Sublime

And here, O men of Athens, I must beg you not to interrupt me, even if I seem to say something extravagant. For the word which I will speak is not mine. I will refer you to a witness who is worthy of credit; that witness shall be the God of Delphi—he

Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve. And in order to determine who deserves what, we have to determine what virtues are worthy of honor and reward. Aristotle maintains that we can’t figure out what a just constitution is without first reflecting on the most desirable way of life. For him, law can’t be neutral on

We shall see, further along, that the stranger domiciled in a city could be neither a proprietor there, nor an heir, nor a testator; he could not make a contract of any sort, or appear before the ordinary tribunals of the citizens. At Athens, if he happened to be the creditor of a citizen, he could not sue him in the courts for the payment of the

If we wished to give an exact definition of a citizen, we should say that it was a man who had the religion of the city.398 The stranger, on the contrary, is one who has not access to the worship, one whom the gods of the city do not protect, and who has not even the right to invoke them. For these national gods do not wish to receive prayers and

But in Sophocles’ world—where so much is contestable—that friendship, companionship and citizenship are essential aspects of humanity is not contestable. And in this at least Sophocles is at one with the rest of the Athenian world.

To characterize a good man is in crucial part to characterize the relationship in which such a man stands to others and both poets and philosophers for the most part do not distinguish in their account of these relationships what is universal and human from what is local and Athenian. The claim is often explicit; Athens is praised because she par

Athenian democracy, though it had the grave limitation of not including slaves or women, was in some respects more democratic than any modern system. Judges and most executive officers were chosen by lot, and served for short periods; they were thus average citizens, like our jurymen, with the prejudices and lack of professionalism characteristic

The common Athenian assumption then is that the virtues have their place within the social context of the city-state. To be a good man will on every Greek view be at least closely allied to being a good citizen.