hellenismos

Trustees of Boston University

HellenismosAuthor(s): Norman AustinSource: Arion, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2012), pp. 5-36Published by: Trustees of Boston UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/arion.20.1.0005 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 07:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Trustees of Boston University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.179 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 07:27:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=tbu

http://www.jstor.org/stable/arion.20.1.0005?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Hellenismos

NORMAN AUSTIN

JHllhniko;~ h\n ouj th/` dialevktw/ movnon, ajlla; kai; th/` yuch/`.

He was a Hellene not in his language alone but also in his soul.—Josephus, Apud Apionem 1.181.1

1.

HELLENISMOS, as Werner Jaeger reminds us,“originally meant the correct use of the Greek language.”1 Itwas a word that arose in the post-classical period whenGreek was becoming the common language, the koinê, whento speak Greek correctly was a matter of concern or a pointof pride for many of the diverse peoples in the easternMediterranean, whether for trade or politics, education orreligion. Theophrastus was among the first to use the word.In his theory of the perfect style, Jaeger tells us, Theophras-tus placed Hellenismos first in his list of the five “virtues”(aretai) of diction, which Jaeger explicates as “a grammati-cally correct use of the Greek language, Greek free from bar-barisms and solecisms.”

The verb from which the noun is derived, hellênizô, “tospeak Greek,” belongs to a group that Debrunner has called“Imitativa,” in that these verbs “generally have the meaning‘be like x.’”2 Compare ajttikivzw, ajttikismov~, lakwnivzw, lak-wnismov~: Atticize, Atticism; Laconize, Laconism. Graf notesthat such terms as Atticizing and Laconizing “arose duringthe contention for leadership in the late fifth and earlyfourth centuries. Thus these terms have first their literalmeaning, to speak Attic Greek or Laconic Greek, but theyalso connote a cultural attitude, signifying ‘to behave in theAttic fashion,’ or ‘the Laconic fashion,’ and can even be ex-tended to signify conspiracy with another state, with Athensor Sparta.”3 To these should be added mêdismos, a term of

arion 20.1 spring/summer 2012



opprobrium that arose in the fifth century when, in the con-flict between Persia and Greece, some cities, or leading fam-ilies within certain cities, were accused of Medism, beingpartial to the Medes; that is, the Persians.4

The Liddell & Scott Lexicon cites Plato and Xenophon asour earliest authors to use the verb hellênizô, an indicationthat Hellenismos was first beginning to emerge as a culturalissue in the fourth century. Plato uses the verb three times(unless we include the Alcibiades).5 Of these instances, oneoccurs in Plato’s Meno, where fortuitously the word has itsliteral meaning, “to speak Greek,” and at the same time en-capsulates the cultural attitudes that Hellenism was to sig-nify in the later centuries as Greek culture expandedthroughout the Mediterranean.

The Meno opens with the young Thessalian after whomthe dialogue takes its name, on a brief visit to Athens, burst-ing in on Socrates and, as if with no time to lose, flinging athim three questions: “Can aretê be taught? Or is it acquiredby exercise? Or it is innate in human beings?” No word inancient Greek better illustrates the quandary facing transla-tors than this word, aretê. Most translators give us “virtue”as the meaning of the word in this dialogue, but to settle on“virtue” as if that were its best translation gives us no senseof the oscillations in the semantics of the word itself as itwas being used in fifth-century Greece, and particularly as itis being deployed in this very dialogue.6 The word hardly, ifever, meant “virtue” as we think of virtue today, except per-haps in the mind of Socrates himself. Aretê, Snell writes,“does not denote a moral property but nobility, achieve-ment, success and reputation.”7 In Homer, our earliest writ-ten source, its primary meaning is “excellence.”8 A warrior’sexcellence is virtually synonymous with manliness, muchlike the Latin noun virtus, signifying prowess and courage.The sports hero is our version of this kind of aretê. We ex-pect such heroes to behave with decorum in society but if wewere to expatiate on their virtues, moral purity would not befirst on our lists. The athlete’s aretê is measured in speed,

hellenismos6



precision, force; in goals won, passes, touchdowns. InHomer, the word is used in a similar way, sometimes in theplural to signify the various kinds of excellence. A warriormight be recognized for his excellences in general or for anexcellence in his own individual way, whether for his speedof foot or for courage on the battlefield.

In the Odyssey, Eumaeus, Odysseus’ swineherd, says toOdysseus: “Zeus takes away half a man’s aretê when the dayof slavery comes upon him” (17.322–23). He speaks specif-ically in reference to the slave women in Odysseus’ house ig-noring the dog Argus. Their domestic duties could be calledtheir “virtues.” But his pronouncement has a broader appli-cation. He speaks of the universal condition of slavery,which would include Eumaeus himself. In his case aretêwould hardly mean “virtue,” since he is impeccably virtuousboth in carrying out his tasks as a swineherd and in his un-divided loyalty to his master, Odysseus. His aretê would besomething close to the excellence that a slave would oncehave enjoyed as a free man. Half his manhood was takenfrom him when he was captured by Phoenician traders as aboy and made their slave.

Aretê can hardly mean virtue when Penelope says toOdysseus that the gods destroyed the aretê of her beautywhen her husband left for Troy (Od. 19.124–26). As Eu-maeus is the paradigm of virtue among slaves, Penelope isthe paradigm of virtue among women. She lost none of herbeauty when Odysseus went to Troy; rather, she lost her ex-cellence as a woman. She lost not her virtue but other quali-ties less easily spelled out. In declaring that she has lost thearetê of her beauty, she expresses the ambiguous status of awoman in the heroic society, married but with her husbandabsent and now presumed dead. As Eumaeus, to judge byhis views, is only half a man, Penelope, also by her own ac-count, is only half a woman, neither wife nor widow.

Again, virtue is not the word we want to translate aretê inPindar, as when he says of Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, thathe “crops the tips of all forms of aretê.”9 Aretê is the ab-

Norman Austin 7



solute. Hieron, like Achilles, is the best. His excellence is ab-solute. Frank Nisetich in his translation has Hieron “reapingthe prime of every distinction.”10 Pindar varies the trope inhis first Nemean ode when he speaks of himself “joyfully en-countering Heracles on the high peaks of excellences”(ajretan, gen. plural). 11 Nisetich translates this:

But when I move among the heights of triumph, Heracles comes to mind. I embrace himeagerly, stirring to life again the ancient story.

Pindar follows this introduction to Heracles with the storyof his miraculous strength in strangling the serpents sent byHera to kill him in his cradle. This story leads into theprophecy of Tiresias that Heracles would grow up to killbeasts on land and sea, and lend his aid to the gods in theirbattle against the giants. These are virtues, to be sure, butvirtues proper to the Age of Heroes, a far cry from virtue asPlato would have us understand it.

Certainly, whatever the specific excellence to which aretêmight be ascribed, virtue is also always blended in the word,but it is virtue as defined by the ethos of the heroic age. Thewarrior’s prowess is his virtue. Hieron’s wealth, his powerand status as a ruler, are his virtue. Only in Socrates’ owntime, and under the influence of Socrates himself, had aretêbecome problematized, as in this dialogue, which is a tug ofwar as Socrates pulls the refractory word away from its ar-chaic meanings and in the direction of virtue as we havecome to understand it. Meno’s examples of aretê show himstill immersed in the semantics of the archaic poets. For him,aretê is to acquire wealth and political honors; it is, in aword, success, especially in reference to persons of high sta-tus (78c). As Bruno Snell has written: “The words for virtueand good, aretê and agathos, are at first by no means clearlydistinguished from the area of profit.”12 Pindar might cele-brate Meno’s wealth as his aretê, but not Socrates.

