Greek Thought Research Articles

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought. Edited by Ryan K.Balot. Pp. xxviii, 659, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2009, £110.00.

A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought. Edited by Ryan K.Balot. Pp. xxviii, 659, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2009, £110.00.

関根清三著『ギリシア・ヘブライの倫理思想』（東京大学出版会、二〇一一年、三二八＋十九頁）

関根清三著『ギリシア・ヘブライの倫理思想』（東京大学出版会、二〇一一年、三二八＋十九頁）

Discovering the Nature of Competitive Personality

In the context of rising living standards, having a competitive personality is the key success in the global competitive struggle. Contemporary multifactor models of evaluating a country's global competitiveness include an evaluation of the labor force along with economic indicators.The significance of human resources for an evaluation of competitiveness is pinpointed by the fact that some companies (Skandia, Dow Chemical, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) are seeking provide their shareholders and employees with detailed descriptions of intellectual capital.Thus, in the contemporary economic environment that has taken shape worldwide, the level of personal competitiveness determines the evolution of firms, entities, and the state.For the first time on the national level, the importance of boosting the competitiveness of Russia was voiced in an address (Russia at the Boundary of Epochs) by B. N. Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation; the address was delivered at a joint session of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly on March 30, 1999. Boosting the competitiveness of Russia should become the keynote for our entry into the 21st century. In an economy everything is interdependent. If the competitiveness of the country is low, then capital inflow is lacking, as are progress, efficient production, and many other economic benefits. One of the causes for this state of affairs is that nobody has ever tackled competitiveness problems in Russia in a systematic and professional manner (Fatkhutdinov, 2004).As mentioned by Andreev (2004), Bogoyavlenskaya (2002), Mitina (2003), Emelyanova (2008), Fatkhutdinov (2004), and others, becoming a competitive power requires that our specialists in science and in our leading manufacturing industries drastically boost their competitiveness. Therefore, regulations have now been developed and adopted for implementing the idea of increasing national competitiveness. The Council on National Competitiveness has been established; an independent, nonprofit organization for cooperation, the Council carries out activities aimed at boosting the global competitiveness of the country.Creating competitive specialists has become a priority for the system of education, a project embodied in the policy documents in this sphere. For instance, training a qualified employee at an appropriate level and with an appropriate profile be competitive in the labor market is presently a priority educational standard for the new generation.The concept of competitiveness has been most thoroughly developed within modern economics and management and appears be the key notion in the consideration of problems of organizational change. In accordance with modern views, competitiveness is the process used by an economic entity manage competitive advantages - that is, the procedures that ensure dominance over rivals (Fatkhutdinov, 2004).No wonder that the problem of competition and competitiveness and their role in social and human development gained the attention of thinkers quite a long time ago. We encounter one of the first references akin the contemporary understanding of employee competitiveness in the myths and descriptions of ancient Greek thinkers - for instance in the myth of Hermes, the god of profit and enrichment: to do a few things at once, get through here and there, assume a multitude of duties and perform them flawlessly (Zaitsev, 2010, p. 55), and in Politics by Aristotle, specifically in the tale of Thales of Miletus (Aristotle, trans. 1984, p. 397):He was reproached for his poverty, which was supposed show that philosophy was of no use. According the story, he knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year; so, having a little money, he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he hired at a low price because no one bid against him. …

Ontological And Anthropological Aspects of the Concept of Human Nature

<div><p>Anthropology is the study of the origin of the man. It is basically concern with the concept of <em>Homo</em><em> </em><em>sapiens</em>, and it is scientifically questioning what are human physical traits as well how do men behave and the variation among different groups of human with his social and cultural dimensions. Ontology is a subfield in traditional philosophy which is mainly focuses on the nature of being, existence or reality as such. There are some similarities and differences among these two areas. However when we deeply study the philosophical basis of the anthropology it is proof that it was derived from ontology.</p><p>Anthropology discusses the social and cultural world or the physical entity of human nature. Ontology focuses the invisible aspect of human nature along with the ultimate reality. Therefore, it has a metaphysical aspect of human being; this philosophical notion has in fact, contributed to the development of the subject of anthropology. The present modern day has given very little attention to this philosophical combination of ontolog y to anthropology, rendering further investigation into the philosophical roots of anthropology.</p><p>This research paper seeks to evaluate the relationship between ontology and anthropology by paying attention to the ontological arguments about the concept of man and human nature within Greek and modern western thoughts, in comparing with modern anthropological arguments.</p></div>

