiades’ expedition against Paros and its rationale, see Herodot. VI 133-6. 61 112 Grote’s History of Greece (II) If we are to predicate any attribute of the multitude, it will rather be that of undue tenacity than undue fickleness. There will occur nothing in the course of this history to prove that the Athenian people changed their opinions, on insufficient grounds, more frequently than an unresponsible one or few would have changed. But there were two circumstances in the working of the Athenian democracy which imparted to it an appearance of greater fickleness without the reality: - First, that the manifestations and changes of opinion were all open, undisguised, and noisy: the people gave utterance to their present impression, whatever it was, with perfect frankness; if their opinions were really changed, they had no shame or scruple in avowing it: Secondly - and this is a point of capital importance in the working of democracy generally - the present impression, whatever it might be, was not merely undisguised in its manifestations, but also had a tendency to be exaggerated in its intensity. This arose from their habit of treating public affairs in multitudinous assemblages, the well-known effect of which is, to inflame sentiment in every man’s bosom by mere contact with a sympathising circle of neighbours ... This is a defect which of course belongs in a certain degree to all exercise of power by numerous bodies, even though they be representative bodies especially when the character of the people, instead of being comparatively sedate and slow to move, like the English, is quick, impressible, and fiery, like Greeks or Italians; but it operated far more powerfully on the self-acting Dêmos assembled in the Pnyx. It was in fact the constitutional malady of democracy, of which the people were themselves perfectly sensible - as I shall show hereafter from the securities which they tried to provide against it - but which no securities could ever wholly eradicate.65 The substance of Grote’s defence is that the fickleness ‘which has been so largely imputed to the Athenian democracy ... is nothing more than a reasonable change of opinion on the best grounds’. Far from being fickle and unsteady, the Athenians were attached to their constitution with unabated loyalty. In no part of the world, Grote contended, ‘has this sentiment of constitutional duty and submission to the vote of a legal minority been more keenly and universally felt than it was among the citizens of democratical Athens’. It was this characteristic of the Athenians that Antiphon used in order to destroy the constitution and establish the oligarchy of the Four Hundred. But the conduct of the Athenians after the restoration of democracy in 411 and 403 respectively, was admirable. Despite the moral and practical degradation to which they had been subjected, the Athenians did not give way to passions of vengeance. On these occasions, the people of Athens demonstrated that the cardinal lesson of democracy - to hold sacred the inviolability of life, law and justice - was well inculcated in their 65 History V 85-6. 113 Chapter 4 minds. Their conduct, an astonishing event in history, far from being accidental, depended upon permanent attributes of the popular character. 66 The Athenians, whose sentiments were loudly and openly expressed with every sign of sincerity, were by no means unconscious of the significance of majority decisions. Ancient democracy, according to Grote, permitted the free expression of a variety of opinions. The diverse opinions helped to balance extreme judgements: people learned to respect each other’s ideas and convictions; and, most importantly, they ‘acquired a certain practical consciousness of their own liability to error’.67 In considering the effect of the popular assemblies on the character of people in ancient democracies, Grote, in his preparatory essays to the History, remarked that every man could become ‘accustomed to hear the functionaries of government freely censured and overhauled: every man when he felt himself wronged, stood a good chance of being able to create general sympathy, and looked to this sympathy for redress’.68 Thus revenge, usually connected with unnecessary infliction of pain and suffering, was discouraged since the dialogic encounter in the assembly effectively sobered personal animosities. But what about the illegal judicial proceedings after the great victory at Arginousae, when the Athenians acted in the spirit of revenge? On this occasion, as well as on the occasion of the mutilation of the Hermae, Grote took pains to investigate the causes that led the Athenians to violate the laws enjoining that the prisoners would have a fair trial. His narrative is an exemplar of the historicist approach combined with a strong sense of the importance of empirical evidence. After Arginusae six Athenian generals were convicted of not taking all the necessary steps to save their wounded and drowning soldiers. In what followed, they were tried as a group and executed. Regardless of the great victory in the field of battle, Grote argued, the negative sentiments excited in Athens were perfectly justifiable.69 In a most imaginative account, the historian recreated the scenes that should have normally taken place in Athens on the day the news arrived: joy for the exceedingly valuable victory but also ‘horror and remorse at the fact that so many of the brave men who had helped to gain it had been left to perish unheeded’. It is unreasonable to expect that the Athenians, elated at the news, would have absolved the generals from all responsibility for the desertion of the perishing warriors. The general sentiment became even more intense due to History VIII 80-83. The Athenians, Aristotle confessed, ‘appear both in private and public to have behaved towards the past disasters in the most completely honourable and statesmanlike manner of any people in history’, Athenian Constitution XL 2. Xenophon similarly praised the conduct of the Athenians on these occasions, Hellenica II.iv.43; and even Plato did so, Seventh Letter 325B. 67 History IV 63. 68 BL Add. MSS 29,517 fol. 38. 69 D. Kagan’s relevant discussion is heavily indebted to Grote, The Fall of the Athenian Empire (Ithaca and London 1987) 356-374. 66 114 Grote’s History of Greece (II) the simultaneous occurrence of the festival of Apaturia, which was the great annual occasion when the members of each phratria (brotherhood) met to worship their protecting deities and to vote on the enrolling of new members (i.e., sons born to members). Grote suggested that the whole legal system on this occasion actually collapsed because the Athenians forgot for a while their obligations as citizens of a democracy and surrendered their hearts to family sympathies and antipathies. So intense and overwhelming were the feelings and the excitement thus produced, that the survivors thought of nothing else but revenge, even at the cost of the constitution itself. Thus, hidden in the heart of these external manifestations of grief and anger, Grote discovered the sentiments and expectations derived from Athenian family and religious conscience. Of course, Grote pointed out, it should be kept in mind that the whole proceedings are transmitted to us by the prejudiced (mis)presentation of Xenophon. Apparently, Xenophon’s narrative was designed to demonstrate that the condemnation of the generals resulted from bribes and intrigues as well as from the violent emotion of the Athenian public.70 Such is the natural behaviour of those who, having for the moment forgotten their sense of political commonwealth, become degraded into exclusive family-men. The family affections, productive as they are of much gentle sympathy and mutual happiness in the interior circle, are also liable to generate disregard, malice, sometimes even ferocious vengeance, towards others. Powerful towards good generally, they are not less powerful occasionally towards evil; and require, not less than the selfish propensities, constant subordinating control from that moral reason which contemplates for its end the security and happiness of all.71 The Athenians committed ‘an act of violent injustice and illegality, deeply dishonouring the men who passed it and the Athenian character generally’, because they departed from the clearly articulated democratic procedures that ensured the proper treatment of individual citizens. Self-regarding motives predominated over the politics of prudence and common security. 72 A similar interpretation was applied in the case of the mutilation of the Hermae, an event that took place just prior to the expedition to Syracuse. For earlier historians, the paroxysms of anger and superstition caused by the vandalism against the Hermae provided another convincing instance of the ‘depraved character of the Athenian citizens’. In refuting the conventional view, Grote showed that the damage inflicted upon the local Gods, apart from being a A. Andrewes paradoxically asserts that Grote’s account, though very much worth reading, is wrong due to his ‘uncritical acceptance of Xenophon’; see “The Arginousai Trial”, Phoenix 28 (1974) 112n. 71 History VIII 184. 72 History VIII 182. 70 115 Chapter 4 violent irreligious act, created deep uncertainty regarding the safety of the country and the constitution.73 The sacrilegious affair raised suspicion against Alcibiades because he had earlier committed an offence against the sanctity of the mysteries.74 Even though Alcibiades must have been innocent of the charges, the conduct of the Athenians against him, Grote maintained, was justifiable. Indeed, Alcibiades on this occasion could have possibly been a victim of a fabricated charge, carefully worked out by his political opponents. It is to these men, and not to the Athenians collectively, that Alcibiades owed his condemnation. (Let it be observed, Grote added, that the public’s alarm was aggravated by two unprincipled politicians, Peisander and Charicles, who thereafter worked for the subversion of democracy.) To judge correctly, according to Grote, the historian ought to take into account the religious traditions of the Athenians. It would then be clear that their apprehension about the integrity of the constitution was on this occasion perfectly sincere: It is of course impossible for any one to sympathise fully with the feelings of a religion not his own ... But if we take the reasonable pains, which is incumbent on those who study the history of Greece, to realise in our minds the religious and political associations of the Athenians - noted in ancient times for their superior piety, as well as for their accuracy and magnificence about the visible monuments embodying that feeling - we shall in part comprehend the intensity of mingled dismay, terror, and wrath, which beset the public mind on the morning after this nocturnal sacrilege, alike unforeseen and unparalleled ... To the Athenians, when they went forth on the following morning, each man seeing the divine guardian at his doorway dishonoured and defaced ... it would seem that the town had become as it were godless. It was on the protection of the gods that all their political constitution as well as the blessings of civil life depended.75 In his narrative, Grote tried to show that the damage inflicted upon the local deities, apart from being a violent irreligious act, created deep uncertainty respecting the safety of the country and the constitution. The offended gods, the deities habitually taken as protecting the state, ‘required’ the punishment of those who were involved in the sacrilege; otherwise, they would have retracted their customary protection. The city would have been open to severe and unpredictable miseries. Grote invited those who ascribed the deeds and agony of the Athenians to ‘democratic folly’ to compare the way the Christian, and especially the Catholic Church, provided for acts of sacrilege. The uniform tendency of Christian legislation, Grote argued, ‘down to a recent period, leaves no room for reproaching the Athenians with excessive cruelty in their penal visitation of 73 Cf. Mitford, History of Greece II 242-3, 325; Gillies, History of Ancient Greece II 358. History VII 214; see Thucyd. VI 61 and Plutarch, Alcib. III 22-3. 75 History VII 208. 74 116 Grote’s History of Greece (II) offences against the religious sentiment. On the contrary, the Athenians are distinguished for comparative mildness and tolerance’. 76 It is an error often committed by historians, Grote argued, to ascribe to democratic Athens crimes that are incident in human passion and prejudice and which are common to monarchies too. It might be worth while to turn back to the discussion of Nicias and see how Grote dealt with him on a tragic occasion in the history of Athens. In 413 B.C., and under extremely unfavourable circumstances, the Athenian generals resolved to retreat from the harbour of Syracuse in a promising attempt to rescue the remaining force. The commander-in-chief, the general Nicias, superstitiously attached to demonic agencies, committed himself to a dramatically dilatory policy and therefore caused the ruin of the Athenian fleet. Future events, Grote argued, showed that Athens never recovered from this material wound. Tested by any principles of political prudence, Nicias’ policy would appear plainly pernicious, sacrificing the security and future prosperity of Athens to immediate transcendental fears. Grote related vividly the existing feelings and contingencies: the plan to retreat, he maintained, was proceeding successfully, when the gods themselves (I speak in the language and feelings of the Athenian camp) interfered to forbid its [the fleet’s] departure. On the very night before (the 27th August, 413 B.C.) - which was full moon - the moon was eclipsed. Such a portent, impressive to the Athenians at all times, was doubly so under their present despondency, and many of them construed it as a divine prohibition against departure until a certain time should have elapsed, with expiatory ceremonies to take off the effect. They made known their wish for postponement to Nikias and his colleagues; but their interference was superfluous, for Nikias himself was more deeply affected than any one else. He consulted the prophets, who declared that the army ought not to decamp until thrice nine days, a full circle of the moon, should have passed over ... The decision of the prophets, which Nikias thus made his own, History VII 248n.; see also VII 214-5n: ‘Those who are disposed to imagine that the violent feelings and proceedings at Athens by the mutilation of the Hermæ were the consequence of her democratical government’, Grote observed, ‘may be reminded of an analogous event of modern times from which we are not yet separated by a century. In the year 1766, at Abbeville in France, two young gentlemen of good family ... were tried, convicted and condemned for having injured a wooden crucifix which stood on the bridge of that town: in aggravation of this offence they were charged with having sung indecent songs. The evidence to prove these points was exceedingly doubtful: nevertheless both were condemned to have their tongues cut out by the roots - to have their right hands cut off at the church gate - then to be tied to a post in the market-place with an iron chain, and burnt by a slow fire ... It will be recollected that the sentence on the Chevalier de la Barre was passed, not by the people nor by any popular judicature; but by a limited court of professional judges sitting at Abbeville, and afterwards confirmed by the Parlement de Paris, the first tribunal of professional judges in France’. 76 117 Chapter 4 was a sentence of death to the Athenian army: yet it went along with the general feeling, and was obeyed without hesitation.77 Whatever the earlier misjudgements of Nicias that brought the Athenians face to face with so unexpected a dilemma, Grote realised that the general acted in accordance with the prevailing religious sentiment of his country. To blame him on this occasion would have been equal to giving expression to a non-historical judgement, based on the historian’s abstraction from the context of original events and his inability to ‘forget’ for a moment the final chapter of the expedition to Sicily. The “Funeral Oration” of Pericles, delivered in the second year of the Peloponnesian war, was for Grote a trustworthy complementary representation of the Athenian character, life and constitution. In the Periclean speech, the historian found encapsulated the most praiseworthy characteristic of the Athenians - their tolerance of the diversity of tastes and pursuits. The Athenian democratic constitution facilitated the expression and development of the individual. Pericles’ speech serves to correct the twofold assertion repeatedly made, namely, that the state in ancient Greece was constantly interfering with individual freedom, sacrificing the citizen to the state’s egalitarian requirements; and that only in modern times has the individual agent been allowed proper freedom. ‘This is preeminently true of Sparta: - it is also true in a great degree of the ideal societies depicted by Plato and Aristotle: but it is pointedly untrue of the Athenian democracy’. The stress, which Pericles lays upon the liberty of thought and action at Athens, not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuit - deserves serious notice, and brings out one of those points in the national character upon which the intellectual development of the time mainly depended ... Within the limits of the law, assuredly as faithfully observed at Athens as anywhere in Greece, individual impulse, taste, and even eccentricity, were accepted with indulgence ... That liberty of individual action, not merely from the over-restraints of law, but from the tyranny of jealous opinion, such as Periklês depicts in Athens, belongs more naturally to democracy, where there is no select One or Few to receive worship and set the fashion, than to any other form of government. But it is very rare even in democracies. None of the governments of modern times, democratical, aristocratical or monarchical, presents anything like the picture of generous tolerance towards social dissent, and spontaneity of individual taste, which we read in the speech of the Athenian statesman.78 77 78 History VII 339. History VI 181-2. 