Why does Socrates frequent, and often use the language of, the marketplace? Why, when so many of his elite interlocutors vehemently express disgust for craftsmen and merchants, does Socrates feature them and their products in his arguments? Elites express tremendous anxiety about the banausic nature of workers and their corrupting… Read more
The ancient Greeks and Chinese bear striking similarities in their attitudes towards other peoples, often calling them ‘barbarians’. This paper attempts to discuss Greek and Chinese perceptions of the barbarian in a comparative perspective in the hope that such a study might be helpful for further understanding the role… Read more
In Aristophanes’ comedy Birds (414 BCE), the protagonist Peisetaerus —not surprisingly named as “he who persuades his companions”— becomes an outstanding master of rhetoric, who smoothly manages to use his λόγος to convince birds, gods and mortals about his own ruling primacy. However, this triumph is not… Read more
This paper explores Aristotle’s conception of responsibility in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics by focusing on one representative example: his treatment of force and compulsion as exculpatory conditions. This case is revealing both for Aristotle’s specific views on the appropriate reactions to actions undertaken under conditions of force… Read more
The island of Crete is the largest Greek island. Unlike the others, it contains dozens of cities, all of which have had to share the island to survive. The mountains occupy more than half of the island, while the fertile plains are very limited, mostly situated on… Read more
