From Freedom to Feedom

[Evola As He Is]

It was.
It became a value.
The value became a concept.
The concept became a political slogan.
The political slogan became an ideal.
The ideal became individual, collective and universal.
The universal ideal became law.
The collectivist ideal became a social motto.
The individual ideal became a belief.
As law, as a social motto, and as a belief, it developed into a revolutionary weapon.
Croce characterised it as a « religion ».
J. Evola called it a « fetishism ».

It is no longer more than a word, neurotically parroted by the masses and cantillated on all the media 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Its pathological character cannot be doubted.

What J. Evola points out in the introduction to `The Myth of the Blood' about race in antiquity can also apply to freedom at that time : « … in aristocratic traditions [racism was not theorised, but experienced]. As a result, it is very rare to find the term `race' in the ancient world : the Ancients did not need to speak of race in the modern sense, since they had race, so to say. »

This absolutely fundamental fact has been well discerned by K. A. Raaflaub in his examination of the scarce occurrence of the term `freedom' in archaic Greek literature : « the free – or, more precisely, the noble elite... - did not ordinarily regard their freedom as a fact worth noting. Freedom was thus either unimportant or taken for granted. » (1) In this context, it is normal that « members of Homeric society seem to have thought and talked of freedom only when they perceived a threat to their own freedom, which they had hitherto taken for granted. » (2) The two explanations offered to account for this fact demonstrate a deep understanding of ancient Aryan-derived traditional cultures : « first, generally, the status difference between free and unfree may have meant less in Homeric society than it did later because other social distinctions and criteria were more important and contributed to minimizing that difference. Second, in particular, the scant attention paid to freedom reflects and is based upon specific traits of the elite. Their social organization and relationships, norms and values, ways of thinking, and relations to the community apparently afforded no means by which freedom could attain a high value. » (3) `Freedom' did not play any part in the political life and institutions of the early Hellenes either. « Freedom of speech was no formalized right ; it was simply taken for granted by those who enjoyed it. Freeman status was not recognized as a criterion to determine `rights,' such as participation in assembly or debate ; and the freedom of individuals or the community was no issue of public discussion. » (4)

The community was homogenous and organic, and its homogeneity and its organicity were due, as insightfully explained by J. Evola, to the regular and closed hereditary transmission of a force that as a magnet established contacts, created a psychic atmosphere, stabilised the social structure and determined a system of coordination and gravitation between the individual elements and the centre in view of the regular development on the part of single individuals of prenatal determinations on the plane of human existence. It was a racial community, the only community worth of the name, and this explains why, even though full awareness of individual freedom and of its value may have existed from early times, it did not, and could not, transcend individual feelings to the point of leading the `polis' to value highly `freedom' and to conceptualise it. Even better, it was one of the « deep-seated condition in the aristocratic way of life which prevented freedom, in whatever context, from being brought to general attention and entering the political arena as a programmatic rallying cry in its own right. » (5) There was a higher concern, which was the `autonomia' of the `oikos' and of the `polis'. (6)

The fact that the nobles took freedom for granted can account for the fact that no positive definition of freedom (`eleutheria') is found in the early Greek literature, and that « From its earliest appearance… eleutheros… forms a pair of opposites with doulos. In Homer donlion emar and eleutheron emar illuminate the same event from two sides. Both expressions are used only when attention is focused on the fact and moment of the loss of freedom… lack of freedom is determined on the one hand by subjugation to force and a foreign will — in other words, by restricted freedom of action — and on the other by loss of protection, home, and country, » so that it seems reasonable to assume that the Homeric idea of `being free' must at the very least include control over one's own person and actions and the security of living in an intact, stable community. (7) The adjective `eleutheros' is « primarily used in a single fixed formula referring to the moment when freedom is lost ; that is, it refers not directly to a person but to a change in the condition of that person. Eleutheros in Homer never designates the status of individuals or a group among the free or dominant part of society in contrast to those who are unfree or dependent. Thought of the community is prompted by only one phrase containing eleutheros. » (8)

So we have to understand exactly what caused `freedom' to become a highly praised value, both in the political and in the social sphere. Various consistent assumptions can be put forward : « The customs of war might change so that armed conflicts resulted no longer in the destruction of cities but in their subjugation, and in the enslavement not just of women and children but of men as well. As a result, male slaves would become less exceptional, and with increasing frequency, slavery might change its character, prompting a change in awareness among the free as well. Moreover, free farmers might come to depend on the nobility not merely for the arbitration of conflicts but also economically, which might lead to exploitation and new forms of dependence. Consequently, the loss of freedom would no longer be blamed only on intangibles — war, piracy, or god-sent fate — but on individuals, members of the same community, who were known and could therefore be criticized or attacked. All this might happen not simply in isolated cases but in increasing frequency and according to recognizable patterns. Then again, the aristocratic value system might be questioned and elite power challenged ; in the aristocratic self-perception, new alternatives to status based on predominance might emerge… Finally, the relationship within the community between the private and public spheres might shift ; the latter might become more intense and be structured by regulated institutions, procedures, and laws ; new forms of accruing power might emerge, new identities become possible or be demanded, and the principles previously determining the individual's ability to participate in government lose their validity. » (9) Solonian Athens illustrates to a limited extent the possibility of such developments, which, however, could hardly have occurred without a drop in the aforementioned force, as a result of the interbreeding of some Hellenes castigated by Menexenus. (10)

The economic and social crisis of the late seventh century created the conditions for the emergence of a typology of slave and free and for the burgeoning of a concept of political freedom. The small farmer was used to face economic difficulties, which caused him to borrow from wealthy landowners. « Since the farmer's land was inalienable, he could not offer it as a pledge for the loan ; some other item had to be found. In this case it was his own person and that of his family which secured the loan. When he was unable to repay the loan, the lender foreclosed on the pledge and the farmer and his family fell into a state of servitude. » (11). The increased availability of imported slaves, combined with other factors, such as the big impact on grain of the cheaper grain grown by slave labour in the colonies and exported to Attica - the same causes always produce the same effects in economic matters - only made matters worse for him. A stage was reached when a substantial and growing number of small farmers lost their economic freedom and, as a result, were about to lose their civic freedom. Solon banned debt bondage, passed an amnesty law, prohibited loans in future on the security of the debtor's person, and restored the economic and civic freedom of the bonded or enslaved farmers. However, the damage was done : `eleutheria', together with `doule', was infused de facto with a political charge. « The consequences for an entire community of loss of freedom in various forms were experienced in a context other than war and not mainly regarding women and children ; freedom (in the form of the citizen's freeman status) was recognized as a basic precondition for the polis's well-being ; the citizens forged ties of solidarity that reached far beyond the immediate victims of social abuse and assumed responsibility for the individual's freedom so that the entire community could survive and prosper. For the first time, the significance of freedom was understood in its political implications, and awareness of its value became general. » (12)

The freedom of the individual, as has been seen, was bound up with `eleutheria' and, more importantly in the eyes of the `polites', with the `autonomia' (having one's own laws, having the power of living and being governed by one's own laws) of the `polis'. The loss of `autonomia', or the threat of losing it, was bound to impinge upon the way `euletheria' was perceived in the community and to give it greater prominence. The Persian invasions of Greece by Darius and by Xerxes in the early fifth century, as told, without, to be sure, any Churchill-like melodramatic, by Herodotus, were certainly crucial for the development of the idea of `eleutheria' along political lines. In `The Histories', « Freedom becomes more than a political… fact ; it is a value that characterizes the Greeks and distinguishes them from their adversaries. » (13) However, it was seen and experienced strictly as a communal fact, and understandingly so, as, in times of war in any political entity, the matter of freedom within it tends to be relegated to a lower priority than that of freedom of it : « Herodotus… deliberately portrayed the Greek war as one of liberation. Time and again he uses the words `freedom' and `servitude', whereas the traditional notions of fame and arete, much more applicable to individuals, appear less and less. » (14). An indication of the increasing perception of freedom as a value and of its conceptualisation is given by his statement that the Greeks were able to achieve victory over the Barbarians' superior power because « they love freedom ».

In Thucydides, if `eleutheria' is still used « as an indication of one's personal status, such as the status of a free person, as opposed to that of a slave or a Helot », and as « a description of the personal freedom of action in daily life, » its main sense, against this background, is unsurprisingly that of « the freedom of a community from foreign authority, and as the freedom of Greece from oppression by the Persians. » (15)

It was not long before the urge for freedom which had led Greek city-states to form an alliance against foreign domination at the conclusion of the Persian wars boomeranged, developing in internal affairs and exerting an effective influence on the relations between the individual and the city-state. Freedom was invested with such a significance, with such a value, in home affairs, that it became, with equality, the second pillar of democracy. `Eleutheria' developed into a concept as the opposition between free and slave came to be used metaphorically in the political discourse : « Eleutheria was regularly invoked as a basic democratic ideal in debates that contrasted democracy and tyranny. The opposite of this form of eleutheria was being enslaved in a metaphorical sense, i.e. being subjected to a despotic ruler. The concepts of freedom and slavery are transposed from the microcosmos of the household (oikia) to the macrocosmos of the city-state (polis) and used in a metaphorical sense. » (16)

By the end of the fifth century, `eleutheria' had thus become a concept in three different contexts. In the social sense, `eleutheros' meant to be free as opposed to being a slave. In the political sense, `eleutheros' took on the meaning of « autonomous as against being dominated by others », as illustrated by the call to fight for the freedom of all Greek states against the barbarians in the Persian wars, and, later, by Demostenes' call to defend it from Macedonian domination. « As a constitutional concept, however, eleutheria was associated both with political participation in the public realm and personal freedom in the private realm. » (17) If, of course, `euletheria" was highly praised as a social and political concept by both oligarchies and democracies, the aspect of `eleutheria' that was rejected by both the oligarchs and the monarchs was the constitutional one, that which pertains, not to the external policy of the `polis', but to its internal policy. Besides, the fact that monarchies and oligarchies emphasised the freedom of the `polis', whereas the ultima ratio of democracies seems to have been the freedom within the `polis', is immensely suggestive.

The second major stiff problem with Athenian democracy from an aristocratic standpoint is not really that it was a majority rule political system, since the democratic body of citizen was constituted of only the adult males of Athenian descent, (18), that is, a very small minority of the population, a criteria which, if applied to modern democracies on our continent, would result in the ineligibility of masses of political schemers currently in office in countries like France and in the exclusion of the political institutions, of the whole political sphere, of the most sincere apologists of this political system and of the so-called `freedom of speech'. The problem lies in the idealisation of the concept of freedom : « as a democratic ideal eleutheria (in the sense of personal freedom) applied not only to citizens but also to metics and sometimes even to slaves. Thus, a slave, who in the social sphere was deprived of eleutheria, might well, in a democratic polis, be allowed a share in, for example, freedom of speech, though only privately and of course not in the political assemblies » (19) - this point cannot be emphasised enough. It is only one step further to argue, minus the pathos, that « Freedom began its career as a social value in the desperate yearning of the slave to negate what, for him or her, and for nonslaves, was a peculiarly inhuman condition », that, to be more specific, « Freedom began its long journey in the Western consciousness as a woman's value », (20) provided that sight is not lost of the fact that this degenerative process started at a later period of Greek culture than that we are here noticing, when the relatively low number of slaves and their effective integration into the `oikos' prevented them from developing a socially-oriented `group (self-)consciousness', and patriarchy was still intact.

Generally speaking, the rise of democracy fostered an increased interest in the `individual' in more than one way, whereby every concept came to be interpreted in a subjective and relativist manner. (21) With Protagoras' statement that « "man is the measure of all things" the figure of the naturally free and self-serving individual entered the historical scene. This spirit of individualism set the Sophists against the objectivism of both the traditional understandings of physis and nomos. » Traditionally, `nomos' is the divine economy of Zeus, on which human justice must model ; (22) from Hesiod to the Pseudo-Demosthenes, an uninterrupted series of authors assert that the `nomos' is Zeus will, in keeping, as rightly stated in `Revolt against the Modern World', with the transcendent realism on which the traditional notion of law (`rta') is based. In early Greek culture, « the nomoi and physis were one and the same. Legal authority did not ultimately rest in a pyramidal hierarchy of officials in a city-state nor in a similar hierarchy of gods and goddesses in the netherworld. The nomos-physis binary was unnecessary as an explanatory or justificatory tool. Laws just seemed to be all-controlling. They were not written down in scripts such as Solon's Code. The unwritten laws could not even be identified with a personalized author or source. Being unwritten and authorless, the laws could not be traced to some higher authority. Indeed, legal authority did not rest with an authorizing origin or arche to which conventions could be traced. Nor were they the subject of reflection when enforced. And yet, the unwritten laws were believed to constrain both the gods and tribal members. The constraints seemed natural, universal, everlasting and uncontrollable. No mortal could ignore or override the universal spirits of the netherworld. » (23) Traditional man « either ignored or considered absurd the idea that one could talk about laws and the obedience due them if the laws in question had a mere human. origin—whether individual or collective. Every law, in order to be regarded as an objective law, had to have a `divine' character. Once the `divine' character of a law was sanctioned and its origin traced back to a nonhuman tradition, then its authority became absolute ; this law became then something ineffable, inflexible, immutable and beyond criticism. » (24)

Later, the term took on a political dimension within the context of the polis. It was conceived of as an embodiment of the `polis', and absolute precondition for its existence (« where the laws have no authority there is no constitution. » (Pol. IV.41292a32-33)) It meant `anything assigned', `custom', `usage', 'law', `ordinance made by authority', `rule' as an authoritative, prescriptive direction for moral and legal conduct, `convention', and, as the transcendent basis of `nomos' became obscured and `nomos' came to be understood in a legal and rationalist sense, this `convention', now seen as based on human criteria alone, was bound to be challenged, opposed and impugned. « The people of the society agreed to be governed by certain rules. The only sanction for such rule was that it had been agreed upon by the citizens, and it could be changed at their subsequent pleasure. This conception of law became possible beginning in the second half of the fifth century BC because of the presocratic philosophers or physiologoi.

« The physiologoi had secularized the universe and all that was within it. They removed from the cosmic scene the Homeric gods and their allied divine forces. The world as a whole was physis, whatever is, and there was in physis no place for the gods. Secondly, the universe did not owe its existence to divine intervention. The initial attempts by some of the presocratics like Thales or Anaximenes to find a universal substance from which all else in the universe was derived evolved into explaining, as Heraclitus for example attempted to do, the unvarying principles which governed the operation of the universe. Common to these speculative thinkers was the assumption that all that took place in the universe was interaction among its parts which had the same physis or nature. Anaxagoras attempted to propose mind or an intelligent principle as underlying the workings of the universe, but he reduced such a principle to mechanical operation immanent within the world. The order of the universe was imposed by physis itself and did not come from a source outside it.

« The attempts of some of the earlier presocratics like Heraclitus and Anaximander to find common principles which applied to both the physical world and the moral and political world of man were jettisoned by the later atomistic philosophers. Democritus and Leucippus, who removed from physis any relationship to human values. Values could only be human and agreed upon by convention among men. Democritus affirmed the separation of nomos from physis : "by convention [nomos] are sweet and bitter, hot and cold, by convention is colour : in truth are atoms and the void." » (25) The distinction between `nomos' and `physis' would govern the development of Greek political thought and, by implication, of Greek thought on freedom from the second half of the fifth century onward. Whether it was first articulated in Hippocrates of Kos' `Peri aeron, hydaton, kai topon' (`Airs, Waters, and Places'), (26) or by Archelaus, the Ionian physicist and teacher of Socrates, it is not by chance that this distinction incubated in the `mixing of cultures' that took place in the Peloponnesian wars, of which these physicists were contemporaries, and which saw a deep change in the economic circumstances. « The growing complexity of life in the Greek city-states generated a demand for technical knowledge because of the growth of business, manufacturing and trade. Political leaders had to acquire the necessary knowledge and skill to deal effectively with the economic, social and political problems arising from the increase in all forms of commercial activity. » (27) A group of itinerant professional teachers were able to cater for such needs, as long as one could pay their fee : the Sophists.

