From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com>
Subject: Re: Greeks and Agency
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 16:29:43 -0400


Charlie writes--

> I think a tad of "class" analysis may be useful here, even though it's
> dicey to apply it to non-capitalist cultures. Everyone I've known who
> explicated the Greeks emphasized that the creators of classical culture,
> like Aristotle, were a thin layer at the top of a society that was still
> very primitive -- a perspective that Mary Renault's books capture well.
> Aristotle may be expressing the control that comes with being in the top
> layer of a nascent civilization, and Sophocles the more common experience
> of those who were the relatively helpless victims of nature,
> circumstance, and their rulers.

Definitely, an understanding of socioeconomic positions and dynamics (I
agree, the term "class" fits poorly here) could be very suggestive in this
regard.  One of the curious facets of Greek tragedy is the the movement
>from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides is also a movement down the social
scales, from the aristocracy, to a manufacturing family, to a farming
family.  (Interestingly, there are classicists--David Grene for one--who'll
argue that Aeschylus was deeply committed to democracy; I think most people
accept that Sophocles was the most conservative.)  As for Aristotle's
family background, I really don't know, though his eventual residence at
the Macedonian court at least suggests his trajectory (when you speak of
his being at the top of a "nascent" civilization, I presume you mean that
of Hellenistic Greece, not Hellenic, which was moribund if not dead
altogether).

However, there are additional issues here: this was a period of marked
lexical and cultural change, not stasis.  It doesn't necessarily take long
for sharply differing "mentalities" to emerge (consider the difference
between 1955 and 1975).  Some of those shifts are economic and political in
nature--the rise and collapse of the Athenian hegemony--but the
restructuring of culture brought about by literacy also should be taken
into account.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce