John M. Dillon (1) (1939–)

Covering some of the same ground of James Davidson’s Courtesans and Fishcakes, John Dillon expands a seminar series he gave at Trinity College, Dublin into a chatty and personal book, as if he were in conversation with a group of students. Although the title refers to “ancient Greece”, Dillon apologizes that he’s limited to ancient Athens – since that’s the only place with any documentation. He also apologizes for ancient Athens, noting that there were things about the world’s show more first democracy – slavery, pederasty, and the treatment of women – that make modern people uncomfortable.

Dillon’s sources are legal speeches, plays, and histories. One of his points is the Athenians had virtually nothing in the way of public records – no marriage certificates, no land titles, no proof of citizenship – so proof of these things depended on the testimony of witnesses – so it was important to have friends and allies who were willing to testify. (if slaves were involved, their testimony could only be accepted after torture; however, Dillon notes there’s no record of this ever being actually applied). There was also no office of public prosecutor; any Athenian adult male citizen could bring a case before a jury (which was also composed of Athenian adult male citizens). And there was no way to enforce a jury’s decision; again it was up to the victor to gather his friends and collect whatever judgment had been awarded.

Another case Dillion describes showing the importance of trusted friends concerns a case of adultery. While there’s often claimed to be an “unwritten law” in the US allowing an enraged husband to kill his wife’s lover if their caught in the act, it was actual a “written law” in ancient Athens. But it had to be done right then and there; if the man got out the window or even as far as the hearth, he was temporarily safe (he might still get the death penalty, but he’d have to be taken to court). So if you had reason to believe your wife was messing around on the side, you had to have some friends with you when you burst into the bedroom to testify justice was executed fair and square.

Interestingly enough, the woman got off; women were not considered smart enough to resist the blandishments of seducers. Divorce from an adulteress was mandatory, however, even if the husband forgave her; and he didn’t have to give her dowry back.

This segues into the theme that it wasn’t much fun to be a woman in Athens. Girl babies were frequently exposed at birth (Dillon notes the “lucky” ones were picked up by madams and raised to be prostitutes). Slave girls were entirely at the mercy of their masters. A slave could be freed – this was considered the “gentlemanly” thing to do for your old nanny, for example – but free girls commanded a premium in the brothels. A metic woman was the next step up; metics were “foreigners” living in Athens. The only way to be an Athenian citizen was to be born to Athenian parents; there was no way to be “naturalized” and marriage between a metic and a citizen was illegal. Sex wasn’t, of course, so a metic woman down on her luck could end up as a street or brothel prostitute – a porno - or, with effort and talent, become a live-in concubine – a pallakê – or even an independent courtesan – a hetaira. Finally, there were Athenian citizen women; these had some civil rights but they were exercised on their behalf by parents, guardians, or husbands. They could rarely end up on the sex trade; Dilllon speculates that the divorced adulteress mentioned above may have ended up that way if her family refused to take her back because of the disgrace. Of course, the expected route for an Athenian citizen girl was marriage; even that was a little dicey since one Athenian describes “breaking in” his very young wife using exactly the same word used for training a horse. A husband could divorce for grounds other than adultery simply by sending her back to her family, but in that case he had to give the dowry back. A wife could divorce a husband by appearing before the archon. I note with some irony that women from Sparta – usually seen as an autocratic state – seem to have more rights than women from democratic Athens ; according to The Spartans, Spartan women were expected to be literate, compete in games (with other women) – and adultery was more or less encouraged.

Homosexuality is another topic the Dillon dances around with a little. He notes – his words – “There were probably no more ‘true” homosexuals in Classical Athens then there are in modern society …”. However, it was apparently considered acceptable for a man, regardless of what his “true” sexual orientation was, to kidnap a boy – even a free one - take him somewhere outside the city, and rape him – and it was considered improper for the boy to enjoy the experience; some ancient authors discussing the subject decided “true love” could only be between a man and a boy, with only “vulgar love” between a man and a woman. Slave boys were always available, of course, and it was possible for a free man to be a “rent boy” or even a male courtesan – but an Athenian citizen who adopted such a role lost almost all his civil rights.

