How the Sacred and Profane Worlds were Joined

This is an abridged and retitled version of a chapter in The Sacred History of Being, which explores  interconnections between earthly and Divine realities in antiquity. A key thing to observe is that the idea of such interconnections is established on logical grounds. The reality of the Divine world is inferred, on the basis of the visible imperfections of profane reality, but the two worlds must be connected in some way if reality itself is not to be necessarily irrational in nature (this also was argued on logical grounds). Establishing the connection between the worlds was a major preoccupation in antiquity: things should ‘meet and agree’. 

The original chapter contained footnotes, which I have removed for ease of reading. I’ve reduced the number of modes of connection which are discussed also. The essential argument of the chapter however remains the same.

TY February 18, 2018.

***

Since the world of the divine is a transcendent reality, the nature of that reality is not going to conform to our secular understanding of the existent world. This is an important point, which would have been considered in antiquity. Thus, there is no reason to presume that extension is represented or has reality in the same way in which extension exists in normal space. There is also no reason to presume that time is represented or has reality in the same way in which time exists in the secular world (the secular world being, by definition, the world of time, or the world existing in time). 

Almost every aspect of the world of existence will have a different nature in the divine world, to the point where we would find it difficult or impossible to establish the connection between one and the other. We are not accustomed to imagining that the ancients thought in such terms, except perhaps within the Academy, or within Parmenides circle.

There are many conceptions which are associated with the divine reality. This may seem a strange way to understand the world of the divine. But it is no more a species of imprecision to do this than it is to create a pantheon of gods, all of which have something of the divine about them. The problem with the divine is that it is forever beyond our capacity to fully understand, by definition. Therefore we can only say things about it from a particular point of view, at a particular time, and under certain circumstances. All within the limitations of the human understanding. Beyond that our interpretation is more or less imperfect. This means that our understanding of the divine is forever contingent – in essence a species of conjecture rather than full understanding.

This is a difficult idea to communicate, given the last two thousand years of theological speculation, and religious struggle in the world. It may seem an unimaginable idea – that the theological ideas of the ancient world were understood to be conjectural, and ultimately contingent on the limitations of the human understanding.

For us, even before the advent of the empirical approach to knowledge during the European enlightenment, we attempted to construct our notions of the world and what is real on what could be established as far as possible, whether what was established was on the basis of logical inference or deduction, on the basis of experience, or was revealed to us by the divine. Conjecture might have been tolerable (or even encouraged to an extent) within the church school and the seminary, but only in so far as it was desirable that scholars produced by religious institutions should be able to use their critical faculties to the best of their ability, in the service of Church and state. But in the end, conjecture is not something we generally wish to face as an important component of our picture of the world.

In constructing ideas of the gods, and creating images of them, the ancients were engaging in the enterprise of framing their understanding of the divine world. They did this on the basis of the idea that the realm of reality (which we have spoken of as Being earlier in this essay), being unchanging in its nature, must still stand behind the world of appearance and existence. This latter world is an image of it, but is not a perfect representation of it. The realm of reality embraces it, but the world of appearance and existence is necessarily a lesser world. However, because it is a good semblance of it, there must be the possibility of aspects of the realm of the reality being manifest in the world. On the basis of their ideas about the nature of the divine, of the supremely perfect Being, we might ask what they would look for in the world which would represent the presence of the supreme Being, woven all through the world, as the soul is woven all through the world in Plato’s model. They would ask: where is it? What shape does it have? How big is it? What properties does it have? And so on.

This is an incomplete list of items which were identified in antiquity as representing what we might term ‘bleedthrough’ from the divine reality. These were things which were regarded as of great importance – in a sense, of more importance than the gods themselves, in that they were aspects of the divine which had reality in our world, and did not depend to the same extent on human conjecture. They are therefore more profoundly real than the gods.

1. Limit: Before the idea of Being, there is no reason to have a sophisticated attitude to limit. One can have the idea that things are separate from other things, or must be separate from other things, and that there is a point of demarcation which marks off where one thing ends and another begins. It is also possible to have the conception that it might be desirable or even necessary to move from one side of the limit to the other. It is also possible to imagine the divine as having existence on the other side of a limit, without there being anything very sophisticated in the conception. A sophisticated conception of a modus operandi of contact with the divine however will not emerge from this, until an intellectual basis for there being a reason why things should be connected is understood. Before Being, one side of the limit or border is the concern. However, once the idea of Being is in play, then the limit itself becomes the focus of interest. The existence of a sophisticated idea of Being means that what exists is understood to be less real than reality itself (the idea of Being from St Anselm onwards was not very sophisticated).

2. Perfection: Before the idea of Being, talking of perfection is focused on the subjective notion of perfection, and the term is used either rhetorically, or refers simply to quality of workmanship or quality of action. It has no bearing on ideas relating to the divine, or to reality. The idea may however be extended to application to the divine and to the gods. By analogy, something which has great perfection will come to be understood to transcend other objects or works of a similar kind, and this transcendence will come to be applied to the divine. It is however a long step to realizing that a proposed perfection means that the divine is actually unintelligible to us, and that the divine is Being itself, beyond any fixed or rigid attributes. Perfection as a quality which may actually connect with the divine, rather than merely showing transcendence of other lesser perfections, is an idea which is dependent on the concept of the divine as Being.

3. Completion: The idea of completion is related to the idea of perfection, particularly in connection with the nature of the divine. However completion as a concept relates more closely to the idea of limit, in that it is a property of the concept of Okeanos in Greece, and the all-enveloping Apsu in Mesopotamia. It is an interesting concept in connection with the idea of a circle, since it is impossible to determine the beginning or end of a circle, at least when it is unbroken. The concept may be used in a great many ways, from indicated the completion of a form, nature, or the performance of ritual and liturgy, and so on. It might also be used to indicate the end of a life, or a process. What is completed has some property in connection with the divine, some participation with it, in that the realm of the divine must be complete as opposed to the world of existence, which is incomplete in its general nature. I suspect that the idea of completion was one of the first mundane properties in the world to be identified as a potential access point to the divine world.

4. Excellence: Excellence is a concept which the Greeks had a particular interest in, but it is an idea which, like the ideas of completion and perfection, is referred to throughout the ancient world. To excel is to exceed something. So something which possesses excellence transcends the excellence of some other thing. This is its comparative use, but it is also used intransitively, so that something can be said to have a special excellence of its own, irrespective of the qualities of other things. Hence its use by Aristotle in his moral and ethical treatises. Ultimately it is about transcendence, whether of oneself or of other things. The world of the divine is both more excellent than the secular world, but it also possesses a special excellence of its own. Excellence is something which exists in the world of existence which has a connection with the reality which stands behind it.