Socrates himself marks the semantic shift when he takesMeno’s definition of aretê and asks if acquiring wealth is in

hellenismos8



itself a virtue (78d). He urges Meno to find in the old heroicaretê the common denominator that will apply equally to allclasses of people, whether to men or women, the master orthe slave. We come to the end of the dialogue with the defi-nition of the word still beyond our reach, but we know thatit has passed irrevocably from the excellence of the archaicpoets and closer to its signification as Plato would have usunderstand it.13 Plato’s use of Meno as the seeker in this di-alogue suggests that this youth was genuinely concerned toascertain from the famous Athenian philosopher whether hisown life, based on luxury and privilege, and certainly drivenby ambition, would pass Socrates’ test for virtue.

2.

meno is a member of one of the prominent families in thecity of Larissa. His lover Aristippus, as we learn from this di-alogue, is a member of the most distinguished of all theThessalian families, the Aleuadae.14 The Aleuadae had,however, also earned for themselves a reputation for theirMedism at the time of the Persian invasions. In this dialogue,Plato has Socrates inform us that Meno, though still a youngman, has earned for himself the honor to be called the“Hereditary Friend of the Great King” (the Xenos of Artax-erxes II, King of Persia) (78d).15 Perhaps Meno’s Medism isone of the subtexts of this dialogue and may account for theurgency of his need to consult Socrates. Could aretê be sodefined as to include Meno’s collaboration with the GreatKing of Persia?

The stage is set. A young man in his prime, handsome, thebeloved of one of the most illustrious men in Greece,wealthy and privileged, breathing aretê from his every pore,at least by his own standards, has for some reason an urgentneed to learn from Socrates his definition of what in Meno’sown eyes are his greatest virtues. Socrates responds toMeno’s questions with a hearty laugh, as if Thessaly andwisdom were scarcely to be used in the same sentence. He is

Norman Austin 9



amused that Meno could suppose that anyone in Athenscould answer his question, and Socrates himself least of all.He praises the Thessalians for their wealth and their horse-manship—some modern commentators write of Thessaly asbeing semi-barbarous. But now these equestrian nobleshave, it seems, decided to acquire wisdom. If so, Meno hascome to the wrong address. With the departure of Gorgiasto Thessaly, Socrates says, all wisdom has fled from Athensand is now lodged in Thesssaly, leaving the Athenians desti-tute—and Socrates among them—when faced with questionsconcerning wisdom and morality. Meno, undeterred by So-cratic flippancy, presses his case, whereupon, as we shouldexpect, Socrates turns the question back on the questioner.Meno, now undertaking to formulate his own definition,finds himself thrown into the cauldron of Socratic confusionas he struggles on two fronts: first, to distinguish exemplafrom the universal; and then, to distinguish between excel-lence and virtue.

As the dialogue browses on topics like color and shape, itleads Socrates to the most astounding theory in all of Pla-tonic thought. Socrates claims that Meno himself alreadyknows what aretê is; indeed, he was born with this knowl-edge. This assertion leads Socrates to his hypothesis of rec-ollection (anamnêsis), the principle that was to become thecornerstone of Platonic epistemology.16 Meno, perplexed,asks Socrates for an explanation, whereupon Socrates offersto provide definitive proof of anamnêsis if Meno will allowhim to use one of his slaves for an experiment. “You havenumerous retainers,” Socrates says; “choose one of themand I will use him for the demonstration” (82a).

Akolouthoi, the word Socrates uses for retainers, Liddell& Scott notes, is usually used of slaves or military atten-dants. Meno, with his wealth, would no doubt travel at alltimes with a large body of such retainers, both for his ownsecurity and as an ostentatious display of status. The manchosen from among these retainers for this demonstrationwould have certain markers about his person, in behavior

hellenismos10



and attitude if not in dress, which would make him recog-nizable as a slave.17 But for us, akolouthoi is our first signi-fier that the cornerstone on which is to be built the greatedifice of Platonic Ideas must be a slave.

Meno calls one of his slaves to step forward, whereuponSocrates asks Meno two questions (82b): “Is he a Hellene(Hellên)? Does he speak Hellenic (hellênizei)?” “Oh yes,”Meno replies; “he is house-born (oikogenês).” Socrates’ ques-tions are our next signifiers of the man’s social condition.Why cannot Socrates put these questions to the man himself?Because the man is a slave; he does not speak for himself; hismaster speaks for him. Also, we need to know, and this wecan really ascertain only from the master, that the slave wasborn and raised in Meno’s house. Meno’s response, “yes, he ishouse-born” is our next signifier, to bring our focus now tothe man’s culture, which is an essential ingredient in this ex-periment. His ethnicity aside, the question is: has this slavebeen Hellenized? While Meno is an historical person, his slaveis, we assume, a fictional character. He has, however, beengiven the plausibility of a real person and assigned a place ofunparalleled importance in Platonic epistemology, considera-tions that encourage us to meditate on the persona that Platohas invented to serve in this fateful encounter.

Would this slave have been a Greek? Socrates’ question it-self implies a strong probability that he was not. The Greekpreference was for foreign slaves, whether the captives ofmilitary expeditions abroad or bought on the foreign mar-ket.18 What would it mean to be Greek? A free man wouldinherit his Greek identity through his father; he would beidentified as Greek by his name, patronymic and deme (orcity), like Theaetetus in the dialogue that has been given hisname: “Theaetetus, son of Euphronios of Sunion.” Or Menohimself: Meno, son of Alexidemus of Larissa. Palmer in-forms us that this usage of name and patronymic can betraced as far back as Linear B.19 Several fathers and sons arenamed in the Meno: Anytus, son of Anthemion; Cleophan-tus, son of Themistocles; Aristides, son of Lysimachus; Lysi-

Norman Austin 11



machus, son of Aristides; Paralus and Xanthippus, the sonsof Pericles; Melesias and Stephanus, the sons of Thucy-dides.20 In no other Platonic dialogue is fatherhood made soprominently a part of the argument. But such descriptorswould be inappropriate for a slave. The slave in this dia-logue has neither name nor patronymic. He has no ancestry,no heritage. Slaves had names of course, frequently pointingto their origin (“the Scythian,” “the Thracian,” “the Egypt-ian”) but such names were almost superfluous, since “boy”would suffice whenever a slave was needed. Socrates callsthis slave “Meno’s boy,” signifying, in the absence of a fa-ther, that the slave’s owner stands in loco parentis.21

This slave’s ethnic origin, whatever it might be, would de-rive not from his father but from his mother, since it is un-likely that Meno would have purchased the man’s parents asa married couple, man and wife. We are to understand thatthe mother of this fictional character would have been aslave in Meno’s household and the child born to her wouldbe Meno’s slave by birth.22 Who was the slave’s father? Pos-sibly another slave, but more likely a member of Meno’sown family, perhaps Meno’s father or his uncle, or a cousin.Sexual intercourse between free men and slave women wasnot forbidden. In fact, it was likely to be encouraged in theslave-breeding programs of antiquity, whereas sexual rela-tions between slaves themselves, between a male slave and afemale, would be more closely monitored, and probably pre-vented except with the slave-owner’s consent.23

Socrates’ question: “Is he a Hellene?” with its implied an-swer “No,” is really a preamble to the more important ques-tion: “Does he speak our language?” Meno’s responseassures us that whatever the slave’s genetic origin, his lan-guage skills are sufficient for the experiment; he is oiko-genês: house-born. Commentators brush past this word as ifit were of no consequence. Jowett has Meno answer thequestion in the flattest way: “He was born in the house.”But oikogenês was a technical term, used to distinguish onecategory of slaves, those born and raised in a Greek house-

hellenismos12



hold, from other slaves of foreign extraction or those pur-chased on the open market.24 Certain points are thus estab-lished as essential. First, the subject of the experiment mustbe a slave; the results would be invalidated if he were a freeman. Next, he cannot be a slave of foreign extraction; hecannot be a bought slave. Next, as we come to understandfrom the experiment itself, he must be devoid of education,a point on which Socrates himself repeatedly insists. And fi-nally, while almost certainly non-Greek by birth, he must besufficiently fluent in Greek to follow Socrates’ lead into theintricate abstractions of Pythagorean geometry. This exhibi-tion requires as its foundation a slave whose mental vacuumcan be certified by his master.

