Ancient Greek & Neoliberal Harmony Pt. 1: Sophrosyne as Proportion philosophy, pop music, sound studies, feminism Browse: Home » 2013 » March » Ancient Greek & Neoliberal Harmony Pt. 1: Sophrosyne as Proportion Ancient Greek & Neoliberal Harmony Pt. 1: Sophrosyne as Proportion March 11, 2013 · by Robin James · in ancient Greek philosophy , ancient philosophy , ethics , Foucault , music , music theory , neoliberalism , Plato , politics , Pythagoras It seems like the ancient Greeks are actually kinda neoliberal in some ways. In Disagreement, Ranciere calls consensus democracy “the perfect realization” of Plato’s Republic, and, as Shannon Winnubst notes in her great new article in Foucault Studies(which everyone should go read right now), Foucault’s work encourages comparisons between the ancient Greek practices he talks about in, say, Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality, and his lecture courses on neoliberalism.

Giving voice to this sense that there’s some relationship between the Greeks and the neoliberals, Winnbust says “it is almost as if, in much too gross historical strokes, we have two bookends standing outside the overlapping milieu of Christianity and modernity: ancient Greece and contemporary neoliberalism” (91). However, as she compellingly argues, the Greeks may be more similar to neoliberals than they are to classical enlightenment liberals, but this doesn’t make them neoliberals. Just because two things are more like one another than either is like a third thing doesn’t mean the two things are identical (I’m no logician, but that feels like an invalid syllogism, right?). But the Greeks aresort of similar to neoliberals—there’s something there that invites comparison, even if that comparison reveals some pretty fundamental differences. This is where sound studies and the philosophy of music are really helpful. Greeks and neoliberals both have harmonic political epistemes, while Enlightenment liberals have visual/representational ones. So, the Greeks and the neoliberals are both sonic/harmonic alternatives to Enlightenment visuality. That’s why they initially, at first pass, invite comparison.

BUT: Greeks and neoliberals have different understandings of harmony. The Greeks measure harmony geometrically, as a proportion, whereas the neoliberals measure harmony acoustically, as the quality (amplitude) and quantity (frequency) of a signal or sine wave. The sine wave is both sound’s material form and a way to statistically represent probability. So, neoliberal biopolitics—aka the governmentality of statistics—and contemporary acoustics converge in the form of a sine wave, and it is this common denominator that allows for easy transposition between them. If classical liberalism thinks and works in terms of “the gaze,” neoliberalism thinks and works in terms of sine waves. So, understanding acoustics can help us understand material, practical, normalized, creative, and critical functions/properties/possibilities of sine waves. Ultimately, I’m arguing that sound and music studies provide very productive avenues, methods, and resources for theorizing neoliberalism. I’m breaking this project down into several posts. Here, I limit my discussion to ancient Greek concepts of harmony as proportion.

I want to emphasize that I’m not a classicist, Ancient is NOT my area of specialization, and I’m not at all trying to make some sort of scholarly contribution to this area of the history of philosophy. What I AM trying to do is explain the relationship between ancient Greek concepts of musical harmony and their ethical ideal “sophrosyne”…so that we can better understand how the ancient Greek “harmonic” ethos is different than the neoliberal “harmonic” ethos. And honestly, this is far, far more work on ancient Greek philosophy than I ever imagined myself doing. So, you know, ancient people, if I’m missing something or get somethign wrong, let me know! 🙂 Ancient Greek Harmony Greeks and neoliberals use harmonic epistemes. Because Foucault’s interest in the Greeks centers on their “orthos logos,” their mechanism for measuring or judging the freedom/truth relationship, I’ll frame my analysis in those terms. Classical liberalism/enlightenment modernity measured truth representationally, with the correspondence theory: confession, as a technology of the self, relies on a correspondence between explicitly expression and inner content.

Whereas the classical liberals frame the freedom/truth relationship in terms of the gaze, the Greeks understand it through the concept of moderation or sophrosyne. As Winnubst explains, “the ethical problem of aphrodisiafor the Greeks was the ongoing effort ‘to be free in relation to pleasures…to be free of their authority;’ to do so, one must cultivate a particular relation to truth that ‘constituted an essential element of moderation’” (90). So how is moderation (i.e., sophrosyne) a proportional, geometric concept of harmony? As Helen North explains, “sophrosyne and its cognate forms were…closely identified with the feeling for harmony and restraint which governed every phase of Greek life” (North, 2). Further, North speculates that “the term sophrosyne passed from ethics first to music” (2). [i] Ok, so sophrosyne and harmony are interrelated in ancient Greek thought. I’m assuming that philosophers generally understand what “moderation” means. Here I’m going to focus on what harmony meant in ancient Greek theory.