5. Greatness: the idea of greatness as we have seen an idea which was pressed into service in the Middle Ages to try to prove the existence of the supreme Being. Greatness is naturally something which the human understanding would wish to associate with the supreme Being. It has been in the past associated with the gods – Herodotus refers to the rituals associated with the cult of the great gods on Samos, without going into any detail, which is frustrating. The great gods were known as the ‘Kaberioi,’ which indicates a near eastern origin for this cult, since kbr is the semitic root for ‘great’. Great however is an imprecise term, merely indicating that these gods transcend other gods, or that that their special excellence is their greatness. It is however an appropriate term to describe men who might be classed in this way, who, through the quality of their greatness, on the field of battle, in their wisdom, and a thousand other attributes, might be understood to have some empathy with the gods.

6. Justice: the focus on justice in the ancient world in general, and not simply among the Greeks, might indicate to the cynical modern sensibility only that justice was in short supply. It might indeed be the case that it was much referenced precisely because there was little access to it. However the discussion of the subject in Plato makes it clear that it is an idea which has its place in this exploration of the earthly corollaries of aspects of the divine nature which have some form of existence here on earth. Justice was presumed to be something which was perfected in the divine world, but justice in the secular world is a different matter. The very nature of the world of existence means that justice – true justice is unobtainable. What we can access is a poor copy of something which can only exist elsewhere. It is interesting that both in Mesopotamia and in Greece it was the Sun god (Shamash and Apollo respectively) which were responsible for the dispensation of justice on earth.

The gods might know what is just, but our capacity to discern it is limited, and the dispensation of justice by the gods is sometimes hard for man to understand and accept. One of the images of the dispensation of justice, is of the participation in battle of the sun god. Assyrian reliefs show Shamash hovering above opposing forces in the winged circle. The meaning of this is at least two-fold: the god is involved in the outcome of the battle, which represents a way of dispensing just decision; and the to-ing and fro-ing of battle represents the difficulty of apportioning justice in the world of existence. It also means that the engagement in battle was understood by kings, priests and generals as a legitimate way of establishing right. In Homer, there is a famous passage where opposing forces are described as being bounded by ropes, which are pulled this way and that in the course of the battle.  These ropes are also found in the iconography of Shamash.  The underlying idea is the same.

7. Proportion: aspects of the divine reality can exist in the secular world expressed in terms of proportion. Thus, in a figure, a side which bears a proportionate relationship to another side, can be regarded as an image or representation of it, in a way similar to the understanding that the image of a god bears a relation to the god itself. Proportionate relationships in a structure, object or image could therefore be used as a way of enhancing the meaning of images and representations which bore a relationship with the divine reality. This is an enormous subject, worth a monograph on its own.

8. Purity: Purity is an attribute which might be associated with the idea of perfection, and often was. But purity can be attributed to things in a different way – not everything which is pure is to be regarded as a perfection. Something which is perfect is just that. Purity on the other hand, is an attribute which can be put on and put off in a way which perfection cannot.  This distinction is of great importance in the Assyrian and Babylonian contexts, since in order to create divine statues, the craftsmen required to be given a temporary divinity. Thus the purity, a temporary perfection, can be put on for the purpose of the work. This was achieved through the perfection of the appropriate ritual. Afterwards it was removed by the performance of another ritual.

9. Wholes and Totalities. Things which are whole are regarded as participating with one another, in that they share the property of wholeness, or totality. This idea is a strong pointer to the essentially subjective nature of the model of the world in which these things are important, since the wholeness of something is sometimes attributed, rather than being a property of an entity. There is a doctrine associated with wholes and totalities, which is attributed to Pythagoras. It is also referenced by Plato. The doctrine however is much older than the middle of the first millennium B.C.E.

Those are nine phenomena which can appear in the world of existence, which were understood to allow and enhance connection with the divine reality which stands eternally behind the physical world. This is an edited list, but it is sufficient to illustrate what was in the mind of man attempting contact with the divine.

Other things which we might consider, which were of great importance in the ancient world, include the idea of reduplication, principally of concepts, attributes and properties. The point of reduplication is emphasis. Two collocated symbols, meaning the same, could be understood to double the power of the image and the connection.

Another related idea is ‘collection’, sometimes expressed in ancient texts as ‘heaping up’. This refers to the bringing together, usually of good things (but not always), sometimes in the context of an altar and a priest. There may be several reasons for creating such a collocation, depending on the objects involved, but ‘heaping up’ is a good thing in itself, if the intention of the supplicant is to multiply and reduplicate the offering. It is obvious from the study of ancient iconography that many images are reduplicated directly, in a way which does not amount to a purely aesthetic distribution of images, and in addition, the meaning of symbols and tableau are reduplicated using different images. The effect is of reduplication, and to make such assemblages identifies to the informed viewer, what is the same among what is apparently different. These assemblages are of course addressed to the gods, and the divine.

Another action which was understood to convey an aspect of the divine world in the physical world is ‘division’. This concept is very closely associated with the ideas of justice and of decision, but it is possible for division to be separated from these ideas, in that division can take place without the wish or need for justice, or of decision. At least in terms of our modern understanding of what justice is. Ultimately the connection between the ideas is about ‘good order’, and ‘meeting and agreeing’.

The association of justice and the power of division with kingship is very strong in the ancient near east – the sun god Shamash is often represented as holding a saw, and the Egyptian kings were also represented with the symbol of the Neteru (axes). In both cases, the instrument for deciding the fate of anything is clearly not a weapon but a tool (though weapons of war also were understood as legitimate tools of the gods). If it is possible to understand the creation and generation of the world as a decision of the gods, then the nature of reality has been divided, at least insofar as there is now a world of existence which has descended into secular time, and which is cut down from Being itself. The power of kings to deal justice comes from their participation in the nature of the divine Being, though they live and function in the world of existence.

Division is also important in gaining an apprehension of what is real and what is not, and in understanding how one thing is different from another. Ultimately it is the basis of logic and classification which we find in developed form among the Greeks in the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. Sumerologists were puzzled to find tablets listing things together which to us had no meaningful connection, such as a large list of objects which have the property of ‘being white’. To the Sumerian scribe who assembled this list, the characteristics of whiteness would have determined the worth of the list. The items were separated out from a (hypothetical) list of all known items, and collected together as a classification of items of the same property. These properties are in a sense subjective, but only because we do not know the function of white objects in the Sumerian model of the world.