3.

with the question of the slave’s Hellenization answered toour satisfaction, the experiment can begin. Plato stages thisexhibition as a play within the play, in fact as a tragedy inthree Episodes. Socrates himself introduces the word “tragic”into the dialogue but in a different context and with a differ-ent meaning, when he asserts that Meno prefers Socrates’definition of color to his definition of figure. Color, asSocrates had defined it, drawing on Empedoclean influences,is (in Jowett’s translation) “an effluence of form, commensu-rate with sight, and palpable to sense.” Socrates, in callingthis definition “tragic” seems to be using word to expresswhat we might call “poetic.” (76d). Jowett translates theword “tragic” here as something spoken “in the orthodoxsolemn vein.” Socrates himself prefers his definition of figureas the limit of solid, as dry, as “untragic,” as only a mathe-matical abstraction can be. Davis applies Socrates’ word“tragic” to the whole dialogue, as an allusion to the tragicparadigm, in which tragedy “is built upon an initial mistakethat later exacts an enormous price.”25 However relevant“tragedy” might be to the dialogue taken as a whole, thetragic form, including hamartia, peripeteia and anagnôrisis,

Norman Austin 13



plays itself out overtly and specifically in the encounter be-tween Socrates and the slave, where Socrates guides the slavestep by step from ignorance to understanding.

In the first Episode of this little drama, Socrates leads theslave to the point where his ignorance is exposed. We mightcall this Episode “The Slave’s Double Ignorance,” since theslave is exposed as both ignorant and ignorant of his igno-rance. In the second Episode, Socrates leads the slave to rec-ognize and to admit his own ignorance. We might call thisEpisode “The Slave Recognizes His Ignorance.” In the thirdEpisode, the slave, with some nudging from Socrates, findshimself, no doubt to his own surprise and confusion, cruis-ing the lofty heights of Pythagorean geometry. We might callthis final Episode “The Slave Discovers Geometry.” Each ofthese three Episodes, like the Episodes in tragedy, is set forthas an agon within the larger Agon, with the slave as the pro-tagonist. Each agon is followed by an interlude, which re-sembles a choral reflection on the action of the previousEpisode, with Socrates and the slave’s owner functioning asthe chorus. Socrates uses these pauses to clarify for Meno hisslave’s progress in consciousness. The Exodos, which intragedy would have the protagonist either dead or leavingthe stage, is supplied here by the dialogue between Socratesand Meno on the success of the whole Agon.

4.

socrates opens the first Episode with a series of questions,the first few as pedestrian as we would expect in a Socraticdialogue but moving forward in increasing and bewilderingcomplexity. “Tell me, ‘Boy,’” he begins, “you know the four-angled space (khorion), that it is like this.” Here, withSocrates’ word “Boy” (pai, vocative of pais), we are giventhe primary indicator of the man’s servile condition. Everyinterlocutor in the Platonic dialogues who has a name is atsome point addressed by his own name. Socrates addressesthis slave as “Boy” because “Boy” is his name. Modern

hellenismos14



commentaries with almost unanimous consent have takenthe word to signify the man’s chronological age rather thanas a marker of his socio-economic status.”26 Guthrie evenrefers to this slave as a “lad.”27 Surely this is an egregiousbreach of protocol. Would any of Thomas Jefferson’s friendsever have called his slaves who served them their eveningcocktails his lads? Meno’s “boy,” whatever his age, was cer-tainly not a lad.

A slave has an important function in another Platonic dia-logue, the Theaetetus. This dialogue opens with an exchangebetween two men: Euclides, an Athenian; and Terpsion ofMegara. Terpsion had been out looking for Euclides on theprevious day but Euclides was down at the Piraeus to wel-come Theaetetus, who was returning wounded from thefighting at Corinth (this dates the dialogue to 365 bce).Mention of the name “Theaetetus” reminds Euclides of aconversation between Socrates and Theaetetus that tookplace some years earlier, shortly before Socrates’ death (thatis, about forty years before the dramatic date of this dia-logue). Euclides had learned of this conversation fromSocrates himself, and had made a record of it, to which hehad added notes from time to time, as he had opportunitiesto review the conversation with Socrates personally. He in-vites Terpsion to come in his house and he will have his“boy” read the manuscript of that memorable conversation.The two men then go indoors and Euclides says to his slave(143c): “Take the book, boy, and read.” The “boy” thenreads the entire dialogue, our whole Theaetetus, minus thetwo pages of the introduction, what for us amounts to sixty-five Stephanus pages written in flawless Platonic Greek. Fewcommentators seem to assume that this “boy” must be achild. Cornford has Euclides refer to him as “my servant,”though in the Greek text, Euclides calls him not “servant”but “boy.” It would be a remarkable feat indeed for anyslave to read a handwritten roll amounting to sixty-fivepages of Platonic Greek, but it is surely unreasonable to as-sume that this superb reader was only a boy.28

Norman Austin 15



If Euclides’ “boy” is an adult, why insist that “Meno’sboy,” as Socrates calls him, must be a child? It stretchescredulity to suppose that Socrates would have Meno sum-mon one of his slaves, that Meno would call forth this childfrom among his large retinue of adult slaves, and that his se-lection of a child would prompt not the slightest noticefrom Socrates. I have, I confess, my personal reasons forpreferring this slave to be an adult rather than a child, beingloath to believe that a slave boy with no education, even ifhouse-born, could be so much more adept than I was at asimilar age in grasping the advanced principles of geometry.I enlist in my support St. Augustine, the good bishop ofHippo, who in his discussion of this Platonic parable writesthat Socrates put to the slave “some problem or other ingeometry, I know not what (quendam nescio quae).”29 Isurmise from his nescio quae and from the conclusions hedraws from the incident that, learned man though he was,he had no understanding either of the theorem being pre-sented in this Episode or of its significance in Greek mathe-matics. Admittedly, neither Augustine nor I had Socrates forour geometry teacher.

Neither Meno nor Socrates ever refers to this slave as aboy. The word “boy” (pais) is used only three times in the di-alogue, and all three instances are in the vocative case (pai),spoken by Socrates in his direct addresses to the slave.Socrates is named, of course, in the dialogue, and likewiseMeno, but for the slave, the name “Boy” must suffice.30

Socrates uses “Boy” simply to indicate that he is talking notto a free man but to a slave. He addresses the slave first as“Boy” at the very beginning of the first Episode, when he ini-tiates their conversation. He addresses him a second time as“Boy” when he initiates the second Episode, and “Boy” onceagain in the third Episode, when Socrates brings his interro-gation to its conclusion (83b). In this last instance, he ad-dresses the slave as “Meno’s boy” (w\ pai Mevnono~, 85b).None of these three instances should be construed as alludingto the slave’s chronological age, and certainly not the last,

hellenismos16



“Meno’s boy,” being a conventional term to refer to aslave.31 (Jowett is so determined to make this slave into achild that in his translation of the dialogue he has Socratesaddressing him as “boy” four times, in contrast to the threeinstances in the Greek text. Even so, he cannot bring himselfto translate “Meno’s boy” (at 85b) literally, since taken liter-ally, “Meno’s boy” would mean “Meno’s son.” At this pointJowett abandons the euphemism and accepts the fact that“boy” can have only one meaning here, to signify a slave.)

