The household in Isocrates’ political thought

The long-lived Isocrates (436–338BCE) is all but forgotten among political theorists, effaced from surveys in political thought currently taught at North Atlantic universities and absent from political theory publications (on this point, see also Bloom, 1955: 3; Hariman, 2004: 230). This despite his position as the head of a school of philosophy in democratic Athens, responsible for educating future officeholders across the Greek world, and, not least for political scientists, the rediscovery in the Renaissance of Isocrates’ To Nicocles and Nicocles as exemplars of the ‘mirrors for princes’ genre we typically associate with Erasmus and Machiavelli. ¹ Nonetheless, scholars who have attended to Isocrates have shown that his political thought has a lot to teach us about the nature of individual leadership, and even about leadership in a democracy (Balot, 2006, 2014; Poulakos, 1997; Tamiolaki, 2018). ² In this article, I analyze the role the household (oikos) plays in Isocrates through an exegesis of his letters to his erstwhile student and current monarch of Salamis of Cyprus, Nicocles. Isocratean political thought, it turns out, treats private and public domains as continuous with one another, regarding participation in political institutions as neither necessary nor sufficient to achieving good political judgment.

In the first section I build outwards from a central concept in Isocratean thought, doxa, to argue that the speeches of advice and praise known as the Cyprian Orations double as counsels to Athenian democracy, making them worthy of our attention. ³ I offer reasons why Isocrates would counsel Athens through speeches addressed to a monarch and show that he is sanguine about the private judgment of his fellow Athenians. Building upon scholarship which maintains that the household was not replaced by the city (polis) in the fourth-century BCE, I argue in the next section that the household features – and ought to feature – in the opinions and judgments of the ruler's subjects. The household offers its virtuous ancestors as competitors for living descendants with whom they ought to be judged; as the source of public outlay, household wealth ought to be displayed without ostentatiousness; and, as a space of private behavior, the household can and ought to be used as public evidence of its master's moderation. I conclude my argument with a challenge to an existing interpretation of the relationship between the few and the many as a contract; rather, this relationship is better characterized through the metaphor of service (therapeia) drawn from the household.

Counsels to Athens: The Cyprian Orations

A central concept in Isocratean political thought is the polysemic Greek word doxa meaning opinion, judgment, belief, appearance, glory, and reputation. Its importance is connected to Isocrates’ assessment of human nature. In the Antidosis (c.353BCE) or mock defense of his life, he writes: ‘Since human nature cannot attain knowledge (epistêmên) that would enable us to know what we must say or do, after this I think the wise are those who have the ability to reach the best opinions (doxais) most of the time, and philosophers are those who spend time acquiring such an intelligence as quickly as possible’ (Isocrates, 2000: 15.271). These opinions (doxais) derive from the verb dokein, meaning to seem or to appear; thus, the doxa of an individual or a city is the way he or it appears to others. The Athenian Assembly employed the verb form in its enactment formula: edôxe tô dêmô, meaning ‘the people have opined that…’ or ‘the people have judged…’. Doxa, then, expresses the power of the many in a democracy but is also, as I will show, critical to a regime which relies on willing, judging subjects such as monarchy. It mediates, in other words, the relationship between the few and the many in these regimes. ⁴

Isocrates pays special attention to doxa-as-reputation. ⁵ Reputation may be rendered in a positive or approving way with the noun eudoxia; an agent or object which is eudokimos or eudoxon has good repute. An elite member himself, in the Panegyricus (380BCE) Isocrates puts his own reputation (tês doxês tês emautou) forward as a standard by which the many might judge him (Isocrates, 2004: 4.14). More generally, elites should pursue a reputation for being noble and good because it adds luster to their actions and makes their speeches more persuasive than the usual forms of proof (Isocrates, 2000: 15.280; cf. Alexiou, 2020: 125). ⁶ As he puts it in his letter To Demonicus (c.370BCE): ‘the virtuous fear disrepute (adoxian) during their lives’ (Isocrates, 2000: 1.43, trans. modified); elites like Demonicus ought to realize that ‘the many (polloi) are ignorant of the truth and look only to reputation (doxan)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 1.17). Even the most powerful of monarchs cannot ignore reputation: ‘you must not look down on the many, and you must not consider your reputation among them unimportant (chrê de mê kataphronein tou plêthous, mêde para mikron hêgeisthai to para pasin eudokimein)’, Isocrates counsels the Macedonian king Philip II in 346BCE. ‘Rather, understand that you will have only a great and noble reputation (doxan) which is good and great and worthy of yourself and of your ancestors (progonois) and of the achievements of your line when you have made all the Greeks feel the same way about you as the Spartans feel about their kings, or your friends feel about you’ (Isocrates, 2004: 5.79–80, trans. modified). Such advice links reputation to lineage (progonois); we will see how ancestral achievement is used normatively in the Cyprian Orations to justify Nicocles’ claim to holding office, implying that the context of public judgment regarding ‘a great and noble reputation’ is an elite member's household.