Samuel Beckett, Wilhelm Windelband, and the Interwar "Philosophy Notes"

Samuel Beckett, Wilhelm Windelband, and the Interwar "Philosophy Notes" David Addyman (bio) and Matthew Feldman (bio) Between the years 1930 and 1938 Samuel Beckett went through an extensive process of self-education, taking notes on psychology, art history, the history of German and English literatures, and Irish and European history, in addition to notes on specific writers as divergent as Dante and d'Annunzio, Mauthner and Mistral, Augustine and Ariosto.1 Despite protestations later in his life that he neither read nor understood philosophy, far and away the largest portion of these extant "Interwar Notes," are the 266 folios, mostly handwritten recto and verso notebook pages, comprising Beckett's so-called "Philosophy Notes."2 These roughly five hundred sides of typed and handwritten reading notes derive from 1932 and 1933—likely around the time Beckett was converting his abortive novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, into the short stories More Pricks Than Kicks (published 1934). In turn, Beckett's "Philosophy Notes" were taken from four main sources: J. Archibald Alexander's 1907 A Short History of Philosophy; John Burnet's 1914 Greek Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Plato; Friedrich Ueberweg's A History of Philosophy, from Thales to the Present Time; and Wilhelm Windelband's A History of Philosophy.3 Amongst these authors, Beckett's engagement with, and subsequent employment of, Wilhelm Windelband was far and away the most profound. In fact, many of those frequently recognized as "Beckettian" philosophers— Arnold Geulincx, George Berkeley, and Gottfried Leibniz, amongst others—were actually first encountered by Beckett in the revised, second edition of A History of Philosophy from 1901. It is from here, for example, that much of the key imagery in Beckett's first novel [End Page 755] from 1935-36 (published 1938), Murphy, is drawn, even extending to the oft-cited epigraph on Murphy's mind, heading chapter six.4 Furthermore, while Beckett used all four sources for notes on ancient Greek philosophy, covering his first 109 folios, A History of Philosophy is most frequently in evidence among the summary sources Beckett consulted on ancient philosophy. More significant still, though, is that final 157 folios are derived solely from Windelband; that is, the remaining 1,600 years of Western philosophy in the "Philosophy Notes" are mediated solely by A History of Philosophy. Put another way, this volume accounts for more than three-quarters of the entire "Philosophy Notes," which itself may be considered a tale of two halves: one, a mosaic of Ancient Greek thinking, deriving from several secondary texts; and two, Beckett's summary of Wilhelm Windelband's account of the tenets and systems ostensibly governing Western philosophy thereafter. That said, this quantitative survey of the "Philosophy Notes" should not be taken as indicative of Beckett's wholesale and wholehearted acceptance of Windelband's views on the history of Western philosophy. Far from it: in his encounter with A History of Philosophy, in which Windelband's philosophical views are writ large, Beckett's note-taking is shrewdly selective. Since nothing has been written on Windelband in Beckett studies to date (this is no less true of Burnet, Alexander, and Ueberweg), however, the nature of Beckett's composition of the notes has never been made apparent. This article therefore examines Beckett's approach to these "Philosophy Notes": it especially focuses on Wilhelm Windelband (a new candidate for "canonical" status amongst Beckettian philosophers), and carefully probes not just what Beckett wrote down, but also what he omitted—a telling detail that speaks volumes. While it is not known for certain just what drew Beckett to Windelband, his work was certainly well-known in the English-speaking world after James H. Tufts' translation of July, 1893; when prefacing the second edition of 1900, Windelband claimed: "A large edition of my History of Philosophy [was] exhausted more than two years ago" (HP, xi). Its sold-out status had partly resulted from a hyperbolic review in 1893 by Egbert Smyth, who coincidentally described A History of Philosophy's ideal reader: "The book deserves the attention of all who would learn how thought has come to be what it is, and who would themselves 'learn to think.'"5 But when Beckett encountered Windelband's...