Despite their lack of interest in scientific ideas and activities, they came to depend heavily upon pre-Socratic philosophy in terms of both form and content. « They consciously attempted to apply the methods of abstract thought that had been developed by the speculative philosophers for explaining the physical universe to practical questions of public and private life. And this led rapidly to a series of crucial questions about the origins and legitimacy of law and morality. » (28) Not all Sophists supported `physis' against `nomos' as the primary source of human law, customs, and mores. Not all the Sophist supporters of the primacy of `physis' went as far as Antiphon in claiming that there are no natural grounds for distinguishing either between high and low birth or between different races, « since by nature we are all made to be alike in all respects, both barbarians and Greeks. » (29) « This does not mean, however, that the majority of Sophist ideas on politics, religion, or morality were traditional or conservative. Nor does it mean that their doctrines were not fundamentally shaped in response to the doctrines of pre-Socratic natural philosophy. The Sophistic supporters of nomos differed from traditionalists largely because they could no longer accept the notion that conventions were divinely inspired and sanctioned. They developed a new notion of the significance of convention in human affairs.

« The framework for the Sophists' new discussions of the meaning of human conventions developed out of questions raised by pre-Socratic philosophers concerning the possibility of knowing or learning the nature of the universe. Science is a search for universally valid knowledge, and the notion of validity implies some criteria, either for testing the conformity of our knowledge to the reality it purports to illuminate or for otherwise judging the `truth' of our knowledge. The question of validity never arose — at least in a conscious and explicit way — in connection with traditional religious and mythopoetic understandings of the world. The appropriateness of a traditional myth was established by its very survival, and mutually contradictory mythopoetic accounts of any given phenomena or social practice seemed to be tolerated without generating overt unease. The notion of establishing some criterion for assessing the validity of knowledge, however, was a critical problem for the pre-Socratics. And from the outset it led in two closely related but separable directions. » (30)

According to Democritus, who was the first to explore the second, our knowledge of the world is derived from sensory experience. « That the experiences of all men should be largely the same (i.e., universal) arises from the fact that we are similarly constituted and that we are all affected by the same events. These events give rise to sensations when the atoms of external objects interact with the atoms that make up human beings, and we simply agree among ourselves to call certain kinds of sensations by certain names. But it is possible for a variety of reasons… for different individuals to experience the same real events somewhat differently. Thus, although sensory evidence underlies our knowledge of reality, there is no strict one to one correlation between real events and our perceptions of them. The basic regularity of experience is overlaid by a contextually determined variability. » (31) It was the Democritean emphasis on the possibility of subjective sensory states that the Sophists retained to develop their moral and political core arguments. Archelaus, a student of the naturalist philosopher Anaxagoras before becoming Socrates' teacher, and a man held to mark the turning point of Greek philosophy from natural to human themes, stepped into the breach, arguing that « if hot and cold, bitter and sweet, have no existence in nature but are simply a matter of how we feel at any particular time, then we can hardly suppose that justice and injustice or right and wrong could have a more constant and less subjective existence… Some early arts, like medicine and agriculture, merely assist the forces of nature, and may have substantial power. But political art and legislation are quite removed from nature. They are artificial, as are the gods, varying from place to place according to local customs. Because both the gods and the laws exist by convention and artifice, justice has nothing to do with nature but owes its existence entirely to design. And if justice is merely an artificial human creation, then it is subject to change at any time that humans choose to re-create it. » (32)

So « In place of the old understandings, the Sophists introduced a contrast between physis and nomos of their own. On the one hand, laws were dismissed as artificial human creations which lacked any objective foundation in justice. On the other, nature was reduced to the free play of human passions and instincts. At its most radical, the Sophists claimed that nomos was an unjustifiable and artificial curb on the natural operations of physis. The real task of the legal philosopher was to free physis from these contingent constraints. » (33) `Nature' was praised as `being free', as opposed to the `constraints of the law'. This view was expressed in its most radical form by Callicles, the person credited with coining the phrase "natural law".

Under the influence of the Sophists, or, at least, of some Sophists, not only `physis' became the measure of all things ethical, and `nomos' was lowered down to a corpus of mere arbitrary conventions, but also the very terms `physis' and `nomos' came to be used in a sense entirely different from that traditionally attached to them. What was conceived of as one and immutable, in that it was attributed to the gods, was `physis' and no longer `nomos', now thought to be valid only in certain groups and in certain peoples, on the grounds of the emphasis put on the mutability of customs.

This opposition did not remain `wisely' in the field of philosophical speculation and science, but was soon used to justify attacks on tradition in the ethical and political field. The relativity promoted by the Sophists on the ontological plane was logically reflected in their ethical and political conceptions.

Ethically, the assumption of the primacy of nature led to « enhance in nature the power of self-affirmation and the overbearing quality of the passions, » to claim that natural instincts should be allowed to have their sway. « Any citizen can justify a conduct on the basis of what he deems to be his own `physis', that is to say, of his own best interests, or legitimate his fight for another `nomos', which, while being just as relative, is more advantageous to him. » (34) The revolutionary significance of this Sophistic analysis of the law did not escape the notice of Antiphon's commentators, nor Plato's. (35)

Politically, it served to discredit the sovereignty of the `polites' and, more generally, to challenge the laws of the state ; freedom came not to be regarded any longer as a political status enjoyed exclusively by free-born citizens possessing the right and the duty to participate in the life of the state and thus eligible to public offices, but as a natural quality possessed by all human beings without distinction of race, of sex, and of social and economic condition. The Sophist Alcidamas declared that : « God has made all men free ; nature made none a slave. » (Aristotle, Rhet. 1373b 18 (ed. Rabe. p.74)) « And this was no idle school declamation ; it formed part of a stirring appeal to all Hellas in favour of the Messenian helots then struggling for their liberty against the Spartan power. » (36) Because of the subjectivist implications of the Sophistic moral relativism that posited that all legal distinctions between individuals were purely arbitrary, that `nomos', the law itself, was purely artificial, there soon lingered the idea that all human beings were entitled to rights, and, one thing leading to another, to equal rights. (37) « Lycophron called for the abolition of the privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy, Alcidamas set out to abolish slavery, Phaleas demanded equality with regard to property and education for all citizens and Hippodamus was the first to sketch the contours of an ideal polity. The Sophists even used the physis/thesis opposition to formulate a demand for political equality between men and women. » (38)

The ethical and political implications of Sophistic philosophy were the logical result of its theoretical principle, that « the individual Ego can arbitrarily determine what is true, right and good, » and that, since « all thought rests solely on the apprehensions of the senses and on subjective impression… therefore we have no other standard of action than utility for the individual. » (39) That was not all : if Sophism was a protest against the existing state of things, against the `nomos', there was one law to which the Sophist had to submit unconditionally : that « which every human can discover by a persevering examination of himself. » (40)

« For Aristotle and his contemporaries, perception was essentially a cognitive process, apprehending the forms of sensible objects without the matter. Such apprehension of external objects was regarded as direct, the awareness as awareness of the objectively real character of things. A mind as such perceiving was foreign to their modes of thinking… In the earlier period, therefore, mind was studied in its manifestations in nature and society ; with the close of ancient speculation, the investigation was based predominantly on introspection and the analysis of mental operations of the individual thinker. » (41) Then, « The Sophist discovered the world to be himself and hence all inquiry had a personal aim. Doubting any positive knowledge of the world of nature, he turned to the more comprehensible life in society. Now appeared the first attempt at a study of mind, which was further developed by Socrates. Thus the Sophists from an individualistic, and Socrates with his followers from a universalistic standpoint investigated the human mind in its social aspect. » (42)

It remained for the Cynics to bring the Sophistic views on `nature' and `freedom' to the next level along these subjectivist lines.

For the Cynics, « `nature' clearly meant the functions and processes and sensations which constitute man's life. With these he must put himself in agreement.

The intimations of sense and instinct were the sure utterance of nature, convincing and unimpeachable ; in agreement with them, virtue and will would find their natural exercise, and attain full and undivided self-realisation. The one sufficient way to happiness lay in obedience to the primary mandates of Nature, as expressed in impulses of appetite, of function, and of natural propensity, and satisfied by inner self-satisfaction of the will. Centring on these, the wise man would refuse to implicate himself in disturbing sensibilities, or in any gratuitous distractions of thought or affection or exterior deference or obligation. Praise, blame, and the whole array of social sanctions were extraneous to the man's own nature, and must not be suffered to impair that unconditional self-assertion and self-mastery which were indispensable to moral independence. Still less could any weight attach to purely external appendages, such as wealth, rank, costume, reputation, or environment. These things are not to be decried as in themselves baneful or undesirable or to be regarded as temptations, which the wise man must by virtue of his profession eschew ; they fall strictly into the same category as their opposites, poverty or squalor or obloquy. The inner satisfaction is found in ignoring, not in mortifying the desires. » (43)

This general picture of the Cynic conception of `nature' already suggests how unwise it is to draw parallels, as once did G. Stucco, between the Cynic approach to freedom and J. Evola's, if only because the emphasis is put on `autarkeia' in both. In fact, the Cynic `autarkeia' and J. Evola's are diametrically opposed. Indeed, to the followers of Diogenes, the attainment of sufficiency required the return to a natural state. « The Cynics held that the lower animals were superior to men in some respects, since they were independent of shoes, clothing, shelter and special preparation of their food and that they were worthy of imitation in these respects as far as men were able. » (44) They took the dog as their model, not « the watch dog, the house dog or the hunting dog, but the homeless and ownerless vagrant. » (45) The vagrant ownerless dog was free and on this account was regarded by the Cynics as worthy of emulation, in their quest for freedom and happiness. Whether The Cynics sought happiness through freedom or freedom through happiness is not entirely clear from the primary sources, and is still a matter of debate among commentators. In the first case, Cynic freedom would not be purely negative : `freedom from' things, « from desires, from fear, anger, grief and other emotions, from religious or moral control, from the authority of the city or state or public officials, from regard for public opinion and freedom also from the care of property, from confinement to any locality and from the care and support of wives and children », (46) from marriage (Pseud. Diog., Epist. 47, 1-6, in M. Billerbeck, Epiktet. Von Kynismus, Brill, Leyde, 1978, p. 131) and even from procreation (47), would have an object : happiness…

Cynicism is a form of eudemonism, and, as such, an immanent ethics. But « those who point "the way of happiness" in order to make man follow a certain behaviour" must be responded with incredulity : « 'But what does happiness matter to us ?' » (48) Besides, « The philosophical concern with freedom as a good of the individual's soul rather than of the body », « with the freedom of the individual and his mind apart from government and society…,» (49) which contributed enormously to the growth of individualism and humanism, is radically opposed to actual freedom, which lies nowhere else than in man's « superiority to his own individuality » (50), when unconditional authority was given by the Cynics to the criteria of individual experience and will.

What's more, the Cynic conception and practice of askesis, a cornerstone of this movement, in which it is supposed to lead one to sufficiency and freedom, bears the most superficial and peripheral resemblance to the `Doctrine of Awakening'. The Cynic is an ascetic « by compromise rather than upon principle, a precaution and in some sense a confession of weakness, rather than a counsel of perfection… » To regain « one's true nature, » the Cynic is expected to go through `ponoi' (`suffering'), `athloi' (contests') and much `talaiporia' (`wretchedness, misery'). « These words are most associated with athletics, the Olympic Games and their mythic founder, Heracles. Heracles' twelve labours were athloi ; according to Cynic and Stoic allegory, he endured them for the good of mankind. He killed the Nemean Lion with his bare hands, shot down the Stymphalian Birds, and in general cleared the earth of monsters and criminals, so great was his philanthropia. All of this was hard labour, athlos. The related adjective athlos means `wretched' and `in pain', and an athlete (athletes) is literally one who is in pain, either because he is training for competition, or competing in the hot dust at the Games themselves. Another word that the Cynics played on is ponos, meaning both `labour' and `pain' at once (e.g. D. Chr. 8.16 ; Epict. Ench. 29.6-7)… The Cynics played even more extensively on this conceit, as they undergo ascetic `labours' to train themselves for the wise, natural life. These ponoi involve physical pain : rolling in the hot sand, embracing snowy statues, walking barefoot on snow and enduring summer heat, winter cold, hard beds and little food. Their labours also include exercises in disappointment and psychological pain. » (51) Even though Cynic asceticism may be described as « a cheerful and hedonistic, not a world-denying, asceticism », as Cynics « paradoxically welcomed pain as a necessary condition of elemental pleasure » and « Askesis made them true hedonists, to such an extent that they might even get pleasure in their self-chosen pains : "the scorn of pleasure is the greatest pleasure" (DL 6.71) », (52) it is certainly no accident that so great a connoisseur of Christian asceticism as Origen singles out « Antisthenes, Diogenes and Crates as champions of pagan asceticism and likens them to the Hebrew prophets ; even more radically, he implicitly compares them with Christ (C. Cels. 2.41, 7.7 ; cf. 6.28). » (53)

The widespread view that Cynicism was a way of life rather than a doctrine calls for some nuance. With the later Cynics `kaprepia' (`endurance') came to mean the ability to endure the hardships incident to the Cynic form of life. With respect to poverty, another cardinal virtue of Cynic ethics, « the avoidance of money seems to have been a theory and a tradition with the later Cynics, rather than an actual practice. » Cynic expressions in regard to pleasure lack consistency : Crates of Thebes, a pupil of Diogenes, « held that pleasure seeking was a form of slavery and should be avoided. The Cynics retained this idea as a theory but did not always carry it into practice. But the idea gained prevalence that pleasures were to be found in the Cynic form of life and this probably facilitated acquiring converts. » Finally, it seems that, after all, words spoke louder than action in the Cynics' commitment to « defacing the currency » : « Parrhesia was a political prerogative at the time : it granted all Athenian citizens the right to voice their opinions at public assemblies. When the Cynics, many of them wanderers or exiles, laid claim to parrhesia, they brazenly appropriated and transformed the notion. They turned parrhesia, once the state-sanctioned privilege of the few, into the prerogative, indeed duty, of all human beings, and they broadened the concept to signify not only the right to speak out publicly on matters that concerned the polis but also the right to speak one's mind in any and all circumstances, on public as well as private matters, whether formally invited to do so or not. » (54)

« The main importance of this school lies in the fact that it was the first to abandon altogether the ideal of the city-state… The theoretical basis for the Cynic philosophy is the assumption that the wise man, of whom Socrates is supposed to be the type, is completely self-sufficing. Only that which is fully within his power, that is, the world of his own thought and character, can be necessary to make a happy life. Everything except moral character is indifferent, and in this wide circle of the indifferent the Cynic includes not only the amenities and even the decencies of life, but also property and marriage, family and citizenship, learning and good repute, and all the practices and conventions and pieties of civilization. For the wise man is ruled by the law of virtue and not by the law of any city. He will not desire even the independence of his native city. It follows that for the Cynic the only true social relation is that between wise men, and, as wisdom is universal in its nature, the relation has nothing to do with the local limits of earthly cities. All wise men everywhere form a single community, the city of the world, which is the only true state. To the wise man no local custom is foreign or strange, for he is a citizen of the world. He stands out as intrinsically superior to all the conventional and customary stratifications of society… All the customary distinctions of Greek social life could thus be subjected to an annihilating criticism. Rich and poor, Greek and barbarian, citizen and foreigner, freeman and slave, well-born and base-born are reduced at a stroke to a common level. »