118 Grote’s History of Greece (II) Contemporary society, Grote argued, while in principle allowing people greater freedom in regulating aspects of private life, is in effect more intolerant in matters pertaining to social differences. The Athenian democracy, by contrast, while expressly demanding obedience to constitutional rules, did not violate individual preferences (what we might call today ‘negative liberties’), and even permitted ‘eccentricities’ to a degree unknown to England. In his “Funeral Speech”, Pericles stated explicitly that in a democratic system of government men were equal before the law in their private pursuit of eudaimonia, respecting and tolerating each other with earnestness and devotion. For Grote, Socrates’ long career was the fairest proof of the effective protection of the private realm. However, his successors, the philosophers of the fourth century, though themselves enjoying immunity from interference, put forward a critical discourse tending to subdue people’s liberty to the imaginary wisdom of a select one or few. Athens attained the maximum of its political power and cultural distinction under Pericles. Democracy reached maturity. The established constitutional arrangements secured a tolerant and pluralistic environment in which the individual citizen freely and constructively participated. But above all, Pericles’ greatest contribution consisted in the encouragement he gave to ‘pacific and intellectual development - rhetoric, poetry, arts, philosophical research, and recreative variety’.79 Under these fertile circumstances, the average Athenian educated himself as to how to think, speak and act. In describing the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks under the leadership of Xenophon, Grote praised his threefold accomplishment (i.e., his distinction in thought, speech and act). Such a distinction was the aim of every Athenian citizen which the discursive democratic culture along with the misinterpreted sophists helped and encouraged him to acquire. ATHENS VS. SPARTA As a reviewer of Grote noticed, ‘who can love Athens and Sparta too?’ 80 To write the encomium on the Athenian constitution entailed a critique of the Lacedaemonian form of government. The radical historian put an end to the fashionable vindication of Sparta in western thought and questioned the idealisation of Sparta by the fathers of Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, as well as Xenophon, Lysias and Isocrates.81 In Spartan policy and constitutional arrangements, Grote saw the rigid antagonist to the ideology of Athenian democracy. Absorbed solely in the cultivation of military arts and ethics, hostile History VI 206: Pericles guaranteed ‘individual security’. N.L. Fronthingham, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Christian Examiner 62 (1857) 59. 81 See Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought, and Roberts, Athens on Trial, throughout; for the idea of Sparta in antiquity, see E.N. Tigerstedt, The Legend of Sparta in Classical Antiquity, 3 vols. (Stockholm 1965-78). 79 80 119 Chapter 4 or at best indifferent to mental improvement, the Spartans were destitute of those qualities that might have appealed to his sympathy. In the first place, the tendency of the Spartans to exclude other Greeks from their religious and gymnastic festivals, at a period when the greater states in Greece promoted reciprocal admission to the local festivities, did not escape Grote’s criticism. The historian emphasised the positive effects these festivals should have had upon the Greek mind. Religious festivals and agônes (games, contests) promoted friendship and fraternity among cities not politically united. A ‘Pan-hellenic’ audience in local celebrations encouraged the ‘sentiment of Hellenic unity’. Citizens of disparate states experienced a feeling that counterbalanced their political disunion. The historian ascribed the same effect to Greek art, which aided the development of a common consciousness. This commonality created the ‘extra-political Hellenism’ in earlier times, or a nation without political union.82 The solitary Spartans, however, had chosen to avoid publicity and therefore hindered the propagation of a common Greek identity, which, given the constant threat of foreign invasions, was absolutely essential for the survival of classical civilisation. Secrecy and isolation were not the only detestable characteristics of the Spartans. The Lacedaemonians were also jealous, aggressive and warlike. Tracing the origins of the Peloponnesian war, Grote argued that the terrible decision was taken by the Spartans out of pique and envy for the Athenian naval hegemony. The historian examined in detail the conduct of Athens and Sparta with regard to existing alliances and current politics, showing that the former abstained from open hostilities, whereas the Peloponnesian alliance was the real aggressor. Grote investigated in depth the motives of the Peloponnesians, concluding that it was not fear alone, but an obvious hatred for Athens that inspired their plans. Reviewing the conduct of the two great Grecian parties ... with reference to existing treaties and positive grounds of complaint, it seems clear that Athens was in the right. She had done nothing which could fairly be called a violation of the Thirty years’ truce: while for such of her acts as were alleged to be such, she offered to submit them to that amicable arbitration which the truce itself prescribed. The Peloponessian confederates were manifestly the aggressors in the contest. If Sparta, usually so backward, now came forward in a spirit so decidedly opposite, we are to ascribe it partly to her standing fear and jealousy of Athens, partly to the pressure of her allies, especially the Corinthians. 83 82 History IV 235-6, 251-3; see Thucyd. II 39. History VI 132. It would be interesting to compare Grote’s idea with bishop Thirlwall’s. With his habitual moderation Thirlwall argued that Sparta ‘was desirous of humbling Athens, but apparently without any design of stepping into her place. She was the aggressor, but under a conviction of the necessity of the measure’, History of Greece IV 169. 83 120 Grote’s History of Greece (II) Athens was already a large empire but the records, Grote argued, do not refer to any effort on its part to make a new acquisition in the fourteen years following the conclusion of the Thirty years’ Peace (which was signed after Pleistoanax’ retreat from Attica). But the militarist, narrow-minded Spartans and their allies were possessed with an overwhelming jealousy towards Athens, and indulged in hopes of an easy victory. Most severely, however, Grote criticised the policy of imperial Sparta. Having replaced Athens as a protectress of Hellenism, Sparta’s strategy was to oppress its subjects by establishing local oligarchies. The local commanders (the harmostes), who were appointed by the imperial state, treated their subjects disrespectfully, and at best with indifference. Those who suffered under their administration could not seek redress and justice at the Spartan courts without risking their safety and personal integrity. This was the universal liberty and autonomy which Sparta promised in 432 and Brasidas still continued to promise throughout the war. Even worse, Sparta hindered the development of a hellenic nation. After the battle of Aegospotamoi, Grote maintained, Sparta could have proceeded to the organisation of a stable confederacy between the disparate states - a union founded on common ‘national’ interests. After the dissolution of the Athenian empire, and to ‘ensure to the Hellenic world external safety as well as internal concord, it was not a new empire which was wanted, but a new political combination on equitable and comprehensive principles; divesting each town of a portion of its autonomy, and creating a common authority, responsible to all, for certain definite controlling purposes. If ever a tolerable federative system would have been practicable in Greece, it was after the battle of Ægospotami’. 84 Yet Sparta, at the most suitable time in the history of Greece, refused to sacrifice its selfish interests for the realisation of national union and political stability. Instead of promoting general peace and local autonomy, Sparta inexcusably surrendered the Asiatic Greeks to Persia, thus securing for itself a ‘shameful’ treaty with that country and many financial advantages. 85 The Asiatic Greeks were the first to practically realise the importance of an independent Athenian maritime power. In her long history, Sparta committed many anti-hellenic deeds. ‘One of the most odious acts of high-handed Spartan despotism’ was to cut into parts (small villages), the ancient city of Mantineia. In the same way, a major expedition was sent north in 382 to crush a promising confederation of the cities of Chalkidike under the leadership of Olynthos. The Olynthian union could have been the guardian of the Greek cities in the Chalkidic peninsula against the imperialism of either Macedonia or Thrace. Never again, after the dissolution of this liberal confederation by Spartan arms, did there occur an opportunity for restoring a firm alliance able to protect the general interests of the Greek nation. Grote traced the 84 History IX 271. See Grote’s remarks on the peace of Antalkidas, History IX 437-9, X1-6. Isocrates criticised the peace of Antalkidas throughout the Panegyricus; see, esp. 85, 115-116. 85 121 Chapter 4 origins of the ascendancy of Philip in the fourth century (whose reign, the historian believed, brought about the gradual destruction of Greek life) to this early mischief done by Sparta to Greece. The dissolution of the promising Olynthian federation and the reconstitution of maritime Macedonia were both ‘signal misfortunes to the Grecian world. Never were the arms of Sparta more mischievously or more unwarrantably employed’. 86 On the other hand, Athens, in protecting the Greek cities around the Aegean against the superior force of their foreign enemies, formed a ‘pan-hellenic’ leader, consistently promoting national dignity and prosperity. Sparta’s domestic policy was similarly deficient for a number of reasons. Against the almost unanimous praise of the political and educational system arguably established by Lycurgus, Grote claimed that Lycurgean education hardly had any positive effects. 87 A Spartan youth might have acquired exceptional military qualifications, but under such an education he was rendered harsh and incapable of mental improvement. To be sure, Lycurgus could be described as the founder of a ‘warlike brotherhood rather than the lawgiver of a political constitution’. The brief sketch here given of the Spartan government will show, that though Greek theorists found a difficulty in determining under what class they should arrange it, it was in substance a close, unscrupulous, and well-obeyed oligarchy including within it, as subordinate, those portions which had once been dominant, the kings and the senate, and softening the odium, without abating the mischief, of the system, by its annual change of the ruling ephors. We must at the same time distinguish the government from the Lykurgean discipline and education, which doubtless tended much to equalise rich and poor, in respect to practical life, habits, and enjoyments ...88 Classical Sparta was renowned in Grote’s time for the discipline and courage of her army and for the stability of her constitution. While almost all Greek governments had undergone minor or major changes, no considerable revolution seems to have occurred in Sparta from the days of the Messenian war down to those of Agis III. During this long period the form of government remained substantially unchanged. This ‘freedom from change’ of the Spartan constitution explains, Grote argued, its appeal to the Greek philosophers of the fourth century. But how should the historian interpret this stability? During these centuries of internal stability, the Spartans, Grote observed, never forgot the roots and the 86 History X 61. For example, Mitford, History of Greece I 198, 220-21; Goldsmith, Grecian History I 15; according to Stanyan it is surprising ‘that a Pagan, who was indeed too indulgent to adultery, theft, and, in some cases, to murder itself, should in the rest approach so near to Christian morality’, Grecian History I 85. 88 History III 131. 87 122 Grote’s History of Greece (II) ‘holy’ commencement of their constitution: ‘the Spartan mind continued to be cast on the old-fashioned scale, and unsusceptible of modernising influences ... The ancient legendary faith, and devoted submission to the Delphian oracle, remained among them unabated, at a time when various influences had considerably undermined it among their fellow-Hellens and neighbours’.89 Thus, Grote presented the long-praised Spartan political virtue, centred on the concept of stability (or, Sparta’s resistance to change), in terms of a serious political weakness. The Spartans lacked even an elementary concept of the idea of progress and disliked cultural pluralism as that produced by the interaction between people of foreign countries, intellectuals and artists. The Spartans, in other words, were ‘conservatives’, as J. S. Mill would later call them in reviewing the History.90 Grote was also very critical of the treatment of the helots; a treatment underlying the ‘inhuman character of the Lacedaemonian government’. The Spartans had established the Crypteia, groups of armed young citizens, and sent them throughout Laconia to assassinate any helot distinguished for his bravery or ‘superior beauty’. Amidst such secret proceedings they caused the murder of 2,000 Helots in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war.91 The ephors, wishing to ‘clear’ the general body of the helots from those ‘most high-couraged and valiant’, asked those who regarded themselves to have earned their liberty by extraordinary military distinction, to stand forth and declare it. Many answered the call, and after being examined by the committee, some were selected as worthy of emancipation. Afterwards, all were mysteriously disappeared, and nothing more was ever heard of them. Commenting on the murderous secrecy on this occasion, Grote remarked that the Spartan’s stratagem of entrapping the miserable helots was ‘so perfidious in the contrivance, so murderous in the purpose, and so complete in the execution, [that] stands without parallel in Grecian history - we might almost say without a parallel in any history’. 92 Overall, the Lycurgean constitution with its secrecy, austerity and demand for single-minded obedience appeared to Grote, as we shall see, to be embodied in Plato’s Republic. REMARKS ON GROTE’S INTERPRETATION Grote closed the History of Greece with a narrative of the expeditions of Alexander the Great. His exploration into classical antiquity traced an era of intellectual progress and political emancipation, regrettably interrupted by Macedonian expansionism. Grote’s predecessors had brought their histories down to the time Greece became an appendage of the Romans, that is, to the time the 89 History III 132. J.S. Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II] 303. 91 See Thucyd. IV 80. 92 History VI 374. 90 123 Chapter 4 freedom of Greece completely disappeared. For Grote, the culmination of Alexander’s power and activity irretrievably crushed the autonomy of the Greek city-states, and drove the Athenian democrats to such disgraceful actions and submissive conduct, that our historian felt ‘that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close’. 93 In his précis of Alexander’s excellence as a military man, Grote was far from heroworship. While emphasising the unrivalled ‘scientific military organisation’ and genius of Alexander, he observed that as a political leader and a humanist, the Macedonian cannot be credited for much, as he would have preserved the Persian oppressive type of government in a deliberately fragmented vast empire. The historian differed entirely from those authors who credited Alexander with a humanist intervention in Asia. In the course of his imperialist expedition, the Macedonian prince moved away from Greek political ethos, the ingenium civile, into a cruel orientalism. Moved by excess of violence, vindictiveness, selfadoration, and aspiration to become the Achilles redivivus, he tended, instead of hellenising Asia, to asiatise Hellas. Hellenism, for Grote, was the absolute reverse of despotism: Hellenism, properly so called - the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy - never passed over into Asia; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind ... This genuine Hellenism could not subsist under the over-ruling compression of Alexander ... Its living force, productive genius, self-organising power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. All that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administration of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not Hellenic ... but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before.94 Grote’s disapproval of Philip and Alexander was in inverse proportion to his enthusiastic admiration of Demosthenes. Through the political career of the latter, Grote depicted the laudable and tragic resistance of freedom against political servility and decadence. For a liberal politician and scholar, the example of Alexander’s imperialism could be disturbing for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it should be remembered that Bentham, James Mill and the Radicals of Grote’s era, opposed any effort to keep a hold over colonial territories, which they regarded as economically useless and a cause of war. They instead proposed programs of selfgovernment on democratic principles for the colonies, believing that measures towards democratisation would mitigate the misuse of colonial patronage. Alexander’s grand dynasty, based on sheer force and exploitation of Asia, should 93 94 History XII 303. History XII 195. 124 Grote’s History of Greece (II) be set as an antitype of imperialist rule, whereas Athens’ hegemony in the fifth century, with its mild policy towards the subject-allies, wise financial control and protection of trade in the Aegean, along with the dissemination of democratic consciousness, could have provided an archetype or golden standard for Britain’s imperialist rule. The account presented above plainly shows that Grote’s rehabilitation of Athenian democracy is contextually oriented and, as such, cannot be separated from Victorian liberalism and the historian’s ideological commitment to the plans of the Benthamite radical reformers. In studying the history of ancient Greece, Grote sought to provide empirical support to utilitarian fundamental principles and claims such as the virtues and educative effects of popular participation, the value of voting for the masses, the importance of subjecting sectional interests to the interest of the community, the need for constitutional reforms that would increase accountability to the people, and the correction of social and civil inequalities. Even the vocabulary used in exploring the constitutional changes in Athens and the political phenomena of ancient Greece marks Grote as a resolute utilitarian ideologue of the earlier school of Bentham and James Mill, who consistently believed in the middle classes, and who fought for universal suffrage and popular liberty.95 To illustrate, let us examine a few representative examples where Grote is committed to basic ideas of utilitarianism. In discussing the impact of the frequent meetings of the ecclêsia following the reforms of Cleisthenes, Grote argued that the citizens identified their own ‘safety and happiness’ with the vote of the majority. Political participation (active citizenship, methexis) thus helped the growth of an understanding of publicregarding interests and educated people to tolerate differences of attitudes. 