Citizens Of Athens Research Articles

Che Guevara’S New Man

In the Platonic dialogue Crito, Socrates is presented with an apparent dilemma: should he flee Athens to avoid the death sentence handed down by the Athenian assembly, or should he accept the sentence even though the charges are unjust? Socrates imagines the laws of Athens asking, Are we or are we not speaking the truth when we say that you have undertaken, in deed if not in word, to live your life as a citizen in obedience to us?(Crito 52d24). As a citizen of Athens, Socrates has enjoyed all the privileges associated with that status. Consequently, for him, fleeing is not an option. Who would he be if he left Athens? In exile he would be an individual with no social ties.

Whiteheadian Recollection

At the opening of the Platonic dialogue bearing his name, Meno asks Socrates whether virtue can be taught. The answer, it would seem, is "no": virtue comes only "as a gift from the gods" (99e). Because it is not an item of knowledge, there are no rules for acquiring virtue that a teacher can impart and a student learn. So those who possess virtue--and at least a few among the citizens of Athens are in fact virtuous--must have acquired it in some nonrational way, perhaps by genetic inheritance or dumb luck, but more likely by the intervention of transcendent benevolent powers.

Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy

Never has the story of the difficult birth of the world's first democracy had more to say to us than now. This masterful biography of Pericles, the first citizen of Athens and its leader for over 20 years, skillfully weaves together the shifting political interests, international tensions, and intellectual currents that guided his remarkable career.

Timon of Athens – a Legendary Figure?

In his last days, after his defeat at Actium, M. Antonhis sojourned in solitude by the sea declaring that he was going to live like Timon, since the injuries and ingratitude which he hadsuffered from his friends had taught him, like Timon, to distrust and detest all mankind. So both Strabo (17.1.9) and Plutarch relate. Plutarch explains that this man Timon was a citizen of Athens who lived at the time of the Peloponnesian War, to judge from plays of Aristophanes and Plato Comicus, in which Timon was held up to ridicule as a surly misanthrope who repulsed all friendly advances but displayed unwonted cordiality towards the brilliant young politician Alcibiades, because he divined, and gleefully predicted, that Alcibiades would do infinite mischieftoAthens (Ant.69–70; Alc. 16). The reference to the ingratitude of Timon's friends is illumined by Lucian's dialogue Timon, or the Misanthrope, in which Timon, identified as son of Echecratides and demotes of Colyttus, has lavished his patrimony on flattering friends who abandon him once his funds are exhausted, and in consequence he has been reduced to labouring in the fields. Luckily he digs up a crock of gold, and when his former friends reappear one by one in the hope of battening on him again, he repulses them with blows and clods of earth.

Aristophanes, the Acuser of Socrates: Some Sociolinguistics Aspects of Comedy

Aristophanes, the Acuser of Socrates: Some Sociolinguistics Aspects of Comedy
 This paper examines the impact of verbal abuse typical of the old Attic comedy on the reputations of real-life citizens of Athens. It can be argued that the way in which comic poets insulted well-known people of their age shared many characteristics with the communicative strategies applied in everyday familiar speech. This may indicate that the only proper reaction to it consisted in accepting the ridicule as if it were not offensive.

The Moral Grounds of Civil Disobedience

HARRY PROSCH'S article, Limits to the Moral Claim in Civil Disobedience,' confuses civil disobedience with defiance of law as such and consequently seems effectively to eliminate what has long stood as the last bastion of the individual against his society short of open rebellion. Prosch's reference to Socrates in the Apology is indicative of this confusion. True, Socrates' disobedience of the Thirty was disobedience to what he considered an illegal government-but it still was disobedience to the government in power, disobedience in the name of justice.2 The disobedience was civil, since Socrates did not attack or otherwise try to overthrow the Thirty; he simply went home and expected to be put to death for his act. Even more instructive, however, as to Plato's views on civil disobedience is Socrates' announcement to the jury and the citizens of Athens that they need not order him to cease his activities as a philosopher because he will not obey them but will continue to obey the god.3 Socrates' here is not defying unlawful rulers but the duly constituted voice of the laws of Athens. As he points out in the Crito, the laws have no voice of their own; they can speak only through men, and whatever the jury decides becomes the legal decision.4 There is no other source for determining what the law is or how it applies to particular cases. The subtle distinction between Socrates' position in the Apology and in the Crito is precisely that between civil disobedience and defiance of law. Socrates in the Apology says, shall not change my conduct even itf I am to die many times over.5 He does not deny that the jury has the authority to command him to cease his search for truth if such is their interpretation of the law and of his profession. But he claims the prerogative of accepting their penalty (even of death) rather than their law. Having made this claim, Socrates is bound to submit to the sentence imposed upon him (whether justly or unjustly) by the, jury. Hence, in the Crito, Socrates refuses to defy the laws of Athens by attempting to escape after he has been condemned to death. Socrates did not consider himself as a destroyer of the laws when he said that he would not obey any order to desist from his philosophic activities. He openly stated that there were certain things that, as a man, he would not do; yet, as a citizen, he stood prepared to undergo execution if so ordered. Had he tried to evade his punishment once he was sentenced, he would have been a destroyer of the laws. Men are, of necessity, social beings; they are not thereby automatically chattels of whatever sort of society they happen to find themselves in. Moral persuasion and orderly political processes are obviously the preferable means for a man to use to change those things he finds wrong in his society. But moral persuasion, to be effective, requires in those to be persuaded a special set of conditions which may be entirely beyond the control of the man attempting the persuasion. And use of the legal machinery for social change requires a certain amount of political power and a particular leverage in order to make that power felt in the right places. If the morally acceptable defenses of the individual citizen against laws he finds unacceptable are restricted to moral persuasion and legal processes, then the man who can find no audience and who has no power is left with no moral resource within the structure of the society, and his own recourse is violence-rebellion or crime. Moral persuasion is an empty phrase to the