Another notion of great importance in antiquity is the idea of ‘drawing near’ to a god. This might be represented by proximity to an altar or symbol of the god, or by the device of showing the supplicant being introduced to the god by a third party, whether another god or by a priest of the divine cult. There is however a technical idea behind this concept. The idea is that by being near, you already participate in the nature of the god, to a limited extent. The connection is open, even if transaction with the divine is not in operation. Drawing near can be achieved through a collocation of offerings, through benefactions to the priesthood and the temple, through other good works, the virtue of the individual, and so on.

Eleven articles on Plato and Socrates

I've gathered these 11 items together, since they are scattered through the blog. The chapter extract concerning 'The Platonic Theory of Being' is from The Sacred History of Being, published in 2015. The text  of 'Logical Modality in Classical Athens', along with some others, forms a chapter in Understanding Ancient Thought published by the Anshar Press in August 2017.  There are three extracts here also from J.G. Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being, published in 2016. 

Justice and the Harmony of the Soul

explores the idea of Justice discussed in Plato’s Republic, which argues that the pursuit of special excellences by individuals, in terms of skills, and moral and intellectual virtue, without reference to the activities of other individuals, was understood to result in a harmonious arrangement of society. They are joined together as a consequence of the fact that each of the virtues is complete and perfected. 

Plato's Point of View

Plato’s main concern was what was truly real, which remained necessarily unchanging and itself, and therefore could not be present, at least as itself, in the world of the here and now. This is not however, how Plato is understood or represented by modern philosophers. There are two main schools of thought: the first is that his position is consistent throughout his work, but his work is shaped by an unknown agrapha (unwritten esoteric doctrine). The second is that his work represents a discursive exploration of philosophical questions, which comes to no firm conclusion.

Sameness and Difference in Plato 

is a discussion of the idea of the Plenum in Plato. Philosophical writing about the divine in the west departed from the consideration of reality as something intricately bound up with a plenum during the Middle Ages, and as a result, philosophical argument about the divine, all the way up to the present day, deals poorly with certain issues, and no longer resembles the kind of argument about the divine found in ancient literature. It also makes it difficult to understand what Plato means. 

The Significance of the Chapter on The Platonic Theory of Being

Though the chapter is a difficult read, it is not that difficult to explain. In conversation with a reader recently, I provided a short explanation of the nature of the chapter, and its significance for the overall argument of The Sacred History of Being. It concerns the belief that divinity could be present in inanimate objects, and whether reality itself is necessarily one. And the consequences which necessarily follow from such discussion.

The Platonic Theory of Being (chapter extract) 

Plato argues that, by systematic dialectical enquiry, we can rise from the realms of likelihood and opinion, where we encounter only similitudes, to the realm in which certain knowledge is possible. This is to be achieved by passing through the similitudes, on account of their similitude, to their ultimate origin, the Form of the Good.

Logical Modality in Classical Athens

Though we have recognised only one logical modality for more than two millennia, there were in fact two. One of them was appropriate to earthbound existence; the other supplied a rational basis for contact with the divine.

I Go to Die (The Death of Socrates)

Written in response to Socrates speech to his accusers, on being found guilty of the charges of moral corruption and impiety to the gods. Performed by Sir Derek Jacobi. [Almeida Theatre, ‘Figures of Speech’ series, published September 25, 2017]. The text of the speech (the edit used) is available here. Bettany Hughes' populist take on Socrates, 'A Man For Our Time', is here. Hughes has also written a book on Socrates, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (review by Tom Holland). Thanks to Stephanie Papadopoulos.


Post Enlightenment Plato, and That which Cannot Move

The Plato we have we look at differently from the way he was understood in antiquity. For most of the middle ages all that was available to scholars was the first part of the Timaeus. So it is not the case that a way of understanding Plato has been handed down to us, except via the neoplatonists. But the neoplatonist understanding of Plato is deprecated as a way of understanding his work, with the consequence that modern scholars approach Plato virtually naked, with a very modern set of intellectual baggage. This can be a problem.


Excluding Parmenides

This is an extract from J.G. Frazer and The Platonic Theory of Being, published April 4, 2016. In Frazer's early essay, Plato's Parmenides is scarcely discussed at all. This is particularly surprising, for the Parmenides contains criticism of Plato's doctrine by Plato himself; criticisms not adequately answered either in that dialogue or elsewhere in the canon. The chronological position of this dialogue is thus immensely important if we consider the work of Plato as a development. The extract is presented here without footnotes.

Running Folklore to the Death

An extract from J.G. Frazer and The Platonic Theory of Being. The ultimate "disappearance" of the Ideal theory as an explanatory device of any worth is read as Plato's rejection of his own theory; lingering in his work for a time, just as the Ptolemaic account of the Cosmos lingered on (in Milton's Paradise Lost, for example) after the work of Copernicus and Galileo rendered it theoretically outmoded.The extract is presented here without footnotes.

Is Plato's Ontology False?

An extract from J.G. Frazer and The Platonic Theory of Being.If we summarise Plato's view of the nature of the ultimate reality, we might say that it is always beyond understanding, unchanging, yet participates in the world of change - a paradoxical matrix. Is this a problem of epistemology? Is there no distinction between epistemology or ontology (since the world of change is what can be known)? Plato's ontology is shown to be beyond the mere projection of the categories of knowledge, since it is known at the point where the epistemology breaks down in contradictions. It is beyond all human categorisation. The Idea of the Good in the dialogues is simply part of the armoury of likelihoods employed by Plato - one of the assumed positions on the path to knowledge of Reality. The extract is presented here without footnotes.

Thomas Yaeger, October 7, 2017.

The Raft of the Medusa

The past, as has been observed, is another country. Much of what we acquire as education and understanding takes us further away from the possibility of entering into that foreign land, with each generation that passes. As a consequence, piecing together the past can sometimes involve a good deal of supposition, and much of this is done without any real consciousness that suppositions are being introduced.

In an age where both ideas of realpolitik and the centrality of ideology and different varieties of determinism (philosophical and economic in particular) are knowingly supposed to be the constants in history, knowledge of which eluded our predecessors, it is easy to introduce suppositions into historical analysis without any sense of violating the proper context of the evidence.

These suppositions create difficulties which stand between us and use of evidence which does more than fit the pieces crudely into a pattern of meaning which does more than simply conform to something like our expectations, and what we are prepared to countenance as a credible model of the past.

More significant than individual difficulties however, is the complex interaction of one with the other, and the effects of successive layers of these interacting obstacles to our understanding.

