_Separating the Men from the Beasts:

Separating the Men from the Beasts:

Foundations of Human Society in Greek Philosophy

In book VIII of his Description of Greece, Pausanias gives a curious and intriguing version of the foundations of human social life in Arcadia.

The Arcadians say that Pelasgus was the first inhabitant of this land. It is natural to suppose that others accompanied Pelasgus, and that he was not by himself; for otherwise he would have been a king without any subjects to rule over...Pelasgus on becoming king invented huts that humans should not shiver, or be soaked by rain, or oppressed by heat. Moreover, it was he who first thought of coats of sheep-skins, such as poor folk still wear in Euboea and Phocis. He too it was who checked the habit of eating green leaves, grasses, and roots always inedible and sometimes poisonous. But he introduced as food the nuts of trees, not those of all trees but only the acorns of the edible oak.[i]

This story has several puzzling features, and they are features which we find elsewhere in Greek foundation-stories.[ii] First, it isn't entirely clear to Pausanias at the story's outset whether there are primitive Arcadians present on the scene when Pelasgus arrives or not. The Arcadians' report, strictly construed, would have Pelasgus arrive alone in an unhabited land (he is said to be "the first inhabitant", genoito en te ge protos); but the fact that he is called "king" seems to Pausanias' logical mind to entail the existence of subjects. As the story proceeds, the subjects seem to be supplied not as accompanying Pelasgus into the new terrain but as existing prior to his arrival - and in a wretched state.

Rain-drenched, shivering, or made miserable by heat; naked or otherwise inadequately clad; feeding on an indigestible or poisonous diet, the primitive Arcadians are in a state which displays noteworthy contrasts with that of organized human society. To live in shelters of some kind, rather than out in the open, is a universal human trait; so also with the wearing of clothing. The primitive Arcadians graze like animals, but less wisely. In short, their existence prior to the beneficent appearance of Pelasgus is in some respects beast-like, but they do more poorly in that state than the beasts themselves. What Pelasgus brings them is tantamount to the establishment of distinctively human life.

All the more remarkable, then, is the story that Pausanias tells next concerning Pelasgus' son Lycaon. The inventions of the son are said to have been wiser or more clever (sophotera) than those of the father. Lycaon founds a city, and there establishes a new cult and athletic games. However, he makes a dreadful religious mistake. As Pausanias tells it,

...Lycaon brought a human baby to the altar of Lycaean Zeus, and sacrificed it, pouring out its blood upon the altar, and according to the legend immediately after the sacrifice he was changed from a man to a wolf. I for my part believe this story; it has been a legend among the Arcadians from of old, and it has the additional merit of probability.

Lycaon raises civilization to new heights with the establishment of the city, with the companion establishment of a new designation for Zeus - in effect, a cult-foundation - and with the initiation of the games, which Pausanias believes to be more ancient than the Panathenaic games. Yet Lycaon also illustrates in his own person the precariousness of the civilized state. In shedding the baby's blood, he earns for himself a beastly status, a feral identity. The transformation is instantaneous (autika epi te thusia genesthai lykon), unlike the civilizing labors which preceded the sacrifice. Lycaon labored, as his father had labored before him, to construct the conditions for human social life; and in an instant (so the story goes, and so Pausanias finds plausible) all is for him undone. He becomes not just any beast but the predator wolf, archetypal enemy of human flocks, and therefore a beast pitted against the socially sustaining labors of husbandry and herding.[iii]

That Pausanias finds this story plausible is not the only paradoxical element here. Lycaon's mistaken sacrifice of a human baby may render him bestial, but it is not itself the kind of act a beast would perform. Ritual sacrificing is distinctive to humans. Furthermore, the primitive Arcadians lived in a state which was sub-bestial. Their survival capabilities were far worse than those of non-human animals, who typically have the sense to come in out of the rain and to eat nourishing food. In these aspects, in presenting paradoxes and in highlighting the precariousness of civilized life, the Arcadians' foundation story is importantly representative. In the remainder of this paper I will explore several other foundation stories, locate similar paradoxes, and attempt to shed some light on the views of human nature which they embody.

Section 1: Prometheus

Related to the Arcadians' foundation-myth in invoking a "great man" figure who benevolently provides the things humans need for social life, and in painting a bleak picture of human existence prior to this philanthropy, is the speech of Prometheus in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. Here the recently-chained Titan speaks to a sympathetic feminine audience, the daughters of Oceanos, concerning his favors to humans (ll.436-506).

In their original state, human beings were so incapable of effective activity as to resemble dream-shapes (...oneiraton aligkioi morphaisi, 448-9). Even their perceptual faculties, their capacities to see and hear, are ineffectual (...blepontes eblepon maten, kluontes ouk ekouon; 447-8). Like the Arcadians above, they are houseless. Neither knowing how to build "sun-facing brickbuilt houses" (450-1) nor having any woodworking techniques (451), they live drifted up into the sunless corners of caves like ants (452-3). They have no knowledge of the changes of seasons, and are thus destitute of agricultural skill as well.