This surely is the most astonishing example of the master-slave dialectic in all of Greek literature, and “boy” is animportant element in that dialectic.32 Calling this slave aboy may mollify our own sensibilities but it brushes asidesignificant aspects of the discourse, allowing us to assimi-late Socrates’ experiment to our idea of a model classroom.Klein, for example, treats the encounter between Socratesand the slave as a paradigm of the student-teacher relation-ship.33 Indeed, it is a pedagogical exercise of a sort, but assuch it is far-removed from Socrates’ practice with the sonsof the aristocrats. Socrates may succeed here in demonstrat-ing for the slave-master’s benefit that his slave has a soul,but with his other interlocutors, Socrates speaks directly totheir souls. He makes love to them. We need recall only Al-cibiades’ ode to Socrates in the Symposium, or Socrates’tenderness toward Phaedo in the Phaedo; and to those ide-alizations we might add this very dialogue. Socrates, at theend of the Theaetetus, claims that his task is to act as mid-wife of the intellect to “young men who are well-born andbeautiful.”34 We, with Xenophon’s Anabasis in hand, maypass judgment on Meno as an arch-villain, but nowhere inthe dialogue does Socrates hint at any such disparagementof Meno’s character.35 On the contrary, he treats Meno as agenuine seeker after wisdom and virtue and, as with otherhandsome young seekers, he showers him with hyperboliccompliments such as a lover might deliver to his beloved.He pretends that he himself is but one among many ofMeno’s lovers.

Norman Austin 17



Klein, in his analysis of Socrates’ pedagogical method vis-à-vis the slave, argues that, having been refuted, “the boyreaches the stage of complete perplexity without feeling dis-graced or ridiculed.”36 I wish I could be as sanguine regard-ing the slave’s poise at having his ignorance held up forpublic display, both before his master and in the sight of alarge number of his fellow slaves. Verna, the Latin word forthe house-born slave, Martial uses as a synonym for buf-foon. Seneca writes that we discipline our sons but we en-courage our little house slaves (vernulae) to be impertinent(to practice licentia and audacia).37 We may surmise that theGreeks behaved in a similar manner, treating their littlehouse slaves as pets and toys (deliciae, to use Seneca’s word),and in time these slaves would grow up to become buffoonsand clowns. Had Meno’s slave been a person of flesh andblood, he would no doubt have been the object of indignitiesfrom the time he was old enough to lisp prettily among theguests at his master’s symposia. To be called “boy” all hislife was but the least of these indignities. To be exposed be-fore his peers by the master philosopher of Athens as a stu-pid boy would not ameliorate the indignity. If we must callMeno’s slave a boy, let us restore to him a modicum of hispersonhood by placing “Boy” in quotes, as DuBois does, butpreferably with an upper-case B, to signify that Boy is hisname, and to put a certain ironic distance between our mod-ern sensibilities and Plato’s euphemism.

It is easy to understand how Meno’s slave has been trans-formed in our commentaries into a boy. We have been mis-led in our reading of the Greek text itself, derived from theStephanus editions (1578), which list the dramatis personaeat the beginning of each dialogue and then throughout thedialogue specify the name of each speaker, much like the per-sonae of a Shakespeare play. At the head of the Meno, thepersonae are listed: Meno, Meno’s Boy, Socrates, Anytus.Throughout the dialogue Meno, when he is the speaker, isidentified with the abbreviation as MEN; Socrates as SWK;and the slave, when he speaks, is identified as PAI (abbrevi-

hellenismos18



ation for PAIS). This Pais is asked to answer a large numberof questions put to him by Socrates, with the result that ourGreek texts preface his brief responses some fifty-three timeswith the abbreviation PAI. Scholars have incorporated thatoft-repeated abbreviation PAI into their thinking on theepisode as a whole. But PAI is not part of the Dialogue. It isa visual cue inserted into the text for the convenience ofreaders simply to alert us when the speaker is the otherwisenameless slave. We experience an odd sense of over-determi-nation, however, when we contrast, for example, the forty-five instances of the word “boy” in Klein’s explication of theslave episode, with the three instances in the Meno itself, oneof which certainly cannot be a signifier of the slave’s age.Throughout the dialogue, neither Socrates nor Meno everrefers to the slave as a boy; whenever they speak of him, heis only a pronoun, “he” or “him,” and then, at the end ofthe demonstration, he becomes anthrôpos. His status as aslave is what is at stake here, not his precocious youthful-ness. His one function is to be the enduring paradigm of Pla-tonic epistêmê. I am prepared to assume that this Hero ofthe Academy was no child but a fully mature adult.

5.

socrates opens the first Episode with the slave by askinghim if he understands the “space” that we call a square. Theslave replies “yes,” and the interrogation proceeds. Does heunderstand that this space has four equal sides? Yes. Does heunderstand that the lines drawn through the midpoints ofthe sides of this square are also equal? Yes. With the axiomsestablished, the calculations can begin. If the length of a sideof a square is two feet in this direction, and two feet in that,what would be its area (khorion in Greek)? We proceed rap-idly from one geometric term to the next, from length to an-gle to square, and finally to area.

“Four,” answers the slave: a square two by two will yieldfour equal smaller squares of one-foot lengths, an area of

Norman Austin 19



four square feet in our terminology. We infer that Socratesdraws the diagram in the sand on the ground: a square twofeet long in this direction, and now two feet in this, producesfour squares, each one foot in length. Socrates and Menohad earlier wrestled with the problems of color and figurebut these abstruse questions need not trouble the slave. In-stead, he is expected to engage with Socrates in pure Euclid-ean geometry.

So far, no problem. But now the real Agon begins. “Let usdouble the length of our square,” Socrates continues, “fromtwo feet to four; four feet in this direction, four feet in that.Now how many squares do we have?” The trap is laid, asmust happen in every Platonic dialogue. “Meno’s ‘Boy’”promptly falls for the mathematical trick. “Eight,” hereplies; double the length and of course double the area: 2 x2 = 4; 4 x 4 = 8. Wrong. The slave may know his multipli-cation tables, but simple arithmetic multiplication is a deadend. An altogether different mathematics is required. Themistake on which the slave founders becomes the point onwhich the whole experiment pivots.

In this first Episode, Socrates asks the slave eleven ques-tions and the slave replies eleven times. His first seven an-swers can be translated simply as variants of “Yes.” Then,for the next four, his Greek is limited to “Four,” then “Yes,”then “Eight,” and finally, “It will be double.” This is the fullextent of his Greek, to this point. We realize that Socrates’question was less whether this slave could speak Greek butwhether his Greek would be adequate for him to follow theargument as Socrates presents him with a complex problemin geometry.38

With the slave’s error exposed for his master’s edification,it is time for the first interlude. Socrates needs to review whathas just happened but his review is directed not to the subjectof the experiment, as we would expect if this were indeed aclassroom, but to his owner. In other dialogues, Socratesmight use such a pause to indulge in some pederastic flatteryof his interlocutor’s beauty and erotic charm. Compare, for

hellenismos20



example, Socrates’ extravagant compliments on Meno’sbeauty in this very dialogue, which, according to Socrates,makes him a tyrant toward his lovers, whereas Socrates him-self is helpless in the presence of beauty (76b).39 He even de-scribes the relationship between Meno and himself as that ofmaster and slave; such is the erotic power of the Beloved overthe Lover (87). But such talk would be grossly improper inthe context of this experiment. There is to be no erotic con-fusion here between master and slave and certainly no innu-endo that Socrates has fallen under the influence of thisslave’s charisma. Instead, Socrates uses the moment to pointout to his charismatic master his own slave’s ignorance, thatignorance being a necessary ingredient in the experiment.