This presupposes that the public can fulfill its role as judge. Isocrates grants as much, but with a qualifier: the Athenian many can exercise good judgment as private citizens rather than political officeholders. In Against the Sophists (c.390BCE), Isocrates both applauds the judgment of private citizens (tôn idiôtôn) when ‘they consider […and] see that those who teach wisdom’ fall short, and seconds their contempt towards them; these citizens also discern that ‘those who follow their own opinions (doxai) live more harmoniously and are more successful’ (Isocrates, 2000: 13.7–8). The many, moreover, acknowledge the distinction between private and public, but go about it the wrong way. In On the Peace (355BCE) Isocrates argues that even though Athenians realize that flatterers harm private matters (epi tôn idiôn), they welcome their advice about public things (epi tôn koinôn) (Isocrates, 2004: 8.4).

Accepting that elites and the many alike can heed Isocrates’ advice, I argue that in the trilogy of letters known as the Cyprian Orations, made up of Evagoras (370–365BCE), To Nicocles (374BCE), and Nicocles (372–365BCE), the author counsels both his former student, the monarch Nicocles of Salamis and his fellow Athenians. The texts and existing scholarship give us grounds for such a hypothesis. The epideictic encomium Evagoras is addressed in the first instance to Nicocles, the son of the homonymous, deceased monarch, and now king of Salamis in eastern Cyprus. Nightingale reminds us that ‘this kind of encomium is directly concerned with contemporary political life’ (Nightingale, 1995: 100) and Alexiou describes it as ‘an open letter’ to the Athenian public (Alexiou, 2015: 48). The didactic To Nicocles is also highly suggestive of a wider audience. Athenian ideals ground its ‘protreptic to good government’ (Usher, 1973: 51), its content already familiar to ‘the enormous multitude of ordinary people (to plêthos) and rulers’, as Isocrates himself admits (Isocrates, 2000: 2.40; see also Morgan, 2003). Defending his way of life to Athenian judges in the Antidosis, Isocrates reads an excerpt from To Nicocles, for this is an oration intended to benefit the monarch and ‘also make my principles (ton tropon ton hemautou) clear in the quickest way… it will make clear how I normally (hon tropon eithismai) deal with ordinary citizens (idiôtais) and rulers’ (Isocrates, 2000: 15.69). Finally, in the Nicocles Isocrates puts his words in the mouth of the monarch himself. Nicocles justifies his rule by arguing for the virtues of monarchy and his rightful claim to office ‘on account of my earliest ancestors’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.12–3.13). The alternate title of the speech, ‘Cyprians (Kuprioi)’, refers to its addressees or the monarch's subjects, its justificatory character presuming a broad audience, as does the critique of democracy it includes (Isocrates, 2000: 3.20).

If, then, Isocrates’ counsels are an attempt to improve Athenian democracy, what makes monarchies suitable to critiquing democracies? Isocratean political thought suggests two, connected reasons. The first is a contrast between these two regimes regarding the distribution of reputational judgments. Monarchies clearly and distinctly identify the reputational subject in their single elite rulers who seek a good reputation to rule over willing subjects, while what sets this regime apart from others is its capacity to give everyone their due and to successfully identify the virtuous among the citizens (see Isocrates, 2000: 2.16; 3.15–6; 9.42 and 9.67). The second reason is regime-independent: elites who occupy political office ought to be subject to a strict or greater than ordinary judgment (doxa). The monarch can and must show himself to deserve a reputation greater than that sought by the ordinary man. Isocrates draws a parallel between the ruler's motivational state and that of his citizens, telling Nicocles to ‘Rule yourself no less than others, and realize that it is most kingly if you are enslaved by no pleasure, but rule all your desires better than the citizens’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.29; see 9.81). Thus, when Nicocles in propria persona asks his subjects to ‘Abstain not only from wrongdoing, but from practices which necessarily create suspicion’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.54), he must be the first to do so. Monarchs, it seems, are prime candidates for the scrutiny of the Athenians.

