13. On the events of 415 BC see W. D. Furley, Andocides and the Herms: A Study of Crisis in Fifth-Century Athenian Religion (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1996). Names and number of those accused of impiety: Ostwald, Popular Sovereignty, 537–50. Thucydides: 6.27–28, and see above, chapter 6. The eisangelia against Alcibiades is preserved at Plutarch, Alcibiades 22 (no doubt via Craterus of Macedon or a similar source).
14. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.97, 100. Trial of Theodorus: O’Sullivan, “Athenian Impiety Trials,” 142–46 (arguing, amongst other things, that there is some evidence for political manipulation here as well).
15. On “reappropriation” of labels, connotative reassignment, and group formation see A. Galinsky et al., “The Reappropriation of Stigmatizing Labels: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Power and Self-Labeling,” Psychological Science 24 no. 10 (2013): 2020–29. I wonder whether the (potentially) positive term amakhos, “impossible to fight against,” may have provided an implicit model for the positive, theomachic sense of atheos. “Atheist underground”: D. Sedley, “The Atheist Underground,” in V. Harte and M. Lane (eds.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 329–48.
9. Plato and the Atheists
1. For a history of the period, see for example P. Rhodes, A History of the Classical Greek World, 478–323 BC (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 257–72.
2. Amnesty: C. Joyce, “The Athenian Amnesty and Scrutiny of 403,” Classical Quarterly 58 (2008): 507–18. Leon of Salamis: Plato, Apology 32c–d; Letter 7 324d–325a. Association with the tyrants: Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.12; Aeschines, Against Timarchus 173 (and see T. Brickhouse and N. Smith, Socrates on Trial [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989], 71–73). It has been long debated whether the title figure of Plato’s Critias is to be identified with the tyrant Critias, but nothing in the text rules out the association. On the details of the trial see Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial; R. Parker, Athenian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 199–216. For a readable account of the death of Socrates and its significance see E. Wilson, The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). Another entertaining account of Socrates is B. Hughes, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (New York: Knopf, 2011). More generally, see S. Ahbel-Rappe and R. Kamtekar (eds.), A Companion to Socrates (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006); and D. R. Morrison (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
3. Formal charge: most fully at Diogenes Laertius 2.40; shorter versions at Plato, Apology 24b and Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates 1.1. Impiety: Plato, Euthyphro 5c, Apology 35d; Xenophon, Apology 22, etc. Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates on Trial, 33 misleadingly claim that the Diopeithes decree “was annulled…by the general amnesty of 403/2.” This confuses two things: the general amnesty issued to those involved with the Thirty (see previous note) and a separate attempt to streamline and rationalize the laws into a systematic code. As a result of the latter, “decrees” like those of Diopeithes were still recognized but seen as not necessarily eternal. See Rhodes, History of the Classical Greek World, 260–62. Little is known, however, about this streamlining attempt, and its effects were impermanent (see, for example, A. Lanni, Law and Justice in the Courts of Classical Athens [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 142–47). “Corrupting the young” is understood as “persuading them to obey yourself rather than the fathers who bore them” at Xenophon, Apology 39.
4. Daimonion as voice: Plato, Apology 31d, Phaedrus 242c; as sign: Plato, Apology 40b, Phaedrus 242b. Philosophers have debated whether the daimonion compromised Socrates’s commitment to rationality: see P. Destrée and N. D. Smith (eds.), Socrates’ Divine Sign: Religion, Practice, and Value in Socratic Philosophy (Kelowna, BC: Academic Printing and Publishing, 2005).
5. For an attempt to reconstruct Socrates’s religious views see M. L. McPherran, The Religion of Socrates (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
6. For a general, if now rather dated introduction to Xenophon see J. Anderson, Xenophon (London: Duckworth, 1974).
7. On what can be known about Plato’s life see for example J. Annas, Plato: A Brief Insight (New York: Sterling, 2003; ill. ed. 2009), 17–38. The ancient biographical tradition is analyzed (and found wanting) by A. Riginos, Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato (Leiden: Brill, 1976). Lucian: True Stories 2.17.
8. Xenophon, Apology 1 argues that “others” have given grandiose versions of the speech, without communicating the substance. More generally on the instrumental power of stories of Socrates’s death see Wilson, The Death of Socrates. Evidence for Socrates’s thought also comes in the fragments of Aeschines the Socratic, but these are sparse.
9. Doughnut: Bettany Hughes, personal conversation. Aristophanes in Plato’s Apology, 19b–c. On the impossibility of recapturing the historical Socrates see A. Dorion, “The Rise and Fall of the Socratic Problem,” in Morrison, The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, 1–23.
10. For the view of the historical Socrates as an ethical philosopher see especially G. Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) and Socratic Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Xenophon: Memorabilia 1.1–4, also discussed in chapter 9.
11. Plato, Apology 26b–26e.
12. M. F. Burnyeat, “The Impiety of Socrates,” Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997): 1–12, reprinted in Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 224–37. Oracle: Plato, Apology 21a; quotation: 29d; mythological gods: Plato, Euthyphro 6a–c.