The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth. By Stephen M. Hildebrand

The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth. By Stephen M. Hildebrand

Stephen M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), pp. xiv + 254. $59.95.

Stephen M. Hildebrand, The Trinitarian Theology of Basil of Caesarea: A Synthesis of Greek Thought and Biblical Truth (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), pp. xiv + 254. $59.95. - Volume 64 Issue 3

Liberty and Honor in the Early Greek Thought - An Analysis of Behaviors of Heroes in the Works of Homer -

Liberty and Honor in the Early Greek Thought - An Analysis of Behaviors of Heroes in the Works of Homer -

Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth (review)

Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth (review)

The Role of Spirituality in Hippocratic Medicine

To anyone studying the role of spirituality in Western medicine, the first few lines of the Hippocratic Oath should be of interest: ‘‘I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods, and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant.’’ The Oath continues to be uniquely respected among practitioners of Western medicine, and the emphasis that the Oath seems to place on spirituality from its onset stimulates inquiry into the nature of spirituality in Hippocratic medicine. The original Oath, as we have it preserved today in Greek, was almost undoubtedly not written by Hippocrates, but the work is traditionally included in the Corpus Hippocratum, a collection of medical writings attributed to Hippocrates of Cos (469Y399 BCE), written between the fifth and fourth century, BCE. Celsus, writing nearly four hundred years later, said that Hippocrates was the first to separate medicine from philosophy. The Corpus Hippocratum illustrates the unique transformation of the Western medical/healing tradition from a system that relied upon external and often divine influences as both the cause and remedy of disease, to a system where causes of diseases were less often divine and more often controllable by the sufferer. For example, dietetics was a central premise of Hippocratic medicine, where the substances we eat may cause, prevent, or treat disease. This concept excluded direct influence of any of the various gods, and placed the onus of health back on the patient and physician. This ‘‘cause-and-effect’’ observational system may very well have found its origin in Greek thought in Homer’s The Iliad, a body of work with which all successors in Western medicine and philosophy would have been intimately familiar. In The Iliad, for example, significant time and interest are dedicated to detailing the various injuries and wounds sustained by the epoch’s characters. These stories must have certainly stirred the Greek mind to understand in a cause-and-effect paradigm that, for example, death eventually followed coma, which followed fever, which followed a purulent wound, which started with a battle injury caused by another mortal Greek. At the same time, the luxury of attributing the battle injury to the will of the gods who controlled these Homeric battles was preserved, at least initially, in the Greek thought process. There gradually emerged in Greek thought a dichotomy in which some actions, mostly those well understood by the philosophers and scientists of the time, were considered wholly physical phenomena ripe for human study and exploration, whereas other phenomena were considered wholly divine. Socrates held that both classes of phenomena existed and espoused essentially two methods of investigationVone scientific and one divine. Interestingly, Socrates considered physics and astronomy as belonging to the divine class, impenetrable to human study, and Plato thought the fields could be studied, to an extent, although the sun and stars should be held as divine and the investigator ran the risk of blasphemy with such investigations. Nevertheless, at the same point in Greek history, Hippocrates clearly denied Socrates’dichotomy. Hippocratic medicine was quicker to embrace a physical model of biomedicine, although it did not abandon the divine. Again, different parts of the Corpus Hippocratum are contradictory on this point, likely the result of mixed authorship. Because Galen saw such contradiction in Hippocrates’ statement that all diseases were divine, he argued that he meant that they were all related to the state of the atmosphere. This particular hypothesis seems unlikely, but it does demonstrate that even the ancients thought that Hippocrates had abandoned ideas that were increasingly believed to be superstitious in favor of biomedical concepts. Rather, it appears that the Hippocratic author was espousing a concept put forward more famously by Anaxagoras, that of divine agency. In this idea, the gods were connected to physical phenomena from their instigation, but were not necessarily involved in the day-to-day execution of physical From the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN.