There’s no one theory of harmony in ancient Greek philosophy—lots of people had lots of different theories about exactly what intervals were consonant and dissonant, about how to divide the octave, fourth, and fifth, etc. While they disagreed about the details, all these theories had the same underlying concept of what harmony was—harmony was a matter of proportion. As A.A. Long explains, ancient Greeks understood harmony as “something balanced, proportional, ratio-like” (207). Or, as Plato says in Timaeus, “the Cosmos was harmonized by proportion and brought into existence” (32c; emphasis mine). Musical Harmony To be really reductive, the ancient Greeks thought musical harmony was a function of visual-spatial ratios, a measure of the size of the resonating media. For example, pan pipes would be acoustically harmonic if the length and width of the pipes were mathematically proportionate to one another. If the physical size and shape of a resonating substance (wood, a string, etc.) fit a specified system of ideal mathematical ratios (e.g., the golden mean), then the sounds this resonating substance produced would be “harmonic” (or rather, consonantly harmonic).

As musicologist Tobias Mathiesen explains, Greek music theory is “an attempt to present all the instruments—flute, reed, and string—as manifesting the mathematical principles of harmonics in the same visual manner” (210; emphasis mine). Acoustic proportion was a function of visual proportion, which was in turn a function of mathematical proportion. The assumption—or ideal—is that visually proportionate instruments should produce acoustically proportionate (in other words, harmonic) sounds…because the same mathematicalproportions ought to govern them both. [ii] For example, the aulos (a double-reeded instrument sort of like the contemporary oboe) was considered a low-prestige instrument and associated with the “unruliness” of femininity (and Dionysus) because its visible and acoustic proportions did not strictly follow ideal mathematical ratios. As Matheisen explains, The rough rations between the trupemata [finger holes] and the mouthpiece do correspond to the possible ratios between the pitches produced by those trupemata, but it is clear that any given fingering on the aulos can be used to produce a number of pitches” (Mathiesen 209).

[iii] The aulos is troublesome because it is not adequately proportional: its visible and auditory physical functioning (the intervals or ratios between pitches produced by finger-holes bored in visually/geometrically proportionate ratios) does not truthfully manifest the underlying logos of mathematical harmony/proportion. (This is why the aulos is associated with femininity—both are unruly and immoderate.) Similarly, one’s outward appearance served as evidence of one’s moderate—or immoderate—ethos. As Plato says, “if the fine dispositions that are in the soul and those that agree and accord with them in the form should ever coincide in anyone, with both partaking of the same model, wouldn’t that be the fairest sight for him who is able to see?” (Republic 402d; emphasis mine). Or, as Foucault puts it, sophrosyne’s “hallmark, grounded in truth, was both its regard for an ontological structure and its visiblybeautiful shape” (HSv2 89; emphasis mine). Outwardly visible harmony should be the manifestation or expression of inner harmony.

As Foucault puts it, “the individual fulfilled himself as an ethical subject by shaping a precisely measured conduct that was plainly visible to all” (HSv2 91). Inner harmony ought to produce outward beauty. The exact nature of this relationship between inner and outer harmony was, however, a subject of disagreement among ancient Greek philosophers. Some, like Pythagoras, saw, or rather heard, a direct correspondence between perceived visual/auditory harmony and mathematical harmony. In this view, perceptual harmony was directly proportional to intellectual/mathematical harmony. Plato critques Pythagoras’s theory of harmony because the latter reverses the proper order between material structure and intelligible logic. According to Plato, Pythagoras “put[s] ears before the intelligence” (Repubic 531a), placing disproportionate emphasis on auditory perception, and insufficient emphasis on mathematical proportion (or, “consideration of… numbers” (531c).) The most musical intervals/proportions/ratios are not the ones that sound most consonant, or are most visibly beautiful, but the ones that are the most mathematically and/or philosophically proportionate.

In other words, Plato thinks the relationship between visual/auditory proportion and mathematical/philosophical proportion must itself be proportionate, putting greater weight or emphasis on the intellectual than on the perceptual. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates functions like an aulos because his visual appearance does not directlycorrespond to his intellectual harmoniousness. In the same way that auloi can produce visually and acoustically consonant phenomena that are neither directly nor necessarily tied to specific mathematical proportions, Socrates’s visual beauty is not directly proportionate to his intellectual beauty. He is visually dischordant—ugly, mocking and mean, anti-social, etc.—but intellectually harmonious. To someone who, like Pythagoreans or Alcibiades in the Symposium, thought the relationship between visible and intellectual harmony was a “mutual exchange of beauty for beauty” (218a), Socrates seems very disharmonious. This is why Alcibiades, in his praise of Socrates at the end of the Symposium, compares Socrates to an aulos/ανλονς(215b).