13. In general on Plato’s “theology” see L. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 33–81. More generally on Plato: Annas, Plato and A. Mason, Plato (Durham: Acumen, 2010), who has lucid discussions of all of the Platonic ideas of forms, the soul, and the god. Plato’s dialogues do not present his ideas systematically; any “theory” has to be reconstructed from multiple sources. As a result, I refer at this point to secondary discussions, rather than to the original Platonic text.
14. Second best, in contrast to The Republic: Laws 739d–e. Generally on the Laws see C. Bobonich (ed.), Plato’s Laws: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the religious aspects see R. Mayhew “The Theology of the Laws,” in Bobobich, Plato’s Laws, 197–216. Mayhew’s translation and commentary upon Laws 10 (Plato, Laws 10 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]) is also valuable.
15. Three types of religious criminal: Laws 885b. Atheist underground: D. Sedley, “The Atheist Underground,” in V. Harte and M. Lane (eds.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 329–48.
16. Punishments for insulting the gods: Laws 885a–b; 907d–908a; 909d.
Part Three: The Hellenistic Era
1. On Macedon’s ambiguous position within Greek ethnicity, see Hall’s “Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia Within Evolving Definitions of Greek Identity,” in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2001), 159–86. Alexander I: Herodotus 5.22. For a comprehensive historical account of Macedonia see the three volumes of N. G. L. Hammond’s A History of Macedonia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972–1988; vol. 2 jointly with G. T. Griffith), and more recently J. Roisman and I. Worthington (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); R. Lane Fox (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Macedon, 650 B.C.—300 A.D. (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
2. Euripides’s visit to Macedonia is recorded in the ancient Life of Euripides, the fragmentary dialogue of Satyrus, and the letters. For a highly skeptical reading of the tradition see M. R. Lefkowitz, Lives of the Greek Poets, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns H
opkins University Press, 2012), 98–100. There is certainly a lively inventiveness in these various sources about Euripides and Macedonia (see for example J. Hanink, “The Life of the Author in the Letters of ‘Euripides,’ ” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50 (2010): 537–64). On the date of 408–407 BC for Euripides’s Archelaus see A. Harder, Euripides’ Kresphontes and Archelaus: Introduction, Text and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 125–26, although the argument admittedly rests on crediting the Macedonian visit (see however her further arguments at 125 n.1).
3. R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973) remains an excellent overview of Alexander’s career.
4. On the Hellenistic world in general see F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); G. Shipley, The Greek World After Alexander (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); A. Erskine, A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2005); G. R. Bugh, The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
10. Gods and Kings
1. On the iconography of Alexander see A. Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press).
2. Iliad: Plutarch, Alexander 8. Visit to Troy: Arrian, Anabasis 1.11–12, Plutarch, Alexander 15. Anecdote: Alexander Romance 1.42.11–13.
3. On Alexander’s insistence on proskynēsis and introduction of foreign dress see Arrian, Anabasis 4.11 and especially Plutarch, Alexander 45 (where he suggests this may have been a strategy to win over “the barbarians”).
4. Sophocles: Oedipus the King 48, 31; Aristophanes, Birds 1706–19. Lysander: Plutarch, Lysander 18. Samian cult: P. Cartledge, Agesilaus and the Crisis of Sparta (London: Duckworth, 1987), 83–96. Possible precedents for ruler cult in Greece: see R. Mondi, “ΣΚΗΠΤΟΥΧΟΙ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΣ: An Argument for Divine Kingship in Early Greece,” Arethusa 13 (1980): 203–16.
5. Dionysius and the Olympics: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 28. Great King: Lysias 33 Dionysus: Favorinus, Corinthiaca (= “Dio Chrysostom” 37) 21, and for all the evidence for divinization L. J. Sanders. “Dionysius I of Syracuse and the Origins of the Ruler Cult in the Greek World,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 40 (1991): 275–87. It has sometimes been claimed that Philip II, Alexander’s father, received cult at Macedon, but there is no firm proof: see M. Mari, “The Ruler Cult in Macedonia,” Studi Ellenistici 20 (2008): 219–68.
6. On the details of Alexander’s campaigns see R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973).
7. “Two-horned one”: Qur’an 18:83–99. On artistic depictions of Alexander as a god during his lifetime see Stewart, Faces of Power, 95–102.
8. On isotheoi timai, and specifically on a decree of Teos relating to Antiochus III and his wife, Laodike, see A. Chaniotis, “La divinité mortelle d’Antiochos III à Téos,” Kernos 20 (2007): 153–71. The ambiguity of the term “isotheoi timai” is discussed on pp. 158–59.
9. The examples here are drawn from A. Chaniotis, “The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers,” in A. Esrkine, A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Malden, MA: Wiley, 2005), 436–37. Interpretations of ruler cult: C. Habicht, Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte, 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1970); S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); P. P. Iossif, A. N. Chankowski, and C. C. Iorber (eds.), More Than Men, Less Than Gods: Studies in Ruler Cult and Emperor Worship (Louvain: Peeters, 2011).
10. Impiety: Philippides in R. Kassel and C. Austin (eds.), Poetae Comici Graeci vol. 7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 347.