The ecclesiology of Dionysius the Areopagite

This article explores the ecclesiological views of Dionysius the Areopagite through the examination of his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, where he discusses the hierarchical ranks and sacraments, and of his Letter VIII to monk Demophilus, which is important for Dionysius's understanding of hierarchical organisation and discipline. These issues are put in the context of other important questions of the Areopagite's thought, such as his symbolic theory, the character of deification and the role of knowledge in it. Although the Areopagite is one of the most famous among early Christian Greek thinkers, his ecclesiology is somewhat less familiar, especially in the West. This article tries to fill in that gap, hence it represents a general, introductory outline of Dionysius's ecclesiology, with the aim of making it more accessible to the broader Western readership and to incite further research on the subject.

Alma, corpo e a antiga civilização grega: as primeiras observações do funcionamento cerebral e das atividades mentais

Muitos dos conceitos existentes na neurociencia moderna possuem suas origens nas especulacoes elaboradas pelos antigos filosofos e medicos gregos. Questoes centrais sobre a fonte dos pensamentos humanos, o mecanismo da atividade cognitiva, e a natureza das emocoes, percepcao e movimento voluntario, por exemplo, foram levantadas pelos pensadores gregos. E a partir desta civilizacao que surgem as observacoes mais sistematicas sobre a estrutura e o funcionamento do corpo, da mente e a relacao entre estas duas entidades. Assim, o presente trabalho pretende observar as principais tentativas iniciais gregas em vincular estruturas do corpo (tais como o cerebro ou o coracao) e atividades mentais, ao longo das diversas especulacoes gregas sobre a natureza, a filosofia, a psicologia e a medicina.

New Work on the Presocratics

The last twenty years have seen a remarkable increase in scholarly work on the Presocratics: new texts have appeared, new interpretations have been advanced, and a new appreciation for the scientific and philosophical claims of the early Greek thinkers is evident. There has been a general broadening of the questions that have been examined: Scholars have been exploring the supposed boundaries of Presocratic thought, and new work on reception history and on the transmission of texts has enriched understanding of the earliest Greek philosophers. Here, I survey some of the trends and results of the new Presocratic scholarship.

What Is Eastern Europe?

This paper discusses Eastern Europe as a way of being traceable to a specific place or topos in between the West and its Others. By virtue of fitting neither one of the terms of the usual dichotomy it could provide novel insights into Western or European identity, as well as social and political problems, such as immigration. More precisely, Eastern Europe is an instance of the process of creating the self through the encounter with an other that is not radically other. Such a notion of Eastern Europe is developed from three sources: the Ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, the Chicana theorist and writer Gloria Anzaldúa, and Merab Mamardashvili, a philosopher from Soviet Georgia.

Logos and Narrative

The books of Genesis through Second Kings trace a history of Israel from earliest times through the fall of the Southern Kingdom in 586 BCE. In earlier work, I demonstrate that this narrative contains a sophisticated political theory – a systematic analysis which justifies political authority; demonstrates the necessity of law and government; explores the nature of power relations in families; argues that nationhood is the best form of political organization; identifies self-governance, centralized institutions and sovereignty as the essential elements of nationhood; and claims that constitutional monarchy represents the best form of national government. But if the bible contains such a theory, why has it not been identified before now? The reason is that the bible’s political theory is embodied in narratives rather than in discursive analysis. The political meaning of the narratives was lost as the bible came to be interpreted from an exclusively spiritual point of view. This paper identifies advantages and disadvantages of narratives and offers conjectures for why Greek thinkers presented their political ideas discursively while the culture of ancient Israel opted to convey abstract ideas in the form of narrative.

The Idea of Freedom and the Premises of Liberalism in Greek Thought

The Idea of Freedom and the Premises of Liberalism in Greek Thought

Judaism and Philosophy: Each Other's Other in Levinas

Levinas’s work consists of two types of writing: one confessional and Jewish and one professional and philosophical. In this article, I argue that the two styles of writing are intimately interconnected. Philosophy is enriched by the inclusion of something that was forgotten and repressed within the limits of an immanent, self-enclosed method of thinking; in conflating the two approaches, Levinas in some manner Judaizes philosophy. His “love of wisdom” is inspired by the Biblical and Talmudic “wisdom of love,” a concept which should not be excluded from the wisdom that is strived for in philosophy. At the same time, Levinas opens up dialogical Jewish thought to its other: to logical Greek thinking. Put succinctly and in a more colorful, biblical metaphor: he welcomes Shem into the tents of Yafet, but also invites Yafet into the dwellings of Shem. Levinas’s Jewish and philosophical writings are therefore interdependent—they clarify each other. It is not by accident that the same concepts and terms appear in both writings, for in each he interprets anew traditional concepts such as God, election, holiness, creation, and revelation, and imparts to them radically new meaning. Yet the same “religious” words function differently in Levinas’s different modes of thought.

