Preamble: the meaning of philanthropia

The word philanthropia supports a number of different meanings. EST lists a range running from â€?love of men, humanitas’ to â€?the laws of friendship and hospitality’. LSJ define it as â€?humanity, benevolence, kind-heartedness, humane feeling or, in a weaker sense, kindliness, courtesy’.¹ In antiquity Diogenes Laertius defined three kinds of philanthropia: the kind based on names, as when one greets someone with a name and a handshake; the kind based on giving help to every unfortunate; and the kind based on convivial encounters with boon companions.² EST notes another important aspect: â€?Philanthropia is not only the goodwill of superiors towards inferiors, such as a god’s towards us, a king’s towards his subjects, or a magistrate’s towards his subordinates, but also anyone’s friendship or affection for another.’ There is a hierarchy, at the upper levels of which it is not so much a question of friendship and affection as of an obligation to treat inferiors properly.

The basic category of â€?kindliness, courtesy’ can also be expressed as â€?fellow-feeling, civility’. It is an attitude, one that needs to be deliberately inculcated, and the mechanism for doing that is paideia, â€?training, education’.⁴ Educated civility is largely presented as a stereotype devoid of detail,⁵ but more specific connotations branch out from it. Diplomacy is a particularly fertile field, so much so that the adjectival form, philanthropos, assumes the force of a noun, ta philanthropa. It comes to mean treaty-generated privileges, then treaty-generated obligations, and ultimately all relations between ruler and subject.⁶ When the Aetolians reminded the Romans of ta progegonota philanthropa (Pol. 20.9.7-8) they did not mean â€?their former kindnesses’.⁷ They meant their due performance of their treaty obligations; the Romans expected compliance from their allies, not kindness.

Our special interest is in philanthropia as a curb on brutality. The civilised attitude induced by paideia would, it was hoped, restrain the innate savage instincts of man. As we have already noticed, Polybius doubts the efficacy of paideia in his despairing comment on the Carthaginian mercenaries (Pol. 1.81.5-11). But society continued to travel hopefully.

A feature of philanthropia is its bilaterality. One philanthropic act expects another, a quid pro quo. For example, the Spartan king Agesilaus treated prisoners of war well not only out of clemency, but also because it promoted the future security of captured fortresses.⁸ Cicero emphasises bilaterality in his letter to Quintus: the Greek gift of humanitas to the world must be matched by humanitas towards Greeks (Cic. Ad Q. fr. 1.1.27).