Correspondingly, the many could benefit from speeches addressed to a monarch because their democracy cannot even identify the subjects of reputational judgments, never mind hold them accountable. In the Antidosis Isocrates characterizes the democracy of his time as a turbid flood in which correct reputational judgments are difficult to make and sustain: ‘For Athens is so large and the multitude of people living here is so great, that the city does not present to the mind an image easily grasped or sharply defined, but, like a turbid flood, whatever it catches up in its course, whether men or things, in each case it sweeps them along every which way, and sometimes attaches to them a reputation inappropriate to them (dia gar to megethos kai to plêthos tôn enoikountôn ouk eusunoptos estin oud’ akribês, all’ hôsper cheimarrous, hopôs an hekaston hupolabousa tuchê kai tôn anthrôpôn kai tôn pragmatôn, houtô katênegke, kai doxan eniois tên enantian tês prosêkousês periethêken)’ (Isocrates, 1980: 15.172, trans. modified). It is because the city itself is so large, large enough to accommodate a multitude of people, that capturing Athens in an image is difficult. Undeterred, Isocrates tries his hand at a simile of the turbid flood (hôsper cheimarrous). The turbidity of the flood represents the unclarity (oud’ akribês) of the image which Athens presents, while the fact of it being a flood implies both its irresistibility and the suddenness by which such judgments are made and unmade. Indeed, a flood is very hard to capture with the naked eye (ouk eusunoptos) and outside of human control, a force that sweeps both men and things along randomly. ⁷ The upshot is that reputations are misallocated, with those meriting good reputations getting bad ones and vice-versa.

A skeptical reader who agrees that Isocrates seeks to improve Athenian democracy might still wonder about the historical bases of my attempt to treat the Cyprian Orations as sites of democratic critique. Perhaps I make too much of writings typically considered peripheral to Isocrates’ political thought and which are best treated as exercise pieces for students at his school. Two things might be said in response. A major piece of evidence which allows us to hypothesize that advice to tyrants doubles as advice to democratic citizens is the analogy between the tyrant or monarch (turannos) and the demos. The former is a figure of the mythic past the latter celebrated, a figure with whom the many shared the characteristics of supremacy (Hoekstra, 2016) and unaccountability (Landauer, 2019). ⁸ The Persian monarch or Great King instantiated the tyrant in the Athenian imaginary; Cyrus, for example, is a man ‘the majority particularly admire’, Isocrates writes in the Evagoras (Isocrates, 2000: 9.37). As the association with the Persian monarchy suggests, the Athenians also defined themselves in contrast to the tyrant; theirs is a regime ‘which particularly detests despotic rule (turannidas)’, Nicocles says without identifying Athens by name (Isocrates, 2000: 3.24). The demos-tyrant analogy featured, then, in the Greek imagination ‘because it is “good to think with”‘ (Forsdyke, 2009: 262).

Not only does Isocrates ‘think with’ the demos-tyrant analogy, he also posits that Athenians are better at judging monarchies than they are their own regime; here is a second reason why we might expect him to address his fellows through the Cyprian Orations. In his plea to Athens to make peace with its erstwhile allies in 355BCE, and after pointing out that people are ready to undergo great suffering to attain monarchies (Isocrates, 2004: 8.111), he asks rhetorically whether, ‘when the best men with the greatest reputations (doxas megistas) lust for such evils, why should it surprise us that other people desire other things like these?’ (Isocrates, 2004: 8.113). He then turns to directly address his Athenian audience: ‘I am not unaware that you may accept my point about tyrannies but are irritated at hearing what I say about your empire. Your condition is the most shameful and lazy of all, for what you see (horate) in others [i.e. tyrants], you ignore in yourselves’ (Isocrates, 2004: 8.114). The Athenians fail to recognize how their own empire is akin to monarchical regimes they deride: ‘you thought that a naval empire was the greatest good, although it is no different [from a tyranny] in either the actions or the sufferings it causes’, Isocrates emphasizes (Isocrates, 2004: 8.115). Since Athenians judge monarchies rightly, even as they fail to do so in their own case, the Cyprian Orations are especially promising for demonstrating to them some truths about good judgment.

As we shall see in the next section, the household (oikos) is central to this demonstration. The household was a significant part of Athenian democratic citizenship, along with acting in the chorus at the theater or making decisions in the Assembly, while ‘Athenian parentage was a matter not only of familial but of political significance, both on the practical level of citizenship and on the symbolic level of national myth: the Athenians were the “children of the earth,” the “children of Athena,” the “children of Erechtheus,” the “children of Theseus”‘(Strauss, 1993: 10). Solon's sixth-century constitutional reforms made the conjugal relationship the core of the household, turning the intergenerational family into ‘a legally sanctioned reproductive institution’ (Lape, 2002–3: 119). Athenian law recognized individuals and households, the latter signifying both the family property managed by the household master (kurios) and ‘the hearth and religious ceremonies, including observances in honor of its dead ancestors’ (MacDowell, 1978: 85). A place of belonging, the household is therefore made up of kin relationships which extend across time but also non-kin, service relationships between master and servant or slave associated with wealth production and management (oikonomikê, see Xenophon, 1990:1.4 and Aristotle, 1998: 1253b23–4). ⁹ In the Cyprian Orations the monarch's household plays a threefold role in the relationship between the elite ruler and his subjects. First, as the locus of his ancestors and their achievements, it offers competitors to Nicocles to be surpassed and a known standard for his subjects to judge their ruler. Second, as the source of the monarch's public outlay, the household is a means by which Nicocles can appear magnificent; at the same time, however, he should be wary lest his subjects judge him ostentatious. And, third, Nicocles invites his subjects to judge his conjugal behavior, offering it as evidence of his moderation. Let us take each in turn.

