# Ancient Greece’s Legacy for Liberty: The Tragedy of Politics **URL:** **By** Roderick T. Long **Published:** November 19, 2015 --- Long examines political themes in Ancient Greek drama. While Greek tragedy generally dealt with stories from Greek myth and legend, this did not prevent its authors from exploring political ideas relevant to the realities of their own era. The three most prominent tragedians – and the only ones from whom any plays survive intact – were the Athenian playwrights Aeschylus (c. 525-c. 455 BCE), Sophocles (c. 496-c. 405 BCE), and Euripides (c. 480-406 BCE), and their plays represent a rich mine of political thought. In his _Suppliant Women_, Euripides puts democratic ideology into the mouth of the legendary Athenian hero Theseus. When a Theban herald arrives and asks to speak to the “master” of the city, Theseus replies: > Your start was wrong, seeking a master here. > This city is free, and ruled by no one man. > The people reign, in annual succession. > They do not yield the power to the rich; > The poor man has an equal share in it.[1](#_ednref1) When the herald boasts in reply that his own city “is controlled / By one man, not a mob,” Theseus responds with a defense of democracy and a critique of dictatorship: > Nothing > Is worse for a city than an absolute ruler. … > With written laws, > People of small resources and the rich > Both have the same recourse to justice. Now > A man of means, if badly spoken of, > Will have no better standing than the weak; > And if the little man is right, he wins > Against the great. This is the call of freedom: > “What man has good advice to give the city, > And wishes to make it known?” He who responds > Gains glory; the reluctant hold their peace. > For the city, what can be more fair than that? … > But when one man is king, he finds this hateful, > And if he thinks that any of the nobles > Are wise, he fears for his despotic power > And kills them. How can a city become strong > If someone takes away, cuts off new ventures > Like ears of corn in a spring field? What use > To build a fortune, if your work promotes > The despot’s welfare, not your family’s?[2](#_ednref2) All this is, of course, bizarrely anachronistic – about as anachronistic as, say, having King Lear singing the praises of Britain’s National Health Service. Theseus is traditionally the _king_ of Athens, in an era _long before_ the city had become democratic; the master that the herald sought, then, would properly have been Theseus himself.[3](#_ednref3) But Euripides is more interested in contrasting democratic with monarchical political systems than in remaining faithful to the details of the Theseus legend. One of the best-known political ideas in Greek tragedy is found in Sophocles’ _Antigone_, in which the titular protagonist, accused of breaking the law by performing funeral rites for her brother, a slain rebel, despite the ruler Kreon’s prohibition on doing so, appeals to a higher moral law that overrides the law of the state: > — You knew the order not to do this thing? > — I knew, of course I knew. The word was plain. > — And still you dared to overstep these laws? > — For me it was not Zeus who made that order. > Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below > mark out such laws to hold among mankind. > Nor did I think your orders were so strong > that you, a mortal man, could over-run > the gods’ unwritten and unfailing laws. > Not now, nor yesterday’s, they always live, > and no one knows their origin in time.[4](#_ednref4) This idea of a higher law is one that we will see explored in more detail by thinkers like Socrates and the Stoics. The conflict between justice and mere human authority is one that Sophocles also takes up in another of his plays, the _Philoctetes_. In Greek legend, Philoctetes was a member of the Greek expedition to Troy who was unjustly marooned on an island after he suffered a festering wound whose smell, combined with his cries of pain, his comrades found too annoying to put up with. When the Greeks later realize that they need his magic bow in order to defeat the Trojans, Odysseus sails back to the island to retrieve it. Recognizing that Philoctetes, naturally resentful of his treatment at the hands of his former comrades, is unlikely to part with the bow willingly, the wily Odysseus, in Sophocles’ account, instructs the young Neoptolemus, son of the late Achilles, to obtain the bow by deceit. Neoptolemus reluctantly agrees to the plan, and indeed succeeds in tricking Philoctetes into surrendering the bow. But then – in an episode that may be an innovation of Sophocles’ – he suffers from pangs of conscience and decides to return the bow to Philoctetes, defying Odysseus’s commands: > — I go to undo the wrong that I have done. … > I did wrong when I obeyed you and the Greeks. > — What did we make you do that was unworthy? > — I practiced craft and treachery with success. … > — You cannot mean you are going to give it back. > — Just that. To my shame, unjustly, I obtained it. … > — Have you no fear of the Greeks if you do this? > — I have no fear of anything you can do, > when I act with justice; nor shall I yield to force.[5](#_ednref5) Just as _Antigone_ presents favorably a woman’s defiance of Kreon’s twofold superiority as both her king and her uncle, so _Philoctetes_ presents favorably a soldier’s disobedience to a direct order from a commanding officer in time of war. In both plays, the authority of a human superior is trumped by the higher authority of the moral law. ## Endnotes [1](#_edn1). Euripides, _Suppliant Women _404-408; Frank William Jones translation, in David Grene and Richmond Latimore, eds., _Euripides IV_ (University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 73. [2](#_edn2). _Suppliant Women _428-451; Jones translation, p. 74. [3](#_edn3). In Sophocles’ _Oedipus at Colonus_, written nearly two decades after Euripides’ _Suppliant Women_, an asylum-seeker arriving in Colonus, a suburb of Athens, asks whether it is “\[r\]uled by a king? Or do the people rule?” and receives the chronologically appropriate answer “The land is governed from Athens by Athens’ king,” namely Theseus again. (Sophocles, _Oedipus at Colonus_ 66-67; Robert Fitzgerald translation, in David Grene, ed., _Sophocles I_ (University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 82.) This may be a deliberate “correction” on Sophocles’ part of the passage in Euripides’ play – just as Euripides in his version of the Electra story (_Electra_ 513-537) pokes fun at Aeschylus’s previously having Electra implausibly recognize her long-lost brother Orestes’ footprint and a lock of his hair by their likeness to her own (_Libation Bearers_ 167-230). [4](#_edn4). Sophocles, _Antigone _447-456; Elizabeth Wyckoff translation, in David Grene, ed., _Sophocles I_ (University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 173-174. [5](#_edn5). Sophocles, _Philoctetes_ 1224-1252; David Grene translation, in Richmond Lattimore and David Grene, eds., _Sophocles II_ (University of Chicago Press, 1957), pp. 242-244.