3. Boxing with Tyrants

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For a full discussion of the social class of Olympic victors, see Young 1984, 89–176. 2. As Nicholson (2005, 21) explains, ‘what motivated anxiety about professional trainers was that, by appearing to add new abilities such as skill to their pupils, they threatened the idea that the qualities on which victory depended were inherited, and, second, that, while the training was traded as a commodity, the relationship between trainer and patron was sufficiently complex that to represent it in other terms was convincing’. 3. The story is told in Pausanias VI.10.1–3: ‘After all of these comes Glaukos of Karystos; they say that by descent he came from Anthedon in Boiotia from Glaukos the daemonic spirit of the sea. But his father was called Demylos, and they say he began as a labourer on the land; when the ploughshare fell out of the plough he stuck it in again using his hand for a hammer. [2] Demylos happened to see what the boy had done, so he took him along to Olympia to box. Glaukos had no experience as a boxer and his opponents hurt him, and when he was boxing with the last one, people thought he was too badly hurt to carry on: and then they say his father shouted out to him “Come on son, the one for the plough”, and he hit his opponent a harder punch and suddenly found he had won.’ 4. According to Kyle (2007, 209); Pausanias says only that his island was named after him. 5. The story is told, in slightly different versions, by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War VI.56–9), and Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, XVIII. 6. Pericles' Funeral Oration, in Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.2 (Jowett translation). 7. Aeschines, Against Timarchus 1.4–5, quoted in Hansen (2004, 177). 8. Morris 2004, 53, citing Ostwald. 9. Arnold (2002, 490) argues that this connection between sport and democracy is one of the things that makes sport an important part of education for democracy. The second connection, equality, is discussed in the next section. 10. The story is recounted by Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.40.4–5. 11. Poliakoff 1978, 70–1. 12. In the Greek mind the two are very closely linked since their conception of freedom (eleutheria) was derived primarily from the idea of not being a slave (Ostwald 2004, 164). 13. Kroton's was apparently a successful strategy; their athletes won 11 of the 26 stadion crowns between 588 and 488, taking the top seven places at one Olympiad (Nicholson 2005, 128). 14. For more on the religious function of the games, see Chapter 2. 15. In case there were odd numbers of competitors, one would draw a lot without a match and be given a bye (ephedros) for that round. Those who won without ever drawing a bye were given the proud title of anephedros (Miller 2004, 50). 16. For a full account of this phenomenon see Nicholson (2005). The enduring effects of this belief is reflected in the stigma attached to coaching by the aristocratic culture surrounding the early modern Olympic Games, as artfully depicted in the movie Chariots of Fire. 17. Mouratidis (1984, 55) explains that women were not allowed to enter the sanctuaries of Heracles or participate in sacrifices offered to him because it was believed their presence might diminish the warriors' or heroes' power. Since the Olympic games was originally a festival in honour of Heracles, women were naturally excluded and the prohibition survived even after the coming of Zeus. 18. Xenophon, Agesilaus 9.6, Plutarch, Ages 20.1, both quoted in Kyle 2007, 191. 19. Socrates' relationship with athletes and gymnasia is the subject of the next chapter. 20. Plato's Meno depicts Socrates guiding a slave boy to find a geometric theorem. 21. Unlike Socrates and Plato, most Greeks believed that women were irrational, and this is precisely why they were excluded from government (Jameson 2004, 286) – only further proving the link between rationality and democracy. 22. This argument is developed in Reid 2006b.