“You see, Meno,” Socrates says, giving the slave’s ownerhis name, as we would expect, “I am teaching him nothingbut only asking him questions. Now he thinks that he knowswhat length of line will produce an area of eight squarefeet.”

“Yes, I see,” Meno replies. “But you agree that he does not know?”“Certainly I agree; he does not know.”“He only guesses that he knows.”“True.”

6.

if the slave were a free man, we would expect Socrates todirect his observations to the slave himself. But this exhibi-tion is being staged not for him but for his master’s enlight-enment. With the slave’s naïveté in elementary mathematicsnow made manifest to his owner, Socrates can proceed to thesecond Episode. Again, the objective is to expose the slave’sabyss of ignorance, to discover a mind so innocent of learn-ing as to appear to some observers as singularly stupid.Socrates calls on the slave’s master to observe the procedure:let him watch how his slave practices a false logic to arriveat a faulty conclusion.

Norman Austin 21



Socrates sets up a new problem. The slave has said that asquare four by four would have an area of eight square feet.Let us take the slave’s mistaken arithmetic and turn it insideout, and begin anew, now using those same mistaken eightsquare feet. How can the slave revise his arithmetic to dis-cover the exact length of a line, which when used to make asquare will in fact produce an area of exactly eight squarefeet. We cannot imagine any Greek slave ever needing tosolve a mathematical conundrum of this complexity, noreven his master, and certainly not the sainted Augustine. Thisis geometry at its most abstract. Socrates needs to take thisslave out of his ordinary cognitive practices, such as theymight be, and set him loose in a realm of pure abstraction.He is to be introduced to theôria.

In this second Episode, Socrates leads the slave through an-other series of interrogations to elucidate for the slave himselfthe nature of his error. Again, the slave’s replies are restricted atfirst to “yes,” “certainly,” “I think so,” but as the interrogationpresses on, he hazards some guesses, all wrong. The length ofthe line we are searching for must lie somewhere between twoand three. Two by two is too small (= four square feet); three bythree is too large (= nine square feet). How do we find that ex-act point somewhere along the continuum between two andthree that can gives us a figure of eight square feet? Two and ahalf? Two and three quarters? Two and seven-eighths? This isan enormous problem. In fact, if we want the exact length ofthat line, we will never find it. Not surprisingly, at the end ofthis Episode the slave draws a blank. He confesses himself com-pletely at a loss. “Indeed, Socrates, I do not know.”

This is progress indeed. The slave has arrived at the aporiawithout which no Socratic dialogue can continue, the kindof aporia that in Platonic epistemology marks the thresholdof true knowledge. As Jaeger has expressed it, “The mathe-matical episode in Meno serves to show that aporein, ‘to behelpless,’ is fertile ground for educational seed. It is the firststage on the way to positive knowledge of truth.” The timehas come for another interlude.40

hellenismos22



“You see, Meno,” Socrates says, once again giving usMeno’s name, “how he is advancing in his power of recol-lection. At first he did not know the length of a line thatwould give an area of eight square feet. He still does notknow, but then he thought that he knew and now he recog-nizes his aporia. He does not know and he does not thinkthat he knows.” In tragedy, this point would be called anag-nôrisis, the protagonist’s recognition of his hamartia.

“And so,” Socrates says, “is he not in a better state now inrespect to the matter of his ignorance?”

“So it would seem.”“If we have put him in a state of aporia, like the stingray

(narkê) numbing its prey, surely we have not done him anyharm?”

“I don’t think so.”The allusion to the stingray takes us back to an earlier

point in the dialogue, when Meno, reduced to helplessness,had responded that Socrates is like the stingray (narkê). Henumbs his interlocutors just as the narkê narcotizes its prey.Now Socrates, following the same procedure with Meno’sslave as he had used with Meno, has achieved a similar effecton the slave.

“And so we have contributed somewhat to his search forthe truth,” Socrates continues. “Now, not knowing thetruth, he will gladly seek it out, whereas before he wouldhave thought that he was an excellent speaker, telling manypeople and on many occasions that the double space wouldhave a double side.”

Socrates’ joke on the slave’s fantasy of lecturing to largecrowds, proudly parading his ignorance of geometry, issurely a reference, and not so very subtle, to Gorgias whowas achieving wealth and fame for doing much the samething, mesmerizing crowds with his sophisticated learning.Meno even boasts that he too has given speeches on aretê tolarge crowds of people, and very good they were, he adds(80b). If this slave were indeed a child, are we to supposehim so infatuated with his own intelligence as to imagine

Norman Austin 23



himself giving public lectures on geometry? Surely, a slaveboy with no education beyond his ABC’s would scarcely ad-vertise himself a Pythagoras among slaves. Can we detecthere a hint of Martial’s verna, the house-born slave clowningbefore the crowds? Or could this allude to that audacity,which the Romans, some of them at least, found winsome intheir vernulae?

Here Hellenism issues its first gleam. How brilliant thatlight would become in the centuries to follow—but now it isso fleeting, its flicker passes almost unnoticed. This slave is aGreek, but only in a manner of speaking, his Greekness ac-quired through his good fortune to be born a slave in aGreek household. He has never had to think as a Greek. Infact, he has never had to think before. As Aristotle put it sowell, the slave is the master’s tool; the master thinks and theslave carries out the thought.41 Now, Socrates has made himtruly a Greek. He has inducted him into the polis, into theSocratic polis, where one man’s mind is good as another’sand knowledge lies latent in every soul, to be brought tolight through dialectic. Socrates has taught him to become athinker. Now he too, like his master, will flex his soul inmastering the rules of the Logos.

Socrates continues his analysis of the slave’s progress (84d):“Watch now. See what he will search out and discover un-

der my guidance, with me doing nothing but asking him andnot teaching him. See if you will discover whether I amteaching him anything or eliciting anything from him orwhether I am asking him for his own opinions.”

7.

we are ready for the third Episode. In tragedy this wouldbe the peripeteia, the reversal, though the reversal here is inthe opposite direction from the path of tragedy. Can theslave now retrace his steps back to his earlier confusionwhen he thought that a square two feet in length on a side,if doubled, would produce not sixteen but eight square feet?

hellenismos24



“Tell me,” says Socrates, turning back to the slave to be-gin the final set of questions, “is this not a four-sided figure.You understand?”

“Yes.”Socrates now creates a new diagram on the ground, begin-

ning with the original square, two by two, then adding an-other of the same size above it, then another to its right, anda fourth in the top right-hand corner, thus creating a newand larger square, four by four.

Socrates examines the area of this larger square: “Howmuch bigger is this space than our first space?”