Any age has a raft of of commonly understood truths, sometimes contradictory and multiple, and differing across social groups, societies and nations. They are not examined closely (if at all) because they have the special status of commonly understood truths. Not common in the sense that they are base or full of superstition, but common in that they are universally agreed from the top of society to the bottom. These vary from age to age.

In my own lifetime, I have seen many patterns of belief change – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Many of these ideas have changed so dramatically that the world in which I spent my first ten years now looks as strange and remote to me as (for example) the world of nineteenth century rationalism. Mostly (in both cases), the changes which occurred in the years following were unregrettable. What is regrettable however, is that one set of unquestionable certainties has been replaced by others.

In fact, we have gone much further than acquire new unquestionable certainties: we have gone so far as to create an approach to reality which is designed to support the enlightenment agenda without a theoretical basis, It is worth drawing attention to this approach, since it illustrates a certain naivete about our own times, and the worth of our own advance on our predecessors. We assume our enlightenment, though it is hard for us to prove it. 

The philosopher John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, published in 1971, essentially uses a normative approach as the basis of determining what is or is not just. The idea is that, though we might not any longer agree on the kind of quasi-theological or philosophical theoretical basis for what is just, which one would have found in past cultural contexts, in many cases we can agree on what is just without such a basis.  This represents a break with former traditions in which justice was understood to emerge from philosophical principle, and be instantiated in particular cases. For Rawls it is about the calculation of self-interest. 

To some extent it can be understood as a reformulation of the idea of common law, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, where law can be decided by judges on the basis of their personal judgement,  and the circumstances, without any necessary reference to a body of specific precedent, or an established legal principle. However, Rawls’ book attempts to enshrine this normative approach to justice as the successor to all philosophical approaches to the establishment of the idea of justice. 

At a stroke, all the difficulties raised by the nature of former approaches to the problem of what is just fall away. Where the old approaches provided little or no support for things which we needed to root as fundamental in our culture, if it is to function rationally, we, by the adoption of normative criteria, could begin the advance to that position.

The downside to this is becoming all too clear. A generation of lawyers and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic is now steeped in this way of thinking. If what you want is reasonable (and of course it is, since we are all reasonable people), then the precedent of other legal systems, legal prescriptions, agreements and contracts, are, from beginning to end, no more than limitations imposed by past ways of thinking. Where there is a conflict with what is clearly ‘normative’ to the reasonable mind, existing arrangements are obstacles. Those who would stand on these arrangements in the face of the normative desire, are using the past as a way of impeding the future.

 The normative view is now the just view. We are now in a period where ‘pre-emptive’ self-defence is understood to be a legitimate policy for a powerful state. And important international agreements such as the Geneva Convention can be ignored provided some kind of normative legal excuse can be provided. What it is reasonable to think, appears to be in the course of a substantial revision. Our idea of reason is changing.

We are by and large, by reflex, so sure of the rightness of our ways of thinking, particularly in the modern Western world, that we have now elevated that reflex to a place above all other rational and legal responses to the world, in the whole of history. 

Such a thing has happened before.  It is reminiscent of the elevation of the Roman Republic above all other constitutional forms, as described to us in the pages of Polybius, so that the Republic was not any longer subject to the forces that (it was understood) other states were. The ancient world had several models for state constitutions available, and Aristotle (we are told) had arranged them into a cycle. Rome fitted into this construction, but at some point the Romans decided that they had transcended that cycle, and that both Rome and its constitution transcended all other forms of polity. Rome stood apart, and was just and eternal.

The pursuit of the normative also can be seen in the culmination of the rationalist and humanist agenda of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rationalists and humanists understood themselves to be struggling under the deadweight of accumulated belief and superstition, as well as the institutions and powers which drew their authority from the religious structures dominating the intellectual landscape. 

Drawing on the intellectual models of nature which developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rationalist perception of the world constantly sought to describe reality in terms of the laws of physics and mechanics. Nature became something which could be the subject of operations, rather than an outward expression of the mystery and character of the divine. The latter approach was derided and  progressively ignored. 

Descartes first shut out this aspect of reality as unnecessary for the analysis of the world, without significant supportive argument in favour of this, beyond the simple assertion that the world of the divine need not be invoked in order to explain physical reality. This severing of the link had enormously beneficial results in terms of the development of the sciences in general – matters were simplified enormously if all that was being considered was what could be measured, counted and weighed; and there was no imponderable interference from the intrusion of the divine. 

Though it was not the case that the world of the divine had been shown to be of no account in the development of an understanding of nature, as the sciences progressed, the quality and power of the descriptive models of nature created supplied what appeared to be the proof that a knowledge of the world of the divine was unnecessary for an understanding of nature. Thereafter, the divine became, in the world of the sciences, something to be scorned, as a relic of the days when the human race lived in a state of irrational superstition. 

The exclusion of the divine was normative, in that it seemed to make rational sense, even if it could not be supported by rational argument. In fact, no argument could be brought against what is essentially a supposition - the idea that the divine has no impact on the world of physics. Before long, any argument for the impact of the divine was necessarily an irrational argument.  

Five articles on Plato

I've gathered these together, since they are scattered through the blog. The chapter extract on the Platonic Theory of Being is from 'The Sacred History of Being'. The others are free-standing blog posts. The text  of 'Logical Modality in Classical Athens' will form part of a chapter in 'Abstract Conception in Greece and Assyria'.

Justice and the Harmony of the Soul

Plato's Point of View (and why we think he doesn't have one) 

Sameness and Difference in Plato 

The Platonic Theory of Being (chapter extract) 

Logical Modality in Classical Athens

Justice and the Harmony of the Soul

Justice is spoken of in Plato's Republic as one of the four

 cardinal virtues; the others being wisdom, courage and 

self discipline (prudence; temperance or moderation in 

older translations) [428e]. Justice however, proves to be

 more difficult to define than the other virtues for the 

participants in the discussion, and they find that its definition 

cannot be approached directly. Therefore they decide to define 

the other virtues first, in the hope that what is left over 

will prove to be justice. 

After the other virtues have been defined, the participants

find that justice remains elusive. Socrates suggests a 

change of approach, and gains the agreement of 

Adeimantus and Glaucon that justice may be characteristic 

of both individuals and communities, and since

 communities are larger than individuals, justice may be 

easier to discern in the context of the polis "We may 

therefore find justice on a larger scale in the

larger entity, and so easier to recognize. I accordingly

 propose that we start our inquiry with the community, 

and then proceed to the individual and see if we can find 

in the conformation of the smaller entity anything similar 

to what we have found in the larger" [Rep. 368e-369a].

Socrates discusses the origin of the state (the polis) and

 argues that it arises out of need, because individuals are not

 self-sufficient. The basic needs are food, shelter and

clothing, and the creation of the polis supplies these needs.