« In the Cynic school, then, we see the first appearance of cosmopolitanism, and not without reason did the ancients themselves perceive a relation between this philosophy and the rise of the Macedonian empire. Nevertheless, there was little that was positively significant in the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics. » (55) The Cynic politeia, the Cynic `state' is nothing other than a moral `state' : that is, the `state' of being a Cynic. » (56) Cosmopolitanism was produced by the intellectualisation and the psychologisation of personal freedom : « Turning inward, the philosopher rejects the constraints of the institutions that were previously thought to form the citizen's character. Rather than protecting freedom as a value that is essential for political participation, the Cynics sought to defend freedom from the political sphere, which they saw as an external constraint imposed on naturally free humans… The freedom that it seeks to protect is universal ; it is treated as the highest of goods to be protected against political institutions' particular demands. » (57)

Cynic cosmopolitanism was « a leveling attack upon the city-state and all its typical social institutions. It looks not so much to the setting up of a new social principle as to the destruction of all civic ties and the abolition of all social restrictions. It aims at a return to nature in a sense which makes nature the negation of civilization. The Cynic philosopher, dirty, witty, contemptuous, shameless, a master of billingsgate, is the earliest example of the philosophical proletarian. » (58)

The Cynics did much to pave the way for Christianity « by destroying respect for existing religions, by ignoring distinctions of race and nationality and by instituting an order of wandering preachers claiming exceptional freedom of speech. Tertullian says that early Christian preachers adopted the Cynic cloak (De Pallio 6), and Augustine mentioned the club or staff as the only distinctive feature of the Cynics (De Civitate Dei 14, 20). Julian mentioned the similarity of methods of the Cynics and the Christians in their public discourses and their collections of contributions (7, 224). Lucian describes cooperation between Cynics and Christians (Peregrinus). The early Christians worked side by side with Cynics for three hundred years and were to some extent influenced by them. We do not know of any early Christian arts, music, literature or sciences. Early Christian orders of priesthood accepted celibacy and poverty as virtues. The Dominicans explained their designation by saying that they were "Domini canes" (dogs of the Lord). » (59)

« Diogenes became a Stoic hero, playing the role in their literature of a model wise man. » (60), even though, to use a most felicitous expression, it was Diogenes without the hub. To Juvenal, the only distinction between the Cynics and the Stoics lay in the coat they wear. The Stoic doctrines contained little that had not been taught by its predecessors : the self-sufficiency of virtue, the identification of virtue with knowledge, the unconditional supremacy of the moral will in the determination of life, the independence and responsibility of the individual as the unit of morality, the distinction of things good, evil, and indifferent, the ideal picture of the wise man, the whole withdrawal from the outer world within the precincts of the mind, and the strength of a moral will, are ideas taken from the Cynics. (61)

The personal touch they added to previous `Greek' philosophical schools was however decisive in their success.

« Aristotle had viewed the world as a system of specific forms ; these complete organisms could be explained by studying the parts in reference to the whole, as means to an end. Thus his investigation of soul was a biological treatise in which development, the transition from potentiality to realization, was the keynote. The underlying motive was the desire to exhibit the universal form in the empirical data of nature and life, since the universal exists potentially in the concrete.

« Aristotle's problem was determined by his epistemological position (based on the Socratic concept and the Platonic mediation between ideas and particulars) that universals are the only objects of scientific knowledge and that the concrete particulars, reality in the strict sense, are presented in sense-perception. Hence no regulating principle was demanded or furnished ; and the search for it became the dominant problem of post-Aristotelian philosophy.

« Discarding the Aristotelian conception of transcendence, the Stoics developed the other side of the latent dualism, the view of the world as an organism, by adopting the Heraclitean notion of primordial fire, eternal, divine, possessed of thought and will. All existing things partake of this divine substance which appears as hold or bond of union in inorganic matter, as vital principle in plants, irrational soul in animals, and rational soul in man. Together with significant contrasts in ethics the ideal of Aristotle was carried to its logical conclusion ; but a new spirit was introduced with the doctrine of universal law and still more by the ever-increasing emphasis on will, self-determination, which involved a practical instead of a theoretical standard of life. The concrete was the object of study ; but not the individual in general so much as the particular person. The introduction of assent or acknowledgment into the cognitive process by Zeno was the entering wedge of the subjective standpoint. As the volitional attitude gradually became basal in psychology and epistemology, the need of a standard became imperative. It is possible to trace in the older Stoicism the growing emphasis on assent as fundamental in knowledge, the increasing skill in psychological analysis, while the criterion of truth remained distinctly objective. The problems thus raised were bequeathed to the Middle Stoa ; then the stress fell on attention and the need of reason in all forms of knowing was recognized. In later Stoicism the judgment, the interpretation, the "view" became of sole importance. The relation between universal and particular, abstract and concrete, remained a vexing problem while the tendency was ever toward a subjective interpretation of the universal. Thus when the individual as such asserted himself, the will began to be treated as a specific function, just as Aristotle in contrast to Plato had discriminated activity from the other functions of the soul ; the more analytic point of view tended toward a transformation of the philosophical attitude. » (62)

To Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, ethics was the apogee of philosophy ; so the study of human nature in its individual and social aspects was basal. Moreover, his physics is eminently psychological. It works on the assumption that « (1) The whole universe is governed by the providence of God. This providence is the activity of his Reason, his Logos, which is expressed in the world as the Law of Nature. (2) Man is the only creature in the world which has been endowed by God with reason, and this is a bond between God and man… The "highest reason" is simply the Logos working in nature ; but there is the necessary implication that the Logos is a moral force, at least in its subjective aspect, in the minds of men. » (63) While, in Cleanthes, the successor to Zeno as the scholarch of the Stoic school in Athens, nature was used as an objective factor character and the emphasis was put on the unification of macrocosm and microcosm and the agreement of nature and the universal law, the main interest for Chrysippus, his pupil, was centred on human nature, harmony and rational control of though and action, and, in general, `virtue'. « In the Middle Stoa the introspective attitude came to be distinctly recognized and employed. The consequent difficulties with the objective criterion and the still more emphasized assent brought these philosophers to find some solution in a subjective standpoint… Panaetius held that knowledge and morality must be based on the logos common to all men, and that differences in opinion are due to the specific character of the individual reason… This insistence on the universality implied in rational thought in opposition to the individualistic point of view of the Skeptics combined with due recognition of individual differences signalized the adoption of a subjective standpoint. This attitude is also manifest in the Platonic conception of soul held by Posidonius [of Apamaia, in Syria]. For the difference in point of view is significant : no explanation is required, said the Stoic, introspection is the only verification needed. The transition from social to introspective psychology had been definitely accomplished. » (64) « While in the Middle Stoa the introspective analysis was concerned predominantly with the problem of knowledge, in Roman Stoicism as inaugurated by Cicero and continued by Seneca it was in ethics that the subjective attitude developed… In the transition from the teleological to the jural view of morality and from an external to an internal standard in which Stoicism played the chief role, Cicero is of great importance in the history of ethics. His belief in the importance of the state and the duty of citizenship is dearly set forth ; but in his strictly ethical works the individualistic standpoint is prominent. » (65)

Seneca made further advance toward a subjective standpoint by defining « reason primarily in individual terms, as human nature, and not as a part of the rational cosmos ; this is what is referred to as identity today : "Animum intuere, qualis quantusque sit" (76.32). The self in its rational scrutiny of itself ("se sibi adplicere"), in its use of its own rational resources to manage its relation to the world in fulfillment of its own nature, comes its own gaudium. » (66) He gave ethics an introspective turn by associating moral progress with self-knowledge, confession of faults, and self-examination. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius put an even greater emphasis on self-consciousness, the former from an individual standpoint, the latter from a universalist standpoint. « The emphasis which Epictetus put on reflective consciousness finds its apogee in the self-consciousness involved in his doctrine of the daemon, the divine element in man, reason as the better self, conscience. For Posidonius the daemon had been the objective, unchangeable, divine nature in man ; for these later Stoics the daemon was subject to modification for better and worse as an explanation of the reality of sin. In Epictetus, the feeling of the high destiny and worth of man is intense, the close connection with God is vital. The inner consciousness of the divine is the dearest and most certain fact of experience. The likeness to God is moral rather than intellectual ; in respect to will the ressemblance is perfect. » (67) In keeping with this moral standpoint, the centre of moral life is not so much identified with apprehending and knowing as with feeling and willing. Man's good is the will and progress consists in the exercise and in improvement of the will. The inner self is the object of all analysis in the `Meditations'. « In this self the immanence of the indwelling God comes to light. » (68) « Man's brotherhood with all mankind is not by blood or physical descent but by community in mind ; and each man's mind is God, an efflux of deity. In social relations all considerations must be directed toward men's inner self. Civil obligation was thus superseded by the cosmic ; citizenship became world-citizenship in the Dear City of God. This conception came to include the whole range of social duties and endeavor, and because of the position of the emperor was invested with new conviction and reality. In the hands of the great jurists the lex naturae was being formulated jus naturale which Stoic influences helped to secure as the moral basis of the imperial code of laws. Cosmopolitanism thus became self-consciousness of Rome's mission. Too exclusive emphasis on reason and the intolerance that results from purely individualistic morality were ameliorated by recognition of the social bond. Although Stoicism from the first had insisted on inwardness of morality and hence on disposition and motive, at the beginning mere self-consistency satisfied the demand of conformity to nature. Such self-centered egoism proved a failure in the relation of the individual to society. Hence gradually, while the emphasis on the motive and on self-consciousness was increased, the social outlook was broadened so that the individual was in peril of being absorbed in the cosmic world. It was in the stress of this conflict that the subjective point of view developed. For this conception of a cosmic order, of a cosmic standard, cosmic interrelationship and cosmic duty were based on self-consciousness. It was "within the little field of self" that M. Aurelius found the ground of all reality », (69) the basis of right conduct.

« From its inception and throughout its history Stoicism insisted on this interaction of the human and the divine, the individual and the whole. All speculation must start from things human and advance continuously to the divine, all-comprehending principle of existence. The theoretical cannot be severed from the practical, was a Stoic maxim. The material monism of Zeno had included everything — inorganic and organic, thought, feeling, will, man and God — under the category of matter ; hence metaphysical materialism. For conduct an equally comprehensive rule was laid down. When philosophy was looking for a canon of right living, a formula to serve as a standard, "nature," which had been the subject of investigations for centuries, met with universal favor. » (70)

Like Diogenes, the Stoics considered philosophy as a way of life, as a practice (`askesis'), and adopted from the Cynics various techniques, such as apatheia and parrhesia, but rejected the latter's animalistic aspects of scandalous behaviour and provocative dialogue that were regarded by Cynics as necessary steps to a life « according to nature » ; the nature to which the Stoics had in mind and wished to return was however different : « They looked to the ideal, and refused to copy the habits either of the lower animals or of primitive man. Hence, they rose to the conception of a pure and noble individual, sharer in the divine, and of a universal brotherhood of mankind and preached the necessity of the individual regarding himself as a citizen of the world and discharging social duties. » (71) « `Return to nature,' so far from implying reversion to animalism, and the reduction of man's needs to the level of the beasts, was found to involve fundamental differentiation of reasoning man from the unreason of the brute or the inertia of matter, to place man on a unique spiritual plane, and eventually to summon him from individual isolation to conscious brotherhood with kind and harmony of will with God… » So, for man « to live according to nature » means « the concordance of human actions with the law of nature, the conformity of the human will with the Divine Will, life according to the principle that is active in nature and in which the human soul shares. The Stoics in this fashion cancelled out the difference between nature and reason : to act according to reason and to act according to nature are identical, law and nature are united because the law is the product of reason ; therefore, we are allowed to think in terms of a natural law. The ethical end of the Stoic sage, his summum bonum, is perforce submission to the divinely appointed order of the universe. But it must be now made clear that man conforms his conduct to his own essential nature, reason. Both statements are in fact identical, since the universe is governed by the law of nature. It is therefore plain that the universal law of nature is, simultaneously, the ruling principle of the cosmos as well as the goal and norm of man. Among the Stoics, it follows no difference exists between the ethical fulfillment of the individual, the ethical fulfillment of the entire community of man…, and the rational law of nature. » (72)

To be sure, to act according to reason and to act according to nature were identical insofar as the correct use of reason allowed one to grasp nature as a universal order. If a person did not use reason to guide his actions and to follow nature, such person was no better than an animal.

« One of the first effects of the reinstatement of reason in its `natural' place was to reintroduce the whole order of `things indifferent' to the purview of morals. So long as virtue was solely right condition and exercise of will, acting upon the intimations of instinct and sense, no alternative was possible but absolute acceptance or rejection ; no intermediate course, no parleying or suspension of decision, could be allowed without admitting the fallibility, and surrendering the independent autocracy of the moral organ. But with the appearance of reason on the scene, with its power of discrimination, of valuation, and, above all, of `suspense,' the position changed. Technically, indeed, the supremacy and independence of the will was left untouched, and its disregard of things indifferent was as unqualified and uncompromising as its rejection of things undesirable but reason, notwithstanding, made allowances which the virtuous will could not admit ; it established from its own point of view classifications and degrees of merit, it attached conditional values and preferential claims to recognition, according as things tended to advance or to retard the life according to nature, and so reduced the number of things strictly indifferent to a remnant which stood out of all determining relation with the will, and to which reason itself could not ascribe such secondary value, positive or negative. » (73)

« By these steps Stoicism entirely altered the physiognomy of the `Wise Man.' Reason, when once its place in Nature was vindicated and re-established, tended to become the dominant partner in each exercise of will. It alone could supply criteria of self-conformity, and interpret and direct the impulses of sense ; it alone could justly pit reduction of needs against surrender of independence. Thus on all sides it was necessary to right action, and held, as it were, the casting vote in the adjustments of nature to life. Control came to be regarded as more important than first momentum, and thus the very essence of personality and `nature' was found to lie in the dominion of reason. Gradually it usurped more than mere directive power, and claimed to decide the prior question of use. It might refuse assent to any line of movement and pass sentence of inertia on any impulse or emotion. At this point the reversal of original position has become complete. For the `nature' in which reason at first had no admitted place is now placed wholly at its mercy, and may be set aside as unauthorised, and in conflict with the mandates of the premier authority. Nature has become contrary to nature, and must therefore cease to be. Suppression of the emotions (apatheia) — a self-determination distinct from the imperturbability secured by disallowance of needs — takes a cardinal place in the Stoic scheme of life. And thus… the idea of personality — of the ultimate unity of the individual will and conscience, of an Ego distinct from physical organism and environment — eventually dawns upon Greek thought…» (74) and, even more importantly, reveals a deeper dualism new to `Greek' philosophy and, more generally, an antithesis previously unknown to Aryan peoples.

