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Shifting and Permanent 'Philia' in Thucydides
Author(s): John R. WilsonSource: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Oct., 1989), pp. 147-151Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/643167 .
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8/9/2019 WILSON (Shifting and Permanent Philia in Thucydides)
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Greece
Rome,
Vol.
xxxvi,
No.
2,
October 1989
SHIFTING
AND PERMANENT
PHILIA IN THUCYDIDES
By
JOHN
R.WILSON
As
an ethical
principle, philia
represents
a continuum of attachment
that extends
in a stable
system
of
relationships
from the self to one's
immediate
family
and
friends and then outwards to one's
polis
and
one's
race.
Furthermore,
shared attachment
or
philia
also
involves
shared
hostility
or
echthra,
which can be as
permanent
as
philia.
But
already
in
Sophocles'
Ajax
the
idea
of
such fixed
relationships
is
seen as old-fashioned
and
incompatible
with
practical
life. In his
pretended transformation from a rigid adherence to the principles of
permanent
philia
and
permanent
echthra
(particularly
the
latter)
to
the
flexible
morality
of
an
'organization
man',
the
hero
realizes
that
'we
must hate
our
echthros
only
so
far,
since he
may
become
our
philos
again
later,
and
I am
only ready
to do so much to
aid and assist
a
philos,
since
he
may
not
remain
a
philos
forever
...'
(672-81).1
In
Thucydides'
world,
which is ruled
primarily
by
motives of self-
interest and
fear,
shifting
philia
of
this kind needs
no
justification.
It
is
spelled
out
very clearly
by
the Athenian
Euphemus
in his
diplomacy with the people of Camarina:
When a
man
or
a
city
exercises absolute
power,
the
logical
course is the
course
of
self-interest,
and ties of blood exist
only
when
they
can be relied
upon:
one
must
choose
one's
friends and enemies
according
to
the circumstances of each
particular
occasion.
(6.85.1)
Naturally
in this case the
particular
occasion demands a
relationship
of
philia
with the
people
of
Camarina.
The
frankness of
Euphemus
accords
with that of
the Athenians at
Melos,
and
as
a
principle
of
behaviour between
city
states the
pursuit
of
power
above
all
else is
recognized by the Syracusan statesman Hermocrates as a fact of life
which
cannot be blamed but
only guarded against (4.61.5).
But the
examples
of
Alcibiades and
Phrynichus
show
what can
happen
to the
polis
itself when
shifting
philia
is
applied
to
politics
at
the
personal
level. In
Thucydides'
view,
one of
the
things
that most
distinguished
Pericles
from his
successors was
the
overriding
steadi-
ness
and unselfishness
of
his
patriotism
(2.65).
In
this
matter,
the
contrast between
Pericles
and
Alcibiades
could
not
be
greater.
Alcibiades
refuses
to
distinguish
between his own
person
and the
polis.
The
confusion is
already
evident in
his
speech
before the
Sicilian
campaign.
His
private
extravagance,
whether at home or
abroad,
had
the beneficial
effect
of
making
the
power
of
Athens
seem
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148
SHIFTING AND
PERMANENT
PHILIA
IN THUCYDIDES
even
greater
than
it
actually
was. But in
his definition of
patriotism,
to
philopoli,
there is no
doubt that
when there is a
conflict between
his
personal
advantage
and that of
the
city,
he chooses
the former. As an
exile he claims that what drives him to defect from Athens and join
the
Spartans
is the
wickedness of those who
force their
philoi
(their
fellow
citizens)
to
become their
enemies. In such
circumstances
the
duties of
patriotism
do
not
apply
-
indeed,
the
true
patriot
is not
the
one who
sits back
after
losing
his
country
but the one
who,
'in
his
passion,
attempts by any
means
available
to
regain
it'
(6.92.2ff.).
In contrast to
these
sophistries,
the selfishness of
Phrynichus
is
plain
and
unadorned.
Thucydides,
who
considers
him to
be consist-
ently intelligent
in
his initiatives
(8.27.2),
describes without
comment
a double act of betrayal. When his enemy Alcibiades seems likely to
return from
exile,
he
attempts
to
betray
him to
the
Spartan
admiral
Astyochus
as a traitor to the
Spartan
cause. He
justifies
this
betrayal
of
Athenian interests
on
the
grounds
of
personal
echthra:
'It
was
forgivable
that he
[Phrynichus]
should
plot
harm
against
a
man
who
was his
enemy,
even
if
it meant harm to his
country'
(8.50.2).
Alcibiades,
informed
of
the
betrayal, exposes Phrynichus
to the
Athenians.
Phrynichus responds by giving
vital
military
information
to
Astyochus
that
could
result
in
the destruction of the Athenians at
Samos.
Again
he
justifies
himself
on
the
grounds
of
personal
echthra,
for 'no one should blame him for
doing
this or
anything
else to
escape
being destroyed by
his
greatest
enemies'
(8.50.5).2
If
shifting
philia
needs
no
intellectual
justification,
permanent
philia
is
generally
unmasked as
hypocritical
or shown in
its violation.
In
political
terms,
permanent
philia/echthra
is
expressed mostly
in
terms of race. For
example
a
pretext
(but
not
the real
cause)
of
the
Athenian invasion of
Sicily
is
their racial
affinity
with the
dispossessed
people
of
Leontini.
They
act 'under the
specious
desire
of
helping
their kinsmen and their
newly
acquired
allies'
(6.6.1).
Such motives
are naturally dismissed as 'sophistries' by the Syracusan statesman
Hermocrates,
but Hermocrates himself is not above
speaking
of the
natural
hostility
between those of different
races.3
Political
reality,
however,
largely ignores
such
matters,
and the
catalogue
of
opposing
forces
at
Syracuse
is
structured
to
demonstrate this fact.
They
are
aligned
not
according
to
principles
of
right (dike)
or
race
(syggeneia)
but of
chance,
advantage,
or
necessity
(7.57.1).
There
is a
descending
scale from
willing
interracial conflict
(highly satisfactory)
to
willing
intraracial
conflict
(merely revolting).
Thus,
for
example,
Ionian
subjects of the Athenians, even if they are there by necessity, are
nevertheless
present
as
Ionians
against
Dorians
(a
mitigating factor).
Worse,
for
example,
is the lot of the Aeolians from
Lesbos,
who are
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SHIFTING AND
PERMANENT
PHILIA
IN
THUCYDIDES
149
forced
to
fight
against
their fellow
Aeolians in
Sicily.
Positively
suspect
is the
position
of the
Corcyreans,
who
willingly fight
both
their
mother
city,
Corinth,
and
their
sister
city, Syracuse,
but
who
hypocritically pretend the excuse of necessity (anagkei men ek tou
euprepous,
boulesei de
kata
echthos,
7.57.7).
The
Plataeans,
on
the
other
hand,
because of
the
extremity
of
their
situation,
can
justifiably
fight
their fellow
Boeotians out
of
hatred
(eikotos
kata
to
echthos,
7.57.5).
Lowest
on the
scale are
mercenaries
such
as the
Cretans,
who
go
against
the
Cretan
colony
of
Gela
'willingly
and for
pay' (7.57.9),
or
the
Arcadians,
who
hire
themselves out
to both
sides.
It
is
evident,
however,
that
such a
catalogue
does more
than
simply
unmask
the
hollowness of
racial
philia.
There is a
definite
moral
feeling, expressed in degrees of negativeness, that the line-up should
ideally
be on
racial
grounds.
Unnatural
encounters
such as
Aeolians
against
Aeolians
are either
revolting
or
pathetic.
In
the Melian
dialogue,
which is
suffused with
both
irony
and
pathos,
the
ideal of
race is
again
unmasked as
unreliable.
The
Melians
believe
that
their
kinship
(syggeneia)
with
the
Spartans
guarantees
an
active
support,
while
the
Athenians
are
confident
that,
however
scrupulous
the
Spartans
may
be in
their
dealings
with
each
other,
in
external
affairs
they
'are most
conspicuous
for
believing
that
what
they
like
doing
is
honourable
and
what
suits their
interest
is
just'
(5.105).
On
a still
higher
and
more
generalized
plane,
the
captured
Plataeans
discover
that
their
appeal
to
the
pan-Hellenic
feeling
of
the
Persian
Wars
fifty years
earlier is no
longer
meaningful.
In
a
pathetic
appeal
that is
undercut
by
the
political
realities of
the
present,
they
invoke
the
Spartan
dead
on
the
battlefield of
Plataea
not
to
allow
them to
be
subject
to
the
Thebans
and,
as
the
Spartans'
greatest
philoi
(in
terms of
a
permanent
philia
established
by
the
events
of
479
B.C.),
not to
be
handed
over to
the
Spartans'
greatest
enemies
(in
terms of the permanent echthraestablished at the same time [3.59.2]).
Whatever the
Spartan
dead
may
have
felt,
the
Spartan
living
consult
their
present
interests
on
the
principle
of
shifting
philia.
In
the
case of
the
Melians
and
the
Plataeans,
permanent
philia
is
treated
with
a
certain
pathos
laced
by
grim
realism.
In
relations
between
cities
permanence
is
a
luxury
that
proves
inconvenient to
the
strong
and
costly
to
the
weak.
But
in
those
scenes of
confusion
where
permanent
philia
is
violated
by
members of
the
same
social
group,
pathos
is
intensified
by
horror.
Such events may be purely accidental, as in the night battle on
Epipolae
at
Syracuse,
where in
the
tumult
philoi
combat
philoi,
citizens
citizens
(7.44.7),
or
as
in
the sea
battle at
Sybota,
where
Corin-
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150
SHIFTING
AND
PERMANENT PHILIA
IN THUCYDIDES
thians kill their own
men
out
of
ignorance
(tous
hauton
philous
...
agnoountes
ekteinon,
1.50.1).
Usually, though,
the
violation
of
philia
within a
society
is
deliberate,
and
its cause is
some unbearable
pressure or necessity, such as plague, civil war, or crushing defeat.
The outbreak
of
plague
at
Athens induced
a
breakdown of
normal
behaviour that included the
indifference
of
family
members
(oikeioi)
to
the
sufferings
of
victims,
who
were
generally
abandoned.
There
were,
however,
some who out of a
sense
of
virtue and
shame insisted
on
visiting
their
philoi,
but
they
soon
contracted the disease them-
selves and
perished
(2.51.5).
In the
course
of civil
war at
Corcyra,
even the closest
family
ties
are
regularly
violated. 'As
usually happens
in such
situations',
remarks Thucydides, 'people went to every extreme and beyond it:
there were fathers
who
killed their sons .
.
.'
(3.81.5).
In
the
vicious
partisanship
that
reigned, 'family
ties
(to
syggenes)
were
weaker
than
party membership
(to hetairikon),
since
party
members were more
ready
to
go
to
any
extreme
for
any
reason
whatsoever'
(3.82.6).
But
the
most
tragic example
of
violated
philia
in
Thucydides
occurs in
the
narrative
of the final
departure
of
the Athenian
army
from
Syracuse.
Immediately
before their ultimate naval
defeat,
Nicias had
appealed
to
his men's
self-pride, family pride,
and
patriotic
feeling
and had
indulged
in
'old-fashioned talk about
women, children,
and ancestral
gods'
(7.69.2).
But after the
defeat,
such
feelings
of
philia
had to be
vigorously suppressed.
In
breaking
camp
the
army
had to
violate the
sacred
duty
of
due burial: 'The dead were
unburied,
and when
any
man
recognized
one
of his
friends
lying
among
them,
he was filled
with
grief
and fear'
(7.75)
-
a blend
of
emotions
comparable
to
Aristotle's
pity
and
fear. Even
worse,
though,
was the violation of the
rights
of the
living:
The
living
who,
whether
sick or
wounded,
were
being
left
behind,
caused
more
pain
than did the dead to those who were still
alive,
and
were more
pitiable
than the lost.