But the joke is, as ever with Socrates, on us, that is, on those who think he really is like a flute or flute-player. For Plato, visual beauty ought to be accorded les import than intellectual beauty—that’s the Symposium’s main argument, after all. Socrates might not be visibly beautiful in equalproportion to his intellectual beauty, but he is visibly beautiful in proper, mathematical, harmonic proportion to his intellectual beauty. Which is to say: Socrates accords greater import and attention to intellectual beauty, because that is its proper place and function. Ironically, his initial aulos-like qualities are evidence that he’s more like a well-tempered stringed instrument (e.g., a kithara). His mind is significantly more harmonious than his body…and that’s what makes him more proportionate than anyone else, “gold” (and more proportionate, like the guardians) rather than just “bronze” (less proportionate, like the plebs) (Symposium 219a). Socrates seems like an aulos only to those who do not recognize the true and proper relationship between visible/perceptual and intellectual harmony.

[iv] So “proportion” is a ratio that is representable both visually/perceptually and mathematically; metatheoretically, the relationship between perceptual and mathematical proportion is itself proportionate. The Greeks visualized mathematical ratios in geometric terms. As Plato states in the Republic, “A man experienced in geometry would…grasp the truth about equals, doubles, or any other proportion” (530a). Mathiesen includes to diagrams that clearly show how Greeks thought sonic harmony was a function of geometric ratios. [this is Mathiesen’s diagram] Because I’m a theorist and not a trained mathematician, and because even the Greeks widely and wildly disagreed about the specific methods for mathematically calculating ideally harmonic ratios, I’m not going to go too deeply into the calculations. I do, however, want to convey a general sense of the proportionality.

Distilling centuries of often inconsistent and conflicting mathematical accounts of musical harmony to their common denominator, Mathiesen explains: The story of Pythagoras’s discovery of the harmonic ratios is told and retold by many writers, Greek and Latin, with certain variations, but its essence lies in the application of four numbers—12, 9, 8, and 6—to produce the Pythagorean ‘harmonia.’ Nichomachus’s version has Pythagoras first detecting the consonant intervals of the octave, fifth, and fourth…” (399) When instruments were visually/materially organized by mathematically proportional ratios, they would produce the musical intervals of the octave, fifth, and fourth. For example, when you fret or put your finger down on a monochord (basically, a single string over a resonator, like a one-stringed guitar) so that the string is divided on a 1:1 ratio, the interval between the two pitches is an octave; at a 3:2 (12:8 or 9:6) ratio (the golden mean), the interval between the two pitches is a fifth.

This is just one simple example; the ancient Geek music theorists bickered about the mathematical derivation of musical harmony with the same nitpicky vehemence that hipster music fans exhibit when discussing the nuances of their favorite sub-sub-subgenre. I do not want to get sidetracked by going into those details. But the proliferation of accounts is itself evidence of the centrality of mathematical proportion to ancient Greek concepts of musical harmony. [v] Ethical/Political Harmony Classicists have established that an “analogy between musical and ethical harmony” (A.A. Long 203) was widespread in ancient Greek philosophy, from the pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Pythagoras, to the Stoics. An explicit and widely-read example of this analogy appears in Plato’s Republic. Here, he argues that “we’ll never be musical—either in ourselves or those whom we say we must educate to be guardians—before we recognize the forms of moderation” (402c). He says musicality requires moderation, [vi] and equates madness and licentiousness to unmusicality. [vii] For example, he compares poor musical harmonization to gluttony.

[viii] If moderation or sophrosyne is understood as a type of musicality, how exactly is moderation/sophrosyne proportional? Foucault, in his chapter on sophrosyne in HSv2, uses the language of “proportion” to describe the Greek’s concept of moderation/sophrosyne as virile self-mastery: the point where the relationship with oneself would become isomorphic with the relationship of domination, hierarchy, and authority that one expected, as a man, a free man, to establish over his inferiors; and it was this prior condition of ‘ethical virility’ that provided one with the right sense of proportion for the exercise of ‘sexual virility,’ according to a model of ‘social virility.’ (HSv2 83). To be moderate was to understand and implement proportion across one’s dealings; one’s desires had to be proportionate (e.g., to one’s responsibilities), one’s authority had to be proportionate (to one’s social position), and one’s desires and authority had to be proportional to one another. Only one who is successfully ruled by proportion may rule others and maintain a proportionate society.

