The household in Isocrates’ political thought
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211073728 |
| Author | Andreas Avgousti |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The household in Isocrates’
political thought
Andreas Avgousti
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Abstract
In this article, I analyze the role the household (oikos) plays in Isocrates through an exe-
gesis of the author’s letters to his erstwhile student and current monarch of Salamis of
Cyprus, Nicocles. The monarch’s household has 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. Third, Nicocles
invites his subjects to judge his conjugal behavior, offering it as evidence of his moder-
ation. I conclude my argument with a challenge to an interpretation of the relationship
between the few and the many as a contract; rather, this relationship is better charac-
terized through the metaphor of service (therapeia) drawn from the household.
Isocratean political thought treats private and public domains as continuous with one
another, regarding participation in political institutions as neither necessary nor suffi-
cient to achieving good political judgment.
Keywords
Democracy, household, Isocrates, political judgment, reputation, rhetoric, the few and
the many
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
Corresponding author:
Andreas Avgousti, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University,
Academic Quadrangle 6196, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6.
Email: andreas.avgousti@gmail.com
Article
European Journal of Political Theory
2023, Vol. 22(4) 523–541
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14748851211073728
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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
524 European Journal of Political Theory 22(4)
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