Dillon’s style makes this an enjoyable read. I’d note the reader is expected to know the basics of Classical Athenian history – who Socrates, Thucydides, and Pericles were and what the Peloponnesian War was about, for example. There’s a very basic map of Athens and some illustrations of typical Athenian houses. There are extensive, and useful footnotes, and a bibliography of both ancient and modern sources; however the index seems very sparse. show less

Sophistry has acquired a bit of a bad reputation over the millennia. The term is commonly used to characterize fallacious, shallow, or otherwise poor reasoning that has been gussied up with flowery, rhetorical ornamentation, often with the intent to deceive. Despite what Plato and Aristotle (to a lesser extent) might believe, however, that characterization is not warranted. Yes, there is a bit of verbal trickery and a bit of word play and maybe a bit of pandering to the audience, but show more considering that the sophists were teaching people how to publicly disclaim on matters of law and politics, there is no denying that speaking in a way that 1) grabs attention, 2) amplifies one character, 3) moves people to actions or beliefs, and 4) keeps people engaged is of paramount importance. There is little denying the utility of of what the sophists taught.

There are so many interesting figures profiled in this book. Among my favorites are Protagoras of Abdera ("Man is the measure of all things" and "No statement can be contradicted"), Prodicus of Ceos, Alcidamas of Elaea, and Gorgias of Leontini. Gorgias was particularly interesting as someone who cultivated a manner of speaking that incorporated elements of poetry into his speeches. The poetry made the speeches more engaging and enjoyable, often making the audiences happier and more agreeable, no matter the content. Poetry does not hold quite the same sway today, but this insight is no less valuable -- consider how many people get their news from comedy shows and how dressing up public information in the form of comedy does all the things sophists taught. More insidiously, consider how dressing up information in the form of inflammatory political and conspiratorial rhetoric achieves the same thing. Certainly there is value to seeing into the art by which people are made to listen and act.

The collection itself is nicely done. Because much of what is handed down to us about the sophists comes from text fragments, it is incumbent on an editor to stitch the fragments together in a coherent way John Dillon and Tania Gergel do a very good job of linking the primary fragments together and contextualizing (and sometimes editorializing) on secondary materials that help illuminate the primary.

- a proud sophist show less

I have to say that I did find this book interesting. I wasn't certain that it was going to keep me engaged, but it did.

Having Platonist sympathies, I have had a tendency to see the Sophists as hacks and con men. But reading this has at least helped in appreciating the ways they utilized language. Also, they did lay bare the ambiguities of language in some cases--even if one recognizes how ridiculous some of their semantical arguments really are. Plato gets this across to some degree in his show more dialogues that portray the sophists, but it is indeed often ironical there. Seneca noted a sophistical argument (originally attributed to Eubulides and not included in this book) that went something like this: "That which you have not lost, you have. You have not lost horns. Therefore, you have horns." These kinds of language conundrums are pretty silly on the surface, but if they help one to recognize the ambiguities of language, they may be of some utility. It was this kind of language trickery that the Sophists were known for. Whether Euthydemus and Dionysodorus took seriously their suppositional false dichotomy that one either knows nothing or knows everything is not entirely clear, but one can at least appreciate their demonstration of conundrums that occasionally accompany language when it comes to sense and context. They can be given credit for that at least. Although, one must admit that the Sophists often made money off of simple word chicanery.

Along with the above, the Sophists were the earliest Western thinkers that recognized the power of language in and upon society. Language really is capable of incredible influence when it is formulated and constructed in particular ways. The Sophists should be appreciated for being among the first to recognize this and the first to teach wordcraft. We take this for granted in this day in age, where advertisers and politicians have been manipulating people with constructed language for generations.

As I've stated before in other reviews, when it comes to the early Stoics, the Pre-Socratics and also the Sophists, our knowledge is rather paltry in terms of textual evidence because the original works mostly only exist in fragments (a notable exception is Gorgias) and in treatments by other writers. Be that as it may, when one sees all the fragments and references collected in one source as this book seeks to do, one can get a pretty good idea of what these thinkers were working with.

I give the book around three-and-a-half stars. It kept my attention and I found the accompanying commentary quite engaging. show less

Human wisdom is like children’s toys compared to the essence it represents. It is disregarded by fools because of that, embraced by prudent souls for the purpose of opening a greater vista to the power it represents. To intellegize, the soul individuated and fixed in a mortal needs to reflect upon images (condensed experiences), mental formations contained in hermetic imagination that lead through notions into mathematical, or systematic precision that help discover laws that bind the soul show more to the intelligible whole. All philosophies are allegories of a deeply occulted machinery, that are useful inasmuch as they enable us to reflect and incorporate its laws by practice. The image, though, imagination and experience, and so on - they are conducive to realization, but they are as they are - children’s toys in the gargantuan vastness of phenomena and noumena. An interesting treatise on pneumatology. show less