Or, think of it this way: “moderation implied that the logos be placed in a position of supremacy in the human being and that it was able to subdue the desires and regulate behavior” (Foucault HSv2 86)—the proportionate man was one whose “logos” was more powerful and more extensive than his desires. Or, the moderate man was one who maintained the correct balance between logos and desires. If “to rule one’s pleasures and to bring them under the authority of the logos formed one and the same enterprise” (Foucault HSv2 86), this logos was proportion. It was proportional because reason had dominion over desire and corporeality—everything was in its appropriate position in a hierarchical relationship. [ix] Foucault’s understanding of proportion is consistent with Plato’s (and also, interestingly, with Ranciere’s reading of Plato in Disagreement).

For Plato, a harmonious city was one in which “Each man does one thing” (Republic 397e), and there is a “proper order for each of the things that are” (Gorgias506d); when each thing follows its own proper logos, the whole will be harmonic, consonant, balanced, well-ordered, etc. [x] For example, the mind and the body each have specific functions, and the moderate man is one who maintains a “harmonious adjustment” (Republic 411e) of soul and body, that is, an overall balance between the two by keeping each in its proper place. [xi] In the moderate man, “his whole soul—brought to its best by acquiring moderation and justice accompanied by prudence…in proportion as soul is more honorable than body” (Republic 591b; emphasis mine).

This is what Plato is talking about in Republic 410c, where he states that “guardians,” or the rulers of the city, “…should possess both natures…And must they not be harmoniously adjusted to one another?” “Of course.” “And the soul of the man thus attuned is sober and brave?” (emphasis mine). Moderation means giving the soul a greater proportion of dominion or authority over one’s life than the body. Sophrosyne is a practice of harmonious attunement because it is a matter of respecting proportional distributions. Sophroysne was a manifestation of the same harmonic logic that governed the rest of the universe—music, the planets, mathematics, etc. [xii] Just as there were various systems for calculating the most ideally harmonic systems of ratios/proportions, this harmony-moderation connection was made in a variety of ways. According to A.A. Long, “Aristotle observes (Top.

IV.3 123a37) that symphonia [loosely, “consonance”] may be predicated of ‘moderation’ (sophrosyne) but such a usage is metaphor since strictly all symphonia pertains to sounds” (203). Drawing a more macro-level analogy or isomorphism, “the Stoics envisaged a virtuous character as directly analogous to a harmonic system” (Long 218). Working with smaller-scale comparisons, “Ptolemy and Aristides Quintilianus…se[t] up correspondences between specific virtues and harmonic intervals” (Long 215).

Though Foucault does not explicitly connect harmony with proportion, he does use musical language to describe Plato’s concept of sophrosyne: in the individual who is sophron, it is reason that commands and prescribes, in consonance with the structure of the human being: ‘it is fitting that the reasonable part should rule,’ Socrates says…and he proceeds to define the sophron as the man in whom the different parts of the soul are in agreement and harmony, when the part that commands and the part that obeys are at one in their recognition that it is proper for reason to rule and that they should not contend for its authority” (HSv2 87). Importantly, Foucault connects sophrosyne with a proportional concept of harmony: something is consonant when its component parts are all in their proper, assigned place. This “harmonization” is the “structural” and “ontological” relationship that Foucault attributes to the ancient Greeks and contrasts to the “epistemological” notion of truth operative in, say, the imperative to confess.

[xiii] Sophrosyne is attunement to truth: harmony is produced when “reason rules.” Often, for the ancient Greeks, reason itself was harmonic—the logos was a mathematical system of proportions. As A.A. Long notes, “orthos logos, in Greek philosophical usage quite generally, connotes the presence, application or realization of determinacy, proportionality, exactitude of quantitative or numerical order” (207). The geometric/mathematical ratios are the orthos logos or true reason that determine what is moderate and what isn’t. So, virtue meant bringing one’s life, or the city, in accordance with the logos of harmonic proportion. Conversely, an unjust city is a disharmonious one: for example, Plato argues that “oligarchy would contain this one mistake that is of such proportions” (Republic 551d; emphasis mine). The logos is a structure or instrument for producing a well-ordered, harmonic body, be it an instrument, a human being, or a polity. à It is clear that metaphorical and/or literal concepts of musical harmony as proportion served as the measure or model for moderation/sophrysune.