 Such basic needs, he argues, are best met by the individuals

who make up the polis pursuing their own natural 

aptitudes, which are different for each and fit them for 

different jobs[369b-370b]. Hence Socrates argues that 

"we do better toexercise one skill" rather than attempting 

to practice several. Further, the workman must be able to 

function at the right moment for action and thus 

"a professional at the call of his job will not wait till he has 

leisure to spare for it" [370c]. The division of labour within 

the structure of the polis means that both the quality of the 

work done and the quantity produced are greater if 

individuals specialize in this way "on a single job for which 

he is naturally fitted, and neglects all others", whether he 

be a craftsman or a businessman.

Where then is justice in the state? Adeimantus suggests that

it is to be found somewhere in the mutual relationship of the

various elements which make up the state [372a]. The state is

not wise, for example, because of the knowledge of its

 carpenters concerning woodworking and the excellences of that

 craft [428a], no matter how vital the craft may be to life:

this kind of knowledge is too specific in its nature. Socrates

 asks whether there is 

"any form of knowledge to be found among

any of the citizens in the state... which is exercised not on

behalf on any particular interest but on behalf of the city as a whole, 

in such a way to benefit the state both in its

internal and external relations?" [428c] 

The answer is that there is, and it is possessed by the guardians, 

the class of citizens whose special purpose it is to defend the polis

(other men cannot do this and pursue their own natural

 abilities). These men, as citizens, are wise and capable of

being just in the abstract, rather than in the particular.

That is, it is possible for individual souls to be just, as

well as a community. The implication seems to be that they

 have some important feature in common which makes them just;

but what justice is, remains elusive, until Socrates remarks

that:

"our quarry is lurking right under our feet all the time

and we haven't seen it... like people searching for

 something they have in their hands all the time" [432d].

He suggests that it is in fact the requirement laid down at

the beginning of the discussion, that "one man was to do one

job, the job he was naturally most suited for" [433a]; and

that it is the quality left over, after discipline, courage

and wisdom have been identified, which "makes it possible for

them to come into being in our state and preserves them by its

continued presence when they have done so" [433b]. 

He argues that the duty of the ruler is to administer justice, 

and that to do this they will "follow the principle that men 

should not take other people's belongings or be deprived of 

their own... their reason... being that it is ”just" [433e]. 

Injustice is therefore defined as the opposite of the pursuit 

of special excellences, so that someone attempting to move 

from one of the three principal classes in the polis to another, 

say from the class of artisans to the military class, by means of

wealth or physical strength, is attempting to enter a sphere

for which he is unfit; the same is true if the individual

 attempts to pursue several or all functions simultaneously.

 Socrates claims that "this sort of mutual interchange and

interference spells destruction to our state" [434a-b]; and

 describes such a state of affairs as "the worst of evils".

This then, is the soul writ large, and justice, having been

 defined in the state as the mutual relations of its various

elements, each pursuing its own special exellence and

 occupying its particular place within the social structure,

 must, if the individual is to be just, involve a similar

structure and set of relationships within the soul. 

Thus Socrates argues that there are three principal aspects of the

soul: the Reason, the Spirit, and the Appetite, corresponding

respectively to the three principal classes in the state,

 which are: the Guardians, the military class, and the class of

artisans and businessmen. Thus the whole structure of the state 

is tied in closely with the ‘Myth of the Cave’ and the ‘Simile

 of the Sun’, as well as the matter of the ‘Divided Line’, 

discussed later in the Republic. 

The first and third of these correspondences are fairly easy to 

understand, but the middle of the three is a different and difficult 

matter, and Plato himself is unclear about it, though he warns us 

that his method is not to be regarded as precise  Each of these

 aspects of the soul must follow its own interests, like the

various classes within the state. Justice is concerned,

"not with external actions, but with a man's inward self,

 his true concern and interest. The just man will not

allow the three elements... to trespass on each other's

 functions or interfere with each other, but, by keeping

all three in tune, like the notes of a scale... will in

the truest sense set his house to rights, attain self-mastery 

and order, and live on good terms with himself" [443c-e].

The just individual has become one instead of many and "will

be ready for action of any kind (recalling the workman

 pursuing his special excellence)... and will call the

knowledge which controls such action wisdom."  Injustice is

action which destroys this disposition and capacity, and 

opinions, as opposed to knowledge and wisdom, which 

control such action, are defined as ignorance [443e]:

"Injustice is a kind of civil war between these… three elements... when

the elements of the mind are confused and displaced... [this] 

constitutes injustice, indiscipline, cowardice,

ignorance, and, in short, wickedness of all kinds" [444b-c].

The relations of the parts of the soul, whether harmonious or

inharmonious, is further compared with the physical health of 

the body: health being defined as being produced by  

establishing a natural relation of control and subordination

among the constituents of the body, whereas disease is 

produced through the establishment of anun-natural 

relation [444d].

The question remains to be asked: if all these elements 

are to be bound together in harmony, how is this achieved

 by letting each constituent of the soul or state pursue its 

own special xcellence, its function?

 It seems to us a very laissez faire

arrangement, and clearly the polis is some kind of entity

beyond the mere assemblage of its parts. It would not do, for

example, for the entire body of the citizenry to consist of

 carpenters, no matter how great their skills, no matter how

 excellent their designs. Likewise, a polis full of Guardians

would have difficulty in supplying the needs of the citizenry

in respect of food, clothing and shelter. Clearly Plato

 assumes that a proper order, a proportionate order of the

classes of the citizens, is natural. I.e., that it is in the

nature of reality for separate things to be joined together in

 a proportionate way. It would seem that the way this

harmonious arrangement arises is by each of the elements of

 the whole pursuing its own special excellence, but it is not

 altogether obvious why this should work out properly.

The reason for the difficulty here is that we look at things

 upside down with respect to the Greek perception of reality.

 Assuming (as we tend to do) that reality is an aggregation of

elements which add up to make substance and action, we cannot

 easily understand how it is that order has a natural place 

in the resulting arrangements. But the Greeks thought (with the

exception of materialists like Democritus) teleologically, so

 that the universe (in toto) was thought of as complete and

 perfect in itself. 

What we encounter in our experience is this complete and 

perfect totality unwound and disassembled to

 various degrees, so that things are not present in the proper

 proportions and order. However, if things are brought to their

proper ends, to their own perfection and completion, then, on

the basis of the analogy with the cosmos at large, all the parts

 of that individual entity, that particular whole, must

be present in a proper and harmonious order (which echoes the

 character of the argument about the nature of the soul on the

basis of the larger entity of the polis). 