Aristotelian Influence in the Formation of Medical Theory

Aristotle is oftentimes viewed through a strictly philosophical lens as heir to Plato and has having introduced logical rigor where an emphasis on the theory of Forms formerly prevailed. It must be appreciated that Aristotle was the son of a physician, and that his inculcation of the thought of other Greek philosophers addressing health and the natural elements led to an extremely broad set of biologically- and medically-related writings. As this article proposes, Aristotle deepened the fourfold theory of the elements with anatomic and physiologic observations. In books like History of Animals, Parts of Animals, and the lost Anatomai, he actively dissected organisms and recorded his findings. The corpus of medically-related literature Aristotle developed had a direct influence on subsequent Greek thinkers, including Galen, and on Medieval Islamic and modern Western practitioners such as William Harvey. Aristotle's ideas continue to influence modern medical thinkers in Europe and America through both his interpretation by European philosophers gaining the attention of medical humanists, and his writings’ enduring impact on medical researchers balancing scientific with more personalistic approaches to medicine.

The "Life of Aesop" and the Gospel of Mark: Two Ancient Approaches to Elite Values

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) My aim in this essay is to compare the Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark with regard to their treatments of values of elite classes. In doing so my goal is to highlight the ethical demands that Mark's Gospel makes of its audience. This study will build upon recent research that has compared the Life of Aesop to early Christian narratives, in particular, to the Gospel of Mark.1 Past research has demonstrated that the written texts of these works are roughly contemporary.2 Both are anonymous narratives, probably composed from oral and written traditions, and both narratives are made up of series of relatively short episodes.3 Both may also be considered aretalogical, novelistic biographies.4 There are, in addition, several thematic similarities between the two narratives, such as the death of the protagonist through the connivance of his foes.5 An important starting point for my study is the recognition by previous interpreters that these two stories criticize values associated with the elite classes of the Hellenistic world.6 I will argue that they do so in very different ways. I hope to demonstrate that, while the Life of Aesop lampoons elite values, it makes no serious claims on its audience to change social structures related to slavery or class. The Gospel of Mark, by contrast, criticizes the elite value system while demanding fundamental changes in actions and attitudes toward status relations. I. Critique in the Life of Aesop: The Puncturing of Pretense The character Aesop represents the very opposite of the ideal Greek male. First, he is slave. To the Greek mind, and especially to the upper-class Greek mind, the was body at the disposal of master, living tool, to use Aristotle's terminology (Pol. 1.2.3-5). In fact, the most common terms for slaves were ... (body) and ... (child), underscoring that slaves were both powerless and passive.7 Aesop is thus seen as passive body whose function is to carry out his master's will. Yet even for his status is very low. He is unsuited for every service in the city and therefore is sent to dig in the fields. His master, moreover, often refers to him as runaway, category that Juvenal likens to cutthroats, thieves, hangmen, and coffin makers (Sat. 8.174-75). Second, Aesop's appearance contrasts markedly with the prevalent physiognomic ideals of his day.8 The author of the Physiognomics ascribed to Aristotle writes that single physiognomic sign is not good indicator of the character of an individual, but number of signs together make much stronger case (Phgn. 2.806b.38-807a.3). Aesop has more than his share of negative physiognomic signs. Described as loathsome of aspect . . . potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, and liver-lipped (1), he is also compared to turnip (14), goose egg (14), a frog, hedgehog, or potbellied jar, or captain of monkeys and a dog in basket (87).9 The Physiognomics states that the little-minded ... person is small-limbed, small and round, dry, with small eyes and small face (Phgn. 3.808a.30-31; trans. Hett, LCL). A snub-nosed ... person, moreover, is thought to be salacious (ibid., 6.811b.3-4). A person who is too swarthy ... is likely to be cowardly, and the ill-proportioned ... are thought to be scoundrels (ibid. 6.812a.12).11 These characteristics correspond to Aesop's short arms, small stature, large belly, squinty eyes, snub nose ..., and swarthy ... complexion. The Hellenistic audience of the text should therefore expect him to display low and ignoble character. Third, Aesop is not Greek but Phrygian. The term Phrygian was often used as synonym for slave in the Roman era.12 One could, through paideia, overcome the shortcoming of not having been born well-to-do Greek.13 Lucian of Samosota did this, as did the Roman Gaul Favorinus. …