The household in the Cyprian Orations

The household rests upon a web of relationships extending from the present into the past and future alike, being the origin of ancestors and the primary place where the dead are remembered. It sets standards for its head to meet and by which everyone else may judge him. Foxhall's observation that, given the high rate of mortality of household heads, the question facing an oikos was not that of continuity but of renewal (Foxhall, 1989; cf. Roy, 1999) is especially apt for the circumstances of the new monarch. Is Nicocles, his subjects would ask, capable of renewing the household of Evagoras? In the Evagoras, Isocrates tells the new monarch that this involves an intergenerational struggle with his ancestors: ‘in addressing you and your family, I use as examples not others, but your own kin (oikeiois)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.77). He advises Nicocles to ‘manage the city just as the home of your ancestors: make the furnishings splendid and royal, but keep accurate account of expense so that you may earn a good reputation and still have enough (oikei tên polin homoiôs hôsper ton patrôon oikon, tais men kataskeuais lamprôs kai basilikôs, tais de praxesin akribôs, hin’ eudokimês hama kai diarkês)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.19, trans. modified)’. ¹⁰ Isocrates uses ‘household’ first as a verb whose subject is the city (oikei tên polin) and then as a noun to refer to the ancestral home (ton patrôon oikon) which models (homoiôs hôsper) Nicocles’ rule. The counsel to manage the city just as he manages the home of his fathers – to make its furnishings splendid and royal (lamprôs kai basilikôs) – is not about that which Nicocles does: his doings are explicitly assigned to the second half of the men…de clause which refers to keeping a close eye on his finances. Rather, the counsel is about the appearance of its furnishings (kataskeuais), namely, its buildings and the equipment of the citizens, which will enable Nicocles to win a good reputation among his subjects. From this we might infer that the freedom of the monarch to make his furnishings splendid and royal is constrained by considerations of reputation and money: on the one hand, he can spend money to earn a good reputation; on the other, by doing so, the monarch can run out of money, thus inviting a diminution in reputation. The absence of a space where the people assemble and are empowered in a monarchy – a very deliberate absence as one historian argues (Simonton, 2017:140) – means that everywhere and all at once the ruler is on display, inviting the judgment of his citizens: the city's furnishings are a direct reflection of his rule.

In the To Nicocles, Isocrates contrasts reputation and wealth to the detriment of the latter, simultaneously shedding light on the role of the ancestors. A good reputation (doxan kalên) is a more valuable inheritance to bequeath than great wealth (Isocrates, 2000: 2.32). First, wealth is mortal but a good reputation is immortal. Second, while a good reputation can bring wealth, the opposite is not true: ‘a good reputation cannot be bought by wealth’. Third, both base and superior men can possess wealth, but only the latter can have a good reputation (Isocrates, 2000: 2.32). Each of these points sets up as judges those who grant reputation – the many – urging them to discount the trappings of wealth. The first because the possessions of the wealthy are perishable; the second because wealth cannot be the basis of a good reputational judgment; and the third, an extension of the second point, because good reputations track only superior characters, whereas wealth tracks both the base and the superior. To say that a good reputation comes from excellence is to make the excellent dependent upon the judgment of their fellows. Like wealth, the mortal ancestors have perished, yet their example remains immortal, as was their intention. Ancestors are worshiped not on account of the wealth they amassed, but because their achievements are kept alive by their living descendants who make worthy competitors of them. Noble and ambitious men pursue reputation (doxês) and live to be remembered after they die, Isocrates writes in the Evagoras (Isocrates, 2000: 9.3). The competition with the ancestors, especially those most immediate to the contemporaries, runs through the household where they are memorialized.

Yet, the relationship between the living and the dead is not without its problems. It requires not one but three different addresses to Nicocles to persuade the son that his father is a worthwhile role-model and competitor. The encomium to Evagoras, descendant of the Trojan war hero Teucer and father of Nicocles, is in some tension with the words spoken in propria persona by the monarch, who tells his subjects that he ‘found the royal treasury empty of wealth and our kingdom impoverished’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.31) when he came to power in 374BCE; he only devotes one paragraph to his father Evagoras and Teucer, ‘the founder of our family’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.28). ¹¹ Still, the new monarch cannot do without the legitimizing force of the Evagorids. A persuasive aim of the speech, Nicocles says as if to anticipate an existing objection to his rule, is to ‘show that I hold this office not unlawfully or as a usurper, but piously and justly on account of my earliest ancestors, my father, and myself’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.13). In the encomium for his father, Isocrates tells Nicocles that he should aim to ‘become the person it is fitting you should be’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.81, trans. modified). And when the monarch speaks in his own voice, Nicocles appeals to the virtues of the Evagorids to motivate a normative argument for reputation: ‘If some of our forbearers were reputed (eudokimêsan) for these virtues [of moderation and justice], I think that it is appropriate for me to attain the same reputation (doxês) as they’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.30, trans. modified). Descendants are judged as worthy of outstanding ancestors through their display.

