Philanthropic, the defining moments

Can the contrast between the negligible use of philanthropia in the fifth century and its proliferation in the fourth be explained as a reaction to a crisis? The closing years of the fifth century saw the Greek world engulfed by a rising tide of violations of human rights.

Revolutions produced a general deterioration. Old values like honour were ridiculed and society was divided into two hostile camps. There was no way of ending this state of affairs. No guarantee was to be trusted, no oath to be relied on. Everyone felt that it was hopeless to expect a permanent solution. Corcyra saw the first breakdown of law and order, with men swept into savage and pitiless excesses by their ungovernable passions. Human nature, always rebellious even where laws exist, was now quite incapable of controlling itself or of showing respect for justice. When pursuing revenge men do not hesitate to nullify general laws which give hopes of salvation to all in distress.²³

A partial solution was found in the fourth century. Its hallmark is the sudden upsurge of uses of philanthropia. The dying years of the Athenian empire had seen comparable violations of human rights to those that were convulsing the Greek world as a whole. The ultimate absurdity was perpetrated by the Demos in 406, when the generals who had chalked up Athens’ last naval victory, at Arginusae, were tried for failing to pick up the dead and the survivors after the battle; a court which denied them any semblance of natural justice sentenced them to death.²⁴ In effect they were charged with violating human rights, though that was not the technical thrust of the indictment. The Demos had tried to bite its own tail, it had created a situation in which a denial of human rights was used to punish a violation of human rights.

The fall of the Thirty brought the restoration of democracy and the great reconciliation and amnesty law of 403. The sources do not speak specifically of philanthropia in connection with the amnesty, but in the Hellenistic period such decrees were regularly known as philanthropa.²⁶ However, even without a specific label the law of 403 was the most important single act of philanthropia in antiquity. It set the pattern for both Greece and Rome.²⁷

If the law of 403 was the first formal Athenian response to the crisis facing the Greek world, Isocrates’ model based on Panhellenism was the genesis of a second response. Ideologically the two defining moments were far apart. As one of the fruits of democracy, the amnesty of 403 inspired an image of philanthropia in which the formative influence was not so much paideia as reasoned parliamentary debate and judicial integrity, as Demosthenes repeatedly reminds us. Also, the model was only designed for domestic use, as a brake on internal mayhem. The larger crisis of internecine savagery amongst the Greeks had to wait for Isocrates’ Panhellenism. His limited form of universalism applied only to the Hellenes; it would be for Universal Rome to broaden the scope. But as far as it went, Isocrates’ model broke important new ground. But it did so by a paternalistic monarchy and elitism, not by Demosthenes’ democratic process. The lesson would not be lost on the Roman emperors.