[xiv] Moderation/sophorysune, in turn, was a model for “subjectivity” (or rather, self-relation—the “subject” is somewhat of an anachronism in this context), political and social relationality, and for epistemology. So, we can say that ancient Greek theories of self-relation, political relation, and epistemology are grounded in a proportional theory of musical harmony. Neoliberal theories of subjectivity, politics, and knowledge are grounded in a differenttheory of musical harmony, one modeled on the sine wave. For the ancient Greeks, sophrosyne could link freedom and truth because both “freedom” (self-mastery) and “truth” (beauty/harmony/mathematical logic/orthos logos) were understood proportionally; for neoliberals, the competitive market can link freedom and truth because both “freedom” (optimalization) and “truth” (success) are understood “acoustically” as sine waves.

[i] North, Helen, Classical Philology 1948 [ii] For example, Mathiesen discusses Nchomachus’s theory of “‘ruling proportion’, in which two middle terms form various ratios with the extremes and the product of the means is equal to the product of the extremes. This proportion is represented by 12:9:8:6, which embraces geometric proportion (12:8::9:6), harmonic proportion (12:8:6), and arithmetic proportion (12:9:6), as well as the whole-tone ratio, 9:8, the common measure of musical rations and the difference between the fifth and the fourth” (400-01). [iii] There’s A LOT to say about the queerness and unruliness of Alcibiades in Plato’s Symposium, its connection to the re-introduction of the “flute girls,” and the unruliness of the aulos.

Basically: if sophrosyne is being a man in relationship to oneself, being “harmonically proportionate,” then the aulos is not harmonically proportionate, so it is feminized and immoderate, sort of the way Xanthippe is represented in the Phaedo…But that’s a tangent to be explored elsewhere. Unless somebody’s already written on that, which would be awesome. (Judith Periano…? [iv] “if you chose to listen to Scorates’ discourses you would feel them at first to be quite ridiculous; on the outside they are clothed with such absurd words and phrases—all, of course, the hide of a mocking satyr…so that anyone inexpert and thoughtless might laugh his speeches into scorn. But when these are opened, and you obtain a fresh view of them by getting inside, first of all you will discover they are the only speeches which have any sense in them; and secondly, that none are so divine, so rich in images of virtue…” (Symposium 221e-222a).

[v] As Alan Bloom points out in his translation of Republic, rhythim is also proportional: “the various meters are compounded of feet based on three basic proportions: the 2.2 or equal…; the 3.2…; and the 2/1…The four forms of sound are apparently the notes of the tetrachord…” (453n48) [vi] “Is the naturally right kind of love to love in a moderate and musical way what’s orderly and fine?” (Republic 403a) [vii] Being “mad or akin to licentiousness” is “unmusical” (403 b-c). [viii] Plato says: “likening such food [attic cakes] and such a way of life as a whole to melodies and songs written in the panharmonic mode and with all rhythms” (404d). Panharmonic modes don’t sufficiently distinguish among and prioritize more- and less-harmonic intervals. You might compare them to a Western chromatic scale, which includes all 12 tones in an octave, not just the 8 tones in a major or minor scale.

[ix] The theory of the divided line is a hierarchical order grounded in a metaphorics of proportion. For example, the intelligible gets a bigger proportion of space on the line because it is more “real” than the visible: “take these four affections arising in the soul in relation to the four segments: intellection in relation to the highest one, and thought in relation to the second; to the third assign trust, and to the last imagination. Arrange them in proportion, and believe that as the segments to which they correspond participate in truth, so they participate in clarity” (611d) [x] Thus, as Plato argues in Republic, “for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform” (Republic 406c). A harmonic city is one in which the gold souls do gold things, when silver ones do silver things, and so on. Those who are “mixed,” who do more than one thing and have more than one role, have no place in Plato’s ideal city because they would disrupt its harmonious attunement.

As Plato says, “he doesn’t harmonize with our regime because there’s no double man among us, nor a manifold one, since each man does one thing” (Republic 397e).

[xi] As Judith Periano explains, “the music taken in by the physical senses recalibrates the harmony of the soul through a metaphysical mimesis that tunes the soul to the cosmic scale (rather than to a physical body) so that the soul can supervise the physical body and the body’s instincts in an ideal, essentially acetic self-practice” (33) à music orders the soul, and puts the soul in charge of the body (ie soul in harmony w body) [xii] “This famous Pythagorean ‘harmonia’…provides a perfect paradigm for music as an embodiment of rational numerical order and, by extension, universal order” (Matheisen 363) [xiii] “The relation to truth was a structural, instrumental, and ontological condition for establishing the individual as a moderate subject leading a life of moderation; it was not an epistemological condition enabling the individual to recognize himself in his singularity as a desiring subject and to purify himself of the desire that was thus brought to light” (HSv2 89).