Nicocles will be motivated to emulate his ancestors, not merely because they are his lineage, but also because doing so will elicit his subjects’ admiration and goodwill (eunoian), which is critical to the physical security of the monarch (Isocrates, 2000: 2. 21). ¹² Public outlay is a principal way in which Nicocles can invite his citizens’ judgment; as the source of wealth, inherited and produced, the household determined the size and extent of such outlay. This is the second function of the household in the Cyprian Orations. Public outlay, Isocrates advises, ought not ‘demonstrate magnificence [through] short-lived displays of extravagance’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.19); Nicocles should be restrained ‘as kings should be…so that those who see you think you deserving of power because of your appearance (hin’ hoi men horôntes dia tên opsin axion se tês arches einai nomizôsin)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.32, trans. modified). As he had done in On the Peace (Isocrates, 2004: 8.114, quoted above), Isocrates characterizes the judgment of the many as a judgment by sight (horôntes dia tên opsin) and draws attention to the monarch's appearance. For even if the ruler is born into an august ancestral home and a family which boasts rulers, this is not sufficient to make him worthy of political office in the judgment of the many (axion se tês arches einai nomizôsin).

Public outlay alone cannot purchase a good reputation and risks giving the impression of ostentation. The Evagoras opens with the worry that the young monarch has fallen into this trap: ‘Nicocles, as I saw (horôn, ô Nikokleis) you honor your father's tomb not only with a multitude of beautiful gifts, dances, songs, and gymnastic contests, and in addition, with competitions involving horses and triremes, leaving no room for anyone to outdo you in these matters…’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.1). The Greek text begins with the word for sight (horôn) followed by the addressee's name as if Isocrates occupies the position of a judge at the monarch's public outlay in honor of his ancestor. Outlays such as these ‘are (merely) a sign of wealth’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.4); their extravagance may be judged ostentatious, an indication that the young monarch's luxurious upbringing has corrupted him. The admiration for which Nicocles is eligible on account of Evagoras having regained political office for his family (Isocrates, 2000: 9.66 and 9.72), cannot exhaust itself in a single appearance or through expensive outlay. Nicocles appears to have learned this lesson and advises his subjects to ‘not rush to be wealthy before being seen (dokein) to be good’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.50).

As the source of wealth-production, the monarch's household is tied directly to his attempts to appear splendid (lampros). In a climactic moment which caps the transition of Evagoras from a private individual to a public officeholder, Isocrates says that ‘no mortal, demigod, or immortal will be found to have acquired kingship in a finer, more splendid (lamproteron), or more pious manner than Evagoras’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.39, trans. modified). The claim draws attention to the importance of splendor (lamprotês). Unlike clothing and jewelry which require light to shine, the splendor of monarchs shines when seen. ¹³ Public outlay must therefore be revelatory, unlike that which Isocrates suspects Nicocles of engaging in and emphatically illustrated by Alcibiades son of Cleinias. ¹⁴ A man who ‘was highly regarded because of his distinguished ancestry’ (Thucydides, 2013: 5.43.2) and who aspired to acts which would motivate future generations (Thucydides, 2013: 6.16.5), Alcibiades reminds the Athenians of the honor his success at the chariot races in Olympia brought to their city. In his speech against the general Nicias and in favor of the Sicilian expedition, he claims that his choregic activity at home made him shine (lamprunomai, Thucydides, 2013: 6.16.3, cf. lamprotêti at Thucydides, 2013: 6.16.5). Such grand acts encourage Athenians to divorce private from public judgment – to judge him by his public outlay and success at the games rather than his way of life – since it was common knowledge that Alcibiades’ behavior with respect to his and other households was blameworthy, mistreating his own wife and fathering illegitimate children (see Pseudo-Andocides, 1998: 4.13–4.15, 23). The ‘general lawlessness and self-indulgence of his lifestyle’ (Thucydides, 2013: 6.15.4) is in stark contrast with Nicocles’ purported treatment of his wife and his insistence on legitimate offspring (see Isocrates, 2000: 3.36 and 42). ¹⁵ Such outlays do not do justice to the philosophical training a monarch ought to undergo daily (Isocrates, 2000: 9.80–9.81). ¹⁶ Monarchs, Isocrates tells Nicocles, ‘are required to train their souls as no athlete trains his body – for none of the public festivals offers the sort of challenge you undertake each day’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.11). What the monarch habituates himself to enjoy and what makes him appear better are one and the same. Any extravagance he allows himself is regulated by the king ‘mak[ing] a habit of enjoying those activities which will improve you and make you appear better to others’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.29).