96 In his account of the history of Areopagus and the aristocratic clubs (the hetairies), Grote also offered historically grounded evidence of how the wealthy classes could infuse into influential bodies their ‘sinister interests’. The Athenian aristocrats defended themselves against reforms because they were preoccupied with sinister interests, in the same way as the ruling classes in a contemporary society have selfish interests at the expense of society. Direct democracy provided the means whereby the will of the people could influence the ruling few, the eupatrides; in the nineteenth century, representative democracy would check the partial interests of the ruling minority. 97 Moreover, it could be argued that in his According to Bentham, ‘the middle ranks of society are the most virtuous, it is among them that in the greatest number of points the principles of honour coincide with the principles of utility’, quoted in R. Harrison, Bentham (London 1983) 180, from the Rationale of Judicial Evidence [5 vols. 1827]. 96 On Bentham and participation, see F. Rosen, Bentham, Byron and Greece. Constitutionalism, Nationalism and Early Liberal Political Thought (Oxford 1992) 168-82. 97 On ‘sinister interests’, see J. Bentham, Constitutional Code 105-6, 433; An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 14-5n; A Fragment on Government 116-121. James Mill, 95 125 Chapter 4 memorable defence of the demagogues and the sophists, Grote was partly inspired by his desire to give a historical justification of contemporary philosophical radicalism. The demagogues, like the sophists, materially aided the growth of Athenian democracy; they usually emerged from the world of business and trade (that is, not the aristocracy by birth), and they were always prepared to defend those who had suffered wrong. The analogy is obvious: the Philosophical Radicals, like the ancient demagogues and the sophists, aspired to renew the aims of intellectual discussions and to reclaim the true ends of politics. Demagogues were radical, in the sense of attacking aristocratic interests and of being ruthless towards aristocratic incompetence. It is important to keep in mind that the leading utilitarians, like Bentham and James Mill, produced a case on behalf of representative government that included the basic characteristics of democracy. In his narrative, Grote showed that this pattern of democracy witnessed its minimum prototype in ancient Athens. Athenian democracy, Grote maintained, ‘had diffused among the people a sentiment favourable to equal citizenship’; it inculcated in their character moderation and political morality; it allowed for ‘liberty of thought and action ... not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuit’.98 Similarly, Grote’s contemporary neo-utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, believed that the Athenian constitution secured the individual citizen’s freedom from interference, a prerequisite for the improvement of responsible and intelligent citizens. The younger Mill went even further, arguing that it would be useful to consider ‘whether we have ... advanced as much beyond the best Grecian model, as might with reason have been expected after more than twenty centuries’.99 Grote undoubtedly bestowed on Mill’s proposals, as those put forward in On Liberty [1854] and Representative Government [1861], a historical substantiation. The ideological appropriation of classical Greece by Grote has often led to the conclusion that one can find in the History of Greece the ‘apotheosis’ of Athenian democracy.100 While true, the term is misleading because it prepares the reader for an uncritical vindication of Athens, whereas the History provides a defence of Athenian democracy based on evidence and critical analysis. Grote’s analytical insights often objectively identified the weaknesses of Athenian society and democracy, such as the fragility of personal security against the dêmos’ collective animosity, the cruelties committed against the revolted Melos and Mytilene, the similarly, joined issue against sinister interests in his Essay on Government [1820], ed. E. Barker (Cambridge 1937) 25, 34, 45. 98 History V 367, VIII 268-9, VI 181. 99 Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II] XI 313. 100 Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 213; W. Africa, “The Owl at Dusk: Two Centuries of Classical Scholarship”, Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1993) 151. 126 Grote’s History of Greece (II) susceptibility of political leaders to pecuniary corruption, and the people’s credulity and blind faith to charismatic politicians. Indeed, these ‘weaknesses’ are often traced to the people’s temporary departure from the democratic character of the constitution, but this was not designed to whitewash the Athenian democracy from the various errors committed. Turner, who examines the way Greek history and thought were appropriated to the purposes of political debates in Victorian Britain, believes that Grote interpreted all the ‘irrational, immoral, and vicious political behavior’ of the Athenians in such a way as to clear democracy from accusations of responsibility. By placing emphasis on the ‘survival of mythic thought into the fifth century’, Turner argues, Grote managed to dissociate Athenian democracy from such errors.101 This is true if we postulate that the ‘democracy’ Grote defended was not the Athenian but an idealised abstract democracy - the model of democracy the utilitarians sought to establish. As far as the Athenian democracy was concerned, Grote did not intend to disassociate it from religiously grounded and often irrational political behaviour. That would contradict his own recurrent assumption or warning in the History, namely that politics in ancient Greece were inherently intermingled with the religious disposition of the age. Religion, Grote argued, was a substantial part of the civic order. Consequently, if the religious feelings were to be held accountable for the actions of injustice committed on several occasions by the Athenians, then the Athenian democratic constitution (i.e., a construct encompassing the mentality, religiosity and political progress of the age) had its share in accountability. Moreover, in his treatment of Spartan politics, Grote was not so blinded by his admiration of Athenian democracy as to ignore the presence of virtuous politicians among Sparta’s leaders. Sparta throughout the History is principally criticised on the grounds of its incapacity to organise a stable union in Greece when it might have done so with considerable chances of success. Grote did not hesitate to eulogize the Spartan general Kallicratidas for his ‘pan-hellenic’ motivation, whereas he attacked Sparta for the severe handling of its subjects and the establishment of oppressive local oligarchies, contrary to its earlier promises to respect their autonomy. Considering the character and action of the Spartan general, Grote displayed no hesitation in asserting that it would have been better for Greece had Kallicratidas been the victor at Arginusae instead of Athens. ‘If Kallikratidas had gained the victory and survived it, he would certainly have been the man to close the Peloponnesian war’, and as he was a man ‘free from corrupt personal ambition’ and devoted ‘to the great ideas of Hellenic brotherhood’, he would have proceeded to reorganise the Greek world. Thus, Grote was prepared to accept the idea of a Spartan becoming the leader of Greece had the latter been determined to work for the benefit of the entire nation. 101 Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain 222. 127 Chapter 4 In classical scholarship, Grote’s contribution proved highly consequential and still endures. Since the publication of his seminal work, the attitude of historians towards Athens and its social and political history has considerably changed. It is now commonplace, for instance, to argue that the demagogues were not the disreputable, irresponsible rascals of Aristophanes’ representation. As Moses Finley argues (it is important that he opens his article on the demagogues with two contrasting quotations, one from Thucydides and another from Grote), the demagogues could not, granted the various legal provisions of the Athenian system, renounce responsibility for their proposals. They ‘were a structural element in the Athenian political system’; without them the system could not function at all. ‘We cannot praise and admire the achievement of two centuries’, Finley believes, ‘and at the same time dismiss the demagogues who were the architects of the political framework and the makers of policy’. 102 Cleon and the demagogues have also found defenders in G.E.M. de Ste Croix and more recently W.R. Connor. Thucydides, maintains de Ste Croix, ‘detested Cleon and could not bring himself to be just to him ... If these “demagogues” were really mere flatterers of the demos, it is strange that of the six whose names were mentioned above, at least four or five should have died violent deaths’. Connor argues that Cleon deserves a high place in the history of the development of politics: ‘He was the master of a new technology of political power, an innovator and a perfector. His accomplishments, like any great technological change, are a break with past traditions and ways, and a source of imitation and emulation in the future.’103 Twentieth-century historians who defend Athenian democracy, and whose accounts Grote would have accepted without reluctance, associate the function of the demagogues with liberty and free speech. The demagogues are presented as practically minded politicians and reliable democrats. With regard to Cleon, A.H.M. Jones remarks, Thucydides was deeply prejudiced and later generations did not share his low opinion of the demagogue.104 Grote’s contribution to the rehabilitation of the demagogues is incontestable. No one today would take the trouble Grote took to show that Solon’s reforms did not establish a democratic government or to prove that Cleisthenes’ moderate democracy was far removed from the radical democracy of Ephialtes and Pericles.105 Regarding the Athenian empire, specialist historians of Athenian democracy have argued that ‘the general mass of the population of the allied (or subject) states, far from being hostile to Athens, actually welcomed her Finley, “Athenian Demagogues”, Past and Present 21 (1962) 14, 23. G.E.M. de Ste Croix, “The Character of the Athenian Empire”, Historia 3 (1954) 35; W.R. Connor, The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens (Indianapolis and Cambridge 1992) 119. 104 Jones, “The Athenian Democracy and its Critics”, in Athenian Democracy (Oxford 1957) 63-4. See also A.G. Woodhead, “Thucydides’ Portrait of Cleon”, Mnemosyne 13 (1960) 289-318. 105 See C. Hignett, A History of the Athenian Constitution to the end of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford 1970) 217. 102 103 128 Grote’s History of Greece (II) dominance and wished to remain within the empire’. Russell Meiggs similarly believes that Athens ‘was not doctrinaire in her relations with allies; there were oligarchies as well as democracies among them’. 106 Modern scholars also point out the coincidence between the policies of Pericles and Cleon with respect to the empire and domestic politics.107 As to the positive effects of the empire for Greece and to civilisation in general, nobody would agree more with Grote than Karl Popper who argued that ‘the most powerful cause of the breakdown of the closed society was the development of sea-communications and commerce ... These two, seafaring and commerce, became the main characteristics of Athenian imperialism’.108 Grote’s defence of ostracism, as a constitutional safeguard in a period when the state could not afford the presence of bitter controversies anticipated the modern treatment of the subject, which largely confirmed his general conclusions. 109 The operation of ostracism helped remove dangerous party contests without using force. Ostracism has often been called the ‘safety valve of democracy’, the institution that greatly minimised the danger of stasis and permitted the gradual development of democratic sentiment. It was a safety device against excessive individual influence and tyranny. As for Grote’s argument that ancient Athenian democracy did not sacrifice the individual to the state, and the related issue of ancient as compared to modern right theories, an ongoing conversation continues and will, predictably, last for a long time. 110 See de Ste Croix, “The Character of the Athenian Empire” 1, 6: ‘In the case of Acanthus, Sane, Dium, Torone and Mende ... we have positive evidence that the bulk of the citizens were loyal to Athens’; Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972) 54. Without ever mentioning Grote, Meiggs argues that Athens accepted the leadership of the Delian League not because it anticipated the resulting benefits, but out of fear: ‘Later conditions should not be read back into the early years. It was the allies who had most to gain from Athenian leadership’ (42-3); see also J.K. Davies, Democracy and Classical Greece (Fontana 1978) 86. On the significance of the distinction between the Athenian hêgemonia and archê, see M.F. McGregor, The Athenians and their Empire (Vancouver 1987) 167-8. 107 See, e.g., J. de Romilly, Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (Oxford 1963) 166; Connor, The New Politicians 134. 108 K.R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. (London 1952) I 177. 109 See e.g., R.K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge 1988) 220; Kagan, “The Origin and Purposes of Ostracism” 400-401; V. Ehrenberg, The Greek State (Oxford 1960) 58; M.I. Finley, “Athenian Demagogues” 20-21. 110 See J. Ober and C. Hedrick, ed. Dêmokratia. A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern (Princeton 1996), esp. M.H. Hansen, “The Ancient Athenian and the Modern Liberal View of Liberty as a Democratic Ideal” 91-104; E.M. Wood “Demos versus, ‘We, the People’: Freedom and Democracy Ancient and Modern” 121-138, and the useful bibliographies cited. See also relevant discussions in E. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (New Haven 1957); Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern (London 1985, 2nd ed.); Hansen, Was Athens a Democracy? Popular Rule, Liberty, and Equality in Ancient and Modern Political Thought (Copenhagen 1989); S.F. Wiltshire, Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (London 1992). 106 129 Chapter 4 CONCLUSION From the mid-eighteenth century down to Grote’s era, Athenian democracy was a primarily negative reference. Athenian democracy was deliberately taken from obscurity only to be set up as a constitutional example to avoid. Apparently, historical narratives were subject to the ideological pressures of the day. During this period, the world witnessed the outburst of two great revolutions and farreaching constitutional reforms. In examining Athenian democracy, historians found a convenient channel to articulate their private political preferences and antipathies. Grote, the utilitarians’ representative in historical writing, upset the established verdict that wanted Athens to represent popular anarchy and ethical disorientation. For the friends of popular liberty and equality, the Philosophic Radicals, the Athenian democracy was a precious ally from the past. If earlier historians condemned the Athenians and deprecated their manners it was because, Grote understood, their preconceptions did not allow them to conceive the liveliness and vivacity of the Athenian faith in democracy. The average Athenian of the fifth century preferred to sacrifice his life instead of submitting himself to political servility. The key conception of Athenian democracy was equality before the law, and unconditional freedom of speech (isonomia and isêgoria). In connection with freedom (eleutheria), they constituted a set of political ideals that sustained a remarkable constitutional life for almost two centuries. Grote’s History of Greece opened new perspectives for the exploration of Greek politics and civilisation. It showed that there was another side to the story: a good, liberal and progressive Athenian society, instead of the wretched and unstable government depicted by generations of historians. 111 Half a century before it was written, such an exaltation of Athenian democracy would have appeared basically blasphemous. As we shall see, the History impressed historians in Britain, Europe and the United States not only for its originality of arguments and historical precision, but also for the liberal spirit in which it was written. As V. Ehrenberg wrote, since nineteenth-century liberalism, and ‘especially George Grote, discovered its ideal predecessor in ancient Athens, Pericles and his times have been regarded as the very fulfilment of human endeavour and cultural harmony’, From Solon to Socrates (London 1973) 323. 111 130 