[xiv] We have frequently asserted 2 that there are housed within us in three regions three kinds of soul, and that each of these has its own motions; so now likewise we must repeat, as briefly as possible, that the kind which remains in idleness and stays with its own motions; in repose necessarily becomes weakest, whereas the kind which exercises itself becomes strongest; [90a] wherefore care must be taken that they have their motions relatively to one another in due proportion. (Timaeus 89e-90a). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.07.67 Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.07.67 Adriaan Rademaker, Sophrosyne and the Rhetoric of Self-Restraint: Polysemy and Persuasive Use of an Ancient Greek Value Term. Mnemosyne Suppl. 259. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp. xi, 375. ISBN 90-04-14251-7. $115.00.

Reviewed by Brad Levett, Carleton University (blevett@connect.carleton.ca) Word count: 2481 words Adriaan Rademaker (R.) has produced a useful study of the ancient Greek term sophrosyne, examining its use from Homer to Plato. It will serve both as a reference work on the nuances of the term in specific passages, and as a starting point for those interested in the virtue more generally. As R. notes in his introduction (11), there is a good study of sophrosyne by North that traces out the wide range of meanings that this notoriously multivalent term can convey. 1 R. differs from his predecessor by avoiding her diachronic perspective that understands certain senses of a word as later derivatives stemming from an "original" meaning, instead adopting a synchronic approach that seeks to explain the full range of meanings available in the term by the time of Plato. More importantly, while R. sees his study as one that is in line with Cairns' study of aidos, 2 in particular in the decision to examine both the concept and the word (15), R.

employs a model of meaning from cognitive linguistics in order to make explicit his methodology and to give a more systematic account of the term's range of meanings and their interrelationships. The model R. adopts from cognitive linguistics abandons the more traditional attempt to find a core or essential meaning that is present in all uses of the term. Instead, by adopting Wittgenstein's metaphor of a "family resemblance," the overall semantic coherence of a word is explained by finding the particular semantic links between individual senses, although these similarities may not be found in all senses of the word. Thus, one sense of a term will bear a similarity to another, and this second sense will bear a (perhaps different) similarity to a third sense, and so on, forming a chain or network of meanings. This method strives to avoid producing a definition of a word that overly simplifies its range of meanings within different contexts. In order to structure these different senses, cognitive linguists replace the search for core meanings with the search for prototypes. A prototype is a member of a linguistic/cognitive category that is more typical of the category than other members. Other senses of the term will share in the category by virtue of their similarity to the prototype.

Hence, if the prototype of bravery is the hoplite resisting the enemy in battle without fleeing, by analogy a sailor can also show bravery by "fighting" a storm at sea, although no actual (human) enemy is involved. An important part of this methodology is to describe how the various senses are semantically linked to one another in order to show (indeed to map, in the form of diagrams) the overall structure of meaning available in the term. Since the book is long and detailed, I can give only a general summary of R.'s findings, making a few points of what is meant as constructive criticism along the way. In Homer, use of the term sophrosyne and cognates (throughout the study R. links the adjective sophron, the noun sophrosyne, and the verb sophronein together on the grounds that they generally have the same semantic value) is very rare, being limited to four instances. However, this word-group already displays a range of meanings, from "soundness of mind" to "orderly behavior." In archaic poetry we find these words used by the elite classes in the face of social change.

In such circumstances, sophrosyne is, for non-elite groups, the good sense to adhere to the status quo and (therefore) refrain from social injustice or civil strife. In this political context, Sparta seems to have been particularly associated with the value term. Turning to classical drama, in Aeschylus sophrosyne and cognates are most often used to encourage others to refrain from violent behavior. As an extension, they are also used to indicate the good sense not to do violence or insult to the gods. They are also used in relation to women to indicate the value of refraining from excessive displays of emotion. In relation to slaves, these terms can also have what R. calls an authoritarian sense, whereby sophrosyne amounts to showing obedience to one's master. In Sophocles the term for the most part is defined by negative opposition, in so far as the unbending nature of Sophoclean protagonists typically does not allow them to exhibit the virtue. However, through other characters we see the prudential use of the term, in which sophrosyne means to act in one's own best interests. With Euripides we get a more frequent and varied use of the term.

Although a crucial sense is "control of desire," we see, in R.'s system, a total of eleven of his eighteen categories of meaning for the term (on which see further below). What is particularly interesting is that Euripides dramatizes the potential conflict between different meanings of the term. Hence Phaedra in Hippolytus is unable to be sophron in the sense of controlling her desire, yet will kill herself as the most sensible response to her dilemma, a response that Hippolytus himself describes as sophron (Hipp. 1034). Also, Euripides is one of our richest sources for this value term as it is understood in relation to women, exploring a range of meanings from fidelity to obedience to indulgence of a husband's desires. My one substantive disagreement here is that R. tends to take at face value passages from Andromache and Medea that suggest that sophrosyne for a woman involved complete and unquestioning acceptance of her husband's other partners. 3 There was obviously a double standard in Classical Athens, but there were also, I think, limits.