Habituation and daily activity refer us to the third role of the household: a private space which may be offered as evidence of the ruler's moderation. For if a good reputation stems from treating the city like his household, the reverse also holds: to gain a good reputation Nicocles must treat his household like his city. He tells his subjects that, ‘those who rule correctly should try to govern in harmony not only the cities (poleis) which they rule but also their own homes (oikous) and the places in which they dwell’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.41; also observed by Atack, 2020, 126 citing Nicocles, 3.21). Although reputation could be distinguished from the private pleasures the monarch pursues, as the career of Alcibiades suggests, Nicocles refuses to do so. He tells his subjects that, ‘I realized that those who are just toward the citizens achieve a good reputation among the many (tois pollois eudokimousin), even if they seek pleasures from somewhere else. But’, he goes on, ‘I wanted to remove myself as far as possible from such suspicions, and at the same time make my character a model for the rest of the citizens, knowing that the many (to plêthos) generally live their lives in the practices in which they see (horôsi) their leaders spending time’ (Isocrates, 2000: 3.37, trans. modified; cf. Isocrates, 2000: 7.22). The monarch understands that he is under the surveillance of the many (to plêthos) from whose sight (horôsi) he cannot escape; as an elite member he properly seeks to hold himself to a stricter than ordinary standard of judgment. In fact, he invites his subjects to observe his most private behavior. A man like Alcibiades could never issue such an invitation, for it would draw attention to how his private life ran afoul of expressed Athenian values.

Far from treating the household as a place apart from public life, and given ‘that all men value their own children and wives highly and are particularly angry at those who wrong them’, Nicocles judges that ‘many private citizens and rulers (kai tôn idiôtôn kai tôn dunasteusantôn) are destroyed’ by the violence (hubrin) which comes from wrongs done to wives and children, which is to say, from injustices concerning household relationships (Isocrates, 2000: 3.36). ¹⁷ He proceeds to invite his subjects to observe his private behavior, offering his conjugal relationship as an outstanding example of his moderation (sôphrosunê) (Isocrates, 2000: 3.36), the very virtue by which those in power ought to be tested (Isocrates, 2000: 3.45). Husbands should refrain from transgressing the conjugal relationship and father offspring only from within the marriage, he counsels (Isocrates, 2000: 3.40 and 3.42, respectively).

The significance of what is said and done in the household to city rule is confirmed from the perspective of the citizens: the household is the site where the ruled express themselves without fear and reveal their true thoughts about their ruler. Isocrates strongly suggests that publicly given honors are an unreliable measure of willing subjects, since it is hard to tell whether they issue from fear. He tells Nicocles in the imperative mood: ‘Consider the truest honors to be not those you receive through fear in public (en tô phanerô), but the admiration that people express in private for your intelligence more than for your good fortune when they are at home’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.30, trans. modified). Beginning from what is publicly seen (en tô phanerô), Isocrates directs the monarch to the context in which the many give their approval. Specifically, publicly-given honors may be motivated by fear and thus epistemically questionable – what people say in private is a better measure of worth. And when admiration is articulated in private, it could be on account of the monarch's luck rather than his intelligence. Nicocles’ subjects might not consider him praiseworthy and public admiration, such as that expressed at extravagant outlays, may be a false friend. Since he cannot have access to the private judgment of his citizens, the monarch is to understand that his capacity to verify the extent their willingness to obey is limited. What he can do instead, Isocrates says, is to ‘show concern for the citizens' homes (tôn oikôn)…everything which belongs to the city's inhabitants belongs to those who rule well (hapanta gar ta tôn oikountôn tên polin oikeia tôn kalôs basileuontôn esti)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.21, trans. modified). This advice manifests in the Nicocles, when the monarch draws a parallel between his behavior and that of his subjects. He urges them to ‘behave toward others as you think I should behave toward you’ (Nicocles, 3.49) and crowns (kephalaion) his speech by advising them to ‘be disposed toward my rule as you think your subordinates should be toward you’ (Nicocles, 3.62). In both instances, the monarch calls upon the judgment of the citizens. ¹⁸

Service, not contract: The relationship between the few and the many in Isocrates

I have argued that the Cyprian Orations double as counsels to the monarch of Salamis and Athenian democrats alike, and that a close reading of these uncovers the threefold role the household plays in the judgment exercised by Nicocles and his subjects. I conclude my argument by showing how the description of the monarch's rule as a service captures the relationship between the few and the many more generally, challenging an existing interpretation of it as a contract.