Chapter Three Grote’s History of Greece (I) The British utilitarians, advocates of liberal reform on a philosophical basis, soon realised that there was a need for a comprehensive survey of the social and political history of Greece that would critically expose Mitford’s deliberate errors of interpretation. At the threshold of the nineteenth century, James Mill handed Mitford’s voluminous work to his son, the future philosopher, duly warning him of the author’s prejudices. ‘My father’, wrote John Stuart Mill, ‘had put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices of this writer, and his perversions of facts for the whitewashing of despots, and blackening of popular institutions. These points he discoursed on, exemplifying them from the Greek orators and historians, with such effect that in reading Mitford, my sympathies were always on the contrary side to those of the author, and I could, to some extent, have argued the point against him: yet this did not diminish the ever new pleasure with which I read the book’.1 In later years, the liberal philosopher would argue that the fundamental weakness attending Mitford’s History of Greece (which, however, was hardly idiosyncratic to him) was not the profound ideological prejudice but its philosophical inefficiency. The party historians, Mill said, ‘have started with what it is scarcely injustice to call, no distinct conception whatever of the general state of things in Greece, the opinions, feelings, personal relations, and actions, habitual to persons individual or collective, whom they are writing about’. 2 Mitford’s historical plan, in particular, rested on no solid philosophical ground, which explains the gross errors of fact and source interpretation in his narrative. Providing an antidote to Mitford’s partialities was by itself a material advance in Greek scholarship. However, there is another reason accounting for the utilitarians’ anxiety to expose the Tory historian: in their desire to reform society politically and intellectually they would have welcomed a classical precedent of liberal government. The moral and practical lessons ingrained in the history of Athenian democracy, cleared from the traditional misconceptions, could have profoundly sustained the theoretical justification of their proposed reforms. To join together classical humanism with radical scientific rationalism was for the British utilitarians a challenge with immediate value. It is not unrelated to this objective that they conceived of Athenian democracy in a fundamentally different way from what went before, testing the reliability and credentials of older testimony. Grote, the banker and politician, well trained in the mainstream current 1 J.S. Mill, Autobiography 9. Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece”, Newspaper Writings, ed. A.P. Robson and J.M. Robson, Collected Works (Toronto 1986) XXV 1159. 2 Chapter 3 of utilitarian empiricism, embarked on the task of overthrowing Mitford from his throne while presenting a picture of Athens based on evidence and critical analysis, with moral and political teaching as a necessary supplement to the historical narrative. THE ORIGINS OF THE HISTORY AND ISSUES OF METHODOLOGY George Grote began writing the History of Greece after his retirement from Parliament. The enterprise was long contemplated but many times frustrated by the political struggles of the day and by several other commitments like those at the newly established University College and his family bank in Threadneedle Street. It is characteristic of the radical politician’s commanding intellect and industrious disposition that, even during the hard decade of the thirties, he never lost sight of his grand project. Despite his active involvement in Victorian life, he continued re-reading original sources, collecting material, and indefinitely pursuing his research whenever he could find appropriate conditions and leisure. However, how and when the history project actually originated is a matter which cannot be ascertained with certainty. Harriet Lewin asserted that she first suggested the multi-volume History of Greece to Grote. On her own testimony, in the autumn of 1823 ‘Mrs. Grote, hearing the subject of Grecian History frequently discussed at their house in Threadneedle Street, and being well aware how attractive the study was in her husband’s eyes, thought it would be a fitting undertaking for him to write a new History of Greece himself; accordingly she propounded this view to George Grote: “You are always studying the ancient authors whenever you have a moment’s leisure; now here would be a fine subject for you to treat. Suppose you try your hand!”.’3 The idea, she added, seemed acceptable to the young scholar, who, after reflecting on this suggestion for a while, decided to embark on what seemed to be a very promising project. It is incontestable, however, that Grote devoted much of his free time to the study of the Greek authors prior to Harriet’s ‘suggestion’, as attested to by the bulk of his early notes. The question that arises is whether the young scholar formed the idea of writing the History earlier than the autumn of 1823. The Posthumous Papers provide ample evidence that the project was not only in Grote’s mind prior to that date, but also that the future historian was practically engaged in its preparation in 1822 at the latest. 4 It should be noted that Lionel Tollemache (1838-1919), who personally interviewed Grote early in 1862, offered testimony that runs against Mrs. Grote’s assertion. ‘I have understood’, wrote Tollemache, ‘that it was at the suggestion of Mr. James Mill that Mr. Grote first thought of writing his History’. Lady Eastlake, on the other 3 4 See H. Grote, The Personal Life of George Grote 49. See Grote, Posthumous Papers, ed. H. Grote (London 1874) 22-4. 62 Grote’s History of Greece (I) hand, still believed that it was Harriet ‘who had originally prompted him to undertake the History of Greece’.5 Despite Lady Eastlake’s assumption, Harriet’s assertion does not appear to stand on firm ground if manuscript evidence is taken into consideration. If she really suggested the History to Grote, then the date might have slipped her memory, inasmuch as 1823 does not correspond with the dating of the historian’s unpublished essays on various classical issues and the history of Athens. Modern scholarship has established beyond doubt that the History was steadily progressing as the decade of the thirties approached. In effect, Grote must have by then written a large part of it, which interestingly enough, he afterwards felt in need of reconsidering.6 Mortimer Chambers has recently tried to show that Grote early in his life inured to the principles of philosophical radicalism and the belief in the cause of fundamental political reform - must have contemplated much earlier the writing of the History. In this respect, he specifies the ‘earlier datable origins of the work’ in two essays from 1815, along with a preparatory essay on Athenian Government written possibly as early as 1821. Chambers, who explores the relationship between Grote’s early influences and the development of his understanding of Greek history, cites also a letter addressed to the radical reformer Francis Place, apparently from 1822, in which Grote informs him that he had embarked ‘fairly on my history’, thus raising further doubts about Harriet’s assertion.7 In all these, it might be worth citing the idea of Boase, namely that Grote first contemplated the writing of the history of Rome, a plan dropped at the suggestion of his lifelong friend Norman. 8 All things considered, the confusing and contradictory evidence as to the origins of Grote’s historical work seems to run counter Harriet’s assertion. The multiplicity of testimonies rather indicates that in setting Grote’s work in the context of early nineteenth-century liberalism, and in reconsidering the rigorous intellectual influences the historian was 5 L.A. Tollemache, Safe Studies (London 1895, 4th ed.) 144; Lady Eastlake, Mrs Grote: A Sketch 74. 6 F. Lieber, Reminiscences of an Intercourse with G.B. Niebuhr (London 1835) 34, provided evidence that Grote very early in his life embarked on the project, something which was known to the German scholar. As far back as 1827, Niebuhr was writing to Lieber (34): ‘Endeavour to become acquainted with Mr. Grote, who is engaged on Greek history; he, too, will receive you well if you take my regards. If you become better acquainted with him, it is worth your while to obtain the proof-sheets of his work, in order to translate it. I expect a great deal from this production, and will get you here a publisher.’ By December 1830, Harriet herself said, “Grote has ... managed to add several chapters to his History during the last five months’, The Personal Life of George Grote 66. On this issue, see also E. Dow, “George Grote, Historian of Greece”, Classical Journal 51 (1956) 212, 219. 7 Chambers, “George Grote’s History of Greece” 1-22. 8 Indeed, manuscript notes reveal a remarkable interest in Roman history; see esp. BL Add. MSS 29,525 (1815-1817). For Boase’s suggestion, see “Norman, G. W. (1793-1882)”, D.N.B. (London 1895) XLI 112-13. 63 Chapter 3 susceptible to between 1817 and 1820, Harriet’s impact on Grote, despite her eminence in social Victorian life, should not be unduly exaggerated. In the early 1820s, and possibly in 1822, Grote started reading Mitford anew, this time apparently as a preparation for his début in historical debates four years later. A large number of notes, preserved in the collection of his manuscripts, are indicative of his commitment to this plan. His reading is one of a devoted liberal utilitarian, yearning for evidence and emphatically discontented with Mitford’s conservative partialities and distorted version of Athenian history. It is worth transcribing a selection of these critical notes as they provide a mirror of Grote’s early intellectual traits and views on Greek politics. [1] Good observations of Mitford on the policy of Lycurgus in increasing the importance & respectability of women. [2] Good remarks of Mitford upon the effects of slave labour - Mitford talks of the “indiscretion of the rich indulging a disposition to avarice & tyranny”. [3] General remarks upon Tyrants. Prodigious violence of factions among the Greeks: wretched reasoning. [4] Unauthorised praise of Peisistratus. Quarrels of opposite factions in an oligarchy: nonsense of Mitford talking about the absolute power of the people as established by Solon. [5] Assertion that “the power of Cleisthenes was equal, but his moderation was not equal” to that of Peisistratus. Mitford abstains from recounting what Hipparchus intended to do & did do towards Harmodius & his sister. [6] Insinuations against democracy on occasion of the appointment of Miltiades - that there was a childish revulsion of popular favour towards him & c. (example well calculated to be selected). [7] The Athenians “in the true spirit of Democracy” were about to divide among the produce of the Laureian mines, when Themistocles persuaded them to reserve it for the building of ships. What could they do with it better? Mitford would have said nothing if they had built a temple with it. [8] Assertion that Pericles was in his own sentiments inclined to the Aristocratical side at Athens: what evidence? ... “Gratifying the people as they had been accustomed to be gratified” - It seems as if the tendency of any measures to convey immediate benefit to the people was a real objection to it in the eye of Mitford. [9] Mention of “extravagant & dishonest ambition” of the Athenian people: why more so then the appetite for conquest in a king. [10] Mitford says that the measure of consecrating the thousand talents in the citadel not to be touched unless the enemy should attack the city by sea, & the denunciation of capital punishment against whoever should propose otherwise - “strongly marks the inherent weakness & the indelible barbarism of democratical government”. [11] Assertion that Cleon was “bred among the lowest of the people.” (What evidence?): more said against Cleon than there is evidence for. - “the ignoble & ignorant Cleon”. [12] To examine what Mitford says about the conduct of the Athenian people during the investigation relative to the Hermae - M. takes no notice about the feeling of superstition. [13] Mitford talks of “the kings of Sparta being obliged, in all political business to yield to the tyrannical authority of the Ephors”. Why was the authority of the Ephors more tyrannical than that of the kings would have been without them? [14] Advantages of the system of representation - that it places every constituted 64 Grote’s History of Greece (I) authority under responsibility. (Mitford forgets that the responsibility must be to the people.) Good remarks on political & legislative science not being easy, & very deficiently understood among the Greek philosophers: he adduces this of course as an apology for the thirty. [15] Short reference to the conduct of the Lacedns - when they arrived at the empire of Greece: I do not observe that M. gives any statement of the oppressive conduct of the harmosts & decadarchies. [16] “It is often extremely difficult to ascertain the real springs of political measures in a free government, because of the variety of interests influencing the individuals who compose the political body, & of the dependency of public measures upon the accidental preponderance of this or that private interests.” (Nonsense - see Hume’s Essay.). [17] Compare the manner in which Mitford speaks of tribute levied on the Asiatic Greeks by the Persians ... & what he says about tribute levied by Athens upon her subject allies.9 The actual product of Grote’s critical study of Mitford was published in the voice of the Radicals, the Westminster Review in 1826. Apart from the scholarly apparatus exhibited, this article provides first hand testimony of his intention to write a comprehensive history of Greece that could be a most powerful alternative to Tory prejudices and assumptions. Grote’s first historical work was supposed to be a review of Henry Fynes Clinton’s (1781-1852) Fasti Hellenici, but turned into a direct attack on Mitford. 10 According to Grote, Mitford consistently confused the realities of modern politics with the circumstances of the Greek city-states. Consequently, he failed to explain the nature of Greek society, its culture, manners and habits, as well as the operation of its institutions. Thus, to take the least example, Mitford did not trace the political implications occasioned by the smallness of the Greek polis. The size of the autonomous city-state engendered an unparalleled civilisation through art, rhetoric and philosophy. While not frustrating individual ambitions, it produced a strong social union and a lively community feeling. Most importantly, owing to the smallness of the cities, governments gradually became centralised, outweighing personal authority and devotion to local chiefs, which are characteristic features of a ‘rude stage of society’. Another consequence resulting from the way in which the Hellenic population was distributed, was that it ‘enabled the bulk of each community to protect themselves better against the injustice and ill-usage of their own rulers, than it would have been possible to do had the distribution been different’. 11 The open and democratic character of political discussion supported the development 9 The above notes are in BL Add. MSS 29,520 fols. 171-200: [1]-[3] fol. 173, [4]-[5] fol. 174, [6] fol. 175, [7] fol. 177, [8] fol. 178, [9]-[11] fol. 181, [12]-[13] fol. 185, [14] fol. 188, [15] fol. 189, [16] fol. 190, [17] fol. 199. 10 H.F. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici. The Civil and Literary Chronology of Greece from the Earliest Accounts to the Death of Augustus, 3 vols. (Oxford 1824-1830). 11 Grote, “Institutions of Ancient Greece”, review of Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, Westminster Review 5 (1826) 273. 65 Chapter 3 of rhetoric and the art of persuasion which, to be effective, necessitated critical reasoning, superior intelligence, and knowledge acquired through observation. The Greek institutions, especially in democratic regimes, the Olympic contests (agônes), and even polytheism, brought into operation incentives to individual excellence in a way unparalleled in the history of humanity. It was amidst these political and historical circumstances, which Mitford unreservedly censured, that ethics and the philosophy of mind (the most valuable inheritance of the Greeks to posterity) had their roots. Among the Greek states, those which created an atmosphere rich in imagination and inventiveness were, Grote emphasised, the democratic (a ‘sort of open aristocracy’), and not the closed oligarchies.12 Grote went on, like James Mill in the History of British India, to define the skills required of the historian, and which in his judgement Mitford lacked. The first was the ability to trace out and report faithfully the facts of the period under examination (to be a faithful ‘reporter of facts’). Most importantly, the historian should be able to analyse these facts giving them a form in terms of causes and effects, to present the real forces sustaining social relationships, and to reveal the various illustrations which Greek history provides of the principles of human nature. Mitford, Grote argued, grossly failed in every respect of the historian’s proper activity. Not only he misrepresented factual reality, but he also neglected to provide a philosophical exposition of the broader cultural and social development of the Greeks. Mitford ‘has contributed nothing towards a systematic description, and comparative estimate in the scale of nations, of the manners, the literature, the arts, and the sciences of Greece’. Significantly, Grote conceived of history as a comprehensive, all-embracing study of human thought: ‘An author who leaves the intellectual philosophy of the Greeks unexplored, cannot assuredly convey even the faintest idea of the rank which they occupy in the scale of human improvement.’13 Mitford thus proved utterly unqualified to describe the social and political characteristics of the Greeks, or to present a philosophical anatomy of the development of Athenian institutions. His observations on Athens were pervaded by strong moral and political biases; he distorted important authorities, while neglecting to take into consideration others, in order to convince his readers that the Athenians misused their empire, oppressed the rich, and committed atrocities of the worst nature. Apparently, his real objective was not genuinely historical. It was rather to praise everything English - kingly government, the virtues of a balanced constitution - and depreciate democracy in order to check the ‘dreaded’ revival of democratic feeling in his time. In political conviction, Mitford was a declared enemy of the people’s interest. For him, ‘a community thoroughly subject and prostrate is essentially necessary; and it is in this state only that he can 12 13 “Institutions of Ancient Greece” 280. “Institutions of Ancient Greece” 281. 