“Four times.”It is easy now to see that the original square, if doubled on

each side, will produce four such squares. “But it should have been only twice the size. Don’t you re-

member?”At this point we at least, if not the slave, are likely to be

awash in confusion, partly because the language of geometryis still being invented. Words like “square,” “angle,” “length,”and “area” had not yet become part of the vernacular. St. Au-gustine’s honest response to this demonstration hints at thedifficulty even educated men would have in grasping theprinciples being laid out here. Soon the slave will be requiredto learn the properties of yet another word, the horrendous“diagonal.” Fortunately for us, we have commentators tosteady our flailing imaginations by diagramming the figuresthat Socrates would have drawn on the ground for the slave,beginning with one square two by two, then adding to it an-other, then another, and yet one more, until we have beforeour eyes the diagram that Socrates would have drawn on theground, a square four feet on every side. This square, subdi-vided, gives the slave sixteen squares, each 1 x 1 . Can henow retrace his steps back to his earlier confusion when hethought that a square two by two, if doubled, would producenot sixteen, but eight square feet? Who among us could dis-entangle from these sixteen squares the one square with anarea of exactly eight square feet?

Norman Austin 25



We bite our tongues here to keep from blurting out “Par-adigm shift! Paradigm shift! Think triangles!”

Triangles!

The slave, already taxed by a surfeit of squares, is askednow to think away for the moment all the smaller squaresand focus instead on only five squares: the four squares(each 2 x 2) making the larger square (4 x 4). Socrates nowbisects each of those four squares (each 2 x 2) by drawing aline on their diagonal. These diagonals now produce, in ad-dition to those original sixteen squares (needed for our six-teen square feet), sixteen triangles, each triangle half the areaof each of those 16 smaller squares. Who would havethought that to find the area of exactly eight square feet wewould need to dribble so many squares and triangles acrossour gymnasium floor? Even then, we are not yet done withsquares and triangles. In addition to those sixteen smallsquares (each 1 x 1) and sixteen small triangles (each halfthe area of its smaller square), we must keep before our eyesfour larger squares (each 2 x 2) and four larger triangles.Somewhere in this tumbling kaleidoscope of squares and tri-

hellenismos26

A F

G

2

E

2

B

D

2

H

2

C

3 8

15 10

16 9

1 7

4 6

2 5

13

14 11

12

J

ABCD = 16 SQ. FT. = 16 TRIANGLES+ 4 TRIANGLES EFG, GHF, ETF, EGJ



angles lies the solution we seek, if only we could stop thetumble long enough to figure it out. Such extraordinary ef-forts of cognitive differentiation and aggregation are re-quired, such prodigious leaps from one paradigm to another,any slave would be precocious indeed to follow Socrates’thread through this labyrinth.

To clarify, Socrates needs to explain some of the basic re-lations between triangles and squares. With some furtherlegerdemain with squares and triangles, Socrates leads theslave to perceive that each of the larger squares (2 x 2), whenbisected on the diagonal, gives us two triangles, each half thearea of the square ( ). We now discover yet anothersquare, the largest of them all, in which have been inscribedfour large triangles, each with an area of ( ). If we addthese triangles, we arrive at an area of 8 square feet: .

Eureka! To arrive at the correct answer to this simpleproblem, we must first construct 16 squares, then whittlethose 16 squares down to 4, then construct 16 triangles,then whittle the triangles down to 8, and eventually we willwork our way to the square of exactly 8 square feet. To sum-marize our findings algebraically: the square drawn on thehypotenuse of a right-angled triangle will equal the sum ofthe squares drawn on the other two sides: c2 = a2 + b2. Thehypotenuse! Of course.

Voila! The Pythagorean theorem, clean as a whistle, brightas a penny.

We might expect the scholars who downsize this slavefrom man to boy to have some faint praise for the boy’sreaching so smoothly a theorem that had teased the bright-est intellects of antiquity. But, treating this slave as littlemore than a “geometry-learning device,” they have beengenerally indifferent to the boy’s achievement except to pon-der whether the templates of geometry were already embed-ded in his soul (if indeed he had a soul) or were a constructcreated in his mind only with Socrates’ coaching.42

The slave’s discovery clearly sailed right over Augustine’shead. So far is Augustine from understanding the implica-

Norman Austin 27



tions of what happened between Socrates and the slave thathe treats the demonstration as evidence of exactly the oppo-site position. Our souls, he argues, could not have acquiredsuch knowledge in a past life. “Not all people are geometri-cians in this life. In fact, geometricians are so rare in the hu-man species, it is almost impossible to find even one,” helaments, somewhat ruefully including himself among theuninitiated.43 Socrates takes Meno’s slave through an acceler-ated course in advanced geometry at a breakneck speed. Inthe first Book of his Elements, Euclid requires 46 Proposi-tions before we reach the Pythagorean Theorem in Proposi-tion 47, out of a total of 48. These Propositions are precededby 23 definitions, 5 Postulates and 5 Common Notions. Inmodern times, Guthrie by contrast treats the slave’s discoveryas a trifle: Socrates, to prove that we derive our knowledgefrom recollection, has “one of Meno’s slaves, a completelyuneducated lad, reason out facts about squares and trianglesall by himself.”44 Facts about squares and triangles? ThePythagorean theorem merely an exercise in shuffling squaresand triangles? Eckstein takes condescension one step farther,advising us that the slave’s education in this dialogue “is tobe taken as a farce and not as a paradigm of teaching.”45

Tradition informs us that the members of the Pythagoreancommunity were divided into two categories. At the elemen-tary level was the akousmatikos who was, as Liddell & Scotttranslates the word, a “probationer.” At a higher level wasthe mathêmatikos, a person who had proven himself worthyto comprehend the more abstruse mathematical principles.This slave surely has passed the test to be accepted in thecommunity as akousmatikos, and is well on his way to beinitiated as mathêmatikos.46 Who would have thought thatsuch a person with no previous understanding of geometry,and with only the gentlest nudges from Socrates, could ar-rive spontaneously at the mathematical theorem that canstand as the very paradigm of the Hellenic Logos? A statueof this slave should have been erected at the entrance to theAcademy or, better yet, inside the grounds, showing (of

hellenismos28



course) not a child but an adult male, with a simple inscrip-tion on the pedestal—his name on the first line, MENO’SBOY, and beneath his name Plato’s Summa Epistemologica,ANAMNÊSIS EPISTÊMÊ.

Once the slave has reached this vertiginous height, aColossus striding now in the company of the intellectual gi-ants of Hellas, we might expect his teacher to offer himsome congratulations. But no. Congratulations, to call themthat, must be addressed not to the slave but to his owner(85b).47

“How does he look to you?” Socrates asks Meno. “Is thereany opinion here that he did not answer of his own accord?”

“No, they all came from himself.”“And yet he did not know them, as we were saying a little

while earlier.”“True.”“But these opinions were already within him, were they

not?”“Yes.”“And so the person who does not know may still have true

opinions about those thoughts that he doesn’t know?”“So it seems.”“Now these opinions have been stirred up in him as in a

dream. But if someone were to ask him the same questionson many occasions and in many ways, do you think that fi-nally he will be inferior to no one in his knowledge of thesematters?” The matter in this case being that shuffling ofsquares and triangles that we call Pythagorean theorem.

“So it seems.”Socrates refers again to the slave’s prior educational vac-

uum, since that is critical to this experiment (85d):“And so he will know these things without anyone teach-

ing him or asking him any questions but he will come uponthis knowledge (epistêmê) in and of himself?”

“Yes, certainly.”“So then, in finding this epistêmê in himself, is that not

anamnêsis?”

Norman Austin 29



Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum. Socrates, needing to secure the foundations for this exper-

iment, returns yet again to the theme of the slave’s lack ofeducation, especially in geometry (85e):

“Did anyone teach this man geometry? Is there anyonewho taught him this? I think you especially should knowsince he was born and raised in your house.”