Indeed, « Hitherto the emphasis on nature had been on the physical and sentient side of nature ; the inclusion of reason and the consequent social relationship changed the conception of the wise man and things indifferent. In the gradual clarification of the implications in pantheistic immanence and social fellowship, return to nature involved separation from the brutes and inert matter, and a recall from individual isolation to conscious brotherhood with human kind and harmony of will with God. As long as sense and impulse pronounced the verdict there could be only absolute rejection or acceptance. When reason became dominant, directing sense and impulse, a graduated scale of things indifferent as they aided or retarded life in agreement with reason resulted. The consequent suppression, or rather attempted annihilation, of the emotions made the nature from which reason had been excluded subservient. From the sovereignty of reason, personality as the ultimate unity of individual will and consciousness, distinct from the physical organism and environment was gradually revealed — with the final antithesis not between thought and sense, but between spirit and flesh, in later Stoicism. »

For the Stoic, the task was to bring man's thoughts and action into harmony with the laws of the universe, man's reason with « universal reason ». This could only be accomplished by the « wise man », through the practice of virtue. It was made easier by the teaching of Zeno of Citium, who, in his Republic, a work composed while he was with the Cynics and which was designed to subvert Plato's, redefined political concepts such as freedom and citizenship in terms of virtue (75), and, to begin with, altered the traditional meaning of virtue, which, to Plato, was an hereditary capacity shared only by nobles. (76) To Zeno, on the contrary, virtue is « a rational life, an agreement with the general course of the world, » which may be potentially reached by anyone, regardless of race and sex : « only the wise or virtuous are true citizens or friends or kindred or free men. » (77) To Epictectus, freedom is a moral quality, a state of mind, which only the wise man possesses ; the term is connected with tranquillity of mind. The wise man is free, because he has liberated himself from inappropriate emotions and, therefore, he is in a state of calm tranquillity (`apatheia'), or – perhaps - « inward neutrality ». (78)

For a reason that will become crystal-clear in the second part of this study, Stoic thought on freedom can be best captured in relation to its ethical views on slavery. They can be summarised in four points as follows :

« 1. Slavery according to the law, institutional slavery, is an external, beyond our control, and therefore not worth caring about ; 2. Slavery as a condition of the soul is both within our control and all important ; 3. Only the wise or good man is free and independent ; the inferior/foolish or bad man is dependent and slavish ; 4. The wise are very few, while virtually all of humanity is inferior. Most men are (moral) slaves. » (79)

Legal slavery was marginal to stoic philosophical discourse. « There is no sign that the Stoics debated the origins and justification of legal slavery in the terms of the argument that surfaces in Aristotle's Politics. They do not appear to have argued, as Aristotle's opponents had done, that slavery was a man-made institution, and an unjust one at that, based on force. The reason is that in terms of their philosophy the whole debate was an irrelevance. Of course legal slavery was a product of nomos, law or convention. But it was also, from the point of view of the individual, an external and an indifferent, not something to engage our attention, excite our emotions or exercise our intellects. » (80). The essence of slavery for the Stoic was the loss of the power of autonomous action. « To the Stoic, legal slavery, the kind of slavery that befell Diogenes, is of no significance. It is not in our control, it is one of the externals, like health and illness, wealth and poverty, high and low status. As such, it is to be judged as neither good nor bad, but, rather, indifferent. True slavery like true freedom is a condition of the soul, not the body. Therefore a free soul or mind can exist within an unfree body. The soul, specifically the reasoning faculty, is under our control, through the dispensation of the gods. Whether or not we are free and independent and exercise free choice (prohairesis) is a function of our attitude to externals. We can either not be constrained and dominated by them and be free, or allow them to constrain or dominate us and be slaves. » (81)

On that basis, it should be expected that most Stoics would reject Aristotle's theory of natural slavery. The doctrine of the very few wise men who are free and the mass of inferiors who are slaves is not laid out as a doctrine of people who are divided in this way by virtue of natural disposition, and the claims made by some Stoic texts about the potential of all human beings to become virtuous, while they should not be exaggerated, should not be downplayed either. (82) In fact, the Stoics even taught, far ahead of their time, the possibility of moral progress - a view which seems to be at odds with their contention that they are no degrees of virtue and vice, no intermediate positions. To Seneca, slaves are virtuous, or at least potentially so ; far from being inferior to their masters, they might be their moral equals.

The contribution of Stoicism to slave theory « was to shift the focus of attention from legal to moral slavery. In so doing they were no longer asking, as Aristotle was forced to do, how the starkest form of legal exploitation of some people by others could be justified, but how humans could free their souls from oppression by the passions and emotions, and bring their moral attitudes and behaviour into line with a higher law than the law of man, the law of Nature… Their point of departure was an acceptance of the rationality of all humans. In the late Stoa this blossoms into the thesis that all men are related in nature. They were putting distance between themselves and Aristotle simply in establishing this base-line. » (83) They developed the cosmopolitanism of the Cynics into a doctrine of the common kinship of all people as rational beings. « Slaves and free are pronounced to be brothers, descended from the same stock, from the divinity or `the world'. » (84) Epictetus « infers the existence of the world community, the cosmic city, from the fact that God and men are kin, that men are sons of God. » (85) The common theme in many texts by Hierocles and others is universality : « all men are related ; we are all sprung from the same source ; all men have rationality ; we have an affinity towards, and a responsibility to care for, `the whole human race'. » (86) To Marcus Aurelius, this « natural affinity of rational beings » entails « an ethic of social responsibility, » which in turn implies that each of these « rational beings » conform to the « intelligence of the universe, » that « has made the inferior things for the sake of the superior, and… has fitted the superior to one another. » (Meditations, 5. 30). In other words, hierarchy according to Stoic thought is a lot of hot air. (87)

Admittedly, « There is not much sign that they were prepared to advance much beyond [this] (sic). » « Stoicism (the Stoicism of the paradox `Every good man is free and every bad man is a slave', the Stoicism of Epictetus) was unoptimistic about the chances of attaining moral freedom and independence. All might be born with the impulse towards virtue, and inferiors can become wise. But the wise are very few. » (88) But there was nothing stopping any of those who were sensitive to its teaching to believe, true to the human, too human, tendency to vanity which, given the eminently psychological method of inquiry of Stoicism, Stoics may have been aware of, that they were among the « very few ». Admittedly, « Stoicism was deterministic. Fate or Providence has planned in advance the main details of one's life. It has assigned one a role to play, and it is one's moral responsibility to apply oneself willingly to this role… The message for slaves, explicit in the Late Stoics, was to stay put and serve their masters well. Therein lay moral goodness, and therefore happiness… Slavery itself, and the doctrine of the externals which helped to prop it up remained untouched. » (89) History has demonstrated that the audience of the Stoics were not as fatalistic as the Stoics.

Stoic ethics had a tremendous impact on the Roman ethos and on the Roman society : « Stoicism… had no belief in social progress. Nevertheless, by placing its practical ideal, not in the isolation of the individual human being, but in his union with the great whole of nature and humanity - an abstract universal, instead of an abstract particular - it favoured the very social progress which it seemed to deny. It was the fitting creed of the best citizens of a universal empire ; it gave an intellectual justification for the breaking down of the barriers of race and caste. Earlier than Christianity it proclaimed that all men were brothers, and that all might be by adoption the sons of God. In its contempt for "things external" as things indifferent, like Christianity, it escaped the need of directly facing many social problems ; but it introduced a cosmopolitan and humanising spirit into the minds of practical citizens, who were engaged in the work of administering and interpreting the law of the Roman world. » (90) Last but not least, as freedom is internalised, as it is in Stoicism, external slavery becomes irrelevant. « It's all a question of your self-awareness, self-assessment. Whether you are a slave or a consul, as a Stoic you act out the social role, while remaining free within. » (91)

This « humanising spirit » can be best seen at work in the pre-modern views of Stoics on the concept of rights, which is interrelated to that of `natural law' : « For Aristotle… any rights operating in a community are conferred on specific individuals in virtue of the fact, and solely in virtue of the fact, that they hold specific political or legal offices. One might be tempted to call such rights natural in some extended sense, since they are based on natural justice and for Aristotle, the polis is itself rooted in nature. However, none of these political or legal rights is inalienable or attaches naturally to individuals by the mere fact of their humanity. If, for instance, an individual of pre-eminent virtue were to appear in the city, all political rights and privileges would be off, since Aristotle thinks it would be best if the virtuous person rules. In contrast, the Stoics are the first thinkers in antiquity to develop a view of rights that are natural in the stronger sense of being naturally attached to individuals by the mere fact that they are human beings and, as such, members of a natural human community. » (92)

Once again, « The primal scene of the Greek eleutheria is public, not private ; its setting is the public square (agora), not the inner citadel of the human psyche. Eleutheria was a combination of play and duty, an obligation and a potential for creative civic action. Ancient cultures did not have our contemporary understanding of the notion of individual freedom. Considerably later, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135 CE), himself a freed slave who experienced many misfortunes in his life including physical handicap and exile, developed the doctrine of inner freedom as the individual's only refuge, an "inner polis" and an "acropolis of the soul." » (93). « The principle of internal liberty sufficient in itself for happiness, Denis Caulfield Heron writes, plagiarising Paul Janet's' `Histoire de la philosophie morale et politique dans l'antiquité et dans les temps modernes, Vol. 1,' conducted Stoicism to the separation of the man from the citizen, and to his enfranchisement from the state. The stranger, the barbarian, the slave might be a man : the citizen might not. » In defining man without any reference to citizenship, in going so far, in the same direction, as to assert, on the basis of a moralistic understanding of the principle of universal order, the unity of the human race, Stoicism undermined and shook the whole traditional system of the Greco-Roman world. Moreover, the Stoic abstract definition of freedom stresses only the subjective free will of the agent, whereas the Roman libertas was in the first place the objective right to act. The Romans conceived of libertas, not in terms of the autonomy of the will, but in terms of social relations, as a duty no less than a right : a right to claim what is due to oneself, and a duty to respect what is due to others, the latter being exactly what acceptance of the law amounts to, for to be law-abiding ultimately means to respect rights other than one's own.

The development of the Christian doctrine of freedom in the gospels is essentially the work of Paul. It will be seen that Paul's epistles and some of the Synoptic gospels are informed by beliefs connected with the crystallisation of the subjectivist and antitraditional concept of `eleutheria' in the aforementioned ancient `Greek' sects and schools of philosophy critical of the ethos of civic society. (94)

While disregarding the possibility of a direct intellectual filiation between Paul and Sophism, some of his commentators cannot help being puzzled by the wealth of rhetorical sophistication he displays in his very critique of the sophistic Corinthian movement in 1 Corinthians 1.4-9, some of them going so far as to acknowledge that « In tabulating his credentials and achievements, Paul initially must have sounded like any sophist who proves his life is a witness, » (95) especially when he urges the Corinthians to « imitate » him and « boast » in him, precisely as the Sophists did their leaders. However that may be, whether Paul reversed the pattern of sophistic boasting (3:18-23) or simply applied it with full knowledge, as an `initiate' ; whether or not he was thus familiar with the elements of Sophistic logic and, if so, whether or not he was fully aware of his indebtedness to Sophism, the fact remains that he was at one with the antitradional use of the antithesis between `nomos' and `physis' that was once popularised by some Sophists. Indeed, Paul made use of the former as antithetical to the latter to draw a contrast between the human, particular law and the `law of nature' - which is used in Romans and Galatians as a synonym for `inward law'. Besides, Paul replaced `nomos' with suneidesis (a so-called « universal aspect of human consciousness ») and `physis' with `pistis'. « Nomos » is regarded, with « sin's dominion » and "death, » as an obstacle to freedom, which can only be brought by faith in Jesus. As a result, the disdain and disregard for commonly held values and virtues that was professed in (popular) Cynicism was promoted (Gal 4.8-10, Col. 2.8-10), only more aggressively. « Paul's `pagan' Galatian converts were encouraged to abandon all their more obvious social markers - festivals, dietary and other purity rules, all codes regulating social rank, race and gender, rules that structured civic life. These were to be seen not as enabling, but enslaving ; renounce them for Christ , and you would enjoy a real freedom. » (96) Because of this and other aspects of his teaching, « It is hard to imagine how Paul could have been seen as anything other than a renegade Cynic Jew. Cynics were the only other people around who reached these very negative conclusions, acted on them themselves, and urged others to emulate them. » (97) Besides, « As a Hellenistic Pharisee (Phil 3.5) Paul would almost certainly have been aware of Stoicism and its discussion of `the law' (as were the author of 4 Maccabees, and Josephus, and Philo ; and if Luke is right in placing Paul's origin in Tarsus, that had a strong Stoic tradition). Paul would then have been aware of Cynicism as the original nurse and continuing sparring-partner of Stoicism. » (98) The theme of renunciation of material possessions, the first step toward Cynic `freedom', that was taken by Crates when, after having donated all of his property to his home city, he cried out in the midst of the `ekklesia' : « Crates, son of Crates, sets Crates free, » will not fall on deaf ears in the early Christian communities : « The wandering Cynic philosophers will find counterparts among the earliest Christian wandering charismatics. They, too, will renounce home, families and possessions… The words of Epictectus… are illustrative : "I lie on the bare earth ; I have no wife, no children, no little mansion - only earth and heaven and one large cloak Yet what do I lack? Am I not free from cares, without fear? Am I not free?" (Dissertationes III 22.46-8). »

« An analogous radical ethos is to be found in the Gospels. According to Mark (10:1 7ff) radical discipleship calls for renunciation of possessions and according to Matthew (6:25) `In the last resort, what is required is inner freedom from possessions, and freedom towards providence'. » (99)

Traditionally, `Euletharia' was the privilege of free men, of citizens, citizens of a particular ethnically and geographically-bound `polis', who, as such, were full-fledged participants in its political life, and who, however, were free only under the law (`nomos)'. None of the numerous occurrences of `eleutheria' in Paul's epistles bear the remotest relation with its original political meaning. `Eleutheria' is not conceived of as freedom for something', as a starting point reserved for a minority on the basis of their birth, but as `freedom from things', as a point of arrival - for all. (100) « For the Stoics, cosmopolitanism involved the affirmation of moral obligations toward humans anywhere in the world because they all share in a common faith, regardless of their different political, religious, and other particular affiliations. The Stoic cosmopolitans held the view that all humans live together "as it were in one state." (101) They conceived of this community in moral terms. They used world citizenship as a metaphor for common membership in a single moral community. » In the Christian discourse, `common faith" replaces Stoic `common rationality'.

The criterion of `politeia' (citizenship') was altered accordingly. The criterion of participation in the `ekklesia' - the main assembly of Athenian democracy - applied by Paul is `pistis' (`faith') in connection with `pneuma' (`spirit'). (102) « Whereas Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle conceptualised freedom as freedom to perform one's public duties, a freedom which could be exercised only in a polis, now freedom acquired a personalised and autonomous meaning. Freedom is no longer dependant upon the existence of a specific political organisation, rather it is potentially available to all ; an inner state which can be experienced irrespective of social and political orders. » (103) For Aristotle, « eleutheria is, politically, the very end of a city, ethically, the end of an individual, » (104) it being understood that the latter's end cannot be achieved independently of the former's. These complementary aims are stoically uncoupled in Paul's epistles. The new doctrine of `freedom' is defined by moral choice, whereby « whatever one's social class, an individual who was properly aligned internally could attain a freedom of choice, but one construed ethically as well as ontologically. » (105) Both in Paul and in Stoicism, as well as in the whole philosophical current from which Stoicism stemmed, freedom is translated from the political to the moral, from the objective to the subjective, from the common to the personal. As the whole political discourse « withdrew in the ethical, the city became internalized, » freedom was then « found in the provinces of morality and of the afterworld. » (106) The « Inner freedom » of the Stoics was no longer « attainable only by the wise, » the « kingdom of God » was now within each and everyone's reach and, actually, claimed to be within each individual, all the more so as the apocalyptic and imminent « kingdom of God » was slow in materialising. Whatever term is applied to qualify the view of citizenship upheld by Paul, it belongs to the lexical field of abstraction. B. Blumenfeld chooses to call it « mystical ». Why not ? (107)

It is argued by those who caution against drawing too close an analogy between Paul's understanding of freedom and the concept of freedom in `Greek' philosophical schools that their resemblances would be superficial, on the ground that « While for Paul freedom was based in the grace of God and charismatic in nature, it was grounded in philosophy and the result of education for the Stoics. While Paul defined it as being "in Christ," the Stoics insisted that it was synonymous with educated moral autonomy. While Paul spoke of freedom from sin, the Stoics advocated freedom from fate… At the very heart of the matter, Paul and Stoicism are in disagreement. Both speak of surrender and obedience, but to the one it is to Christ while to the other it is to the inner law of one's being. The one is theo- and Christo-centric ; the other is anthropocentric. » (108) ; « The Stoic is free because he is master of himself through rational thought ; for Paul man's will is corrupt and in himself he is totally incapable of freedom. The Stoic finds certainty of existence by self-restriction, and this is freedom ; for Paul responsibility to self drives man to despair and he can achieve freedom only as he is freed from himself. The Stoic can separate himself from time and deny the future, thus achieving freedom by abstraction ; for Paul temporality is inherent in man's nature, so that, even though conditioned by his past, he continually has to make new decisions for the future, and he cannot do so, since he is his past and can have freedom only as a gift of grace, » etc. (109) What is actually superficial is instead this kind of distinctions, which, no matter how pertinent some of them may be from a philosophical or theological perspective, are essentially hair-splitting from a deeper perspective, from which what distinguishes and even separates the Stoic concept of freedom from Paul's discourse on freedom appears infinitely less important than what binds them together, their many dissimilarities infinitely less central than their similarities. Their similarity in nature is often inadvertently hinted at through arguments about their contrasts, as in the following statement : « The Stoics… held that freedom is achieved through the individual's own efforts to live according to nature and virtue, while for Paul freedom comes to the individual only though God's help, manifested in Christ. » (110) `Individual' is the key word, the lowest common denominator of freedom in Paul and of freedom in Stoic philosophy.