66 Grote’s History of Greece (I) tolerate the community’.14 Far from constituting an orderly and convincing historical analysis of Greek life and politics, Mitford’s reflections were a colourful exposition of his ideological prejudices which the revolutionary upheaval in France helped to reinforce. Hence, Grote concluded, there was clearly a need for a new history of Greece: Should Grecian history ever be re-written with care and fidelity, we venture to predict that Mr. Mitford’s reputation ... will be prodigiously lowered. That it should have remained so long exalted, is a striking proof how much more apparent than real is the attention paid to Greek literature in this country; and how much that attention, where it is sincere and real, is confined to the technicalities of the language, or the intricacies of its metres, instead of being employed to unfold the mechanism of society, and to bring to view the numerous illustrations which Grecian phenomena afford, of the principles of human nature .15 In tracing the origins of Grote’s historiographical method, as exemplified in the article of 1826, it is obvious that the historian was heavily indebted to the elder Mill. The History of India was a paradigm of philosophical historiography, dictated by the esprit philosophique of the eminent Scottish historians and philosophers, such as William Robertson, Dugald Stewart and John Millar. 16 James Mill’s didactic India encapsulates, to a certain degree, the rationalist bent of eighteenth-century Enlightenment. History, as a body of fact properly elucidated on the basis of generalisations and precepts, should virtually be a school for training in political virtue, both private and public, and must bear some distinct relation to contemporary needs. It was under the influence of the concept of philosophical history that James Mill wrote, in a letter to Ricardo, that his book might ‘make no bad introduction to the study of civil society in general’. 17 The mode of philosophising historiography provided for James Mill a convenient channel to expand his avowed Benthamism into the tested field of human experience. India could be a fertile territory in which to cultivate utilitarian philosophical propositions of universal validity. Mill’s treatment of India, and his researches into the culture and ideas of the Hindus, brought him to envisage the “Institutions of Ancient Greece” 283. “Institutions of Ancient Greece” 330-31. 16 On Ferguson, see W.C. Lehmann, Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology (New York 1930); P. Salvucci, Adam Ferguson: Sociologia e filosofia politica (Urbino 1972); D. Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Ohio 1965); On John Millar and his historical method, see W.C. Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow (Cambridge 1960). A still valuable discussion of philosophical historiography in Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie (München and Berlin 1911). 17 Quoted in J.H. Burns, “The Light of Reason: Philosophical History in the Two Mills”, in J.M. Robson and M. Laine, ed. James and John Stuart Mill: Papers of the Centenary Conference (Toronto and Buffalo 1976) 11. 14 15 67 Chapter 3 improvement of Indian society and public administration through a revolution activated on Benthamite principles of legislation. 18 The links of Mill’s method with philosophical historiography are manifest in his introductory observations. Dismissing from the outset anything emotional that could prevail over the historian’s philosophical criteria, he argued that ‘A history of India ... to be good for any thing, must, it was evident, be ... “A Critical History”. To criticise means, to judge. A critical history is, then, a judging history.’ Furthermore, in recomposing the past of a nation the historian has to face nothing less than a gigantic task that calls for extraordinary qualifications: To qualify a man for this great duty, hardly any kind or degree of knowledge is not demanded; hardly any amount of knowledge, which it is within the competence of one man to acquire, will be regarded as enough. It is plain, for example, that he needs the most profound knowledge of the laws of human nature, which is the end, as well as instrument, of every thing. It is plain, that he requires the most perfect comprehension of the principles of human society ...The historian requires a clear comprehension of the practical play of the machinery of government ... In short, the whole field of human nature, the whole field of legislation, the whole field of judicature, the whole field of administration, down to war, commerce, and diplomacy, ought to be familiar to his mind.19 Grote’s piece of 1826 encapsulates the substance of Mill’s conception of the historical discipline despite the diversity of their subject matter, i.e. the civilisation and political experience of the Greeks versus the cultural lethargy and static social regulations of the Hindus. It is in the light of philosophical historiography that Mitford is judged, not surprisingly, as wanting an adequate knowledge of the laws of human nature as well as the ability to reveal the sequence of causes and effects, ineradicably embedded in the matter of history. 20 James Mill’s interests, Bentham believed, ‘he seems to be closely connected with mine, as he has a prospect of introducing a better system of judicial procedure in British India. His book on British India abounds with bad English, which made it to me a disagreeable book. His account of the superstitions of the Hindoos [sic] made me melancholy’, in J. Bowring, ed. The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols. (Edinburgh 1838-43) X 450. 19 Mill, History of British India, 3 vols. (London 1818) I 6, 17-8. See also Mill’s Outline of the Courses of Lectures, designed for the University of London, now in Grote’s collection, University of London Library B.P. 68 (4) 9-10: Mill called attention to the ‘rules for weighing [historical evidence], and ascertaining its force’. His pupil, Grote, according to Stephen, The English Utilitarians III 338, ‘resembled an ideal judge investigating evidence in a trial’. 20 In his preparatory notes to the History of Greece, BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 149, and most likely at the time he was writing the essay on Mitford, Grote called attention to the ‘peculiar necessity for philosophy, and for an enlarged acquaintance with the principles of human nature, in order to enable an author to conjecture justly: necessity of his being superior to the prejudices of his own age and country: if he is not so, he will ascribe all the calamitous phenomena which history exhibits to such institutions as are contrary to the prejudices which he was imbibed, all the favourable phenomena to institutions conformable to these prejudices’. 18 68 Grote’s History of Greece (I) Grote’s second appearance in historical debates took place in 1843, only three years before the first volume of the History of Greece was published. This article, together with the philosophical criticism of Mitford two decades before, constitute the best introduction to Grote’s historical thinking and methodology. In this article, Grote reviewed Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s (1776-1831) Griechische Heroen Geschichten (Hamburg 1842).21 English historians and many others, Grote protested, had attempted to elicit history from fable and overestimated the possibility of extracting truth from fiction. 22 In Britain, the ‘historical school of mythology’ included both Gillies, who believed in ‘the successful adventures of the Argonauts, the glorious, though destructive, expedition against Troy’, and Mitford, who credulously referred to the ‘early age of Agamemnon’. 23 It was left to the genius of German scholars to discover the metaphorical nature of legendary early traditions and to detect the fallacy of interpreting myths literally. In Niebuhr’s study, for instance, legends ‘are given in their literary integrity as legends, instead of being squeezed and tortured into authentic history’. This scholar, whom Grote enthusiastically praised in the first pages of his article, insisted that a portion of the mythological past was simply ‘miraculous and impossible, and bears the character of a mere popular tradition’. 24 The review article of 1843 is in effect a prelude to the first two volumes of the forthcoming History. Grote’s aversion to mere conjecture led him, as we shall see, to draw a sharp distinction between legend and factual history. The mythical subject, in Grote’s view, emerged as plausible fiction which corresponded to the ‘mythopoeic propensity’ of an age that possessed no knowledge of past events traceable to trustworthy sources. Mythos was neither degenerated fact nor misreported reality. Rather, it was legitimate and genuine fiction believed to be history but which derived directly from the prevalent emotions of the public. These legends were significant as valuable memorials of the state of societies, the people’s feelings, their mentality and intelligence. ‘They are tales which grow out of, and are accommodated to, the prevalent emotions of the public among whom See Grote’s remarks on Niebuhr’s interpretation of myths, BL Add. MSS 29,514 fol. 311. The utilitarians’ forerunner, Hume, of course argued that the ‘fables which are commonly employed to supply the place of true history ought entirely to be disregarded’; see History of England [1754-1762] (London 1825) I 13. In his understanding of myths, Grote might have also been influenced by Jacob Bryant. See Grote’s note on Bryant’s treatment of the Argonautic expedition, in BL Add. MSS, 29,517 (1826-32) fol. 92. It is not accidental that the elder Mill pronounced Bryant’s study to have been a work of ‘singular merit’, History of British India I 102n. Bryant argued that his purpose ‘has been throughout to give a new turn to ancient history; and to place it upon a surer foundation’. See A New System, or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology: wherein an Attempt is made to divert TRADITION of FABLE; and to reduce the TRUTH to its Original Purity (London 1774) I xvii. 23 Gillies, History of Ancient Greece I 153; Mitford, History of Greece IV 621. 24 Grote, “Grecian Legends and Early History” (originally published in the Westminster Review for 1843, reprinted in Minor Works) 77. 21 22 69 Chapter 3 they circulate: they exemplify and illustrate the partialities or antipathies, the hopes or fears, the religious or political sentiments of a given audience.’ However, the mythical predicates have no resemblance to reality, they are rooted in something generically different from factual history. For a historian disinclined to conjecture, the mythical ‘past’ could be recorded as history only if it could be deduced ‘by some reasonable chain of collated evidence’. ‘It is by no means our purpose to maintain’, Grote said (possibly in order to appease the impression of extreme scepticism in the eyes of his readers), ‘that there is no historical matter in the ancient Grecian legends. Amongst the varied and interesting agglomerate which they compose, we doubt not that there are fragments of historical matter of fact imbedded: and we shall rejoice much when any one will furnish some assured criterion by which to verify them and detach them from the rest’. 25 Such ‘assured criterion’, stemming from a systematic analysis of evidence (literary or archaeological) and satisfying rational demands, Grote did not succeed in finding even in the extended context of the research for the History of Greece. Greek legends and religious antiquities corresponded to ‘a pseudo-historical past suited to the non-historical mind’.26 From the first Olympiad onwards (776 B.C.), a new era started; actual facts were no longer intermingled with fervent and unanimous feelings.27 The ‘mythopoeic’ propensity gave way to rational curiosity. The mythical narrative degenerated and its emotional intensity lessened in the hands of prose mythographers, who had gradually replaced the poets. After 776, the Greek governments experienced considerable improvement, and the Greek mind made an important advance socially, ethically, and intellectually. 28 Many myths became utterly disharmonious with the altered tone of public feeling. The idea of an external authority began to fade away from superior minds. Finally, there gradually developed an ‘historical sense’, and a habit of recording and combining positive facts. An age of awakening critical spirit began to find the legends improbable and simply allegorising. The sophists and the philosophers, the natural offspring of this age, being constructively sceptical, tried to distinguish between the literal and the symbolic meanings of myths. Grote’s analysis of Niebuhr indicates that the strictly philosophical methodology he inherited from James Mill, employed throughout in the article of 1826, was enriched and supplemented by two sources. Grote’s mature approach to history owed much both to the historicist school of the Romantic classicists, and to Comte’s scheme of the evolutionary development of thought and civilisation. 29 Grote, “Grecian Legends” 81, 87, 125. “Grecian Legends” 92. 27 See also BL Add. MSS 29,521 fol. 6. Bryant argued earlier that ‘I can afford credence to very few events, which were antecedent to the Olympiads’, Analysis of Ancient Mythology I xi. 28 Grote, History of Greece II 23. 29 See Duncan Forbes, “Historismus in England”, Cambridge Review 4 (1950/51) 399. Grote visited Comte in Paris in 1843, and according to Harriet, he was impressed by Philosophie 25 26 70 Grote’s History of Greece (I) Under the new influences the historian placed emphasis upon the irrational (mythic) substratum, relative to the early epoch of Greek historical development.30 On the whole, German historismus affirmed more freely than the Enlightenment historiographers the significance of emotional and irrational factors in the history of humankind. The historian was supposed to approach the rich variety of the past with respect, and attempt to appreciate the manifold forms of human endeavour towards progress. The elder Mill, by contrast, in his rationalist, pragmatic monument of historical exposition, was less concerned with ‘savages’ and their fictitious entities.31 In this respect, Grote was not in total harmony with his mentor.32 Note how Grote himself testified to his new influences. During the generation since Mitford’s work, Grote stated in the “Preface” to the History of Greece, philological studies have been prosecuted in Germany with remarkable success: the stock of facts and documents, comparatively scanty, handed down from the ancient world, has been combined, and illustrated in a thousand different ways ... some of the best writers in this department - Böckh, Niebuhr, [K.] O. Müller - have been translated into our language; so that the English public has been enabled to form some idea of the new lights thrown upon many subjects of antiquity by the inestimable aid of German erudition. The poets, historians, orators and philosophers of Greece, have thus been all rendered both more intelligible and more instructive than they were to a student in the last century.33 It might be useful to provide a brief account of the three eminent scholars cited by Grote in order to define more precisely the intellectual traditions that affected his thought in the early 1840s. Positive. On returning to London, Grote made efforts to promote the circulation of Comte’s works. See The Personal Life of George Grote 157-8. For Comte’s influence on Grote and the Victorians in general, see T.R. Wright, The Religion of Humanity. The Impact of Comtean Positivism in Victorian Britain (Cambridge 1986). 30 See Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive, 2 vols. [1830-42] (Paris 1975) II 381. 31 In effect, Mill addressed a damning indictment of Indian society and civilisation. The Hindu books which contained accounts of the creation ‘is all vagueness and darkness, incoherence, inconsistency, and confusion ... The fearless propensity of a rude mind to guess where it does not know, never exhibited itself in more fantastic and senseless forms’; in Hindu religion there was nothing but ‘meanness’, ‘absurdity’, ‘folly’ and ‘endless ceremonies’; further, ‘no people, how rude and ignorant soever ... have ever drawn a more gross and disgusting picture of the universe than what is presented in the writings of the Hindus’. See History of British India I 286, 340-1, II 46-7. The dismissive accounts are too many to cite exhaustively. 32 It is not accidental that Grote in the History of Greece draws his analogies of the Hindu mythological tradition not from Mill but from Colonel W.H. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (London 1844); and H.H. Wilson, trans. and ed. with notes, The Vishnu Purána, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition (London 1840). 33 Grote, History I xvi. 71 Chapter 3 August Böckh (1785-1867), who held a chair in the new University of Berlin until his death in 1867, pursued a comprehensive study of the ancient world. One of his most significant contributions was related to Athens. The Public Economy of Athens (1817) was at the time a novel undertaking designed to provide a systematic account of the economic and social aspects of the Athenian constitution. In his Corpus Inscriptionum Greacarum, Böckh offered a corpus of Greek Inscriptions, applying his astronomical knowledge and expertise in mathematics to determine issues of chronology. Böckh’s wide knowledge of the various branches of classical learning was epitomised in the Enzyklopädie, published by his pupils in 1877 - a book based on his lectures given in Berlin. 34 Grote made a thorough use of Böckh’s many-sided and laborious work. Writing to the elderly professor (12 March 1867), on the occasion of his retirement, the historian expressed the gratitude of one of his ‘foreign brothers-in-hellenism’: ‘Your long and most active philological career has enabled you to extend and improve our knowledge of Hellenic antiquity more than any of your contemporaries, distinguished as several of them have been. Your works, taken together, form an encyclopaedia of philology in all its principal departments.’ 35 Karl Otfried Müller (1797- Athens, August 1840)36 was the distinguished pupil of Böckh and the major representative of the Altertumswissenschaft. His aim was to form a vivid conception of Greek life as a whole, and therefore he considered his themes from all imaginable perspectives, taking into account all available evidence. He began by publishing in 1817 a monograph on the ancient and modern history of the island of Aegina. 37 In this work, Müller’s methodology contrasted with the grammatical and literary approach of Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812), Gottfried Hermann (1772-1848), and indeed all scholars who belonged to the so-called ‘philological and artistic school’. In their works the investigation of the political, social and religious contexts had occupied only a subordinate place. In his Geschichten hellenischer Stämme und Städte, Müller planned to offer a comprehensive account of the entire Greek nation, but he soon realised that it fell short of this gigantic enterprise. 