Redefining the Muslim Community - Alexander Orwin

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Greek models are introduced only to be roundly rejected. One counts some instances where Homer, considered by many to be the “teacher of Greece” (606e1–3), is cited as a model (389e4, 390d1–5, 404b11–c9), but others where he is presented as a potential corrupter of the young guardians (377d5, 383a7, 387b1, 393b1). Socrates continues to cite Greek sources, although hardly as models, in highly unconventional accounts of music, gymnastic, and medicine (398d ff.). But Socrates identifies the noble lie, a centerpiece of the city’s education, with the Phoenicians, a barbarian people (414c4); the interlocutors probably refer this designation to the Greek myth of Cadmus, the Phoenician founder of Thebes, but Socrates’s intention remains murky. Neither the word “Greek” nor any of its cognates appears in the first three books.

      The discussion of the city’s stance toward foreign relations and war in Book IV yields similarly inconclusive results. Socrates proposes to Adeimantus that the city take an equally suspicious view of all foreign cities and encourage faction among them, noting that this policy should be applied to cities inhabited by both Greeks and barbarians alike (423a8–b1). The very first mention of the Greek-barbarian distinction in the dialogue suggests that the city should ignore it, at least with regard to fateful questions of war and peace.

      The next reference to ethnic differences comes in the well-known passage on the spiritedness of the Thracians and Scythians who live in the north, the greed of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and the love of learning of the people who live in the “place around us” (435e3–436a3). Yet Socrates refrains both from mentioning Greece by name and from classifying non-Greek peoples as barbarian. Love of learning is not ascribed explicitly to Greece, but rather to the highly equivocal “place around us” (ton par’ hēmin … topon; 435e6–436a1). Assuming that “us” refers to the participants in the dialogue, one could define the land surrounding them in various ways, from the Piraeus to the entire Mediterranean region. It would be hasty to assume, as many interpreters as well as the interlocutors probably do,7 that this phrase refers to Greece, as it could easily signify a region either much larger or much smaller than it. We may also ask whether the city, whose location at this point in the dialogue remains indeterminate, is founded in the “place around us.” If not, then this passage reveals nothing about the city’s ethnic identity.

      It is not until the discussion of women and the family that the Greeks are even mentioned for the second time. Although Socrates praises them for allowing men to exercise naked, a practice still deemed shameful among the barbarians, he admits that they would still be unable to tolerate naked women performing the same activities, as ought to occur in the new city (452a7 ff.).8 The subsequent proposals for the equality of women and men, not to mention the dissolution of the family, remove the city still farther from prevailing Greek custom and precedent. The current institutions of the family are “against nature,” but at present they prevail everywhere (456c1–3), that is to say, among both Greeks and barbarians.

      The discussion of the ethnicity of the city thus far has been largely inconclusive. Socrates probably expects his interlocutors to consider the city Greek, despite its evident eccentricities. But Socrates never calls it Greek, and its frequent divergence from most Greek norms ought to give the reader of the dialogue pause. Until the discussion of war in Book V, the potentially explosive issue of the city’s ethnic identity is effectively avoided. In this discussion, however, it comes to the fore. Let us take a closer look.

      Socrates begins by asking whether Greeks should reduce Greek cities to slavery (469b8–c4). This question is posed well before anyone has confirmed that the city is Greek (cf. 470e4), which at this point is simply presumed. Moreover, the broader relevance of this issue for the city is difficult to discern, owing to the relative lack of evidence for the presence of slaves of any ethnicity in the city.9 But Socrates’ purpose soon becomes clear enough: he aims to put Glaucon into a philhellenic mood. He argues that Greeks should spare Greeks from enslavement precisely in order to avoid enslavement of the entire Greek genos at the hands of barbarians. Glaucon promptly agrees (469c5–6): he is clearly delighted to listen to any opinion (doxa) asserting the solidarity of Greeks against barbarians (470a8). Socrates takes advantage of Glaucon’s eagerness to introduce a more sweeping argument on the natural affinity of Greeks and their natural hostility to barbarians (470b4 ff.). This allows him to present warfare between Greek cities as a kind of civil strife. Glaucon does not show the slightest sign of opposition. Glaucon’s answer to the question “Won’t the city that you are founding be Greek?” is thus entirely predictable.