“I know that no one ever taught him.”“But if he did not acquire this knowledge in this life,

surely he must have learned it at some time?”“So it seems.”“So it must have been at some time when he was not a

man (anthrôpos)?” Socrates’ use of anthrôpos might mean a human being,

but would he have referred to this slave as anthrôpos if hewere still only a boy? Even this word, however, so bland andgeneric, is in this context laced with nuance, being anotherterm for “slave.” Anthrôpos may be slightly more dignifiedthan yet another word for slave, anthrôpodon, “the human-footed thing” (the slave as an anthropod), but as Carrière-Hergavault has noted, when it is used in the Attic orators, itis generally pejorative, having the connotation of “crea-ture.”48 Does Socrates use anthrôpos to mean man or slave?Or does he mean both, that this man, though a slave, is alsoa human being?

“And so these truths must have been always in him,whether in the time when he was not a slave (anthrôpos) orin the present time when he is a slave (anthrôpos)?”

8.

the experiment is a resounding success, and on several dif-ferent fronts. First, it has proved that a slave is not merely ananthropod but indeed a human being (anthrôpos). Second,the slave has a soul. Third, the soul is immortal, at least inSocrates’ dogma.49 Fourth, the slave has demonstrated thatall knowledge is, or begins in, recollection (epistêmê = anam-

hellenismos30



nêsis). Fifth, and certainly by no means least, even a slave se-questered from education by his owner can reason his wayinto the very heart of Pythagorean geometry, to exercise Lo-gos and discover somewhere and somehow in his own soulthe theorem that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-an-gled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the othertwo sides, that c2 = a2 + b2.

Of course, the problem is more complex than the slave cansuppose from his first lesson in geometry. The length thatSocrates asks for is √8. If Meno were to grant this slave man-umission and encourage him to study with the Pythagoreansin Krotona, he would quickly learn that √8 is an irrationalnumber or, as mathematicians prefer to say, it is incommen-surable. My calculator gives √8, rounding it off to ten places,as 2.8284271247. On reflection, we understand that an in-commensurable number is required for this experiment. Itrequires no depth of soul to calculate the area of a squaretwo by two, or three by three, or four by four. The slave isnot being asked to parade his multiplication tables. What hemust calculate through an intricate process of thought is anumber that cannot in fact be calculated by arithmetic.Socrates is asking him for the hypotenuse of a right-angledtriangle. He must discover geometry.50 The problem posedto the slave is not the better-known instance of the theoreminvolving the triangle with sides 3, 4, and 5. To workthrough to the equation based on that hypotenuse might bea simpler exercise, since it would be to work with integers.Were it not for the hypotenuse with its incommensurablenumber, which was the cause of suicidal consternationamong the Pythagoreans, the slave would not have beenthrown headlong into such a coruscating welter of squaresand triangles.51 He must discover a square exactly √8 x √8 ifhis thinking is to be proof of the experiment. Or, to put itanother way, he must be brought to the threshold of whatPopper calls “the irrationality of the diagonal,” whichSocrates adroitly camouflages as the very pitch of rational-ity.52

Norman Austin 31



Whether the slave could reason his way to the rational,and then from the rational to the irrational, is a questionbest left for another dialogue. Legend has it that Hippasus,the man credited with the discovery of the incommensu-rable, for his transgression, whether in discovering the in-commensurable or exposing this horror to the public atlarge, was taken to sea and thrown overboard—or, by someaccounts, threw himself overboard. Let us leave this slave toface that catastrophe at a later date.

Meno’s slave, having played his part as an object lesson withimpeccable good manners, is no longer needed. He is theQ.E.D. of our geometry lesson and as such can return to hisplace among Meno’s retainers to resume his usual function asan accessory. For the remainder of the dialogue, in which thetwo principals, Socrates and Meno, revert back to their origi-nal problem, the slave with the brilliant intellect stands aside,surely the most conspicuous silent actor in all of Greek drama.

Earlier in the dialogue, Socrates elicits from Meno Gor-gias’ definition of aretê, that it is to govern wisely (73d).“But surely,” Socrates replies, “this cannot be true, whetherfor a boy or a slave, that his virtue is to govern his master. Ifa slave were to rule his master, he would no longer be aslave.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so, Socrates,” Meno replies.“For that would be unseemly, my friend,” Socrates adds.Imagine if Socrates, having shown Meno that his slave had

a mind as fine as the finest minds in Hellas, had then said toMeno: “Meno, why don’t you and your slave change places?Why don’t you stand aside while I continue my conversationwith your slave?”

Imagine then Socrates turning back to the slave and askinghim: “Come now, Meno’s Slave, tell me, please, your defini-tion of virtue.” And now, if you will, imagine the slave’s re-sponse: “O Socrates, begging your pardon, sir, the godssubtracted half my virtue when I was born a slave in Meno’shouse, though please understand, sir, among slave mastersmy owner is beyond reproach, may his name live forever.”

hellenismos32



Here ends the first chapter in the history of Hellenismos,which was to spread like wildfire around the Mediterraneanbasin and to issue several centuries later in that most famousof all Hellenic sentences, ascribed to the Hellenized Jewwhom Jesus of Nazareth culled from his fishing nets in theLake of Gennesaret (St. Matthew’s “Galilee of the gentiles”)to become his beloved apostle John: ejn ajrch h\n oJ lovgo~ kai;oJ lovgo~ h\n pro;~ to;n qevon kai; oJ lovgo~ h\n oJ qevo~. In the begin-ning was the Logos, and the Logos was in the presence ofGod, and the Logos was God. Socrates himself could hardlyhave said it better than that.

notes

Thanks to Professor Catalin Zara, University of Massachusetts, Boston,for reviewing the mathematics in this essay.

1. Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, MA1961), 107, n. 6.

2. A. Debrunner, Griechische Wortbildungenslehre (Heidelberg 1917),136–38.

3. David A. Graf, “Medism: The Origin and Significance of the Term,”JHS 114 (1984), 15.

4. Graf (note 3).

5. For other instances in Plato: Charmides 159a; Protagoras 328a.

6. Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chapel Hill, NC 1965)and R. W. Sharples, Plato: Meno, ed. and tr. (Chicago, IL 1985) choose “ex-cellence” rather than “virtue” in their translations and commentary, a pref-erence that illuminates more clearly, in my view, the dynamics of the wholedialogue.

7. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of Euro-pean Thought, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, tr. (New York 1960; original Ger-man ed. 1953), 158.

8. On aretê in ancient Greek thought, see Snell (note 7), 153–90; alsoWerner Jaeger, Paideia, Gilbert Highet, tr. (New York 1943), II.160–73.

9. Pindar, Ol. 1.13.

10. Frank Nisetich, Pindar’s Victory Songs (Baltimore 1980).

11. Pindar, Nem. 1.32–34.

12. Snell (note 7), 158. By the end of the Meno, profit is still an impor-tant criterion for the concept of aretê.

13. See Snell (note 7), 181: “After Socrates all exhortations to virtue goby the board; they become antiquated, no matter how vigorous their after

Norman Austin 33



life.” Even so, when Socrates, at the very end of the dialogue, brings the dis-cussion around to certain famous men—Aristides, Pericles, Thucydides—who were reputed to be wise but were incapable of passing on their wisdomto their sons—Socrates seems to be using aretê to mean something close toshrewd political judgment. Goodness, as an absolute, seems at this point al-most peripheral to the discussion.