Prometheus emphasizes the utter helplessness of the humans in this state, and this helplessness is even more dire than that of the alternately drenched and sunbaked Arcadians. For here, even simple sense-perception is somehow unsuccessful in its tasks. It is as if, lacking the external organization-principles of shelter, temporal structure, and the social structures which these make possible, they lack also the internal meaning-structures which make perception what it is. This is symbolized in their silting-up in sunless corners, piled upon each other like swarming ants. But again, the ants are the parties who suffer by this comparison. For, as Aeschylus (or the true author of the Prometheus, if someone other than Aeschylus) will have known, ants have social structure which is practically unparalleled in the animal kingdom for its high articulation, its rigid directionality. When ants swarm and pile up, one can safely bet there is a very good reason.

At any rate, the benefactions which Prometheus brings to humans include, in the following order: astronomy, calculation, literacy which facilitates memory, "mother of the Muses", the yoking of beasts, ship-building, herbal medicine, prophecy and augury, sacrifice to the gods, metallurgy, and in sum all the arts (pasai technai, l.506).

The yoking of the beasts is described with a vivid image; they are enslaved to the yoke (zeuglaisi douleuonta, l.463), in order that their bodies may substitute for those of humans in the most arduous labors (ll.463-5). These domesticated beasts have thus taken on a formerly human role, a kind of surrogate humanity. Their slave-labor allows the bodies of the humans to move more freely and in other domains. In sacrifice as well, and in augury, the bodies of animals take on new jobs; they become bearers of significance for human concerns. In life, their organs and movements are inscribed with information and directives for human society. In death, their bodies are burnt and partially consumed in a ritual which both bears a message to the gods and cements the connections among humans in society.[iv]

Thus, according to the Prometheus story, humans move into organized society not towards one another and away from other animals, but into specific new relationships to those animals. The establishment of organized human society is at the same time a transformation of the non-human animal world. The disorganized proximity among humans prior to Prometheus' intervention (human heaps in dark corners) is to some extent broken up by the insertion of animal surrogates and animal messengers into the social structure at critical junctures: for the hardest work, and for the most important religious rituals. Aeschylus' contribution to the topic of this paper is thus not so much a separation of men from beasts, as it is an integration among men and beasts based on division of labor. In the process of that integration and re-assignment of meanings, humans themselves presumably take on the definiteness of shape which they had been lacking. In re-defining the status of non-human animals, the humans give themselves a definite outline as well. From darkness and dream-shape, they awaken into human life; and the beasts are of critical assistance in this awakening.

Section 2: Plato's Protagoras

Plato's interest in foundation stories is perhaps unparalleled in ancient Greek literature. The dialogues contain no less than six separate accounts of how present human social order developed out of a pre-existing state.[v] It would be beyond the present scope of this paper to treat adequately of all these accounts, and their contexts (within complex dialogues with specific and multiple purposes of their own) add considerable interpretive difficulties in addition. But for present purposes, the foundation-story which Plato has Protagoras tell, in the dialogue named after him, is of irresistable interest.

It is not known whether the historical Protagoras can be credited with all or even a portion of this story. A reasonable consensus among scholars holds that it substantially represents Protagoras' own teaching, perhaps representing a recasting of (part of) what would have been contained in the lost "On the Original State of Things" (referred to by Diogenes Laertius in IX.55).[vi] For my purposes here it must be assumed only that the ideas about human social origins which the Platonic Protagoras represents were a matter of some interest and debate in the late fifth and early fourth centuries.

The account of social origins offered by Protagoras here has an explicit moral: it is to show that social existence is the conditio sine qua non of human survival, and that a necessary condition for social existence is a very widely shared basic moral sense (which can be refined and strengthened through teaching).

It begins with a mythic moment outside human history, in which humans who have been created as physical beings, but have somehow not yet begun to live their lives in the world, stand "naked, shoeless, having no beds, having no weapons" (321c) before Prometheus and Epimetheus. The latter has shown great dexterity in equipping the non-human animals with horns, fur, prolific reproductive habits, and whatever else seemed appropriate to allow each species the capacity for survival. Epimetheus is the sponsor of the beasts' viability, the robustness of which is stressed (321a-c is quite detailed on animal survival capabilities). For Epimetheus, humans are a disconcerting afterthought (eporei ho ti chresaito, 321c2-3).

Prometheus by contrast looks directly at the naked proto-humans and is filled with concern for their vulnerability. By means of a theft, he procures technical skills and fire-making capability, with which he equips the humans before they go forth to begin living. Thus, technical skills are the human equivalent of horns and fangs, and they are a feature of the very earliest human existence. By means of them, humans may achieve parallel viability with that of the other animals.