Thus it is that the pursuit of special excellences by individuals, 

in terms of skills, and moral and intellectual virtue,

without reference to the activities of other individuals, was 

understood to  result in such a harmonious arrangement. 

They are joined together as a consequence of the fact that each 

of the virtues is complete and perfected,  and thus each 

participates in the completion and perfection of, the individual, 

the polis, and ultimately the cosmos itself.*1 

*1 See Timaeus 31c-32c.

References:

Plato: The Republic (penguin edn. transl. and introduction by

 Desmond Lee)

Plato: The Timaeus (penguin edn. transl. and introduction by

 Desmond Lee)

Onians, R.B:  The Origins of European Thought

Synoikismos and the Origins of the Polis

The definition of the polis, as understood by the Greeks themselves, and as transmitted to us, is far from clear; its origins and archaic development seem to be beyond recovery. We can say a few things with certainty: that it is the central institution of Greek society, and that there could be no politics without the polis. According to Aristotle, it is an entity which is not too large or too small, and other ancient sources have been taken to imply the necessity of the agora. In addition it must be an autonomous entity with surrounding territory (chora). However, it is misleading to think of the polis as a city-state along the lines of the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, for instance, because some possessed a population of no more than 600 citizens.

One of the oldest references to the polis appears in the Iliad [Bk xviii], in Homer's description of the shield of Achilles wrought by Hephaestus. On this shield was represented the world, the earth, the heaven, the sea, the sun, the moon, the constellations, and:

         

In it likewise he wrought two fair cities of articulate speaking men. In the one... there were marriages and feasts; and they were conducting the brides from their chambers through the city with brilliant torches... and the people were crowded together in an assembly, and there a contest had arisen; for two men contended for the ransom money of a slain man: the one affirmed that he had paid all, appealing to the people; but the other denied, declaring that he had received nothing: and both wished to find an end (of the dispute) before a judge. The people were applauding both, the supporters of either party... the elders sat upon polished stones, in a sacred circle, and (the pleaders) held in their hands the staves of the clear-voiced heralds; with these... they arose, and alternately pleaded their cause.

This passage contains details which appear in classical definitions of the polis: the physical city, the joining together of people, an assembly, the orderly resolution of disputes, appeal to the people and arbitration by a judge. The elders sitting in a sacred circle probably prefigure the council(s) of the polis. The second city appears to be the reverse of the former in its essence: a place of discord and distrust, of war and ambush. Not at all desirable, but a place to be included in a representation of the world.

A description of a polis appears in the Odyssey [bk. vi. 262ff]. It mentions a high wall and gates on each side of the city, stations for ships, a market-place around a temple of Poseidon, "fitted with large stones dug out of the earth". This passage indicates the existence of large conurbations at a relatively early period, but it would be unreasonable to infer from this description of a particular polis that each of the features described are essential features of the polis (i.e., a polis situated far inland cannot have stations for large ships).

Further evidence that the polis was a defined concept in Homeric times is indicated in Bk. vi, 4-10, where the foundation of a colony is described. Men were settled "in Scheria far away from enterprising men... (the Phoenicians); and ... ("godlike Nausithous") drew a wall around the city, and built houses, and made temples for the gods, and divided the plains". This foundation of an "apoikia" is echoed in its details in a passage found in Plato's Laws [745b-e] which describes the just foundation and layout of a polis, "as far as possible in the centre of its chora"; and the division of the whole into twelve parts, after an area has been designated for the principal gods to be called the "acropolis. A wall is to be built around it; "then it is possible to lay out the twelve parts, both in the polis itself and in the chora as a whole", And after the creation of the tribes and their allocation to the twelve gods, and the distribution of the land, the foundation is said to be complete.

Negative evidence for the nature of the polis in Homeric times appears in the account of the Cyclops given by Odysseus [Od. Ix., 106ff] who says that

they have no laws, who, trusting in the immortal gods, neither plant a plant with their hands, nor plough: but all these things unsown, untilled, spring up, wheat and barley, and vines, which bear wine from large clusters...

The real horror of the Cyclops' situation is that "there are neither assemblies for consulting, nor rights". In short the Cyclops live without the principal features of the polis, inhabiting " the summits of lofty moutains in hollow caves", unlike the citizens who live in the plains, "and everyone gives judgement to his children and wives", as opposed to the Greek practice. Finally, we are told that the Cyclops have no care for one another.

In the Works and Days Hesiod too sees the polis as a place where justice should reign and where fair arbitration ought to be obtainable:

When judgements are fair - alike for strangers as for the local folk - and the judges undiverted from what is right, then a polis blooms and the people in it prosper. For such a place Zeus, all seeing, does not ordain the misery of war (recalling the inverted polis on the shield of Achilles), so the young men grow up in the land in peace. Men of justice know nothing of famine or ruin, as they feast upon the produce of their fields: the earth offers them a life of plenty... As for the women, they bring forth sons to match their fathers.

Thus says Hesiod, "their blessings are perpetual: the fertile land yields up its crops - and they never set foot on a ship". By this Hesiod seems to be referring to one of the most probable causes of colonization: shortage of land, or its infertility. But, in common with most Greeks he sees a relation between fact and value, so that bad times for a polis are likely to be the actions of bad citizens:

often a whole polis has suffered because of the evil of one man who is a sinful and wicked schemer: the son of Kronos sends down from heaven a great and universal calamity, famine and plague at the same time, so that the people waste away; no children are born to the women, and oikoi die out; such is the decision of Olympian Zeus*^[1].

Thus, though calamity might seem like sufficient practical reason for the foundation of an "apoikia", this pattern of belief suggests strongly that colonists might be expelled for fear of contagion if they were perceived to be tainted with the evil which had befallen the polis (it seems that colonists were chosen to go by the polis, and it was not up to to the choice of the individual), whether or not the continued presence of the colonists would have prejudiced the survival of the polis in strictly causal terms. In practice this would have been an excellent way of settling old scores and redistributing land, principally in favour of the rich*^[2].

Turning to the archaeological evidence, there exists an inscription from the Cretan city of Dreros, which gives some insight into the structure of a polis in the archaic period*^[3]. It tells of a decision made by the polis about the office of "Kosmos" (apparently a chief magistrate), limiting its tenure and laying down specific conditions for the holder of the office (Aristotle claims a parallel significance for Spartan Ephors and the Cretan Kosmi, to which I shall return later). The seventh century Draconian Law on Homicide is the oldest extant Greek law code, and has been used in the past to suggest a drift towards written and therefore public law, at least in some parts of Greece*^[4]. However, according to Crawford and Whitehead [op. cit., p65], modern scholars regard the Constitution of Drako as the result of fifth century pamphleteering. Another stele, the Law from Chios, contains "the earliest secure reference to a Boule... of the people", and, it is argued, its power to levy fines and judge appeals (c600-550 B.C.) "attests the growth of the popular element within the state at a relatively early period"*^[5].

