MAN, LIFE, AND SOCIETY

Bowra, C.M.  The Greek Experience. New York: Holt, 

     Rinehart, and Winston, 1969.

    For the Greeks there were four cardinal virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. It embodied what the Greeks admired in theory and sought in practice, and most of them would have thought that, if a man exercises these virtues and applies them to each situation as it arises, he does as much as can be expected of him.

      The list has no special authority, but it represents average opinion on character and conduct and is a fair guide to the stand­ards by which the Greeks judged each other and themselves. Originally, perhaps, the list looked at men from four different angles, physical, aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, and reflected the concept of the "four-square" man in all its fullness and balance. Physical courage was highly valued at all times by a people much given to war, and we cannot doubt that the average man would not trouble himself with niceties about its nature, but respond with admiration to its imaginative appeal. Temperance was largely a matter of style, of doing things without display or vulgarity, of behaving without arrogance. If it was highly regarded in aristo­cratic circles as an essential element in good manners, it was also something that Pericles praised in the Athenians: "Our love of what is beautiful does not lead us to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft." Justice is essentially of a moral quality, the natural tendency to obey the rules and laws of a civilized society and to treat other men fairly, and is well described by Simonides as "rendering to every man his due." It is primarily social in its application and was derived from the boundaries of a man's land and conveys metaphorically the notion that he should keep within his own sphere and respect that of his neighbor. Wisdom is certainly an intellectual quality. In early days it is applied to any activity of the mind and denotes skill in the arts, to say nothing of capacity for philosophy, science, or politics. Obviously it was not easy to find all four virtues equally prominent in a single man, but it was not impossible, and a respect for them certainly indicated a well-balanced view of what a man ought to be.

If the four virtues stood for an ideal of a balanced and controlled personality, their antithesis lay in those faults which destroy such a balance and work havoc both in individuals and in societies. In general it was thought that not only the individual virtues but their unity and balance were destroyed by hubris or arrogance. It might well reflect an inner lack of courage; it certainly meant a defiance of self-control and temperance; it led inevitably to in­justice in its disregard for the rights of others; it often ended in folly when its possessor thought that he could by unjust methods secure the impossible. The Greeks gave this vile eminence to arro­gance because, more than anything else, it defied their ideal of a harmonious and restrained self, and their deep political distrust of it was equaled by their moral condemnation. They saw that it grows with feeding and creates other evils as great as itself.

When we turn from the notion of the good man to that of the good life, it is clear that the word "good" has another sense. We may take as our text an Attic drinking-song which lays down the four best goods:

For a man health is the first and best possession,

Second best to be born with shapely beauty,

And the third is wealth honestly won,

Fourth are the days of youth spent with friends.

The Greeks prayed for health as the first of blessings because not only did the lack of it ruin happiness as they conceived it, but they were at the mercy of disease. Medicine had indeed begun to make an impressive appearance by the end of the sixth century, but though it approached its task in a strictly scientific spirit, it had much to learn and could not cure all evils in a society which had almost no hygiene and fell an easy victim to any new infection.

The desire for health was inextricably connected with the Greek cult of the body. This was essentially a religious activity because it was thought that through their bodies men resembled the gods, and the gods guided and guarded their development. The whole process of birth and growth was directed and watched by gods, and at each stage it was the young body that called for their care, whether it was strengthened at the beginning by being passed over a fire or later by being exercised in games and dances, or tested by initiation ceremonies. If health was the first of good things, it was because the gods gave it and fostered it in those whom they loved.

The belief in health passes imperceptibly into the belief in beauty, which is equally derived from the notion that through it men and women resemble the gods. Indeed, the Greeks could not think any physical form beautiful unless it was healthy. They had no morbid taste for decay, and old age was for them not beau­tiful but either impressive or pathetic. The beauty which they admired and celebrated with many statues of naked young men and well-clothed maidens was that of the body when it is passing into manhood or womanhood.

The Attic song names wealth as the third good. The Greeks enjoyed the pursuit of money as much as any men, and had an undoubted talent for it, but it was thought mean to treat it as an end in itself, nor were the rich respected just because they were wealthy. A normal attitude was that a good man needs money to help him to lead the good life, as Cephalus said to Socrates: "If it is true that a good man will not find it easy to endure old age and poverty together, no more will riches ever make a bad man contented and cheerful." It followed that the Greeks saw no virtue in poverty and regarded it as a condition which degrades those whose lot it is.

The fourth good named by the Attic song is to be young among friends, and what this means can be seen from the delight which Greek sculptors and painters take in representing the pastimes and indulgences of young men. They keep their bodies fit by wrestling, playing ball, practicing what looks very like hockey, jumping over sticks, and throwing the discus. They exercise horses in a field or listen, in unashamed dandyism, to a lyre-player.

The ancient Greeks believed that society was made up of two kinds of people—themselves and the barbarians. What distinguished Greeks from the barbarians was the polis, which is most often translated into English as "city-state," but it was far more than a geographical concept. The Greeks thought of the polis as a way of life. It was the particular way the Greeks gov­erned themselves, educated their children, produced their goods and services, and pursued their cultural life. In short, Greeks thought of the polis as the good society.  If the modern reader picks up a translation of Plato's Republic or Aristotle’s Politics he finds Plato ordaining that his ideal city shall have 5,000 citizens, and Aristotle that each citizen should be able to know all the others by sight. Plato is imagining a polis on the normal Greek scale; indeed he implies that many existing Greek city-states were too small—for many had less than 5,000 citizens. Aristotle contended that a polis of ten citizens would be impossible, because it could not be self-sufficient, and that a polis of a hundred thousand would be absurd, because it could not govern itself properly.

The entire life of the polis, and the relation between its parts, were much easier to grasp, because of the small scale of things. Therefore to say, "It is everyone's duty to help the polis" was not to express a fine sentiment but to speak the plainest and most urgent common sense.

Diagram and explain the Greek concepts of man, life, and society.