14. For a summary of the ancient tradition regarding Meno, see Klein(note 6), 35–38.

15. Xenophon, Anabasis II.21–29, portrays Meno as completely un-scrupulous, vicious, indeed depraved in all his actions.

16. The theory is put succinctly at 81c5: since the soul has come into ex-istence many times, and has seen everything both here and in Hades’ realm,it is not surprising that it has a recollection of aretê and of the other thingsthat it knew in the past.

17. On the question whether slaves bear stigmata of their slave nature,see Aristotle Pol. 1254b27, Giuseppe Cambiano, “Aristotle and the Argu-ments of the Anonymous Opponents of Slavery,” in Classical Slavery, M. I.Finley, ed. (London and Portland, OR 1987), 35–38.

18. Yvon Garlan, “War, Piracy and Slavery,” in Classical Slavery, M. I.Finley, ed. (note 17), 15: “No modern historian would dispute the fact thatthe great majority of slaves were not of Greek origin.”

19. Leonard P. Palmer, The Greek Language (London and Boston 1980), 34.

20. Michael Davis, Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science(Carbondale, IL 1988), 137–38 on the significance of Anthemion father ofAnytus in this dialogue. “This section of the dialogue is replete with fathersand sons,” he writes (138). All the more striking that this slave, despite hisimportance for Platonic epistemology, is a man without a father.

21. Yvon Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece, Janet Lloyd, tr. (Cornell1988, orig. 1982), 22: slaves’ names are given in isolation or are accompa-nied by the master’s name in the genitive.

22. Garlan, Slavery (note 21), 52: the child of a free man and a slave in-herits the status of the mother.

23. On slave-breeding, see Xenophon, Oeconomicus 9.5. He advisesslave-owners to separate the women’s quarters from the men’s with a bolteddoor so that slaves could not breed without their master’s consent. ThomasWeidemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Johns Hopkins 1981), 186, notesAristotle’s advice on slave-breeding (Householder 1.5): “we should let themhave children to serve as hostages.” See also Garlan (“War,” note 18above), 52.

24. On oikogenês as a category of slaves, see W. L. Westermann, TheSlave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia 1955), 32; Wei-demann (note 23), 120, discusses the lists of “house-born” slaves in the Del-phic paramone inscriptions. Garlan (“War,” note 18), 16, on these Delphicmanumissions in the last two centuries BCE, notes that the slaves’ “origin isgiven in 50 percent of the cases, divided into 29 percent ‘born-at-home’ and21 percent of foreign origin.” Weidemann notes that Seneca, in his dialogue

hellenismos34



“On Anger,” writes that house-born slaves are more likely to be loyal totheir masters (112).

25. Davis (note 20), 113.

26. For example, Joseph Klein (note 6), in discussing the slave’s partici-pation in the dialogue, uses “boy” 52 times. On pais as slave, see the tablesin Marie-Paule Carrière-Hergavault, “Esclaves et affranchis chez les ora-teurs attiques,” Actes du Colloque 1971 sur l’Esclavage, Annales Litterairesde l’Université de Besançon (Paris 1972), 46–47, where doulo~ is used in 30instances in the orators; oJ pai~ in 19; a[nqrwpo~ in 12.

27. W. K. C. Guthrie, in Collected Dialogues of Plato, Edith Hamiltonand Huntington Cairns, eds. (Princeton 1961), 353.

28. Page DuBois, Slaves and Other Objects (Chicago 2003), 161, whilesympathetic to this slave as she is to Meno’s slave, still accepts at face valuethat because Euclides calls him “boy,” he must be a child.

29. Augustine, de Trinitate 15.

30. See Eleanor Dickey, Greek Forms of Address (Oxford 1996),109–19, 232, on “The Meaning of Friendship Terms in Plato,” and by con-trast pai as the common form used to address slaves.

31. Garlan, Slavery (note 21), 22.

32. DuBois (note 28), 158, 162, who distinguishes herself in her under-standing of this dialogue’s contribution to the ancient discourse on slavery,notes the invisibility of this slave and his slave status among modern writ-ers on this dialogue.

33. Jacob Klein (note 6), 106–7.

34. Plato, Theaetetus 210c.

35. Our main source for Meno’s portrait is Xenophon, AnabasisII.21–29. For a discussion of ancient sources on Meno, see Klein (note 6),36–37. He writes: There can be no “doubt that Meno’s image as that of anarchvillain was fixed in the minds of Plato’s contemporaries, regardless ofwhether this image did or did not do justice to the ‘real’ Meno” (37).

36. Klein (note 6), 106–7.

37. Martial 1.42.2; Seneca, de Providentia 6.

38. Socrates himself gives an example of the abstraction of geometrywhen he talks to Meno of a triangle being inscribed in a circle (86–87). Thequestion posed to the slave is equally abstract. On the importance of math-ematics in this dialogue, see Jaeger (note 8), 167: mathematics is used herefirst to exemplify the right method and as an illustration of the kind ofknowledge at which Socrates is aiming. The search begins with “phenom-ena perceived by sense . . . but the thing itself does not belong to the worldof sense. It can be cognized only in the soul, and the organ of cognition isthe logos.”

39. On the importance of Meno’s beauty in the argument of this dia-logue, see Davis (note 20), 114–22.

40. Jaeger (note 8), 169.

41. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1161b, the slave is the master’s living

Norman Austin 35



tool (a tool with a yuchv), just as a tool is an inanimate slave (a slave with-out a yuchv).

42. The phrase comes from Julius Moravscik: “we can represent theslave-boy as a geometry learning device.” I have garnered it from DuBois(note 28), 162. She gives quotations from several scholars that indicate theirindifference to this slave as a person.

43. Augustine (note 29).

44. Guthrie (note 27), 353.

45. Jerome Eckstein, The Platonic Method: An Interpretation of the Dra-matic-Philosophic Aspects of the “Meno” (New York 1968), 34–35. Mal-colm Brown, “Plato Disapproves of the Slave-boy’s Answer,” Plato: Meno,W. K. C. Guthrie, tr., with essays edited by Malcolm Brown (Indianapolisand New York 1971), 223, pauses to ponder why Plato had Socrates engagethe slave in “a mathematical problem of such technical difficulty,” butsurely, the technical challenge is the point of the experiment.

46. See Iamblichus Vit. Pyth. 83.

47. Socrates, allowing himself one violation of protocol, gives the slave acompliment once, and with a single word, kalw~ (83d).

48. Carrière-Hergavault (note 26), 49.

49. In contrast to other scholars’ easy dismissals, DuBois (note 28), 164,notes that in this dialogue Socrates demonstrates that the slave, in commonwith free persons, has a soul, which is immortal and capable of under-standing. A man born and raised as a slave, deprived of an education, yetable to arrive at the Pythagorean theorem in a single afternoon, is surelymore than an abstraction.

50. Brown (note 45), 198–242, treats this inquiry as organized in twoparts. In the first part, which he calls Experiment I, “the inquiry remainsrigorous but can produce no substantive answer,” whereas in the secondpart, Experiment II, the slave reaches an answer “at the cost of rigor,” oncewe allow for the problematic status of geometry’s foundations. I can detectnothing in the text to suggest that the Pythagorean Theorem would be ananswer achieved “at the cost of rigor,” or that Plato would disapprove of aslave’s arriving at the theorem that is the glory of ancient Greek mathemat-ics.

51. Karl Popper, in Brown (note 45), 164: “Plato emphasized the cata-strophic character of the discovery of the irrationals.”

52. Popper (in Brown, note 45), 161.

hellenismos36



hellenismos

Documents