For example, Lysias, out of respect for his wife and mother, did not lodge his hetaira at home when he wanted to have her initiated into the mysteries, but at an unmarried friend's home ([Dem.] 59.21-22). A work such as Sophocles' Trachiniae, in which Deianeira, a self-restrained, loyal and indeed quite passive woman, is driven to foolish action by the extreme lack of sophrosyne shown by her husband Heracles, has similar implications. Among the historians, Herodotus uses sophrosyne to describe tyrant figures, suggesting that it is the quality they typically lack. R.'s final position here is a bit unclear, since on 194 n. 1 he stresses that for Herodotus sophrosyne was not typically a Greek quality, but elsewhere in the chapter (195, 197, 200-1) he argues that Herodotus does in fact suggest that sophrosyne was typically Greek.

In Thucydides, we see the term used in the sense of acting in a manner beneficial to the state, where it is used in political deliberations to suggest the good planning and caution needed to ensure favorable results in international relations. Like Euripides, Thucydides also explores contrasts between the term's various meanings. R. treats Aristophanes and the orators in a single chapter on the grounds that they both represent more ordinary uses of these words compared to the high literature of epic, lyric and tragedy. Here the emphasis is upon control of desire, both in sexual practices and in social interaction. The term is also used in the pragmatic sense of being moderate in one's expenses. Here we see the value of quietism, in which the citizen refrains from the dirty business of city politics and minds his own affairs. The heart of the study is to be found in chapter nine, in which R. gathers his individual findings to form an overview of the various meanings of sophrosyne. R. lists and describes eighteen distinct senses. What distinguishes these various senses is not only difference in meaning (e.g. "prudence" as opposed to "control of desire") but also difference in agent (e.g.

sophrosyne exhibited by a male citizen as opposed to sophrosyne displayed by a slave). The network of senses is composed upon two axes. The vertical axis moves from the internal and individual (mental sanity) towards more other-regarding senses (towards other individuals, the state and the gods). This gradation allows R. to avoid a strict dichotomy between an intellectual and ethical sense of the term, a dichotomy that has characterized past studies. The horizontal axis records difference in social status, in which men occupy the central position, with women, boys, girls and slaves taking more peripheral positions. (R. also includes the polis along this axis, but as an extension of the category of men.) In his explanation of his diagrams, R. discusses these senses in an order that brings out the family resemblances between them. For example, after examining the prudential sense of sophrosyne, he then looks at sophrosyne on the level of the polis where it denotes good counsel and caution, since these latter senses can easily be understood as the political counterparts to an individual's use of personal prudence. R. structures the entire network by determining the prototypes of sophrosyne for each class of individual.

For men he argues that the prototype was control of desire, for women fidelity, for boys order and quietness, for girls quietness and for slaves obedience. R.'s establishment of these specific senses as the more dominant ones within the network is generally convincing. Having structured the overall network of senses for sophrosyne, R. then plots the various authors upon the network, thereby concisely expressing by means of individual diagrams the particular emphasis in each author's use of the term. This is very useful, and justifies R.'s general claim for the explanatory power of his semantic model. In R.'s establishment of the various general senses of the term, my one major complaint is that he tends to delimit the senses of sophrosyne too narrowly in relation to social status, in particular with regard to women. It seems to me to be impossible to limit sophrosyne as "prudence" to men, since this would suggest that no one else was viewed as having any self-interest or personal agency.

Granted that in our sources sophrosyne is a term used by male authors, and so reflects a male conception of what is proper for the various classes of individuals, I see no reason to accept that Greek males uniformly thought that women could not act in their own interests, even if these interests were supposed to be subsumed under their own. In Sophocles' Antigone, Ismene, typically understood as an example of a properly obedient woman in contrast to her transgressive sister, rejects Antigone's request to help bury the body of their brother not only because she is obedient to those in power (61-2), but also because it would not be in their interest to oppose Creon. Her concern is that such a course of action will lead to their destruction, and she repeatedly describes Antigone's plan as one that lacks nous (68, 99). Hence Ismene can be understood as sophron not only in her obedience to her kurios, but also in her prudential concern for survival. There does not seem to be anything particularly "masculine" about Ismene's attitude.