38 The novelty of his approach 34 E. Bratuscheck, ed. Enzyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften (Leipzig 1877). Böckh published the Staatshaushaltung der Athener, 2 vols. (Berlin 1817), trans. by A. Lamb as The Public Economy of the Athenians (London 1857). His Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum was published in 2 vols. (Berlin 1825-43; reprint, Hildesheim and New York 1977). For more on Böckh, see Max Hoffmann, August Böckh. Lebensbeschreibung und Auswahl aus seinem wissenschaflichen Briefwechsel (Leipzig 1901). 35 The Personal Life of George Grote 285; see also Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates I 123n. 36 See a brief biography of Müller with useful bibliography by W. Unte, in Classical Scholarship: A Biographical Encyclopedia 310-320. 37 Müller, Aegineticorum liber (Berlin 1817). 38 In the context of this project he published the Orchomenos und die Minyer (Breslau 1820); and Die Dorier, 2 vols. (Breslau 1824); English trans. by H. Tufnell and C. Lewis, The History and 72 Grote’s History of Greece (I) consisted in the encyclopaedic tendency to employ and evaluate all available sources while dealing with Greek antiquities - including myths, which he acknowledged as potentially important sources of historical information. In his Prolegomena to a Scientific Mythology, he criticised the views of his predecessors, such as Georg Friedrich Creuzer (1771-1858) and Christian August Lobeck (1781-1860), and defended the thesis that local myths had either been based on historical events and developed as national sagas, or had a symbolic dimension independent of their historicity. While myths, he argued, must have contained historical elements, it can hardly be confirmed whether they had emerged out of pure historical reality. 39 Grote cited him approvingly. Müller, he wrote, ‘has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed originally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards’. 40 Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), the known historian of Rome (also Prussian ambassador at Rome between 1816 and 1823), similarly exercised a profound influence on Grote’s conception of history.41 Niebuhr was generally sceptical about early legendary traditions. In his famous Lectures on Ancient History, he argued that there were many instances indicating that the history ‘we have regarded as so perfectly authentic, is untenable; and that a portion of it is miraculous and impossible, and bears the character of a mere popular tradition’. 42 Antiquities of the Doric Race, 2 vols. (Oxford 1830). Müller was also the author of the unfinished Geschichte der griechischen Literatur bis auf das Zeitalter Alexanders des Grossen, 2 vols. (Breslau 1841). On the reception of Müller in Britain, see G.C. Lewis, “Mythology and Religion of Ancient Greece”, Foreign Quarterly Review 7 (1831) 33-52; on his life see, among others J.W. Donaldson, “On the Life and Writings of Karl Otfried Müller”, in K.O. Müller, A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece. Continued after the author’s death by J.W. Donaldson, 3 vols. (London 1858, first ed., trans. G.C. Lewis and J.W. Donaldson, 2 vols., 1840-42) I xii-xxxi, and K. Dilthey, Karl Otfried Müller (Göttingen 1898). 39 See the Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, 2 vols. (Göttingen 1825) I 108; trans. J. Leitch as Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology (London 1844). 40 See History II 12n. In his philosophical analysis of myths Grote also referred extensively to Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (Göttingen 1835); Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch, Heldensage der Griechen (Kiel 1842), and G.F. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, 4 vols. (Leipzig 1810-12). 41 See A. Momigliano, “G.C. Lewis, Niebuhr e la critica delle fonti”, Rivista Storica Italiana 64 (1952) 208-21, for Niebuhr’s method and its reception in Britain. See Niebuhr’s epoch-making Römische Geschichte, 3 vols. (Berlin 1828-31), a work that won him immediate fame, later trans. by C. Thirlwall and J.C. Hare, The History of Rome, completed by W. Smith and L. Schmitz, 3 vols. (London 1847-51, 4th and last ed.). Grote made thorough use of these sources. He was personally acquainted with Böckh and Niebuhr. On Niebuhr’s life and work, see J. Classen, Barthold Georg Niebuhr (Gotha 1876); E. Renfer, Barthold Georg Niebuhr als Politiker (Bern 1911); extensive bibliography of works by and about Niebuhr in B.C. Witte, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, 1776-1831, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf 1979). See also G. Wirth, ed. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Historiker und Staatsmann (Bonn 1984). 42 Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, trans. by L. Schmitz, 3 vols. (London 1852) 339. 73 Chapter 3 Niebuhr put forward an original explanation regarding the transmission of early Roman legends in the form of poetic lays, which gave a widely acknowledged stimulus to both philosophers and historians.43 Moreover, in his historical research Niebuhr applied the idea of social evolution, growth and change, as a means of reconstructing earlier stages through the known facts in the later development of a people. John Edwin Sandys observed that ‘Niebuhr’s work marks an epoch in the study of the subject. His main results, such as his views on the ancient population of Rome, the origin of the plebs, the relation between the patricians and the plebeians, the real nature of the ager publicus, and many other points of interest, have been acknowledged by all his successors. He was the first to deal with the history of Rome in a critical and scientific spirit’.44 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff believed that the characteristic that made Niebuhr great as the historian of Rome was ‘the statesman in him - who is aware of what makes the wheels of national life go round, and is familiar with the exigencies of political and administrative systems, and therefore takes account of the things that are usually omitted in the narratives of wars, great personages and memorable events which fill the history books. Niebuhr’s experience taught him that documents are more trustworthy than the most enthralling narrative, and that one must make the most of every scrap of evidence about the life of the past’. 45 Needless to say, the same remark perfectly applies to Grote as well. Böckh’s erudition and painstaking search for documentary materials, Müller’s comprehensive historical outlook, and Niebuhr’s political insights and scepticism, are blended in Grote’s History of Greece, producing a historiographical method that sought to present a faithful and sympathetic picture of ancient Greek society and its institutional surroundings. 46 The historian of government, it was evident, could no longer be indifferent to literary remains, art, religious faiths, and manifold cultural expressions. In his historical work Grote combined the interdisciplinary Altertumswissenschaft with utilitarian empiricism. The methods of his predecessors in Germany are cautiously applied, but their license to conjecture when evidence was too weak to sustain a historical thesis is critically checked. Characteristically, William Mure (1799-1860) criticised Grote’s approach to legendary Greece for in sceptical severity it surpassed even ‘the school of criticism to which he belongs, and which I shall here designate as the German ultra-skeptical school of research in matters of prehistorical antiquity’. 47 43 See Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, ed. M. Isler and trans. by L. Schmitz (London 1848) 2-8. 44 J.E. Sandys, A Short History of Classical Scholarship (Cambridge 1913) 314. 45 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Geschichte der Philologie (Leipzig 1921), trans. A. Harris, History of Classical Scholarship (London 1982) 153. 46 G. Highet asserts that Niebuhr helped in England ‘to produce Grote’s History of Greece’, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature (Oxford 1957) 474. 47 W. Mure, Remarks on two Appendices to the second volume, third edition, of Mr Grote’s History of Greece (London 1851) 7. 74 Grote’s History of Greece (I) In Grote’s work, the poetry of the ancients - the product of a mythical propensity and intense religious sentiment - was distinctly associated with the mental characteristics of the Greeks in a certain stage of society. Fiction as such, the adventurous excursion of ideas, stemmed from a quasi-philosophical disposition, in the sense of an intellectual struggle to comprehend the role of human beings in the system of the universe, with the poor means then available to the man of science. 48 The historian explored respectfully the ceremonial and ethological practices of the ancients as a necessary precondition to a fair understanding of their civil and political practices. Greek legends, the historian argued, should not be ignored by anyone who wishes to understand the subjectmatter and the intensity of the transcendental and religious feelings prevalent in Greek culture because, to treat Greek history without Greek religion, ‘is to render it essentially acephalous’. 49 Greek religion was an aspect of the political life of society. The religious ideas, rituals and sentiments of the Greeks were of paramount importance in actual politics. (It should be remembered that an attack on the gods of a city was always interpreted as an attack on its constitution.) Gods and the polis formed an essential interactive unity, and cannot be treated as isolated entities by anyone who wishes to comprehend the nature and evolution of Greek moral, cognitive, and, of course, political experience. 50 It is not accidental that Grote incorporated in his results the sociological insights of Comte, promptly recognising that the French scholar was right in claiming that differences of interpretation as to phenomena and ethical values can be understood only if one postulates that they correspond to different stages of social development. 51 The transition from the primitive instinct of tracing natural phenomena to personal Commenting on the Platonic Timaeus, Grote argued that ‘the whole are well worthy of study, as the conjectures of a great and ingenious mind in the existing state of knowledge and belief among the Greeks’, Plato III 83. See also BL Add. MSS 29,522 fol. 63. 49 “Grecian Legends” 89. 50 ‘I venture ... to forewarn the reader’, Grote wrote in the “Preface” to his History I xxi, ‘that there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Hermæ, unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability and security with the domiciliation of the gods in the soil’, etc. 51 Significantly, however, as Tollemache remarked, ‘while feeling great admiration for Comte, he said that both Comte and Buckle take too little account of what may be termed the accidents of history’, Safe Studies 135, emphasis added. (H.T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England, 4 vols. (London 1857-61) claimed to have turned history into a science by the discovery of the laws of history, analogous to the laws of physics.) On Grote’s conception of philosophical history, see further the letter addressed to G.C. Lewis, author of the Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History, 2 vols. (London 1855), dated 27th May 1851, The Personal Life of George Grote 203. Stephen observed, The English Utilitarians III 344, that Grote had been impressed by Comte ‘though he never, like [J.S.] Mill, took Comte for a prophet’, being cautious to avoid ‘excessive theorising’, and never letting ‘his prejudices ... overpowering his candour’. 48 75 Chapter 3 agents, to the substitution of metaphysical eidôla in place of polytheism, and then to induction and observation, points, in effect, to ‘an inevitable law of intellectual progress’.52 Grote’s treatment of ancient Greek politics and society as well as his reflections on the various phenomena that intervene as a theoretical medium, demonstrate his commitment to German historicism. Indeed, the liberal historian was a distinguished representative of German classicism in Victorian Britain. Of course, the utilitarian influence is undeniable and never left him, but it should be read in terms of a set of commanding philosophical instruments such as a disposition to keep to solid facts, a dismissal of vague and a priori beliefs, and a powerful critical aptitude - features characteristic of every scholar who belonged to the Benthamite school and the Philosophic Radicals. With James Mill he shared the analytical tools and the empirical disposition in investigating the past; not exactly the method or the orientation.53 In effect, Grote enriched in a certain way and supplemented the historiographical approach of James Mill. In this, he was assisted by the marvellous subject matter of Greek history itself. James Mill’s India was singularly devoid of any interest in human characters, and the historian deliberately dismissed or scorned the formative influence of causes incidental to the Hindu heritage.54 By contrast, in Grote one can find what Mill aptly called a ‘gallery of historical portraits’, a rich and imaginative analysis of characters and deeds.55 A reader can still turn to Grote to learn about Pericles’ feelings at the time the Spartans were attacking the walls of Athens, to appreciate the conduct of Alcibiades, to be acquainted with an honest, yet over-ambitious Cleon, to find an elaborate account on the character and objectives of Philip of Macedon. In Grote, general principles are intermingled with a narrative of specific historical causes and circumstances. This was due, as one of his biographers observed, to his History II 25n: This law, Grote observed, had been convincingly put forward by ‘M. Auguste Comte ... and largely applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is also re-stated and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive’. 53 It has been often suggested that the historical method defended in 1826, clearly under the impact of Mill, was unchangeably applied in the History of Greece. See, e.g., W. Thomas, “Introduction”, in The History of British India, abridged edition (Chicago and London 1975) xl-xlv; and The Philosophic Radicals 412; see also Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution 160. Cf. the balanced view of Vaio, “Grote and Mill: How to Write History” 64. 54 As Gooch wrote in his History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century 306: ‘Sympathy and imagination are conspicuously lacking. The value of the book lay in its mass of information and its analytical power.’ Discussions on Mill’s India in D. Forbes, “James Mill and India”, The Cambridge Journal 5 (1951/52) 19-33; R. Thapar, “Interpretations of Ancient Indian History”, History and Theory 7 (1968) 318-35; C.H. Philips, “James Mill, Mountstuart Elphistone, and the History of India”, in Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, ed. C.H. Philips (London 1961) 217-29; E. Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford 1959). 55 J.S. Mill, “Grote’s History of Greece” [II], Essays on Philosophy and the Classics, ed. J.M. Robson, Collected Works (Toronto 1978) XI 334. 52 76 Grote’s History of Greece (I) combining the ‘analytic habit of the philosopher ... with the discriminating power of the historian’.56 The extent to which Grote departed from the historiographical method of his mentor can also be assessed by drawing attention to J.S. Mill’s idea of the unique ‘philosophical’ character of Grote’s History. Let us briefly examine what the liberal philosopher said on the subject. As Burns showed convincingly, John Stuart Mill’s idea of history cannot be closely identified with eighteenth-century philosophical historiography. His conception of historical enquiry was formed under the influence of Comte’s Philosophie Positive, a work that came to his notice in the late 1830s. The younger Mill ‘moved towards his own conclusions as to historical and sociological method by way of some considerable degree of reaction against his father’s ideas ... And one of the characteristics of the philosophes of the Enlightenment to whose position and attitudes he so clearly assimilates those of his father was, needless to say, the disrespect for history’. 57 As regards Grote’s historical work, Mill thought that it was deeply and successfully ‘philosophical’. If we understand Mill to have protested against his father’s abstract and deductive nature of enquiry, then he enthusiastically received the History of Greece because it appeared to him an exemplar of a ‘Philosophy of History ... directed and controlled by sociological evidence’. Grote, Mill argued, made ‘his primary object to fill his own mind and his reader’s with as correct and complete a conception as can be formed of the situation; so that we enter at once into the impressions and feelings of the actors, both collective and individual’. Grote, he continued, was distinguished for ‘clearness and correctness in conceiving the surrounding circumstances, and the posture of affairs at each particular moment’. 58 The younger Mill admired Grote’s respectful dealing with the mythical antiquities of Greece, his analytical aptitude in presenting historical events, and approved of the ethical import the historian bestowed on Greek political history through the employment of parallels and analogies. With a view of making his picture of Greek events more vivid and lively to his readers, Grote frequently drew analogies (in the way either of contrast or similitude) with events of modern European history. Drawing several analogies was apparently consistent with the idea he shared with philosophical historians, namely, that as human nature is essentially the same in all ages, and as the same causes always tend to produce the same effects, many modern events could throw light upon those of antiquity and vice versa. Thus, his treatment of Greek myths is carried out with reference to the dissemination of myths and legends in modern Europe, especially as manifested in the legends of the saints and the legends of chivalry, which he copiously narrates in critical commentaries and notes. The regulations of Solon respecting the law of 56 See P. Anton, Masters in History: Gibbon, Grote, Macaulay, Motley (Edinburgh 1880) 90-91. Burns, “The Light of Reason” 9-10. 58 Mill, Essays on Philosophy and the Classics 330. 