11. On the contradictions of ruler cult see especially H. S. Versnel, Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 439–92. The quotation is from an orally delivered paper by Richard Gordon, and it is recorded by Versnel on p. 471.
12. Theocritus 17.1–19.
13. Entry of Demetrius: Versnel, Coping with the Gods, 444–45.
14. Hermocles of Cyzicus, in J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925; reprint 1970), 173–74.
15. The three types of divine absence correspond to the three types of disbelief listed at Plato, Laws 885b.
16. The Greek texts of Euhemerus are collected by M. Winiarczyk, Euhemerus Messenius, Reliquiae (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1981). The authoritative, book-length discussion is M. Winiarczyk, The Sacred History of Euhemerus of Messene (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013). I discuss Euhemerus in Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 49–62.
17. Euhemerus is summarized by Diodorus of Sicily, Library 5.41–46 and 6.1.
18. Diodorus does tell us that Euhemerus says that “the ancients” envisaged two types of god: as well as the Olympians, i.e., the divinized humans, there were the natural elements (sun, moon, stars, winds, and so forth) (fragment 25 Winiarczyk (in Euhemerus Messenius, Reliquiae). But there is no reason to believe that Euhemerus thought these were really divine, rather than the fantasies of the ancients. In other words, it is probable that Euhemerus was atheistic in the modern sense, i.e., that he denied all divinity.
19. Iambus 1.9–11. Callimachus’s poem probably dates to the 270s.
20. Biography of Persaeus and list of his book titles: Diogenes Laertius 7.6, 7.36 = H. von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004), vol. 1, nos. 439 and 435 (henceforth SVF). On the background of the court of Antigonus Gonatas see A. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa (London: Duckworth, 1989), 87–88. Cicero: On the Nature of the Gods 1.38. The papyrus is Herculaneum Papyrus 1428, from Philodemus’s On Piety; Persaeus is discussed at ii.28–iii.13 (printed, along with the Cicero passage, at SVF 448). For the two-stage interpretation I follow the analysis of Philodemus by A. Henrichs, “Two Doxographical Notes: Democritus and Prodicus,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 79 (1975): 115–23. The first attempt to argue away Persaeus’s atheism appears at A. Dyck, Cicero De Natura Deorum Book I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 110; the second at K. Algra, “Stoic Theology,” in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Stoicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 158.
11. Philosophical Atheism
1. For good introductions to Hellenistic philosophy see A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); K. Algra, J. Barns, J. Mansfeld, and M. Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). The major sources are available in A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Volume 2 has the original Greek and Latin texts.
2. For introductions to the Stoics see B. Inwood, The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); J. Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Stoic theology is discussed (with ancient sources) by Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 274–79, 323–33.
3. Epictetus’s leg: Origen, Against Celsus 7.53. On Epictetus’s philosophy see especially A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Stockdale: J. B. Stockdale, Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior (Hoover Institution, 1990: http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/StockdaleCourage.pdf); “world of technology” quotation on p. 7.
4. Zeus, Athena, Hera, and so forth: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.147 = Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 323. On the influence of Stoic cosmic ideas on Christianity see T. Rasimus, T. Engberg-Pedersen, and I. Dunderberg (eds.), Stoicism in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010).
5. For a succinct history of Cynicism, see W. Desmond, Cynics (Stocksfield, UK: Acumen, 2008); interesting, pro
vocative essays in R. B. Branham and M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). The jokes are found at Diogenes Laertius 6.22–69; on these see R. B. Branham, “Defacing the Currency: Diogenes’ Rhetoric and the Invention of Rhetoric,” in Branham and Goulet-Cazé, The Cynics, 81–104.
6. Brisk survey of early Cynic views of religion in M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, “Religion and the Early Cynics,” in Branham and Goulet-Cazé, The Cynics, 47–80; also Desmond, Cynics, 115–22, who focuses on later material. Mockery of sacrifice and dedications: Diogenes Laertius 6.63, 6.59. Diogenes on the nonexistence of gods: Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.34–35; Lysias the pharmacist: Diogenes Laertius 6.42. Cercidas: fragment 4.44–48 in J. U. Powell (ed.), Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925).
7. For introductions see R. J. Hankinson, The Skeptics (London: Routledge, 1988); H. Thorsrud, Ancient Skepticism (Stocksfield, UK: Acumen, 2009).
8. Rhetoricians, hair, and nails: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 4.62. Embassy to Rome: Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder 22.2, 23.2. Speeches on justice: Cicero, Republic 3.12.21. Expulsion: Athenaeus, Sophists at Supper 12.547a; Aelian, Varied History 9.12. For discussion of the historical circumstances around the embassy see E. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 174–77.
9. Contradictory views of the gods: Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.2–4. Carneades’s argument from sensation: Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.139–41. Skepticism toward religion: see A. A. Long, “Skepticism About Gods in Hellenistic Philosophy,” in M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde (eds.), Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas J. Rosenmeyer (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 279–91; Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 462–63; P. A. Meijer, Stoic Theology: Proofs for the Existence of the Cosmic God and the Traditional Gods (Delft: Eburon, 2007), 149–206.
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