Sophrosyne understood as moderation in one's expenses also seems to be a sense that is properly applicable to women as well as men. Here R. is too quick to dismiss the evidence of Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.10-43, and indeed, given this passage's emphasis on sophrosyne, the absence of any substantive discussion by R. is unfortunate. In 7.15 Ischomachus (and not Socrates, as R. says on 255 n. 4) emphasizes to his new wife that sophrosyne for both men and women involves the preservation of the family's wealth. And while Ischomachus is certainly an idealized figure, in this regard his understanding of what it means for his wife to be sophron fits quite well with the figure of Penelope, the paradigm of feminine sophrosyne, as she is often presented as preserving, or trying to preserve, the wealth of the household for her husband and son (e.g. Od. 18.274-83, 19.524-31, 23.354-8).

4 Ischomachus' comparison of the good wife to the queen bee (7.32-40) fits well also with Semonides' bee-woman (7.83-93), who is productive where his other women often waste the wealth of the oikos. In the final chapter R. shows how Plato makes good use of the polysemy inherent in sophrosyne. In works like Laches, Protagoras and Gorgias, Plato activates different senses of the term to suggest the unity or at least the compatibility of the virtues. Thus, in Gorgias, Callicles rejects sophrosyne as "control of desire," only to be shown later that sophrosyne (in its prudential sense) involves an ordering of the soul that thereby benefits the individual, and is thus compatible with Callicles' self-professed concern for arete. At other times, as in Charmides and Republic, Plato instead insists on a restricted, technical sense for the term.

Thus in Republic the virtues of justice and sophrosyne are kept distinct (despite the fact that they are closely linked) by having justice mean "to take care of one's own affairs," whereas sophrosyne is reserved for a type of harmony by which the different classes of the state, and the different parts of the soul, agree on just what constitutes "one's own affairs." Plato links this with the traditional sense of sophrosyne as "control of desire" by describing the virtue as "being stronger than oneself," which itself can be understood to mean that one part (of the state or of the soul) gives way and is controlled by another. This understanding nicely makes use of another common sense of the term, that of obedience. The book's usefulness as a reference tool would be improved if there were more secondary references. For instance, R.'s interpretation (199-200) of the opening of Herodotus' Histories appears to me to be overstated, and I would have liked to have seen it supported in relation to the literature, but there is only one citation, and that is to a work that is missing from the bibliography (Heath [1990], mentioned on 200 n.

8). Similarly, given the importance of Andromache's self-presentation in Troades for our understanding of what constituted the attributes of the good wife, some acknowledgement of other discussions of the passage (634-83) would have been helpful. Also, a little more care could have been taken with the editing. I noticed about two dozen misprints (none of major significance). However, a number of secondary works cited in the notes do not appear in the bibliography (e.g. Kroll (1936) cited on 84 n. 23, Lebeck (1971) cited on 112 n. 19, Lattimore (1939) cited on 194 n. 2, Hogan (1972) cited on 205 n. 13, and Tuckey (1951) and Santas (1973) cited on 325 n. 38). There is also very little consistency in the spelling of Greek names, with different forms at times appearing in close succession (e.g. Ithaka on 70 n. 60, but Ithaca on 70 n.

65; Hephaistos on 51 n. 17, but Hephaestus on 53 n. 22). In conclusion, although at times overly restrictive in attributing different meanings of the virtue to different classes of individuals, by employing a recent and profitable methodology R. has produced a detailed and clear description of this important value term. Notes: 1. H. North, Sophrosyne: self-knowledge and self-restraint in Greek literature. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966. 2. D.L. Cairns, Aidos: the psychology and ethics of honour and shame in ancient Greek literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 3. Andromache's statement (Andr. 224-5) that she happily breast-fed Hector's bastards seems overly self-abasing (see W. Allan, The Andromache and Euripidean Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 182). The self-serving Jason is not a reliable source (Med.

913, 1369) to establish that Medea would have been sophron to have accepted his new marriage. 4. Penelope is certainly sophron in the first instance because she is loyal to her husband, but R. tends to be too restrictive in his understanding of the range of senses in which she is a paradigm for feminine sophrosyne. For instance, he repeatedly cites Troades 422-3 (33, 35, 258, 260), where Penelope is referred to as sophronos gunaikos, as evidence of her prototypical nature as the faithful wife. However, fidelity does not in fact seem to be the central sense of the term as it is used here. Talthybius' point is that, even if Hecuba detests Odysseus (278-92), at least she will be the slave of a generally good woman. In this instance Penelope is sophron in the sense of being decent towards others.

Question: The ancient Greek term/goddess 'Sophrosyne' represents?
Answer: Moderation