Later sources, naturally, are retrospective. Thucydides gives some information on the "synoikismos" of Attica (settling together). In Bk. ii. 15 he says that, from the time of the first kings "down to Theseus (the legendary founder of Athens, whose name is probably related to the verb tithemi, "to set in place") the people of Attica

always lived in (their own) poleis, each one with its own administrative buildings and officials; unless there was some common danger they would not come together in council with the king, but each individual polis would govern itself in accordance with its own decisions.

 In this case it is clear that the foundation of the Athenian polis did not involve the inauguration of basic institutions: each polis had its administrative buildings and officials, and took its own decisions. When Theseus came to the throne (as the Athenians wished to believe) he

organised the chora on a proper basis, chiefly by doing away with the multiplicity of poleis and their separate councils and governments; on his scheme there was only one polis... and one seat of decision making and administration.

So the synoikismos of Theseus had nothing to do with the foundation of the polis as an idea, but was instead a particular exemplification of the idea. What was his motive? This was total synoikismos:

everyone was free, just as before, to look after his own affairs, but there was now only one place - Athens - which Theseus allowed them to treat as a polis.

The synoikismos of Theseus was the completion of a unity: the population was not moved, but the political unit was now Attica instead of a multitude of "poleis".

There is a tendency among scholars to conflate synoikismos (interpreted here as the process leading to the creation of the polis) and the development of urbanism. The two are emphatically not the same and to assume that they are does not much illuminate the emergence of the polis. Aristotle's view of the development of the polis [Politics 1, 1252-3] is, on one level an example of this kind of error: his account is warped by a combination of two factors: his view of the world in teleological terms, leading him to postulate an evolution of the polis; and his systematic programme (which surfaces in all of his work) of leading the Greeks to virtue through common sense, which determines the character of that evolution. He sees the polis as the natural outcome of a teleological process which he outlines as follows: first the oikos which is the

natural unit established to meet all man's daily needs... then, when a number of oikia are first united for the satisfaction of something more than day-to-day needs, the result is the village... finally the ultimate partnership, made up of numbers of villages and having already attained the height... of self sufficiency - this is the polis.

I.e., it has become complete. "It has come into being in order, simply that life can go on; but it now exists so as to make that life a good life". Each of its constituent parts (the villages) are seen as leading up to the polis and, "for a process to reach its consummation is only natural".

Aristotle argues that the oikos is built out of two unions: that of male and female and of master and slave, and the latter are joined together out of mutual interest. He explains the relationship between master and slave by saying that intelligence and foresight naturally belong to the ruling element, and the partner with the capacity for physical labour will naturally be subject. Thus kings are explained as the outcome of master and slave within the oikos. The relationships between male and female and master and slave, he argues, are different, except in the case of the barbaroi: "among the barbaroi... female and slave...  fill the same position. The reason for this is that the barbaroi possess no naturally ruling element". Hence the Greeks have as much right to rule the barbaroi as their own slaves.

This preposterous argument serves a crucial function, for his argument about the development of the polis makes it virtually indistinguishable from the development of the city, making the development of the polis universal, given the same conditions. Thus the polis ceases to be a uniquely Greek phenomenon. To restore its uniqueness Aristotle has to assert the racial superiority of the Greeks over the barbaroi: only the Greeks can develop the polis, since only they are truly human. Further, Aristotle is forced to deny the obvious, in that his argument implies that no urban developments of the kind described had occurred elsewhere. Not only is this nonsense, but the absurdity is underlined by the fact that in the same book he describes the Carthaginian political system, showing it to parallel closely many aspects of the polis*^[6].

Roebuck, in his article "Some aspects of urbanization in Corinth"*^[7] also presents a case for synoikismos: i.e., he attempts to understand the development of the polis there in terms of an evolution (though naturally not a teleological one). Thus he interprets the archaeological remains as marking the development of the synoikismos towards the polis, as if the concept of the polis necessarily bears a fixed relation to its concrete remains. He discusses the relative merits of whether or not the material development of Corinth was the result of agriculture or commerce, and sees the presence of temples and other structures as stages in the upgrading towards the status of polis, confusing the remains with the institutions, which did not necessarily have a parallel evolution. For instance, if the synoikismos of the expanded Athenian polis reflects an actual occurence, and it came into being of a piece as the result of the imposition of an idea, then there was no evolution as such. No people were moved (unless we credit Plutarch's account) and the material remains would hardly reflect the change. Unless it turns up inscriptions and documents, archaeology can tell us little about this kind of change.

If the polis is neither the same thing as a city, nor its material infrastructure, we should decide what it is that the polis could be:

1. A passage from Thucydides makes it quite clear that the polis is not the same as the city, but that it is wherever the citizens are [vii. 77. 4.]. Why the citizens constitute a polis remains to be determined.

2. Is the polis a tribal entity? It certainly involved the tribes but did not depend on particular tribal arrangements, for the polis continued to exist after Cleisthenes' reforms and the breaking up of the old tribes.

3. Is it a place of law under which the citizens live? Yes. However this is not unique to the Greeks: the Carthaginians lived under law, and the Assyrians also (the kings' word was law). Is it written law? No, for the Spartans were accredited as Greeks and the Lycurgan rhetra were specifically unwritten. Yet they lived as citizens of a polis. Certainly according to Hesiod the polis was a place where justice ought to be had (though he was cynical about the likelihood of getting it).

4. Is the polis necessarily democratic? Not in the late archaic and classical sense, though the presence of democratic arrangements did not destroy the polis considered as a physical entity. The polis existed as a concept before the existence of democracy, being mentioned by both Homer and Hesiod. It also existed under oligarchic control.

5. Is the polis an ordered, hierarchical community? Yes, but this does not distinguish it from other cities in antiquity.

6. Is the polis a concept associated with the making of decisions? It is a characteristic of the polis that decisions are made, whatever the character of its rulership. A tyrant decides for his pleasure, an oligarch decides for "the best", and the demos, according to one's inclination, either falls prey to whatever seizes its imagination at the time, or else functions as the voice of the gods; a king, like the oligarchs, decides for the best on account of his supposed proximity to the divine.