The increasing interest in the individual, influenced by the democratic developments in Athens, or rather, as has been previously stressed, by the developments of the democratic ideal, (111) hypnotised some into a belief in human equality and led as a result to the blurring of social, political, and economic status in the name of moral concern. Masters were admonished to remember that « the man whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies. » (Epistulae, 47:30) To Paul, following in the footsteps of the Stoics and of Philo (112), it goes without saying that moral comes first over slavery according to the law, let alone « spiritual slavery » ; slavery of the soul is more damaging than the slavery of the body. Like Seneca and other Stoics he is interested in the quality of master/slave relationships. « A vision of the unity of mankind plays a supporting role in his argument, as it does in Seneca's. » (113) It is argued that « The comparison breaks down when one looks more closely at the aims and preoccupations of the two men. Seneca addresses only masters. He holds out to them, as an incentive for gentle treatment of their slaves (who as rational beings are their kinsmen), the prospect of present benefits - ranging from dedicated and sacrificial service from their slaves to release from the fear of assassination at their hands. Paul, addressing both slaves and masters indiscriminately, equals in the sight of God, talks of rewards and hints at punishments in the next world. His message for slaves is that in serving their masters well they are serving Christ. The instructions to slaves and masters are to be seen as part of a call to all men, whatever their social, legal or ethnic condition. » (114) The comparison breaks down only to be made effective again and even reinforced by a common belief in the equality of all men, a persistent, recurrent, sneaking, nagging, belief, which, beyond doctrinal and tactical differences, is the unmistakable hallmark of one and the same current of thought in the samsaric sense, whether it is externalised in philosophical or religious forms. In fact, the epistles go further than the late Stoa on the issue of the relationship between masters and slaves, or, actually, slaves and masters : not only, unlike Stoics, Paul addresses slaves, appeal to them directly, something which was most unusual in ancient moral instruction, but, as has been noted, the apostle addresses the inferiors, the slaves first in this pair of relationship. Besides, « If society thought of slaves as property, Paul addressed them as people. If the law required obedience, Paul makes the life of slavery into an act of devotion, where service to Christ is the highest good. »

« Likewise, Paul encourages masters to work out their relationship with their slaves in ways that tangibly demonstrate their equality in Christ. They are to apply the Golden Rule to their treatment of slaves : "Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven" (Col. 4:1). Since the Lord is the master of all masters and slaves, of both masters and slaves, slave-holders should remain aware "whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free" (Eph. 6.8). » (115) One has either to have no idea of the nature of slavery in Paul's day, so widely accepted an institution that it did not occur anyone to attack it, at least head-on, or, most probably in this case, to treat it as immaterial, to state that « The social attitudes he betrays in addressing slaves and their masters are conventional and conservative. The first and crucial instruction as set out in 1 Corinthians is that slaves should stay precisely where they are without resentment, in the knowledge that it makes no difference to Christ whether one is a slave or a free man. » Indeed, no sooner has Paul instructed slaves to be content to remain in whatever position they were in when they became Christians (1 Corinthians 7.20) than he encouraged them to do the contrary : « Were you a slave when you were called? Do not be concerned about it, but if you can gain your freedom, do so. » (1 Corinthians 7.21). (116)

There is something deeply, cunningly subversive about the treatment of the relationship between slaves and masters in the epistles. When Paul « emphasizes that singleness of heart is expected of the slave, but masters are to show justice and also equality (isotes) toward slaves… This means more than simply "justly" and "fairly." It is a recognition that subtly subverts the social stratification itself (3:22-4:1) by utilizing the language of "fellowship" and "friendship" (koinonia) — terms reminiscent of Philippians — to describe a relationship that was anything but koinonia in the ancient world.. Paul relativizes the entire social system by placing it within the critical framework of the "good news" from God. » (117)

This implies that « Paul… brings the principle of transcendence to bear on the social arrangements and attitudes themselves. Submission is conditioned by the measure of what is "fitting in the Lord" (3: 18)... Moreover, slaves are to serve as those "fearing the Lord" (3:22) and as though they are "serving the Lord rather than humans" (3:23), because they are, in fact, "serving the Lord Christ" (3.24). » (118)

This also implies that « any form of stratification will be in tension with the community ideal of "neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Greek" (3:11) and "neither male nor female" (Gal. 3:28). » (119) The fact that the relationship of slave and master is defined as a relationship which takes place under God, who is master of both the slave and the master, and before whom both the slave and the master are thus fundamentally equal, cannot but have deep social implications in the long run. 1 Tim. 6:1-2 shows clearly that the slaves who were told by Paul that they were equal to their masters before God took his message most literally. More generally, there is no indication that the gospels were understood only symbolically by a large part of the mass of « worthless and contemptible people, idiots, slaves, poor women, and children », which, as implicitly acknowledged in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, made up the target audience of the first evangelists (for that matter, Paul's audience, too, of which we are told that it was far more literate, far more familiar with the Jewish scriptures, than the earlier Christian communities, may just as well be regarded by the standards of Celsius as having been made up of « worthless and contemptible people, idiots, slaves… »).

There is no intrinsic contradiction between 1 Tim. 6:1-2 or even Gal. 3:11 and various other passages of the epistles in which slaves are commanded, or rather advised, to obey their `masters'. The latter are addressed to the small world of the nascent and heterogeneous Christian community, the former to a much desired Christian world, in which tension is ideally resolved and « there is neither slave nor free ».

Paul's imagery and discourse on the relationship between masters and slaves are consistent with Jesus'. « Jesus, in spite of the (underdeveloped (sic)) message of liberation found in Luke's Gospel, never acted to abolish slavery. But neither did he legitimate it. In spite of violent slave uprisings, like the one led by Spartacus (c. 70 BCE) resulting in the eventual crucifixion of 6600 of his followers along the Appian Way, no one in the first century wrote abolitionist tracts or even questioned the legitimacy of slavery. The fact that slavery is a constant motif in Jesus' preaching (Matt. 13:24–30 ; 18:23–35 ; 22:1–14 ; 24:45–51 ; 25:14–30 ; Mark 12:1–12 ; Luke 14:15–24 ; 15:11–32 ; 20:9–19) is itself unique. Placed within the context of the Gospels' overall message, in which the Messiah is depicted as both slave (doulos) and Lord (kyrios), and in which this lordship is attained by becoming a slave (Phil. 2:5–11), a subversive view of slavery begins to coalesce.

« When Jesus employs slavery as a metaphor for understanding our relationship to God, he is giving primacy to one relationship above all others : God makes an absolute and exclusive demand upon the life of each believer. As Jesus has taught : "no slave can serve two masters" (Luke, 16:13). Rather than legitimating the practice of slavery, the analogous use of slavery for understanding our relationship to God—when properly understood (sic) —radically transforms all other relationships. » (120) Likewise, Paul does not explicitly condemn slavery or call for the abolition of slavery, yet his use of slavery as a metaphor for humankind's relationship to God builds upon Jesus' own in order to eliminate difference between slave and free.

Pauline usage of metaphorical slave language, the apostle self-identification to « a slave of Christ » and, in general, Pauline « theology of slavery » can be best understood when viewed against the Old Testament background. « Slavery was an accepted, structural element in the society of ancient Israel, but Slavery was the fate of others, not of Jews. Jews could be subjected only to temporary slavery, unless they chose to stay with their masters (Exodus 11:1-7 ; Deut. I5:11-18). Accordingly, slavery (of Jews) to men was defined as bad slavery. The alternative to slavery to men was slavery to God, which can be labelled as good slavery. Moses, Abraham and the rest of the patriarchs were slaves of God. So for that matter were the whole chosen people of God. They had been freed from slavery in Egypt to be the slaves of their God (e.g. Lev. 15:41 and 55), and were firmly instructed not to become slaves of men. » (121) Israel was identified as God's slaves. It has been rightly noted that « slavery to God became an intricate part of Jewish self-understanding... an emblem that helped to show a perception of a distinctive relation with God. » (122) and helped them to identify themselves in relation to the rest of the world.

This shade of meaning of the title « slave » would have gone unnoticed by the Gentiles which made up most of Paul's audience and readership, that would have understood Paul's use of the word in the same way as they perceived themselves as actual slaves and, in any case, would unlikely have been as able as modern scholars to discriminate between cases where `doulos' was employed in its Greek senses and cases where it carried meanings foreign to the Greek. In general, however, the lexical form of the New Testament is Greek, and its substance is Jewish. (123) The view, shared both by some anti-Semitic milieux and by certain scholars, that Christianity is essentially a universalisation of the depths of Judaism is given further credibility by Paul's ambiguous and ambitious use of the term' Christos', which can be translated both as `Christ' or `Messiah' and can recall the Old Testament use of `the Servant', and by the continuity of thought which a close reading of the original Greek betrays between the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Old Testament : « In a very true sense St Paul does not regard the Christian Society, the Church, as a new Society : it is rather the direct, and true, and legitimate continuation and development of the old Divine Society, the covenant people of Israel. » (124) Generally speaking, it has been showed conclusively that Semitic sources played a constitutive role in the composition of more than one Gospel, (125) something which, in the light of the presence of specific Stoic (or Cynic) elements, whether linked to the concept of freedom or not, in Mark, Matthew and Luke, would not have surprised the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Aristobolus, who perceived « the correspondence in point of view between the Stoic philosophers and the Jewish scriptures to be the result— not of the Jewish thinkers having read and been influenced by the Stoics, but of the Stoics having read and been persuaded by Moses ! He declares, "It seems to me that Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato with great care follow [Moses] in all respects. They copy him when they say they hear the voice of God, when they contemplate the arrangement of the universe, so carefully made and so unceasingly held together by God." » (126)

Paul's deductions regarding freedom can be fully understood only in a wider context than that of Jewish history and beliefs. The notion that Jehovah had become a special protector of Israel and the Hebrews as a whole had turned into God's slaves reflected royal court language in which subjects of the king were often called slaves, not only in ancient Israel, but throughout the ancient Near East. Most of Israel's patriarchs, kings, and prophets are spoken of as servants or slaves of Jehovah, while the officials of Oriental kings already called themselves their servants or slaves. (127) There is also some evidence that the absolute monarchs of Persia would regard their subjects as slaves. (128) Three points should be noted in this respect : first, Semitic and Oriental peoples « did not regard this notion of slavery as repulsive, but as a common way of identifying with the god(s) they worshipped. » (129) Interestingly enough, the words for `slave', `servant', and `worshipper' derive from the same root in Semitic languages. Secondly, at least in ancient Mesopotamia, « … apart from the special attention given to awelum in the Code of Hammurabi — usually translated "seignior" — there seems to be no special designation for a `free' man. There is no notion of a person `free' in a political sense. (130) Third, Patterson finds the idea expressed in prehistoric Mesopotamia and even Africa that all who serve the ruler are « slaves of the king, » and tries to justify it by arguing that « Since only the king-god was free, the only freedom worth having was that which came vicariously in enslavement to him. » In fact, « a king's subjects took an oath by the gods to guard and protect him, so that their servitude to him was ultimately a servitude to the gods, » yet, at least in the Near East, kings were slaves too - of the gods. (131)

To conclude with this overview on the genesis and development of the concept of `freedom' in the ancient Greco-Roman world as a preliminary to the study of the influence of the Christian concept of freedom on the early Germanic `Genossenschaft', suffice it to say that the full conceptualisation of freedom occurred, first as a political and social category, under the influence of non aristocratic elements (« Neither in Greece nor in Rome was the concept of freedom invented and made politically useful by the elite. In Rome, on the contrary, its political dynamism and attractiveness as a catchword in social conflict was apparently generated by the non-elite citizen's need of protection against the elite, who, despite all their power and social superiority, depended on the citizens for the defense of the community. In Greece, the protection of the external independence of the polis became an issue only when in some of the leading communities equal political participation had already become a crucial concern for broad non-elite classes »), (132) only to be used and understood later in a non political and even a-political sense ; then as an individual attribute, still, and even more conspicuously, under the influence of alien conceptions, which will be duly highlighted in the second part of this survey. These developments were accompanied and shaped by increased abstraction, in relation to the increasing weight of a « human type, who in order to uphold values that he cannot realize and that thus appear to him increasingly abstract and utopian, eventually feels dissatisfied and frustrated before any existing positive order and any form of authority. » (133)

It is most noteworthy that the word appeared first as an adjective (free), then as a nominal (the free) and only much later as an abstract noun (freedom).

In the Athenian period, it was impossible that the cosmopolitan class of the metics, which enjoyed supremacy in industry - except in that of the mines - as well as in trade, « imported goods, and with them ideas, from all over the world, which was able to display the effort of its intelligence in every direction and to guide its instinct for success on every course, should never know any other means of action than money… » (134) The liberal and intellectual professions also attracted the metics. « Most of the philosophers who taught in Athens before Socrates and after Plato came from abroad. They exercised a powerful influence on the moral and social evolution of the Athenian people. They brought with them all the ideas which were being worked out in the Hellenic world, but especially those which best suited men who were emancipated from local prejudices and eager for practical novelties. As professors, lecturers, living by their profession and anxious to live very comfortably by it, they frankly presented themselves as importers of intellectual commodities and dealers therein. So the Metics, as they invaded the economic domain in Athens, at the same time caused their ideas to penetrate into public and private life. They systematically occupied all the avenues of thought which radiated from the centre of sophistry. Their fruitful initiative created the great systems of the IVth century. The Academy was an exception ; it was for the old true-blue Athenians that Plato laid down the principles of aristocratic idealism imbued with religion. » (135). Then, they set their heart on the remaining fields which they had not cornered yet : « In art, science, and literature, » G. Glotz, the mouth open, the tongue hanging, the tail wagging, says, « the Metics showed the same qualities of practical intelligence as in manufacture, trade, and banking. They founded the principal schools of rhetoric, they created philosophical systems with realist tendencies, they were the best advocates, they brought modern music into fashion, and they attained great popularity as writers of comedy. They invaded, transformed, and appropriated every sphere in which, while making money and a name for themselves, they could express their feelings and spread their ideas. » (136)

The Academy did not remain long an exception. Beginning with Carneades, born in Cyrene, a Greek city in North Africa, the Academy « would be led by non-Athenians scholarchs… The other schools were completely nonlocal in their leadership : no Athenian would ever lead the Peripatos. » (137)

Athens, Smyrna and Ephesus were the main Sophistic centres, but the overwhelming majority of those who are traditionally included among early Sophists came to Athens from Asia Minor : Byblos, Gadara, Tyre, Emesa, Tarsus, Tyana, Side, Perge, Aphrodisias, Thyatira, Cnidos, Nicomedia, Amastris, Perynthus, Aenos, Laryssa. Protagoras was a native of Abdera, a colony founded by Ionians in Thrace, where he « consorted with the Persian Magi… » (Philostratus, Life of the Sophists 1.10) ; Gorgias, of Sicily ; Anaxagoras, of Asia Minor. Members of the Second Sophistic were Syrians ; later, Lucian of Samosata thought of himself as a Syrian. The Sophists often emphasised their rootlessness. Aristippus boasted about it : « I am a stranger everywhere ». Some of the major Sophists visited Athens as ambassadors ; others were exiles. Once they had settled there, they travelled from one city to the next, teaching rhetorical techniques for cash – it was not customary for teachers to charge payment for their services in those days - to the children of wealthy families. They never formed a school in the institutional sense.

While the briefest reference is made to the Asian origin of most Sophists in most scholarly works on the subject, the greatest care is taken not to consider their `nomos'/'physis' antithesis in morals and politics, their thirst for equality in freedom, their ethical relativism, their systematic scepticism, based on their sensualistic subjectivism, their rationalist theories of religion, their whole rhetoric and philosophy, in the light of their Oriental background. It goes without saying, in the scholarly `Western tradition', that the Sophistic movement is one of the sources of the `Western tradition', and that it can only be studied in the context of the Hellenic culture. However, if we look to the bottom of the matter, things look rather different : « The Sophists and Hellenistic religion clearly belong to two different worlds, separated by a wide gulf of far-reaching changes that took place in the course of the fourth century BC. To the casual observer, it would seem inconceivable that the two could have anything in common, especially if the point of comparison has to do with religion and the gods. Any Western religion, Hellenistic or otherwise, implies by definition a conviction that gods exist, and a firm belief in them. By contrast, the sophists are notorious for their agnosticism or explicit atheism, Protagoras and Prodicus in particular. » (138)

There are similarities between the Sophistic outlook and that of contemporary non-Greek systems of philosophy ; striking are those which exist between the former and the Carvaka school in India. « There is reason to believe that the Carvakas shared certain qualities of mind with the early Greek philosophers. They were both critical of official theology, disposed to treat dogma lightly, presenting uncommonly open minds to speculation concerning epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. Both were remarkably free from the trammels of the past ; both felt it to be a right of the philosopher to look at the universe as a matter of private interest… » (139) Carvaka's epistemological outlook was empirical, its metaphysics materialistic, and its ethics hedonistic, and, as such, « Carvaka is seen to fit unqualifiedly in the highest level of naturalism. » (140) Naturalistic elements can be found in the highest degree in Hindu schools of philosophy which, like Jainism and Samkhya, predate the development of `Greek philosophy' ; thus, it is clearly not the case that naturalism is « as contrary to the ways of Eastern thought as it is frequent, under more or less explicit forms, in Western conceptions. » (141)

Greeks received this thought through various channels, through various mediums. Apuleius repeats a tradition that Pythagoras travelled into India, where he was instructed by the Brahmans. Diogene Laertius says of Democritus : « Some say that he associated with the Gymnosophists of India. » (D. L. 9, 35) ; Aelian says : « Democritus went to the Chaldaeans in Babylon and to the Magi and to the sophists of the Indians » (Var. Hist. 4, 20) ; Hyppolitus : « Democritus… discussing with the gymnosophists among the Indians, and with priests in Egypt, and with astrologers and magi in Babylon propounded his system. » (Refutationes 1.13) Pyrrho, the founder of the sceptical school of philosophy, is said to have travelled in India with Alexander's army and to have obtained from Indians the ideas of scepticism, suspension of judgment and indifference (D. L. 9, 61-68) Onesicritus, a Greek historical writer who accompanied Alexander on his campaigns in Asia and wrote a biography of him, is said to have been « sent to converse with these Indian Sophists » (Strabo 15, 1, 63), whose disregard for customs, shamelessness, freedom of speech, conception of life according to nature and of apathy as a state of indifference to passions to be attained through training and hardship, are reflected outrageously in Cynicism. The Cynics were associated with the Gymnosophists (`the naked teachers') by Plutarch, who suggested that Alexander had heard of the later before his expedition to India.

The Cynics did not form a school in the institutional sense anymore than the Sophists ever did, and, unlike these, they did not take money for teaching. « … the Cynic teacher… in symbolic garb of cloak, wallet and staff, talked on street corners and in open squares to the plain man of the streets… These Cynic sermons were informal talks which used the Socratic method of interrogation and dialogue ; only, as the preacher answered his own questions, setting up a fictitious interlocutor whom he could oppose and convince, the form of such colloquy came to be called a diatribe. It was a kind of monologue-dialogue that was very effective for informal presentation of ethical teaching. » (142) Now, it has been established that the methods of argumentation in the diatribes constructed by the Cynics, more precisely by Bion of Borysthenes, which were directed to the crowd, resemble « the methods of argumentation in the dialogical form of some exegetical midrashim. » (143) Later, the Stoics, too, used the diatribe most successfully.

The Cynics, as we might also expect, were for most of them non-Athenians, and many of them were probably not Greek by birth. Menippus, a former slave, was born in Gadara in Coele-Syria, just as, two centuries later, the poet Meleager, who, in a true Cynic spirit, remarked in an epigram : « If I am Syrian, what wonder ? Stranger, we dwell in one wonder, the world : one Chaos gave birth to all mortals…» (144). Antisthenes, thought to be the founder of the Cynic movement, shares a questionable ancestry with many Cynics as well, for he « was no Athenian citizen, but the son of a citizen and a Thracian woman ; thus he is depicted as having held his `lectures' in the gymnasium reserved for `nothoi,' or illegitimates, known as the Cynosarges, or `agile dog.' This last name is certainly at least partly responsible for Antisthenes' synthesis into the Cynic group. His birth, which deprived him of Athenian citizen rights, also endows him with the potential for Cynic cosmopolitanism, and a predilection for overlooking matters of rank and status. » (145) Indeed. `Freedom and Slavery' is one of the works that are attributed to him. Most of his followers seem to have experienced essentially the latter.

Diogenes of Sinope – the son of a dishonest banker who had been banished from his native place after counterfeiting charges were brought against him - had not set a foot in Greece, where they had been both exiled, than the Oracle at Delphi, where he had travelled, urged him to « deface the currency ». (146) He is said to have been captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Crete later on in his life. His pupil, Monimus of Syracuse, is said to have been a slave, that of – it's a small world - a banker ; Byon of Borysthenes was the son of a freed merchant of salting equipment and a courtesan. « Such experiences might lead those Cynics to look past circumstances and external appearances. » Indeed.

The fact is that « The Cynics did not grasp the Indian philosophies in their entirety. If there were resemblances there were also differences. The Indian philosophers spent their time in instruction, discussions, meditation and self-improvement ; they had no time for earning a livelihood and their requests for food were understood and complied with. They accepted nothing but food and rejected money. The Cynics generally demanded money and this demand was irrational. Indian philosophers were kindly and helpful ; the Cynics were abusive and unsociable. The Cynics were orators and the Indians were not. The Indian philosophers did not seek happiness or the enjoyment of life ; they sought self-improvement, spiritual advancement and increased usefulness to others. » (147)

Still in terms of practice, the connection is even more pronounced between the Cynics and the members of the Shaivite sect known as Pasupatha, - the earliest one to worship Shiva, so that, even though the first reference to this cult is found in the late portions of the Mahabharata (150 B.C. – 150 A.D.), one would think that it had more ancient origins ; in any case, its practices are lost in the night of pre-Aryan India. « The Pasupatas, like the cynics, exposed themselves regularly to scorn and actively sought dishonor even at the cost of blows. Their methods of exciting censure were various : the wearing of filthy garments, the use of violent and indecent language, the imitation of animals, the performance in public of acts that were ridiculous or which gave the impression of madness or which were interpreted by the society as obscene… The Cynics, by undergoing the hardship of dishonor, hoped to equate themselves with the object of their worship, the hero Hercules, who was believed to hold a club, likewise the founder of the Pasupata cult was called Lakulisa, the "Lord of the Club." Pseudo-Diogenes urges one to be strong, through poverty and dishonour. What he meant by dishonor (adoxia) is precisely what the Pasupatas mean by avamana. And elsewhere we find the Cynics urging their followers to unsocial actions in order to gain strength, just as the Pasupatas sought to gain increase (vrddhi) from similar acts. » (148). What is also most interesting is that the pasupatas, like the Cynics, « were in the habit of imitating dogs both in sound and in deed. » (149)

Now, in terms of doctrines, there is a blatant lack of transcendence, of an equivalent to `moksa', the ultimate goal of the Pasupatas, in Cynic asceticism. If, in the case of Sophism and Cynicism, the similarities to Indian philosophical schools are too numerous and too striking for one to entertain the assumption that the same ideas arose in Greece and in India independently, we can agree with R. Guénon that the `Greeks' did not always expound Indian thought exactly as they had received it, let alone that any concept cannot fail to undergo some distortion when moving from one culture to another. In any case, Cynic practice can be seen as a radicalisation of a type of asceticism that was foreign to Aryan traditions. (150)

The early Stoics appear to have advocated shameless (`adoxia') as doctrinally as the Cynics did : « temples, gymnasia, and courthouses need not be built ; coinage is unnecessary ; only the virtuous are citizens, friends, relatives, and free—everyone else is at war with each other, an enemy, alienated, and a slave ; Zeno holds the doctrine of the so-called community of women; men and women are to wear the same dress ; no part of the body is to be fully covered ; nothing is shameful about incest and other conventionally abhorred sexual actions ; if an amputated limb is useful for food, we should eat it ; the traditional educational curriculum is useless ; no special effort is to be made for one's parents' (or any other) funeral, » etc. (151) According to Diogene Laertius, Zeno read through Xenophon's `Memorabilia' in a bookstore in Athens, asked the bookseller where he could find a man such as Socrates, and was directed to a pupil of Diogene of Sinope, Crates, who happened at that instant to be passing by. He eventually made himself independent and set up his own business under the `stoa poikile'.

The Academy, as mentioned above, beginning with Carneades, would be led by non-Athenians scholarchs, the other schools were completely nonlocal in their leadership, « and the Stoa, beginning with Zeno of Citium, would be under the control of non-Athenian philosophers for the first two hundred years of its existence. Nor were the students at the schools any less heterogeneous in origin… We learn that Zeno's first followers in the Stoa came from all over the Mediterranean : Persaeus, son of Demetrios, came to Athens from Zeno's own Citium ; Ariston, the son of Miltiades came from Chios ; Herillus from Carthage ; Dionysius from Heraclea ; Sphaerus from Bosphorus ; Cleanthes, who would take over the school at Zeno's death, from Assos ; Philonides from Thebes ; Callipus from Corinth, Posidonius from Alexandria, Athenodorus from Soli, and Zeno from Sidon. » (152)

Zeno himself came from Citium, the prime Phoenician colony in the isle of Cyprus, whose population was largely Phoenician in blood. Believe it or not, some have been « led to suspect that the ideas behind the cosmopolitanism of the Stoa were themselves of eastern origin » and « have long posited a link between the cosmopolitan makeup of the philosophical schools of Athens in the late classical and early Hellenistic periods and the schools' political and ethical teachings. » « Unsurprisingly, serious scholarship has never attempted to describe Zeno's `Semiticness' in any detail, aside from a previous generation's vague references to `Adamic' theories about the unity of mankind. » Hopefully, serious scholarship is not short of a sense of humour : « Zeno's ideas about the nature of belonging in the polis… were, in many ways, those of an outsider. This is not to suggest that Zeno's foreigness determined his thought ; it is only to point out that `eastern outsidernesss' seems to have been linked with Stoic ideas in the minds of Zeno's contemporaries, » and « Given the state of evidence, it is of course impossible to discover what if any `Semitic' (whatever that might mean in this context) influences there may have been in Zeno's thought. » (153) Leaving aside that his father's name, Mneseas (an Hellenised form Menahem) (154) was « often used by Phoenicians », (155) that he « was often referred to by his contemporaries as `the Phoenician' » (156), that he was even mocked by his opponents on that account, and that Polemo, the head of the Platonic Academy from 314-269 BC, weary of his self-conceit, is said to have addressed him thus : « You slip in, Zeno, by the garden door--I'm quite aware of it--you filch my doctrines and give them a Phoenician make-up. » (D.L. VII, 25), « there seems to be no grounds for » (157) assuming that he was of Phoenician descent.

« It remains… something of a strange coincidence that the founder of Stoicism should have come of a race whose language was almost identical with Hebrew, and from a Greek-Oriental city so near to Tarsus. The connexion of Stoicism with that region was always a close one. Chrysippus, the `second Founder' of Stoicism, as he has been called, came from Cilicia, and his successor, another Zeno, from Tarsus itself. When Paul lived in Tarsus, as a young man, it was still one of the chief seats of the Stoic philosophy. » (158) It was also something of a coincidence, which will remain strange and purely accidental for those who do not grasp the hermetic link between the spreading of commerce and the spreading of ideas, that Tarsus was also the `home port' of the Cilician pirates, who, according to Plutarch's account, practiced Mithraicism and introduced it into Italy. (Vita Pompei, XXIV, 234-236) .

Even a tenth rate philosophical hack such as B. Russell hints at a work which « suspects » alien influences in Stoicism, a scholarly work which actually goes further than suspecting alien influences in Stoicism. They can be found in its ethics, and in its physics and cosmology. (159)

The study of ethics was raised to a new plane of importance by the early Stoics as a result of their focus on the pre-Aristotelian individualism of the Cynics and also of the character of the times, as shaped, at least partly, by the conceptions of previous influential philosophical schools. The scope « for public life and action was gone, and thus individuality supplanted the idea of citizenship. To find out the way of happiness for the individual soul, became now, not one problem among many, but the one great problem for philosophy, to which all others were to be secondary and subordinate. » In addition to a « monkish exclusiveness of attention to the subjective and practical well-being of the individual soul » there was another special cause which contributed greatly to give its peculiar character to the Stoical school, and which is the source of much of the interest that attaches to the history of that school. (160)

« Its essence consists in the introduction of the Semitic temperament and a Semitic spirit into Greek philosophy.

« The meeting of Eastern and Western ideas had been prepared by the conquests of Alexander, and the production of Stoicism was one of its first fruits. We moderns have all been imbued with the Semitic spirit in its highest manifestations by the pages of Holy Writ. Other manifestations of that spirit, as for instance the Mahomedan religion, exhibit it as an intense, but narrow, earnestness, averse on the whole to science and art, but tending to enthusiasm and even fanaticism for abstract ideas of religion or morality. The Semitic spirit found a new and favourable field for its development in Athens at the close of the fourth century B.C. If philosophy in general was then tending from other causes to the exaltation of Ethics over Metaphysics, this tendency just suited the Semitic moral earnestness. Ethics were taken up by the Phoenician Zeno, and came out from his hands with a new aspect. A phase of thought now appears for the first time on Hellenic soil, in which the moral consciousness of the individual the moral ego is made the centre and starting-point. Such a point of view, with various concomitant ideas, such as duty and responsibility, and self-examination, and the sense of shortcoming, and moral self-cultivation, is familiar to us in the Psalms of David and afterwards in the writings of St. Paul, but it was not to be found in the conversations of Socrates, nor in the dialogues of Plato, nor in the Ethics of Aristotle. It was alien indeed from the childlike and unconscious spirit of the Hellenic mind, with its tendency to objective thought and the enjoyment of nature. » The following statement should be pondered over : « Our own views in modern times have been so much tinged with Hebraism, that the highest degree of moral consciousness seems only natural to us, and thus Stoicism, which introduced this state of feeling to the ancient Hellenic world, may be said to have formed a transition step between Greek philosophy and the modern ethical point of view. So it is that in many modern books of morals, and even in many practical sermons, we come upon much that has a close affinity with the modes of thinking of the ancient Stoics, while with the modes of thinking of Plato and Aristotle such productions have rarely any affinity at all. » (161)

Against this background, it is clear that the Stoic `apatheia', as « an `unplugging' from the domain of social mores », may legitimately be associated with the detachment maintained by the Jews of the Diaspora toward the societies in which they live (162) As has been already pointed out, the points of contact between Stoicism and the `Doctrine of Awakening' in terms of askesis are not as firm as J. Evola assumes them to be. Even if both the Stoic `apatheia' (`without pathe' : without emotions, without passions) and the Buddhist `(citta) viveka' mean generically detachment of the mind from passions ; even if 'pathe' (`passions') was regarded by some Stoics as well as by Cicero, who proposed to translate `pathe' as `diseases' instead of as `emotions', as `disturbances' instead of as `suffering', according to the etymology of `pathe' (from the verb `paschein' (aor. `pathein' : to suffer or endure'), the Stoic understanding of `pathos' remains far more akin to the popular sense of `dukkha' (`suffering') than to its metaphysical sense of `restlessness', `agitation', and `commotion'. To the Stoics, the `wise man' is the one who is able to distinguish between what is under his control and what is not under his control ; to some, `pathe' are to be avoided ; to others, they should be eliminated, whereas the `Doctrine of Awakening' insists that nothing can even be said to be `ours' and adopts a realistic approach to the issue by teaching that `asava' (`mania'), not being avoidable or destructible, can only be overcome. « The Stoics said the goal of human beings is to live consistently with or according to nature. They also said that the goal can be described by other expressions all of which are, perhaps, equally valid : in particular, `life according to reason', `life according to virtue', and `happiness' or `the attainment of happiness'. All these expressions have the same denotation, and cumulatively they may give the impression that the central principles of Stoic ethics are a series of vicious circles : one should live according to nature because this accords with reason ; one should live rationally because this accords with nature, etc. » (163) Even though the author of these lines applies to prove in the rest of his study that the impression is wrong, credit must be given to him for not attempting to provide the reader with, so to speak, a turnkey scholarly solution to the vicious circle of Stoicism and, through the very words he uses to characterise the issue, for enabling us to go to the bottom of it without transition : detachment from the substratum of existence, from all attachment (`upadhi-viveka') is completely lacking from Stoic ethics, which is only concerned with life, and, within life, with the moral conduct of man, with the ordering of one's own life according to the so-called `law of nature', to `reason', a `reason' common to all, which in turn is supposed to be the manifestation of a `universal reason' called `logos'.

The samsaric nature of Stoic teachings is even reflected in the metaphor Zeno uses to describe happiness as a result of living in accordance with `virtue' and in agreement with `nature' : a « good flow of life ».

Semitic influences are also striking in Stoic physics and cosmology. They are essentially of Chaldean origin. (164)

« Everywhere it [Stoicism] devoted itself to the task of justifying popular worships, sacred narratives, and ritual observances. In Greece, it was able without much difficulty to come to terms with cults more formalistic than doctrinal, more civic than moral, in which no authority demanded assent to definite dogmas. A system of accommodating allegories could readily put on gods or myths a physical, ethical, or psychological interpretation, which reconciled them with the cosmology or ethics of the Porch. In the East, where more theological religions always implied a more definite conception of the world, the task appeared much less easy. Yet certain profound affinities reconciled stoicism with Chaldean doctrines. Whether these did or did not contribute to the development of the ideas of Zeno, they offer a singular analogy to his pantheism, which represented ethereal Fire as the primordial principle and regarded the stars as the purest manifestation of its power. Stoicism conceived the world as a great organism, the `sympathetic' forces of which acted and re-acted necessarily upon one another, and was bound in consequence to attribute a predominating influence to the celestial bodies, the greatest and the most powerful of all in nature, and its… Destiny, connected with the infinite succession of causes, readily agreed also with the determinism of the Chaldeans, founded, as it was, upon the regularity of the sidereal movements. Thus it was that this philosophy made remarkable conquests not only in Syria but as far as Mesopotamia. » (165) This interactive movement of ideas was « definitively to introduce astrology together with star-worship into the philosophy of the Stoa » (166) through the views of Zeno. « For us the person who almost alone represents this fusion of East and West is Posidonius of Apamea [in Syria]… but the preparations for this fusion were undoubtedly made by his predecessors. It is remarkable that the great astronomer, Hipparchus [of Nicaea, in Bythinia], whose scientific theories… are directly influenced by Chaldean learning, was also a convinced supporter of one of the leading doctrines of stellar religion… » (167) The scientific findings of Chaldean astrology « won such prestige for their beliefs that they spread from the Far East to the Far West, and even now their sway has not been wholly overthrown. In mysterious ways they penetrated as far as India, China, and Indo-China, where divination by means of the stars is still practised at the present day, and reached perhaps even the primitive centres of American civilisation. In the opposite direction they spread to Syria, to Egypt, and over the whole Roman world, where their influence was to prevail up to the fall of paganism and lasted through the Middle Ages up to the dawn of modern times. » (168) « We shall be struck with the power of this sidereal theology, founded on ancient beliefs of Chaldean astrologers, transformed in the Hellenistic age under the two fold influence of astronomic discoveries and Stoic thought, and promoted, after becoming a pantheistic Sun-worship, to rank of official religion of the Roman Empire. » (169)

In this respect too, « it may be said that Stoicism was a Semitic philosophy. » (170)

« In the first century bce and first century ce, many prominent astrologers (e.g., Manilius, Chaeremon) were also Stoics, and a number of influential Stoics (esp. Posidonius) defended astrological divination on philosophical grounds. Inasmuch as this philosophical stamp of approval seems to have facilitated the positive reception of astrology among Roman elites, it also became a locus for polemics against the Stoics themselves. » (171) There was a Greek reaction, and, later, an even stronger Roman reaction against these alien influences, which were perceived as such : « In Hellenistic historiography, knowledge about the stars—both `scientific' and divinatory—exemplified the `alien wisdom' that the Greeks borrowed from ancient `barbarian' nations. After the initial appropriation and subsequent criminalization of astral divination under Augustus (63 bce-14 ce), its traditional association with non-Greek nations started to take on more negative connotations. When early imperial Roman and Romanized authors begin trying to extricate the `scientific' study of the stars from astral divination (esp. horoscopic astrology), it is often with appeal to the suspiciously foreign origins of the latter, which becomes increasingly assimilated to the category of `magic' (e.g., Pliny, Nat. hist. 30.1V ). » (172) From 33 BCE to 93 CE, astrologers were regularly banned from Rome or executed, because of proven or suspected fraud and manipulation, both personal and political. Astrology « —as a politically destabilizing force and as a powerful tool for (mis)leading the masses—is » a concept « to which Josephus appeals in his Jewish War, when he recounts the fascination with celestial portents and the misinterpretations thereof, that contribute to the outbreak of the Jewish revolt against Rome (War 6.288V ). » (173) « What proves significant is the fact that early Jewish attitudes towards astronomy/astrology were not wholly negative. On the contrary, some of Josephus' predecessors seem to have embraced the view of astronomy/astrology as an emblem of extreme antiquity and as an integral part of humankind's scientific progress—such that Abraham's Chaldean origins and astronomical/astrological associations could serve the positive purpose of asserting the place of the Jewish people in world history. » (174) « On that basis, the equation established by Pliny, sensitive as he was to the Jewish problem, between the threat of magic and the threat of foreign invasion and cultural contamination takes on its full meaning ; for similar reasons, Pliny and Celsius recognised an eastern cult such as Christianity as a threat to public order, and could most probably see that Stoicism and eastern cults were not so much rivals as they were objective allies, since « The latter counted their adherents by the hundreds where the preaching philosopher might pick up an occasional adherent. The importance of the philosophers for the spread of non-Roman beliefs lies chiefly in the fact that they reached all classes of society, and, different as they seem from the cult-associations of the various foreign deities, they really represented the same emotional need as the latter. » (175) Astrology, however, was never formally outlawed in Rome, where it had the full support of the mob, which was increasingly made up of Near- and Middle-Easterners, and where most emperors, who were no longer of Roman stock for most of them, employed astrologers (note that in Italy they were not called `magi' but `mathematicii') at their courts.

More generally, philosophy in the Greco-Roman world tended to play a subversive role in all areas as soon as its tenor became individualistic, causing an actual shift from objective investigation to the subjective ground of practical, and especially political, concerns, and, as has been seen, its tenor became increasingly individualistic, ethical and political as the number of philosophers of Asian or North African stock grew. Already « The presocratics were in general politically active and influential, combining ethereal and abstruse contemplation of the cosmos with aggressive political engagement » (176) so much so that, in the latter fifth and early fourth centuries, they came under fire from dissatisfied citizens. « First, the scientific studies of the cosmologists deal with phenomena that are remote and propose theories that are not testable. Second, these studies are irrelevant to the needs of society and unhelpful for the education of the individual. Third techniques of debate and argument can be used indifferently to support true and false positions and hence are potentially harmful. Fourth, the theories of the philosophers are impious and subversive of traditional values. » (177) With full awareness of the danger, an Athenian, Sophocles of Sunium, introduced a law « forbidding the establishment of a philosophical school without the express permission of the Athenian assembly and `boule' ; failure to gain that prior permission was to be punishable by death. » (178) Unfortunately for Athens, the law was soon declared unlawful because it was held to have been a violation of the right of free religious association (you read it right : « a violation of the right of free religious association. »), (179) and Athens was again in the Greco-Roman world the only safe `home port' of the philosophers and of the rhetoricians, the only place where `free thinkers' flowing in from all over the Near-East and North Africa as exiles or ambassadors, could settle and practice without fear of being banished, despite Plato and Aristotle's opposition to their teachings, and despite the fact that a certain number of Athenian citizens felt that philosophy was unpatriotic and, therefore, dangerous. Whether or not Cato the Elder, who was not the only one to perceive the influence of eastern Mediterranean religions as potentially subversive, saw the cause and effect relationship between the a- and even `anti-politeia' of `philo-sophia' and the foreign origin of most philosophers, the fact is that he clearly saw the danger posed by philosophers and had Carneades and his crew, who had been sent from Athens to Rome as ambassadors, sent back again to Greece, and had them subsequently banished from Rome, where philosophy was held up in ridicule in comedies of the period. Until Rome conquered Greece, many young Romans had the opportunity to become acquainted with `Greek' philosophy, and men such as Cato were no longer there to deal with it. (180)

Taking note of the fact that Thales is said, included by Herodotus, to have been of Phoenician ancestry and to have fled from Phoenicia to Miletos, W. K. C. Guthrie writes that « it would be interesting to find a trace of Semitic blood at the very beginning of Greek philosophy. » The controversy about the origin of Greek philosophy is not new, since Diogenes Laertius relates disapprovingly that « philosophy had its rise among the barbarians. »

(1) Raaflaub, K. A., The discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 30.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid., p. 31.
(4) Ibid., p. 35.
(5) Ibid. A comprehensive comparative study of these two terms in Homeric literature suggests that « autonomia stresses self-determination, and eleutheria the absence of foreign rule ; eleutheria is passive, autonomia active ; eleutheria is a double negative concept (`not unfree'), autonomia a positive one ; eleutheria implies `freedom from something,' autonomia `independence for something.' » (ibid., p. 154).
(6) Ibid. p. 44-45. Various studies have pointed at the possible link between `eleutheros' and `liut' (from the Indo-European root * leudh-o), the Old Germanic word for `people', whereby it may be inferred that this Greek adjective originally meant the legitimate belonging to an ethnic-bound social and familial community as the place of development of individual activity. See Berthouzoz OP, R., Théologien dans le dialogue social, Fribourg : Academic Press, 2006, p. 49.
(7) Raaflaub, K. A., op. cit., p. 24.
(8) Ibid., p. 28.
(9) Ibid., p. 44-45.
(10) « For we are not like many others, descendants of Pelops or Cadmus or Egyptus or Danaus, who are by nature barbarians, and yet pass for Hellenes, and dwell in the midst of us; but we are pure Hellenes, uncontaminated by any foreign element, and therefore the hatred of the foreigner has passed unadulterated into the life-blood of the city. » (Menexenus 245d)
(11) Stanley, P. V., The Economic Reforms of Solon, St. Katharinen : Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1999, p. 176.
(12) Raaflaub, K. A., op. cit., p. 57.
(13) Davis, R. W., The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West, Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1995, p. 46. In `Histories', the notion of `nomos' is « always something essentially and inherently Greek. The famous dialogue between Xerxes, the barbarian king, and Demaratus, the exiled Spartan king is a perfect demonstration : Spartans, Demaratus says, are at once free and submissive to a `master,' the law. The laughter with which Xerxes greets this declaration indicates his total lack of understanding. » (Brunschwig, J., Le Savoir Grec : A Guide to Classical Knowledge, Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 645).
(14) Polenz, M., Freedom in Greek Life and Thought : The History of an Ideal, Dordrecht : D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1996, p. 13.
(15) Dmitriev, S., The Greek Slogan of Freedom and Early Roman Politics in Greece, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 18.
(16) griceclub.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-eleutherism-rather-than-liberalism.html.
(17) Photopoulos, T., Towards an Inclusive Democracy : The Crisis of the Growth Economy and Need for a New Liberatory Project, London : Cassell, 1997, p. 179.
(18) Lape, S., Race and Citizen Identity in the Classical Athenian Democracy, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 25 - historiantigua.cl/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Race-and-Citizen-Identity-in-the-Classical-Athenian-Democracy.pdf, p. 6 : « The birth criteria for citizenship evolved in three stages – from "free birth from an Athenian father," to "free and legitimate birth from an Athenian father," to "free and legitimate birth from an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. » If, as stated p. 25, « Before the passage of the Periclean citizenship law, there is no evidence that citizens with known foreign ancestry were considered to be a threat to the polis or to the democracy", there are strong grounds for thinking that it was simply because there were then few citizens with foreign ancestry, as immigration from the Near East was still limited.
(19) Hansen, M. H., In The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes : Structure, Principles, and Ideology, University of Oklahoma Press Edition, 1999, translated by J.A. Crook, p. 76.
(20) Patterson, O., Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, 1991, p. 42 ; p. 51.
(21) One aspect of this growing interest in the individual is clearly illustrated by the philosophical meaning given by the Socratics to the Delphic precept « know yourself ». While the ancients thought that, in practice, « self-knowledge can be obtained by some kind of consultation of the `personal daimon'. » (Betz, H. D., Hellenismus und Urchristentum, Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 1990, p. 160), which implies « that the Delphic maxim orders them to conjure up their personal daimon and get control of it by magical procedures ; the Socratics sought it through the outcome of philosophical self-examination, through a careful examination of their `conscience'. » « They identified the self with the psyche [daimon]… (which) to the Socratic circle came to mean the rational faculty. They assumed the main task of life was to care for this psyche ; the word arete (virtue or excellence) was redefined to mean the excellence of the psyche [ in Homer, `arete' means `martial excellence'] ; caring for it meant to develop the peculiar excellence of reason and to ensure that reason is dominant over all other faculties. They thought moral and political life would be placed on a sound foundation only when all citizens recognized the supremacy of reason. » (Dawson, D., Cities of the Gods : Communist Utopias in Greek Thought, New-York-Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 55)
(22) Ibid., p. 9. The deepest meaning of `nomos', from `nemein', `to divide', `to pasture', for early Hellenes, is perhaps revealed in the following penetrating remarks : it was the « immediate form in which the political and social order of a people becomes spatially visible — the initial measure and division of pasture- land, i.e., the land-appropriation as well as the concrete order contained in it and following from it… Nomos is the measure by which the land in a particular order is divided and situated ; it is also the form of political, social, and religious order determined by this process. Here, measure, order, and form constitute a spatially concrete unity. The nomos by which a tribe, a retinue, or a people becomes settled, ie, by which it becomes historically situated and turns a part of the earth's surface into the force-field of a particular order, becomes visible in the appropriation of land and in the founding of a city or a colony. » (Schmitt, C., The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus. Translation and Introduction by G. L. Ulmen, Telos Press Publishing, 2006, p. 70).
(23) Conklin, W. E., The Invisible Origins of Legal Positivism : A Re-Reading of a Tradition , Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, p. 26).
(24) Evola, J., Revolt against the Modern World, Rochester, Vt : Inner Traditions International, 1995, p. 20-21.
(25) Hall, R. Plato, London : Routledge, 2004, p. 13-14.
(26) See F. Heinimann, Nomos und Physis : Herkunft und Bedeutung einer Antithese im Griechischen Denken des 5. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt : Wiss. Buchges., 1980, p. 125.
(27) Hall, R., op. cit., p. 14.
(28) Olson, R., Science Deified and Science Defied : The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture, Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1983, p. 88.
(29) Arguments, if not for racial equality, at least for social equability were drawn for most of them from scientific themes. For example, in Euripides' `The Pheonissea', « equality among men is tied to the exact quantitative considerations that apply to calenderial astronomy, and human ethical considerations are seen as analogous to the course of inanimate phenomena. » (ibid. p. 90)
(30) Ibid., p. 91.
(31) Ibid., p. 92.
(32) Ibid., p. 93. As such, as clearly seen by Hegel, Sophism had a tremendous corrupting effect on Athenian democracy, while it was the forerunner of modern freedom : « When reflection once comes into play, the inquiry is started whether the Principles of Law (das Recht) cannot be improved. Instead of holding by the existing state of things, internal conviction is relied upon ; and thus begins subjective independent Freedom, in which the individual finds himself in a position to bring everything to the test of his own conscience, even in defiance of the existing constitution… This decay even Thucydides notices, when he speaks of everyone's thinking that things are going on badly when he has not a hand in the management. » (Hegel, G. W. F., The Philosophy of History, New York : Dover, 1956, translated by J. Sibree, p. 253.
(34) Roederer C., Moellendorff, D., Jurisprudence, Lansdowne : Juta and Company Ltd, p. 31.
(35) Fouchard, A., Aristocratie et démocratie : idéologies et sociétés en Grèce ancienne, Paris : Les belles lettres, 1998, p. 371. For a discussion of Plato's attempt at reconciling `nomos' and `physis' in a synthesis, see Hall, R., op. cit., p. 13-31.