In the fourth-century BCE, the language of service was used to describe this relationship (Brock, 1953: 154) and the textual evidence suggests the locution being of some import for Isocrates, whose theme is ‘the old problem of the relationship between a great personality and the masses, as they interacted within the framework of Greek democracy’ (Jaeger, 1971: 139). ¹⁹ In the Evagoras we read that the eponymous ruler was ‘democratic in the service of the people; public-minded in his government of the whole city-state (dêmotikos men hôn tê tou plêthous therapeia, politikos de tê tês poleôs holês dioikêsei)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 9.46, trans. modified). The construction (men…de) discloses that to be democratic (dêmotikos) is distinct from being public-minded (politikos): the latter applies to his government of the city, the former to an activity regarding the many (plêthous). Trading on therapeia as an activity which can be done well and to the benefit of the regime Isocrates urges the monarch in To Nicocles to love the people and the city: ‘do everything to rule [the people, to plêthos] in a way that gratifies them, knowing that…regimes which best serve the people last the longest (an arista to plêthos therapeuôsin)’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.15–16, trans. modified). ²⁰ Isocrates attributes privileged status to such counsel when he refers to it in the Antidosis, telling his fictional Athenian judges that ‘if whenever I speak with a king, I do so on behalf of his subjects (huper tou dêmou), I would surely exhort those who live under democracy to tend to the many (to plêthos therapeuein) (Isocrates, 2000: 15.70, trans. modified; cf. 1.36). This strongly suggests that it could be fruitful to apply Isocrates’ locution to the relationship between the few and the many in a democracy, thereby challenging an important interpretation of it by Poulakos.

For Poulakos, Isocrates seeks a revival of the ‘contract’ between the few and the many, a contract once present in the ancestral constitution which the author lauds in the Areopagiticus (c.355BCE), a speech coeval with the Social War (357–355BCE) and the further diminution in Athens’ reconstituted naval empire. Elites act as public servants who give counsel to the city, and the many reward them with lasting reputation (Poulakos, 2001: 75–6 and Poulakos, 2004: 62). Consistent with the democratic ideal of political equality (isonomia, see Isocrates, 2000: 7.20 and Thucydides, 2013: 3.82.8), Poulakos’ interpretation makes the parties to the contract into formal equals and is a useful counter to those who worry about the authoritarian overtones of Isocratean political thought (cf. Roberts, 1994; Simonton, 2017; Too, 1995). Moreover, the presupposition of Poulakos’ contract interpretation is correct: the few and the many are in a cooperative, rather than competitive, relationship. Yet, a metaphor drawn from the public realm of exchange falls short in capturing this relationship in Isocrates. Our findings, accompanied by evidence from the Areopagiticus, suggest three reasons why.

First, the exchange involved in a contract manifesting as trade or business (emporia) is a normatively undesirable attitude to governance. In the ancestral democracy, Isocrates writes, the many ‘regarded the care of the common interests not as a business, but as a public service’ (Isocrates, 2000: 7.25) rather than the pay-for-service transactions in Athenian courts and military enterprises among Isocrates’ contemporaries (see Isocrates, 2000: 7.82). Employing the demos-tyrant analogy, Isocrates elaborates how the fifth-century ancestors ‘recognized that the people, just like a monarch (ton men dêmon hôsper turannon), must appoint public officials, punish transgressors, and judge disputes and that those who had leisure and possessed adequate means should take care of common interests, as if they were servants (epimelêsthai tôn koinôn hôsper oiketas); that they should be praised for being just and be pleased with this honor; while those who govern badly should not be excused but should receive the harshest penalties. So how could anyone find a democracy more secure or more just than this, one which puts the most able people in charge of public matters and makes the people sovereign (dêmon kurion) over these?’ (Isocrates, 2000: 7.26–27). The many (dêmon), on this view, are sovereign masters (turannon…kurion) with three powers. First, they can appoint to public office the most resourceful among them, men who had the leisure and inclination to lead by making proposals to the Assembly or by serving in elected offices such as that of general. Second, the many can punish those ‘who govern badly’, such as shoddy counselors and incompetent generals. Third, the many have judicial power, being the arbiters of disputes when they act as judges both of their peers in courts and of orators who proffer competing advice in the Assembly. Those they appoint to office tend to the public good (epimelêsthai tôn koinôn) in a precise manner: like servants. The difference in capability which decides who occupies political office is dependent upon having enough leisure and means. Isocrates employs a simile drawn from relationships between non-kin within the household: a secure and just democracy makes the few ‘like servants (hôsper oiketas)’ who tend to the many, their masters (dêmon kurion).

Second, the contractual relationship Poulakos posits understates the role ancestors play in the tending of the many by elites, thereby pointing away from a signature feature of Isocratean political thought. As the Cyprian Orations suggest, and contrary to the practice in pre-democratic Athens to depict the dead as exalted (Garland, 2001: 12), the effort for the defense of the dead fell upon the living in Isocrates’ time. ²¹ In the Areopagiticus, Isocrates casts the ancestors as worthwhile rivals of the living, their democracy modeling a well-ordered relationship between the few and the many. ²² Drawing from the kin relationships in the household, Isocrates tells the Athenians that ‘I reproach those who come from noble stock and are only a little more decent than the exceptionally wicked and much worse than their fathers…I have the same view of public matters…we should be upset and discontent if we are worse than our ancestors. We must compete with their virtue’ (Isocrates, 2000: 7.72–73, trans. modified). Isocrates uses the Athenian ancestors in the same way he uses Nicocles’ father: they and Evagoras are the correct comparandum in judgment, not those who ‘are only a little more decent than the exceptionally wicked’. Such counsel is not born of nostalgia but is instead a recognition that ancestral achievement is the foundation upon which the fourth-century democracy is built and through which the solution to its current crisis must necessarily pass. ²³ The activity involved in therapeia captures Isocrates’ concern to preserve the ancestors in memory as exemplars of virtue, as something to which household members tend or restore and which the ancestral democracy performed rightly (Isocrates, 2000: 7.29). Otherwise, their normative pull and motivational efficacy upon the living loses its force.

Third, the relationship between the few and the many as therapeia has a feature which involves no exchange whatsoever and which is therefore entirely missed by a contract interpretation: good political rule tends to the everyday needs of the many. Isocrates writes in the Areopagiticus that ‘the most important point’ about the ancestral democracy was that ‘at that time no citizen went without life's necessities, and no one shamed the city begging from passersby, but now the needy outnumber those with means. And we can hardly blame them if they disregard public affairs and consider only how to get through each day’ (Isocrates, 2000: 7.83; see 7.40 and 7.61). Needful behavior in public is shameful for the city, but need in private life is not blameworthy. On Isocrates’ telling, no citizen of the ancestral democracy was poor, by contrast to contemporary Athens which finds itself shamed by outsiders on account of its poverty. ²⁴ Yet, because the compulsion of need focuses their attention on quotidian matters, Isocrates argues, these Athenians cannot be blamed for overlooking the public matter of their city's reputation. The ancestral regime permitted citizens to carry out ‘daily affairs justly and lawfully’ (Isocrates, 2000: 7.28). These men ‘judged happiness by sober government, that is, by the conduct of daily life, where no citizen lacked necessities (tên eudaimonian edokimazon…ek tou sôphronôs oikein kai tou biou tou kath’ hêmeran kai tou mêdena tôn politôn aporein tôn epitêdeiôn)’, as opposed to judging by ostentatious acts (alazoneiôn) such as processions or the financing of choruses (Isocrates, 2000: 7.53, trans. modified). There are three tests of happiness (tên eudaimonian edokimazon). The first is wise government, noted by the verb form of household (oikein), the second is daily life (tou biou tou kath’ hêmeran), and the third is no citizen being in need (tou mêdena tôn politôn aporein tôn epitêdeiôn). Beginning from the household, political judgment is founded in daily habits and constrained by need. ²⁵ As Isocrates counseled Nicocles, laws are secondary in the citizens’ education – first and foremost, it is the ‘the lack of luxury and the need to plan for one's livelihood each day’ (Isocrates, 2000: 2.2).

More would need to be said to establish that the relationship between the few and the many in Isocrates is properly understood as a therapeia of the latter by the former. Still, by drawing attention to the role the household plays in Isocratean political thought, I hope to have done enough to motivate a challenge to an influential presentation of this relationship. By treating private and public domains as continuous, Isocrates denies that participation in political institutions is either necessary or sufficient to achieve good political judgment. Treated as a framework for considering current democratic dilemmas, this proposal stands in contrast to contemporary democratic theories which argue that judgment should be restricted to public actions (Markovits, 2008), or which identify the lack of opportunity for citizens to engage in public decision-making as the cause for bad judgment in liberal democracy (Garsten, 2011). To the first an Isocratean would respond by taking seriously mere appearances across private and public domains, thus drawing attention to the impact that unequal relationships, which structure the former, have upon the freedom and equality that define the latter. To the second, an Isocratean would reply by leveraging good judgment made in private, searching for a way to extend it to public matters; far from being complacent, such a response includes an insistence on framing judgment using the ancestors in a poetic, normative way which understands citizenship intergenerationally and also motivates dissatisfaction with existing arrangements.