7. Does the polis enshrine freedom? Yes, for it is only with freedom that decisions can be made, and therefore, according to Aristotle, virtue acquired [cf. the Nicomachean Ethics, particularly concerning the distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts]. The polis makes men free, and therefore where men are free there is a polis. The corollary of this is that where men can acquire virtue and have honour, they are free. Each of the Greek states has in common - apart from linguistic affinities - a common interest in honour and virtue. They differ from each other in the manner in which honour and virtue are achieved (i.e., the Spartans emphasised narrow military virtues).

8. Is the polis a place where there is specialization of official functions? To some extent, although most of the Greeks prided themselves on the amateur nature of their offices, almost as a guarantee of the purity of their institutions. At any rate, arguments for specialization of functions again blurs the distinction between the development of the polis and the rise of urbanism.

9. Does the polis promote attachment to something beyond the individual - i.e., the polis before the individual and his purely personal obligations? Yes, but pressure in this direction also comes from tribal association and obligation to a king, as well as being a sporadic feature of the development of urbanism.

10. Is assembly a necessary feature of the polis? Judging by the horror at the Cyclops lack of assembly, yes.

It might be argued that what we see in the institution of the polis is a secularization of decision making, the decisions no longer being made in consultation with the divine (through oracle and sacrifice), but now made by the community via the institutions (various councils; the ekklesia). In this respect it might be significant that (as far as I am aware) there were no oracular seats in Attica. However, the secularization argument is probably mistaken: oracles continued to be consulted. Perhaps it would be better to see the citizens functioning as a kind of "college of cardinals" (vox populi, vox dei), so that the style of man's relation to the divine has changed, rather than the connection being attenuated or abandoned altogether. If so, we might expect the carrying over of institutions and titles from an earlier system, i.e., "Kosmos"*^[8], "Basileus"*^[9], "Archon", etc. As Aristotle noted, Kosmos was a title of Cretan officials, and he equated this office with that of the Spartan Ephorate. The Kosmos may originally have had a sacred function: the word signifies order, arrangement, regularity, institution, discipline, and also the world, the universe, and mankind. The text of the inscription from Dreros has been interpreted in secular terms, but the reference to the Kosmos being "useless as long as he lives" might well refer either to a ritual uselessness, or to his being "marked off" from the rest of humanity as a man with a foot in both worlds, the sacred and the profane*^[10]. The Spartan Ephors (elected by the assembly of Equals) had responsibilities which included the giving of permission to foreign ambassadors to cross the border into Spartan territory; permission to address the Spartan assembly; they were also responsible for summoning the assembly. They were the essential intermediaries between the Spartans and the outside world, functioning in much the same way as a priest or prophet: as a gate to the other (the etymology of ephor is probably epi horos: i.e., "on the frontier"). Xenophon [Lak. Pol. 13, 1-5] indicates some of the religious associations of the boundaries of the chora.

The polis appears to revolve around two central ideas: that of assembly, and that of judgement (in a wide sense, including "separation" and "balance"). From Plutarch's life of Theseus we can gather that the assemblage was to be as large as possible, whether or not the synoikismos actually took place in this way:

daring yet farther to enlarge the city, he invited all strangers to equal privileges in it: and the words "come hither, all ye people", are said to be the beginning of any proclamation which Theseus ordered.

Plutarch also tells us that:

the nobility (selected by Theseus) were to have the care of religion, to supply the city with magistrates, to explain the laws and to interpret whatever related to the worship of the gods. As to the rest, he balanced the citizens against each other as nearly as possible; the nobles excelling in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the artificers in number...

(which recalls Plato's remarks about the distribution of equal plots of land: the actual size of the plot depended on its fertility. A good plot would be very small). This view of the polis makes it a moral universe, containing all good things in strict proportion, with all the people of Attica in communion with the king.

A fragment from the beginning of Aristotle's Athenian Constitution [no. 5] also points to the significance of total assemblage for the idea of the polis. He says that the Athenians

were grouped in four tribal divisions in imitation of the seasons of the year, and each of the tribes was divided into three parts, in order that there might be twelve parts in all, like the months of the year, and they were called thirds and brotherhoods; and the arrangement of clans was in groups of thirty to the brotherhood, as the days to the month, and the clan consisted of thirty men.

One can argue that the significance of the assembly of the citizens is that it makes council and judgement possible among the largest number of participants. But there may be a deeper reason behind the desire for the total synoikismos. The reason may be theological, involving the idea of completion. As Aristotle said of the polis, it is an end, and once it is reached it begins to serve an entirely different function, allowing the passage of the citizens from the world of subsistence to the world of the good life, the life of virtue. The polis can do this only because it is complete and has reached the limit of what it is: its completion marks it off from the rest of the world (with which it is contrasted on the shield of Achilles), so that it stands in relation to the world as does a priest or priest-king - of the world, but set apart.

The importance of the polis therefore, given the validity of this argument, was its completeness, so that it stood like a gate between the world of subsistence and a world of possibilities beyond; a place of transaction (hence commerce and the agora), both between man and man, and man and the divine. It served as the intermediary, as the point of exchange (hence the presence of strangers). Its completeness did not depend on particular buildings, institutions, and social arrangements, beyond the assembly and the principle of counsel, and so it was possible for the polis to be wherever the citizens (the free) happened to be.

The real polis, of course, was never like this: the average citizen's liberty and leisure to acquire virtue was never quite what Aristotle had in mind. The history of the polis, and its emergence into history, might be characterized as the struggle to be what it ought to have been, but never was.

---

    [1] Crawford and Whitehead, Archaic and Classical Greece, 10.

    [2]  I.e., the aristocracy: decisions were always confirmed by an oracle of Apollo, and the aristocracy had charge of religious matters, and corruption is likely to have been a great temptation. However, to look at this kind of power as corruption is to retroject modern cynicism about political elites: the teleological view of the world equates fact and value, and therefore it follows as the corollary of social position that the judgements of the aristocracy are of a better calibre than the judgements of anyone else.

    [3] c650-600 B.C.  Fornara: Archaic Times to the end of the Peloponnesian War, 11.

    [4]  Fornara: op. cit., 15.

    [5] Fornara: op. cit., 19.

    [6]  Politics ii, 11, 1-16.

    [7]  Hesperia 41, 96-127.

    [8] Fornara, op. cit., 11.

    [9] Crawford and Whitehead, op. cit., 38, 63.

  [10] kosmos is probably cognate with the Arabic kesem, to distribute, divide; or Hebrew kesem, to dress the hair. The Greek word connotes order, arrangement, regularity; battle array; institution; discipline; ornament, attire; praise; world, universe, mankind.