Their
prayers
and their lamentations made the rest feel
impotent
and
helpless,
as
they begged to be taken with them and cried out aloud to every single friend or
relative
whom
they
could
see;
as
they hung
about the necks of those who had shared
tents
with
them
[i.e.
were
joined
in
ties
of
hospitality]
and
were now
leaving.
They
followed after them as far
as
they
could
and,
when their
bodily
strength
failed
them,
reiterated their cries to heaven
and
their lamentations as
they
were left behind.
The
pressures
that the
sick
apply
to
their friends
and
relatives
in 413
B.C.
resemble the
appeals
in
Sophocles' tragedy
of
409
B.C.
of
the
crippled
Philoctetes
to the
philia
of
Neoptolemus
not to
abandon
him
(Ph. 468ff.).
Thucydides
underlines the
tragic
nature
of this
departure
by recalling the auspicious start to the whole affair (7.75.7). In that
departure
from the Piraeus in
415,
just
two
years
before,
the whole
population
of Athens had been there
for the
send-off:
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SHIFTING AND
PERMANENT
PHILIA
IN
THUCYDIDES
151
Those who
were natives of
the
country
all
had
people
to send off
on their
way,
whether
friends or relatives or
sons,
and
they
all came full
of
hope
and full of
lamentation t
the same
time.
(6.30)
The friends or relatives who are sent off correspond to the friends
and
relatives
who,
in
the
same
ascending
order of
philia,
are
appealed
to
by
the
sick
in
the anastasis from
Syracuse.
Our
review of
philia
in
Thucydides
reveals a
typical
complexity
of
attitude. In
relationships
between
cities it
is
merely
a
matter
of
convenience,
to
be
assumed or
discarded
according
to
circumstance.
But even
in such
relationships
this
hardnosed
attitude
may
not
really
benefit
the
players
involved. In
an
interesting plea
for
Sicilian
unity
in
the face of
Athenian
expansionism,
Hermocrates
suggests
that
strife between cities can at times be as fatal as strife within them:
We
should realize
that internal
strife
(stasis)
s
the main
reason for
the
decline of
cities,
and will be so
for
Sicily
too if
we,
the
inhabitants,
who
are all
threatened
together,
still
stand
apart
rom
each
other,
city
against
city. (4.61.1)
Certainly
there could
be no
question
about
the
dangers
of
internal
strife,
to
which the
unrestricted
practice
of
shifting
philia
by
such
individuals
as
Alcibiades
or
Phrynichus
contributed.
It must
be
admitted,
though,
that
Thucydides
rarely
criticizes
the
single-minded
pursuit
of
self-interest at
any
level. It
is
only
in
moments of dire distress, when traditional values are actively violated,
that he
passionately
asserts
their
validity.
Paradoxically,
he
comes
closest to
being
a
moralist in
those
very
passages
in
which
he
records
the death of
morality.
NOTES
1.
For
philia
in
Ajax
Bernard
Knox's
'The
Ajax
of
Sophocles',
HSCP 65
(1961),
1-37
is still
the best
discussion.
See
recently
Simon
Goldhill,
Reading
Greek
Tragedy
(Cambridge,
1986),
pp.
85-88.
2.
These
twin
self-justifications
are
considered
by
Anthony
Andrewes
(A
Historical
Commentaryon Thucydides,Vol. 5 ad 8.50.2 and 5) as a mark of Thucydides' own unease at the
high
praise
of his
intelligence.
There
is,
however,
no
reason to
think
this.
There is no
reason,
either,
to
think that
Phrynichus'
second
treachery
is
somehow
pretended (so Grote,
Brunt,
Delebecque,
and
others,
but
see
Andrewes ad
8.50.5).
Plutarch
(Alc.
25.9),
whose account
is
clearly
based on
Thucydides,
calls
Phrynichus'
second
approach
to
Astyochus
an
attempt
'to
cure
one evil
by
a
greater
evil'.
3.
See
Jacqueline
de
Romilly,
'Amis
et
ennemis
au
cinquieme
si cle
avant
J.C.'
in
Philias
Charin ...
Festschrift
E.
Manni,
vol. 3
(Rome,
1980),
pp.
741-6.