      The question about the Greek identity of the city turns out to be part of a sequence of queries specifically designed to induce an affirmative answer. However, the use of the singular pronoun “you” in posing the question allows Socrates to evade full responsibility for this answer. The shift from “we” to “you” had already begun to take place earlier, with Socrates surrendering possession of the city’s soldiers just before he imposes on them the task of ending faction in Greece, replacing hēmin in 469b5 with soi in 470a6. The switch to “you” gives the impression that Glaucon’s answers might apply only to a city founded of his own accord, without the careful guidance of Socrates. Glaucon’s city may be Greek, but Socrates’s is never identified as such.

      The change in pronoun is linked to a strong disagreement between Socrates and Glaucon, which gradually emerges in the course of the discussion. While the questions posed by Socrates tend to encourage Glaucon’s strong philhellenic sentiments, and corresponding dislike of barbarians, some of Socrates’s own statements and demurrals point in a different direction. While Socrates argues that Greeks should spare other Greeks in order to defend themselves collectively against the barbarians, Glaucon responds by proclaiming that Greeks should launch an offensive against barbarians (469c6–7). Rather than sanction so aggressive a policy, which was in no way implied in his question, Socrates promptly changes the subject to smaller matters of battlefield conduct (469c8 ff.). One might retort that Socrates’s subsequent argument on the kinship of Greeks and the foreignness of barbarians, in which he resumes using the pronoun “we” in calling warring barbarians and Greeks “enemies by nature” (470c5–7), does justify a war against barbarians.10 Yet whether we ought to go to war with our enemies by nature, or merely stay away from them, remains unclear. Furthermore, it is remarkable how quickly Socrates loses interest in barbarians after this point. He stops mentioning them altogether after 470c5, and turns once again to the evils of certain types of warfare, such as the burning of land and destruction of houses, when practiced among fellow Greeks (470d5–8). He proceeds to redirect the energies of the city away from attacking barbarians and toward reprimanding quarrelsome Greeks (471a6–7). Glaucon makes one more effort to reintroduce barbarians into the discussion, wishing that the cruel acts frequently perpetrated by Greeks against Greeks could somehow be directed against the barbarians (471b7–8).11 But Socrates again refuses to take the bait, calmly concluding that the guardians of the city shouldn’t engage in ravaging the property of any enemy under any circumstance, thus dropping the distinction between Greeks and barbarians altogether (471c1–2; cf. 469c8 ff.).12 Impatient to learn about the possibility of the city, and perhaps dissatisfied by his failure to instigate a war against the barbarians, Glaucon promptly changes the subject (471c3 ff.).13

      The disagreement between Socrates and Glaucon about the urgency of fighting barbarians strengthens our suspicion that they may disagree about the Greek identity of the city as well. Socrates will later announce that the city is most likely to come into being among remote barbarians (499c7–d1). If this constitutes Socrates’s definitive statement on the matter, then why does he deceive Glaucon into believing that the city is Greek? To answer this question, we need to integrate the argument into Socrates’s overarching aims.

      Panhellenism, Kinship, and the City’s Gentler Foreign Policy

      Socrates’s success in persuading Glaucon that the city is Greek, along with his invocation of Greek unity, may not represent his last word on these subjects, but it serves an important function in the dialogue. It both restates the foreign policy of the city and deepens Glaucon’s understanding of kinship.

      The earlier discussion of foreign affairs between Socrates and Adeimantus in Book IV presented every other city, Greek and barbarian, as a potential enemy (423a8–b1). According

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