Religion appears, as a consequence of humans' "divine portion" (theias moiras, 322a); and language, houses, shoes, beds, and earth-borne food (though it is not clear whether this entails agriculture). But parallel viability is not yet ensured. And human life is not yet firmly established as social. Between the technical and the fully political phases of the foundation-process, there intervenes a phase of war. This war is first of all fought between humans and beasts. Scattered humans (sporaden, 322e) engage in hostilities with aggressive animals, and these are often destructive of human life (apollunto oun hypo ton therion, 322b). The humans are capable of banding together in mutual protection alliances against these threatening beasts, but the alliances are unstable due to humans' recurrent injustices toward one another. Warring also against one another then, the humans scatter again and perish (palin skedannumenoi diephtheironto, 322c1).

It is important to note some implications of the story so far. First, the pre-political relationship between humans and beasts, and between humans and humans, is adversarial. Familial connectedness is absent from the scenario,[vii] and the fragile sense of common cause which brings humans into associations for mutual protection cannot contain our innate disposition toward mutual nastiness. The animals, presented throughout the story as better equipped for flourishing than we, coolly deploy their superior abilities to the depradation of our species. To contrast this foundation-story with that of Aeschylus' Prometheus, we find here that even technical skills and religious institutions are not sufficient to separate the men from the beasts - for there is too much of the beast in the man.

A special divine dispensation is required to enable humans to desist from their intra-necine warfare; Zeus, seeing them endangered, "sent Hermes bringing to humans a sense of honor and justice (aidos and dike, 322c) so that there might be orders within the cities and bonds holding them together in friendship". What is the significance of the fact that human society as such is founded only as a result of a secondary divine concern, a response to a crisis (threat of human extinction), and is only logically secondary to the development of religion, clothing, housing, and so forth?

Taylor's conjecture here makes good sense: we are to understand Protagoras as claiming that political organizations, even of the most rudimentary sort, are the result of a long and painful process of development by "trial and error".[viii] In this process, humans develop the ability to restrain themselves from harming one another; for this, a widespread sense of basic respect or at least a commitment to non-interference is critical.

Thus is the beast within tamed, suppressed, or controlled.

But the beast is not exorcised. It quickly emerges that some humans may turn out not after all to have received their share of respect and justice. For Zeus makes provision concerning anyone who reveals himself incapable of "participating in respect and justice" (...me dynamenon aidous kai dikes metechein; 322d) - such a person will be executed as a disease to the city (noson poleos). And Protagoras troubles to develop a theory of punishment which will be compatible with his view of the centrality of respect and justice in political life. On this theory, punishment of wrongdoers, of those who persist in the pre-political pattern of mutual depredation in which beast and human were not sufficiently different to ensure human survival, is for the sake of education (324b). To punish a wrongdoer just because of the wrong done, i.e., with a view only to retribution, is "to exact vengeance just like a senseless beast" (hosper therion alogistos timoreitai, 324b). Since this theory of punishment seems largely prescriptive, and certainly does not fit with Greek popular morality of the late fifth-early fourth century, we must infer that "senseless beasts" are in fact a feature of the real political terrain. A fairly elaborate programme of education is described, the goal of which is to be the solid and reliable establishment of social morality in the heart of each citizen. But (it is clearly implied) this establishment is a project, not like religion or technical skill a natural outgrowth of some human capacity, but an arduous process requiring diligence and constant vigilance - for the beast is always at the city gates, both without and within. Unlike the other animal species, who were well-equipped for survival as they came into the world, humans are ill-adapted, perhaps even maladapted. Political society, the clear condition of our species' continuance, is a never-ending task. Like the unfortunate philanthropist Lykaon of Pausanias' Arcadian narrative, the citizen of the polis regards both himself and his fellow-citizens as a risk-population, ever vulnerable to more or less sudden transformations into predatory beasts.

Plato's Protagoras also notes the existence of certain "wild people" (agrioi, 327d) in comparison with whom even the most unjust contemporary Athenian would appear just; these folk live without education, law-courts, or laws. Presumably then, they are a living reminder of that pre-political scattered state in which all humans lived prior to the development of aidos and dike. (The fact that, if these wild people exist, it must obviously be possible to survive outside a polis, does not seem to trouble him.)

Again it must be noted that in comparing the retributivist to a vengeful beast, Protagoras insults the animal kingdom. For beasts do not in fact take vengeance on one another. Vengeance is harm returned for harm suffered; no animal we know apart from humans is capable of conceptualizing harms and returns thereof. What Protagoras' story illustrates, and in this respect it echoes Pausanias' account, is the disposition to hold up the non-human animal as a kind of negative mirror, in which the worst or most fearsome human traits are viewed. They are viewed as possessed by another creature; in fact, they would seem to be projections of purely human dispositions. The beast in the foundation story is a human invention; and like the original scapegoat is made to bear the defects of our own nature into exile from our hearths. Adding pathos to this picture is the unmistakeable admiration all three of the stories so far discussed express for the animals' sheer completeness and vitality. Unlike humans, the beasts are finished projects which thrive on their own. We are initially incomplete, and are only precariously completeable; we require divine or heroic assistance, and even this does not always suffice.

Notes: