Greek Virtue

GREEK VIRTUE LYSIAS Speech 21 (19): "Do not just remember my services to the State, but also think of my private conduct, keeping in mind that most laborious of all services: to be law abiding and selfcontrolled, and neither to be dominated by pleasure nor driven by the prospect of profit, but instead to behave in such a way that not one of my fellow citizens has ever found fault with me or gone so far as to call me into court." XENOPHON Memorabilia 2.1.33: "And when their destined end comes, they do not lie forgotten and without honor, but they are remembered and flourish eternally in men's praises." ISOCRATES Speech 4 (95): Good men would choose to die honorably rather than live disgracefully." Speech 5 (134) Through being well-spoken-of and praised and remembered we have a share in immortality, and so...should be willing to undergo anything." ARISTOTLE, Politics 1293b 30-40: "Furthermore, the rich are regarded as possessing the thing for the sake of which wrongdoers do wrong; for that reason they call the rich KALOS K'AGATHOS (`beautiful and good') and GNORIMOS (`notable')." DEMOSTHENES Speech 25 (24) "PONERIA (`wickedness') is bold and active and greedy, while KALOKAGOTHIA, on the contrary, is peaceable and hesitant and slow and extraordinarily apt to be put at a disadvantage." Speech 40 (46): "You abide by the agreement then made, as respectable men (KALOI K'AGATHOI) should do." ARISTOTLE Rhetoric 1366b 13-15: "SOPHROSYNE is a virtue through which people behave as the Law requires them to behave in respect to the bodily pleasures, and AKOLASIA is the opposite." (`wisdom'/`intemperance') ISOCRATES, Panegyric 50: "Our city of Athens has so far surpassed other men in its wisdom and its power of expression that its pupils have become the teachers of the world. It has caused the name of HELLENE to be regarded as no longer a mark of racial origin but of intelligence, so that men are called HELLENES because they have shared our common education rather than that they share in our common ethnic origin." DEMOCRITUS of Abdera Fragment 19: "If inferior citizens proceed to the prerogatives of office the more unfit they are when they enter office the more negligible they become, and they are filled with witlessness and overconfidence." Fragment 20: "The exercise of authority is by nature proper to the superior." Fragment 23: "A man in authority is expected to perform well, and not badly. This is the assumption on which he was elected." SOLON of ATHENS "Obey the lawful authorities, whether you think they are right or not." TYRTAEUS of Athens "It is a fair thing (KALON) for a good man (AGATHOS) to fall and die fighting in the front line for his native land, whereas to leave his city and his rich fields and go begging is of all things the most miserable, wandering with mother and aged father, with little children and wedded wife.... Abide, then, young men, shoulder to shoulder and fight. THEOGNIS of MEGARA "But it is with good intent toward you, Kyrnos, that I shall give you good advice which I learned from good men in my own childhood. Be wise and attract to yourself neither honors (TIMAS) nor virtues (ARETAS) nor substance on account of dishonorable deeds or unrighteous acts. This, then, I would want you to know: not to associate with the bad, but always to associate with the good, and at their tables to eat and drink, and with them sit down, to please them, for their power is great. From good men you will learn good, but if you mingle with the bad, you shall also lose the good sense (NOÖN) which you have now. Associate therefore wit the good, and some day you will say that I gave right advice to my friends." "This is virtue, this the noblest prize and the fairest for a wise man to win among men: a common good for his city and for all her people, when a man stands firmly in his place in the battle-line."