57 77 Chapter 3 seisachtheia (cancelling all debts made upon the land or the person) inspired almost a separate essay on the practice of lending money upon interest in antiquity and the Middle Ages. He pointed out the difference between the various demands of the creditors in ancient and modern times, thus tracing the gradual change of moral feeling with reference to creditors. The description of the working of courts of justice at Athens gave, in turn, rise to an elaborate account of the merits and defects of trial by jury in England and other countries. ‘The theory of the Athenian dikastery’ the historian argued, ‘and the theory of jury-trial as it has prevailed in England since the Revolution of 1688, are one and the same ... But in Athens this theory was worked out to its natural consequences; while English practice, in this respect as in so many others, is at variance with English theory’. 59 In drawing a picture of the moral and physical degradation which accompanied the plague at Athens at the outset of the Peloponnesian war, the historian observed that despite the catastrophe that fell upon the Athenians, ‘there are no human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence to appease the anger of the gods - there are no cruel persecutions against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the Untori (anointers of the doors) in the plague of Milan in 1630’.60 On another occasion, he remarked that the Persian wars imparted to the Athenians a great political stimulus that paved the way for the growth of democratic ideology, solidified the rules of constitutional order, and removed political inequalities among the people. Similarly, the historian observed, we see ‘by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to 59 History VI 31. History VI 193. Grote’s description of the epidemic and its consequences conveys a most graphic picture of the situation (189-192): ‘It is hardly within the province of an historian of Greece to repeat after Thucydidês the painful enumeration of symptoms, violent in the extreme and pervading every portion of the bodily system, which marked this fearful disorder. Beginning in Peiræus, it quickly passed into the city, and both the one and the other was speedily filled with sickness and suffering, the like of which had never before been known ... When it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard the spread, or mitigate the intensity, of the disorder, the Athenians abandoned themselves to despair, and the space within the walls became a scene of desolating misery ... Nor is there any circumstance which conveys to us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair, as when we read in the words of an eye-witness [i.e. Thucydides], that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of attention - that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples ... To all these scenes of physical suffering, death, and reckless despair - was superadded another evil, which affected those who were fortunate enough to escape the rest. The bonds both of law and morality became relaxed ... An interval, short and sweet, before their doom was realised - before they became plunged in the wide-spread misery which they witnessed around, and which affected indiscriminately the virtuous and profligate was all that they looked to enjoy ... Life and property being alike ephemeral, there was not hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment, before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims.’ 60 78 Grote’s History of Greece (I) stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship’.61 To give a last example, the elder Dionysius’ distrust of Plato, and his unwillingness to pay attention to his philosophical instruction, reminded Grote of the contempt with which Napoleon treated intellectuals and the learned academics. Grote’s article on the “Grecian Legends” remains an important testimony to his intellectual transformation within the period extending from the early 1820s to the late 1830s. Taken together with the piece on Mitford, both articles (which were preparatory to the History) also reveal his empirical approach to historical issues and the fullness of his approval of the ancient idea of liberty and its modern counterpart. But before we examine how these tendencies shaped the structure and argument of his greatest work, the History of Greece, it is important to see in more detail his treatment of legendary and archaic Greece. LEGENDARY AND ARCHAIC GREECE The first two volumes, Grote stated in his “Preface”, are destined to elucidate this age of historical faith, as distinguished from the later age of historical reason: to exhibit its basis in the human mind - an omnipresent religious and personal interpretation of nature; ... to show its immense abundance and variety of narrative matter, with little care for consistency between one story and another; lastly, to set forth the causes which overgrew and partially supplanted the old epical sentiment, and introduced, in the room of literal faith, a variety of compromises and interpretations.62 Having drawn the distinction between legendary and historical Greece, Grote traced the beginning of history proper with the first recorded Olympiad (776 B.C.) as the earliest point to which any chronology can be ascertained. It is not until long after this period that the historian can find original records and positive testimonies facilitating the reconstruction of a faithful picture of Greek events. Yet, Grote argued, the legends transferred from generation to generation, as those of Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s poetry, should have exerted such a powerful influence on people’s understanding of the world that a knowledge of them should form the indispensable introduction to Greek history. For this reason, the first chapters of the History are dedicated to relating the myths as they would appear to the eyes of the Greeks themselves, without pressing for traces of historical basis or allegorical symbolisms. ‘I describe’, Grote stated, ‘the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known 61 62 History V 366. History I xix. 79 Chapter 3 only through their legends - without presuming to measure how much or how little of historical matters these legends may contain’.63 The prevailing idea among Grote’s contemporary scholars, namely that mythical narratives freed from irrational elements would provide the basic knowledge for the reconstruction of early times, is contested on the grounds that what we understand as ‘early tradition’, to which arguably the Greeks believed and narrated in their stories, must have suffered dramatic distortions in the process of oral transmission through the ages. The tales of old poets are not necessarily embodying real historical events, neither did they refer to ‘eponymous’ personages. If the historian examines the mental ‘exigencies’ that prevailed in early Greek society, it would appear clearly, Grote maintained, that the diffusion of these mythical tales could be perfectly explained without supposing any special basis of matter of fact. The essential characteristics of myths required nothing like a nucleus of historical fact in order to be generally accepted and reverently believed by the people. It is possible, of course, that some portions of the legendary tradition consisted of real historical incidents. However, the difficulty in differentiating between what is fact and what is purely fiction remains inasmuch as there is no valid criterion founded on either internal evidence or external testimony at the hands of the historian. The influence of imagination and feeling is not confined simply to the process of retouching, transforming, or magnifying narratives originally founded on fact; it will often create new narratives of its own, without any such preliminary basis. Where there is any general body of sentiment pervading men living in society, whether it be religious or political - love, admiration, or antipathy - all incidents tending to illustrate that sentiment are eagerly welcomed, rapidly circulated, and ... easily accredited ... Of such tendencies in the human mind abundant evidence is furnished by the innumerable religious legends which have acquired currency in various parts of the world, and of which no country was more fertile than Greece legends which derived their origin, not from special facts misreported and exaggerated, but from pious feelings pervading the society, and translated into narrative by forward and imaginative minds - legends, in which not merely the incidents, but often even the personages are unreal, yet in which the generating sentiment is conspicuously discernible, providing its own matter as well as its own form.64 Grote’s sceptical position in respect to the possibility of reconstructing a satisfactory picture of archaic Greece extended to Troy and the Trojan War. His argument on the Trojan affairs resulted in one of the most controversial and widely discussed sections of the History. Grote questioned the historical foundation of the war of Troy, arguing that, as the possibility of it cannot be 63 64 History, “Preface” xix. History II 80. 80 Grote’s History of Greece (I) denied, neither the reality of it can be affirmed. 65 The siege of Troy rests on the same indistinct evidence as the superhuman powers of Achilles or the arbitrary intervention of the gods in determining the final victory of the Greeks. There is nothing, according to Grote, to assure us that we have reached positive truths regarding Troy. The historian possesses nothing but Homer’s epic and the eloquent moralised and allegorised interpretations of the philosophers, without any scrap of reliable and independent evidence. Instead of regarding legendary narratives as a body of historical knowledge, historians should turn their attention to the origins and significance of these fictitious stories. They should consider, Grote urged, the possibility of plausible fiction disseminated among the Greeks, i.e., fictitious stories involving gigantic phenomena and extraordinary agencies, designed almost invariably with a view to creating feelings of awe, sympathy and common religious and national faith: The enterprise was one comprehending all the members of the Hellenic body, of which each individually might be proud, and in which, nevertheless, those feelings of jealous and narrow patriotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of the towns, were as much as possible excluded. It supplied them with a grand and inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith, and common admiration; and when occasions arose for bringing together a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the precedent of the Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated minds of Greece could dwell with the certainty of rousing an unanimous impulse, if not always of counterworking sinister by-motives, among their audience.66 But only an impartial and well-informed witness can distinguish such stories appealing to popular mentality at a certain stage of social evolution from real events: ‘To raise plausible fiction up to the superior dignity of truth, some positive testimony or positive ground of inference must be shown; even the highest measure of intrinsic probability is not alone sufficient.’ The often drawn analogy between the Trojan War (with the supernatural element removed) and the crusades - which everyone admits to be a historical event - with a view to substantiating the historicity of the war in Troy is unacceptable. It is by no menas sufficient to draw an analogy between two cases in respect to ‘negative presumptions alone’. There is also a need for positive corresponding elements. The crusades, though a ‘curious’ phenomenon in history, are accepted as an unquestionable fact ‘because the antecedent improbability is surmounted by Grote’s predecessor in scepticism was Bryant; see Dissertation Concerning the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians, as described by Homer: shewing, that no such expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed (London 1799, second ed.) See Grote’s extensive comments on Bryant and the controversy over Troy and the Trojan war in the late eighteenth century, History I 285-6 n., and II 83. 66 History I 277; see also II 172-3. 65 81 Chapter 3 adequate contemporary testimony. When the like testimony, both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the historical reality of the Trojan War, we shall not hesitate to deal with the two events on the same footing’.67 The Trojan issue naturally led the historian to the question of the authorship of the Homeric poems. Grote rejected the overwhelming hypothesis put forward by Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) in his ‘acute and valuable’ Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), that before the time of Peisistratus an extended and entire poem did not exist and that the two poems had been constructed by combining the various parts of the rhapsodists.68 In his learned twenty-first chapter entitled “Grecian Epic - Homeric Poems”, Grote maintained that the poems were transmitted from generation to generation in the memory of the rhapsodists; they were written some time before the age of Peisistratus, who simply restored them according to the best authenticated form. Grote (meanwhile having read almost everything that was written on the Homeric question since Wolf’s death) argued that the Odyssey is, in purpose and structure, one poem having a unity of design, whereas the Iliad reveals less unity. The latter poem has no concrete design, its narrative flows less evenly, and it has a greater multiplicity of prominent personages. Grote’s explanation for this was that there had been an original nucleus of the poem, an Achilleis or saga of Achilles, to which other parts not necessarily inferior were subsequently added (i.e., books ii-vii, ix, x, xxiii-xxiv). Grote’s textual-philological examination of the Iliad manifests his exhaustive learning and critical judgement. The structure and internal plan of the poems are subjected to a rigorous analysis. The ninth book, to give an example, seemed to Grote an addition by a different hand on the grounds that the embassy to Achilles ought to have put an end to the quarrel and that it is ignored in later passages, especially in the hero’s speeches. The last two books are similarly treated as subsequent additions since, in the historian’s view, they unnecessarily prolong the action of the poem beyond the requirements of a coherent scheme. 69 Grote’s rigid adherence to the laws of evidence is foremost exemplified in his scepticism about the possibility of extracting anything like chronological data from the legends and genealogies that preceded the historical period. Under the authority of Thucydides, earlier historians had accepted as a matter of fact that the 67 History II 75. History II 253-4, 270. See L. Friedländer, Die Homerische Kritik von Wolf bis Grote, Berlin 1853. Wolf was followed by Karl Lachmann (1793-1851) who similarly ascribed the whole constructive process to Peisistratus. See Betrachtungen über Homers Ilias (Berlin 1837, second ed. 1865), in which he tried to show that the Iliad consists of sixteen separate lays, variously enlarged and subjected to interpolations. Similarly see, Wilhem Müller, Homerische Vorschule. Eine Einleitung in das Studium der Ilias und Odyssee (Leipzig 1836); G. Hermann, De interpolationibus Homeri (Leipzig 1832). See also Friedrich G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus oder die homerischen Dichter, 2 vols. (Bonn 1835-1849; reprint: Hildesheim, New York 1981), a work Grote often cited and discussed; and Nitzsch, De historia Homeri, 2 vols. (Hannover 1830-1837). 69 History II 304. 68 82 Grote’s History of Greece (I) Boetians left Thessaly sixty years after the Trojan War, and that the invasion of the Dorians into Peloponnesus occurred some twenty years later. Accepting in full Thucydides’ testimony, ancient and modern chronologers constructed systems of approximate chronologies carried back at least as far as Phoroneus.70 In antiquity, there had been two rival chronological systems, respectively suggested by the Alexandrine scholars Eratosthenes and Callimachus. In Grote’s time, the most distinguished attempt at the reconstruction of a chronological record of antiquity was that of Clinton. By taking a ‘middle position’, Clinton did not accept the systems of the two ancient authors nor altogether rejected them. His practice was to accept as historical persons all those he believed there was no sufficient reason for rejecting.71 On the other hand, he believed that he could ascertain all fictitious persons by the aid of inscriptions and the evidence provided by epic poetry. In assessing the historical value of the genealogies transmitted by poetry, he claimed that they surely contain many references to real persons who are recorded, however, with fictitious names. Hence, the statements respecting genealogies may be false, but they have a historical foundation. Grote directed a devastating critique against the method used by Clinton, which he eventually dismissed as extremely conjucturalist. Granted that the systems of the ancient chronologers necessarily contained a mixture of myth and reality as the basis for their calculation in tracing the genealogies, any attempt at reconstruction would depend on indefensible inferences. In the first place, there are absolutely no consistent criteria for distinguishing fictitious from real personages. The ‘chronologist can accomplish nothing, unless he is supplied with a certain basis of matters of fact, pure and distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses, both knowing the truth and willing to declare it’. 72 Clinton’s approach inevitably led him to inconsistencies, like the acceptance of one’s ‘superhuman’ ancestors as fictitious, while a son is considered as a historical actor. 73 On the other hand, the testimonia of archaic times, such as inscriptions and poetry, are considerably later productions, and must have therefore incorporated plausible fiction. The empiricist historian asked for independent evidence in order to accept either legendary stories or heroes as constitutive elements in any attempt at the construction of a chronological map anterior to the first recorded Olympiad. Grote opened the strictly historical part of the History by a general view of the geography of Greece and its people. He emphatically commented on the Amphictyonies (religious partnerships) and other festivities that helped to create Clinton ‘places Phorôneus seventeen generations, or 570 years prior to the Trojan war, 978 years earlier than the first recorded Olympiad’, History I 74n., II 158-9; see Fasti Hellenici III 19. 71 Fasti Hellenici I vi-vii. 72 History II 158. 73 History II 174. 70 83 Chapter 3 common sentiments, sympathies, and ‘Hellenic union’.74 He then proceeded to the invasion of the Dorians in Pelopponnesus, describing the early conquests of the Spartans within the peninsula. Even though not denying that the Spartans were of Doric origins, he disagreed with Müller who asserted in his work on the Dorians that Sparta represented a faithful type of ‘Dorian principles, tendencies, and sentiments’.75 Grote instead believed that the Spartan system of government was peculiar to itself and the result of its local circumstances. The Spartans, along with the other Dorians in Crete and elsewhere, might have shared some common beliefs and tendencies, yet the constitution ascribed to Lycurgus must have impressed upon them particular characteristics. Grote argued, in a way that reminds us of Montesquieu, that the features (the spirit) of Spartan legislation and political institutions are to be found in the social habits, mentality and discipline of the Spartiates. Due to the geographical place of their polis on the banks of the Eurotas, opened and without walls, the Spartans should have constructed a permanent community of soldiers, attached to an austere and patriotic discipline. The character of the Spartan constitution and the discipline imparted to the citizenry reinforced their position and further made easy the expansion of their conquests in Messenia and Laconia. By the new territorial acquisitions, Sparta became the possessor of a great portion of Peloponnesus. The Spartans gradually spread as far as Argolis and Arcadia through expeditions from the interior towards the coast, which were facilitated by the valleys across the Alpheius and Eurotas. The Spartan territory became progressively larger and its population more numerous than that of any other Greek state; nevertheless, its government ‘was also more completely centralised and more strictly obeyed’. 76 In his remarks on the origins of the Spartan constitution, Grote attacked the mystification that surrounded the name of Lycurgus. Of biographical details (‘a large superstructure of romance’), we possess very little to affirm anything with certainty, except what is recited in the legendary tradition. 77 With regard to the political constitution, financial organisation, and the discipline supposedly established by Lycurgus, and which was notably analogous to the social and political arrangements depicted in Homer, the historian is almost entirely in the dark. From the scanty and scarcely verifiable information that comes to us, we may infer that Lycurgus ‘(or the individual to whom this system is owing, whoever he was) is the founder of a warlike brotherhood rather than the lawgiver He recurs to this issue in chapter XXVIII, “Pan-Hellenic Festivals - Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian”, History IV 233-51. 75 Grote, History III 115; the historian compares Müller’s view with A. Kopstadt’s De rerum Laconicarum constitutionis Lycurgeæ origine et indole (Greifswald 1849), which the historian read ‘with much satisfaction’ (III 172). It would be interesting to compare Grote’s views on this issue with bishop Thirlwall’s narrative, History of Greece I 263-89. 76 Grote, History III 214. 77 History III 161. Cf. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici I 410. 74 84 Grote’s History of Greece (I) of a political community ... The parallel of the Lykurgean institutions is to be found in the Republic of Plato, who approves the Spartan principle of select guardians carefully trained and administering the community at discretion’. 78 In describing the development of the political affairs in Peloponnesus, Grote took special pains to show that the assumption that Sparta had an agrarian law (anadasmos), originated with Lycurgus, and according to which the land was divided into equal parts among the citizens and the Perioikoi, was incorrect. As a matter of fact, all historical evidence points to increasing inequalities of property among the people of Sparta. Moreover, the idea of Lycurgus having equally divided the landed property appears for the first time in Plutarch. Earlier historians, like Herodotus and Thucydides, never mentioned anything about such a division of land by Lycurgus, whereas Isocrates expressly denied that a partition of land had ever taken place. Aristotle traces inequality of property among the Spartans as far back as the Messenian war, mentioning Phaleas of Chalcedon as the first author of a scheme of equal landed property. The statement of Plutarch, Grote argued, which was accepted by Müller and Manso (who deduced from it principles that could make the scheme feasible), is untrustworthy in terms of historical accuracy.79 Plutarch represents all Laconia as a Spartan possession in the time of Lycurgus, whereas this was far from the truth. Again, he ascribes to Lycurgus the ban of gold and silver whereas a silver coinage was first introduced by Pheidon of Argos, at least a hundred years after the appearance of the Spartan legislator. By subjecting Plutarch’s testimony to critical examination, and discarding the historicity of his claims, Grote professed to have shed new light on Spartan social and political history. According to Grote, the working of the Spartan constitution, especially the law that anyone not providing sufficient amounts of produce for the public syssitia (meals) should be disfranchised, made easier the accumulation of property in the hands of wealthy proprietors, while a great portion of the population remained extremely poor. The existence of great inequality of landed property explains the raison d’ être of social revolutions that took place in the time of Lysander, and even later in the reign of King Agis during the third century. The stability of the Spartan constitution, Grote argued, was a myth readily propagated by historians. Lycurgus (or the founders of the Spartan law and constitution) established in effect a conservative form of government in which he tried to repress all social growth, invention and intellectual improvement. He contemplated a social system that could secure the maintenance of existing forms. But despite the conservative spirit of the reforms introduced, Sparta was always on the verge of political revolution. Whenever a popular revolt started, it was rapidly silenced through methods of terrorism and massacre employed by the 78 79 History III 158-9. History III 164. Cf. Manso, Sparta I 110-121. 85 Chapter 3 privileged oligarchy. By contrast, the Solonian constitutional arrangements differed explicitly from those of Lycurgus both in spirit and tendency. But before entering on his account of the Athenian government at the time prior to and during the Solonian reforms, Grote examined the history of Corinth, Sicyon and Megara, the three great neighbouring states. In a most thoughtful chapter, the historian dealt with the ancient tyrannides and despotism with direct references to Mitford’s excessive idealisation of tyrants. The Tory historian praised the ancient despots because he had confused, Grote believed, the idea of monarchy as it existed in contemporary Europe with the irresponsible usurper of power in antiquity. It is important to keep in mind that the monarchies of medieval and modern Europe had been generated by causes peculiar to the societies that existed during this time. Without giving due attention to the historical and sociological factors, there can be no impartial estimate of the universal feeling among the Greeks towards the idea of a king. The conception which the Greeks formed of a king, especially after having experienced the reign of the despots, was one of an irresponsible and selfish ruler, who often violated the lives and property of the people. Despotic rule in cities in which the citizens had previously been accustomed to regulate their own affairs should have generally caused much anger and exasperation. The title of a king conveys to a modern an entirely different idea from that which it conveyed to the Greeks. When the Greeks thought of a man exempt from legal responsibility, they conceived him as really and truly such, in deed as well as in name, with a defenceless community exposed to his oppressions; and their fear and hatred of him was measured by their reverence for a government of equal law and free speech, with the ascendency of which their whole hopes of security were associated, - in the democracy of Athens more perhaps than in any other portion of Greece. And this feeling, as it was one of the best in the Greek mind, so it was also one of the most widely spread, - a point of unanimity highly valuable amidst so many points of dissension. We cannot construe or criticise it by reference to the feelings of modern Europe, still less to the very peculiar feelings of England, respecting kingship: and it is the application, sometimes explicit and sometimes tacit, of this unsuitable standard, which renders Mr. Mitford’s appreciation of Greek politics so often incorrect and unfair.80 History III 237-8; see also III 237: ‘The theory of a constitutional king, especially, as it exists in England, would have appeared to him [Aristotle] impracticable: to establish a king who will reign without governing - in whose name all government is carried on, yet whose personal will is in practice of little or no effect - exempt from all responsibility, without making use of the exemption .... surrounded with all the paraphernalia of power, yet acting as a passive instrument in the hands of ministers ... This remarkable combination of the fiction of superhuman grandeur and licence with the reality of an invisible strat-waistcoat, is what an Englishman has in his mind when he speaks of a constitutional king.’ 80 86 Grote’s History of Greece (I) According to Grote, the despots who emerged in the process of transition from the primitive heroic royalty to the oligarchical regimes, showed contempt for the laws and cruelty towards their subjects. (The despots of Corinth, Sicyon and Megara serve as examples of those revolutionary influences which, towards the beginning of the sixth century, seem to have overturned the oligarchical governments in many cities.) Their relationship with freemen was generally one of open hostility. For this reason, their political rule, sustained against a defenceless community exposed to their oppressions, was usually short-lived. But the Greek mind ‘was of a progressive character, capable of conceiving and gradually of realising amended social combinations’. Thus, after the painful experience of despotism, a firm antipathy to a permanent hereditary ruler became a sentiment almost unanimous. The triumph of dêmocratia was not too far away. ‘The hatred of kings as it stood among the Greeks ... was a pre-eminent virtue, flowing directly from the noblest and wisest part of their nature. It was a consequence of their deep conviction of the necessity of universal legal restraint; it was a direct expression of that regulated sociality which required the control of individual passion from every one without exception, and most of all from him to whom power was confided.’ 81 Before tracing the events of Greek history from the Persian wars down to Alexander the Great, Grote surveyed the history of the Greek colonies and the natives with whom the Greeks came into contact. Beginning with the Greek apoikies on the Black Sea, he passed on to Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean, Cyrene, Sicily, the islands and coast of the Adriatic, Macedonia and the mountainous area of Northern Greece. He also provided an account of the neighbouring nations, the Scythians, Phrygians, Lydians, Assyrians,82 Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians and Carthaginians. In tracing the history of the Greek colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, Grote showed the process by which their development had been disturbed by the growth of the Persian empire and its involvement in the region. This panoramic view of the various states and the detailed account of the Persian empire served a twofold purpose. First, it provided a comparison of foreign civilisations, then at the peak of their development, with the civilisation of the Greeks; and, secondly, by tracing the surrounding political influences and environments, it made it easier for the reader to understand the subsequent course of historical events. By illustrating the differences in culture, mental improvement, industry and prosperity between the Greeks and other races, 81 History III 238, 236. It is interesting to note that in his examination of the Assyrians, Grote criticised Sir Austen Henry Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains, 2 vols. (London 1849; a new ed. by H.W. Saggs, New York and London 1970). Layard, in Grote’s judgement, History IV 93, was liable to the same mistake committed by the historians of ancient Greece: belief in legends and blind trust of sculptures and monuments in revealing authentic history. Grote calls again for ‘rational and trustworthy principles’, maintaining that ‘from monuments of art alone, it would be unsafe to draw historical inferences’. 82 87 Chapter 3 Grote wanted to emphasise that the most important contributions of antiquity to posterity (literature, arts, and theories of government) originated with the people of ancient Greece. The differences in customs and sentiment were too important to ignore. ‘In no city of historical Greece’, Grote argued, ‘did there prevail either human sacrifices - or deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, &c. - or castration - or selling of children into slavery - or polygamy or the feeling of unlimited obedience towards one man: all customs which might be pointed out as existing among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, &c.’ What strikes the modern historian most, Grote argued, and should have alike impressed the first Greek visitors on countries like Egypt and Assyria, is that he could ‘scarcely trace in either of them the higher sentiment of art, which owes its first marked development to Grecian susceptibility and genius’. But the human mind, added the philosophical historiographer, ‘is in every stage of its progress, and most of all in its rude and unreflecting period, strongly impressed by visible and tangible magnitude, and awe-struck by the evidences of great power’. Solid magnitude and colossal works, whilst demonstrating regular industry under despotic and priestly governments, contrasted sharply ‘with the small autonomous communities of Greece and Western Europe, wherein the will of the individual citizen was so much more energetic and uncontrolled’. The Greek ‘observers’ should have been impressed by the ‘mechanical and fixed habits of the mass of the Egyptian population’. Those colossal Pyramids, the ‘stupendous works, which form the permanent memorials of the country, remain at the same time as proofs of the oppressive exactions of the kings, and of the reckless caprice with which the lives as well as the contributions of the people were lavished’.83 Greek civilisation and political institutional progress emerged as the fruit of individual genius, collective effort and liberty. Oriental barbarism and expansionism eventually faced the moral superiority and intellectual pre-eminence of the Greeks in Marathon, Salamis and Mycale. The victory of the Greeks was, for Grote, a victory of human progress. After 560 B.C., there took place two important changes that substantially determined the course of Greek history. The first change, or event, was the subjection of the Asiatic Greeks by Lydia and by Persia, and the struggles for freedom which followed. The second was the combined action of the Greeks first under Sparta and, afterwards, due to the growth of Athens as a maritime power, under Athenian leadership. The second development grew out of the first. It was the Persian invasions that gave birth to an organised Greek opposition to the ‘barbarians’ of the East, and inspired in them the necessity of joint action. ‘The idea of leadership or hegemony of collective Hellas, as a privilege necessarily vested in some one State for common security against the barbarians, thus became current ... Next came the miraculous development of Athens, and the violent 83 History III 40, IV 90, 106. 88 Grote’s History of Greece (I) contest between her and Sparta which should be the leader; the larger portion of Hellas taking side with one or the other, and the common quarrel against the Persian being for the time put out of sight.’ 84 It is time now to turn to Grote’s discussion of the ‘miraculous development of Athens’, which occupies a central place in the History of Greece. CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have suggested that Grote’s idea of history as applied in the History of Greece, was different from the extremely rationalist philosophical conceptions which he inherited from James Mill and the scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment. The difference can be explained in terms of his supplementing philosophico-didactic narratives with the historicist approach of German scholars. Comte’s scheme of the development of human civilisation was also present in his examination of the intellectual and political development of the Greeks. Grote’s treatment of myths and legends is quite characteristic of the combined intellectual influences that worked in his mind in the 1830s (i.e., historismus, Comtean philosophy of history, utilitarianism). These influences are respectively embodied in his conception of the particular identity of the Greek past; in his dealing with myths and epic poetry as representative of the sentiments, mentality and political ethos of the people of Greece in a certain scale of their development; and, finally, in his consistent application of the laws of evidence prior to the exposition of any historical conclusion. Respect for evidence, deeply rooted in his utilitarian education, was the new element that broke with eighteenth-century British Greek historiography, as examined in the previous chapter. The magnitude of Grote’s sceptical assault on testimonies, ancient and modern, was, to say the least, tremendous. Hardly anyone or any piece of testimony survives his severe analysis or criticism. On the other hand, sparks of liberalism animate his dealing with the manners and society of archaic and early classical Greece. The social and political history of Athens would provide him a most suitable terrain for presenting both an exemplar of critical scholarship and his commitment to utilitarian liberalism. 84 History III 53-4. 89