To Plato, `nomos' is not a mere convention, nor is it opposed to `physis' ; on the contrary, `nomos' is consistent with it. The assumption that `nomos' and `physis' are antithetical results from a misapprehension about the term `physis' : « It is his view that physis has been misconstrued by the upholders of these-doctrines [the Sophists] ; they have, in fact, reversed the natural order of things. What these thinkers refer to as `natural' and `primary', is actually secondary and derivative, and that to which they refer as `natural' and `secondary' is preeminently natural. Presumably basing their thought on Greek cosmological speculation, these modern wise misuse the term `nature' to signify the chance processes by which the primary substances (on their view, fire, earth, air and water) were created. Soul was derived from these at a later stage, along with those things related to the soul (ta psyches). This, Plato claims, is the source of the "senseless opinions of all those who have ever undertaken investigations into nature." » (Byron, S., Plato's Resolution of the Nomos-Physis Antithesis, a thesis, MA, McGill University, 1984, p. 56-57) « The nomos-physis antithesis is a faulty distinction engendered by the erroneous notion that physis is characterized by material substance and that soul and those things related to soul are derived from these materials substances at a later date. Plato demonstrates against this that soul and the things of the soul are logically prior to material substance and, consequently, are truly natural.

« There is, however, a problem with this account. Plato is sometimes depicted as a prototypical natural law theorist. And, as Morrow claims, there is little doubt that Plato foreshadowed and influenced the Stoic conception of the `law of nature', carrying out the philosophical footwork, so to speak, needed to reunite the concepts of nomos and physis. In praising the role that intelligence is to play in legislation and in claiming that laws which fail to promote the good are not true laws, Plato was clearly formulating ideas developed by subsequent natural law theorists. » (ibid. p. 59)

The essential complementary of `physis' and `nomos' emerges clearly, as do the limitations of Plato's attempt at reuniting them, from this most insightful and powerful gloss of Heidegger's interpretation of the former : « Etymologically, the term physis derives from the Indo- Germanic root bhu, bheu (corresponding Greek word is phuo), which means self-emergence, "to emerge, to hold sway, to come to stand from out of itself and to remain standing". Accordingly the root meaning of Being denotes the implications of self-subsistence and self-emergence of entities. Physis is Being itself, which is by nature in-itself-abiding and self-unfolding. It means growing or emerging. Physis is accordingly explained as that which emerges from itself, or self-opening unfolding. It is the coming forth and unfolding, the self-opening, which at the same time returns to its source : withdrawal. Physis as a ground word means the emergence into the open, the emergent return into itself… Physis means the emerging – abiding sway. Physis brings beings to the `world,', to be as they are. » (Manithottil, P., Difference at the Origin : Derrida's Critique of Heidegger's Philosophy of the Work of Art, New Delhi : Atlantic, p. 29-30) « The distortion of the concept of physis took place with the translation of physis into Latin as natura (nasci), which means `to be born,' `to originate'. By this translation the fundamental meaning of physis is already ignored. Here we understand physis not in the originary sense of the emerging and abiding sway, but rather as the nature of things, as being prior to all beings. Thus, in the course of time, the fundamental Greek experience of physis is turned into the philosophy of nature, "a representation of all things according to which they are really of material nature." » (ibid., p. 30) « In Plato, the essence of truth as the correctness of the representation, and thereby, philosophy becomes the inquiry into the truth of beings in terms of Ideas. His thinking causes the change in the essence of truth ; physis is turned into the look of beings as being, the real is interpreted and determined by Ideas. And this change in the essence of truth dominates the entire history of philosophy till today… In Aristotelian metaphysics, the narrowing down of the meaning of physis takes place in the direction of a physical or materialistic interpretation of this term (physis). He describes the nature as "the grounds of beings as such," `what is, as such and as a whole.' In short, beings — as such and as a whole — is physis, to mean the emerging-abiding sway as their essence and character ; but the narrowing down of physis takes place to mean what naturally or physically is… The conceptualization of the meaning of beings, the humanization of truth, leads to the distortion of the original Greek experience of the meaning of physis. Metaphysics is the distortion of the archaic meaning of physis » (ibid., p. 31-32) while « the etymological implications of the term physis and its corresponding Latin translation natura, nature, indicate how the original meaning of Being as physis is degraded into physics, what a thing is… » (ibid., p. 28-29) « With the human concern and the question of the meaning of beings began the degradation of the earliest meaning of Being as physis. The humanization of truth determines the truth of things in a rational way. » (ibid. p. 28).
(36) In Plato's Gorgias, virtue and happiness are equated by Callicles with « Luxury, intemperance, and freedom ». Aristotle and Plato argued that freedom, especially as an ideal, can easily be corrupted and degenerate into licence (Gorg. 492c5, Laws, III 701a7 ; Politics, VI, 2, 1317b11–13, 4 1319b30–2), for, when defined in the Athenian democratic sense as « doing whatever one wishes » (Pol. V, 10, 1310a31-2), freedom hinders one from attaining personal moral perfection and becomes a threat to constitutional order (Pol. V, 12, 1316b21-7 ; VI, 4, 1318b38–1319a1) ; analogously, to Tacitus, only fools can identify `licencia' to `libertas'; « libertas at Rome and with regard to Romans is not an innate faculty or right of man, but the sum of civic rights granted by the laws of Rome ; it consequently rests on those positive laws which determine its scope. This fundamental idea implies that libertas contains the notion of restraint which is inherent in every law. In fact, it is the notion of restraint and moderation that distinguishes libertas from licentia, whose salient feature is arbitrariness ; and libertas untempered by moderation degenerates into licentia. True libertas, therefore, is by no means the unqualified power to do whatever one likes ; such power—whether conceded or assumed—is licentia, not libertas. » (Wirszubski, Ch., Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and Early Principate, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1950, p. 7) « Libertas is quite consistent with the dictates of the disciplina Romana, mos maiorum, and instituta patrum, because it is conceived of as a right and faculty, not of an isolated individual, but of the citizen in the organized community of the Roman State… libertas at Rome was not the watchword of the individual who tried to assert his own personality against the overriding authority of society. » (ibid., p.8)
(37) Benn, A. W., History of Ancient Philosophy, Watts & Co., 1912, p. 44.
(38) The striking « similarity in manner of thinking between the Greek Sophists… of the fifth century B.C. and the advocates of liberal ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries » needs hardly to be stressed. (Ritchie, D., Natural Rights : A Criticism Of Some Political And Ethical Conceptions, Vol. 11, London : Routledge, 2004 (first published in 1894), p. 25.

What was to be known later as individualism, both as a belief, a belief in the primary importance of the individual and of personal independence, and as a doctrine, a doctrine advocating freedom from government regulation in the pursuit of a person's economic goals, and holding that the interests of the individual should take precedence over the interests of the state or social group, was already behind the Sophist and Cynic corruption of the concept of `eleutheria'.
(39) Keulartz, J., Struggle for Nature : A Critique of Radical Ecology, London : Routledge, 1998, p. 110.
(40) Davis, C. H. S., Greek and Roman Stoicism and some of Its Disciples, Boston : Herbert B. Turner & co., 1903, p. 29. The utilitarian aspect of knowledge in Sophism is mirrored in the humanising philosophy of Socrates, who « like the Sophists… rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the subjective thoughts and opinions of men his starting-point. He endeavored to extract from the common intelligence of mankind an objective rule of practical life. Socrates aimed to from the contemplation of nature, and to turn its regard on its own phenomena. » (ibid., p. 34)
(41) Ibid., p. 29.
(42) Sunne, D. G., Some Phases in the Development of the Subjective Point of View during the Post-Aristotelian Period, The University of Chicago press, 1911, p. 9.
(43) Ibid., p. 10.
(44) Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to himself : an English translation with introductory study on stoicism and the last of the Stoics, Translated by Gerald H. Rendall. London : Macmilan, 1898, xl-xlii.
(45) Sayre, F., Greek Cynics, Baltimore : J. H. Furst, 1948, p. 4.
(46) Ibid., p. 7.
(47) DL, VI., 29, in Clément, M., Le Cynisme à la renaissance d'Erasme à Montaigne, Genève : Droz, 2005, p. 141.
(48) Evola, J., Ride The Tiger, Rochester : Inner Traditions International, 2003, p. 49.
(49) Thornton, B. S., Greek Ways : How the Greeks Created Western Civilization, Encounter Books, 2000, p. 176.
(50) Evola, J., op. cit., p. 53.
(51) Desmond, W. D., Cynics, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2008, p. 153-54.
(52) Ibid., p. 101-2.
(53) Ibid., p. 219.
(54) Shea, L., The Cynic Enlightenment: Diogenes in the Salon, Baltimore : The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, p. 11.
(55) Marcus Tullius Cicero., On The Commonwealth, Columbus (Ohio) : The Ohio State University Press, translated by G. H., Sabine, 1929, p. 17-18. In his `Hermotimus', Lucian of Samosata pictures a city where « all the citizens are aliens and foreigners, not a native among them ; they include numbers of barbarians, slaves, cripples, dwarfs… Such distinctions as superior and inferior, noble and common, bond and free, simply do not exist here, not even in name. » It is pictured as Utopian…
(56) Goulet-Caze, M. O., The Cynics : The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, Berkeley-L.A.-London, University of California Press, 1996, p. 111.
(57) Howard, D., The Primacy of the Political : A History of Political Thought from the Greeks, p. 82.
(58) Marcus Tullius Cicero., op. cit., p. 18. The promotion of cosmopolitanism, as might be expected, was not purely ideal, anymore than it was disinterested ; the motives behind it, not as abstract as its formulation. For example, the concept of hospitality or rights of a foreigner (`xenia') put forward by Aristippus of Cyrene, one of Socrates' pupils - apparently, the first to have taken money for his teaching – and the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, was designed to secure his personal freedom (Branham, R. B., Goulet-Caze, M. O., The Cynics : The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, Berkeley & Los Angeles : University of California Press, p. 111).
(59) Sayre, F., Diogenes of Sinope : a Study of Greek Cynicism, Baltimore : J.H. Furst, 1938 p. 28.
(60) Garnsey, P., Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, Cambridge : Cambrige University Press, 1996, p. 132.
(61) See Davis, C. H. S., op. cit. ; Marcus Aurelius, op. cit., p. xxxvi-xxxviii.
(62) Sunne, D. G., op. cit., p. 18-19.
(63) Dillon, J. M., The Middle Platonists, 80 B.C. to A.D. 220, Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 80-81.
(64) Sunne, D. G., op. cit., p. 30-31.
(65) Ibid., p. 33. « No one has discoursed with greater eloquence than he on the intrinsic value of virtue. The true criterion is an internal one, consequences are morally irrelevant ; the will is the only good. Another evidence of the subjective standpoint is the prominence given to the gentler and more sympathetic side of character; although his writings bear the impress of the sterner and more virile traits, Cicero was an influential factor in the progress toward the gentler virtues. Another conception that is conspicuous in Cicero's ethics is that of humanism, a feeling of universal sympathy ingrafted by nature for man simply as a human being. Most prominent is the tendency toward the subjective attitude in the transition from the conception of supreme good to that of supreme law. Cicero's legal mind had a tendency to give a jural aspect to the rational law and he was probably the first to identify explicitly the law of nature with the jus gentium. Discussing the universal law he says, the divine reason has the authority of commanding in regard to right and wrong, attaching a penalty in case of disobedience. For Cicero, then, the law of nature, from the objective standpoint, is a supreme code ; and from the subjective, a natural principle distinctly commanding what to do and not to do. Thus in ethics Cicero allied himself in general to the Middle Stoa, but made further advance toward a subjective standpoint by giving wider so both in religious beliefs and in ethical doctrines to the personal element and the inner control. » Ibid., p. 34.
(66) Strozierp, R. M., Foucault, Subjectivity, and Identity : Historical Constructions of Subject and Self, Detroit (Mich.) : Wayne State University Press, 2002, 170-171.
(67) Sunne, D. G., op. cit., p. 40.
(68) Ibid., p. 43.
(69) Ibid., p. 46.
(70) Ibid., p. 47.
(71) Davidson, W. L., The Stoic Creed, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1907, p. 135. Both Stoicism and Cynicism derived their cosmopolitan outlook from a study of `human nature' that led them to conceive it as a set of faculties and ends proper to all human beings irrespective of temporal and geographical variations in customs, habits, and laws. Stoics' cosmopolitanism was based on altruism ; Cynics' on egoism. It was nonetheless cosmopolitanism.
(72) Fernandez-Santamaría, J. A., Natural Law, Constitutionalism, Reason of State, and War, New York : Peter Lang Publishing, 2005, p. 19.
(73) Davis, C. H. S., op. cit., xivi.
(74) Ibid., xivi-xiviii.
(75) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 133.
(76) Kamtekar, R., Distinction Without a Difference ? Race and Genos in Plato, in Philosophers on Race. Critical Essays, Oxford : Backwell, 2002, p. 7 ; p. 9.
www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/9780631222262/001.pdf.
(77) In Bobzien, S., Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 339.
(78) If what the term `pathos', which Cicero tells us he struggled to translate into Latin, actually means is, as is sometimes suggested, `disturbance', possibly even `disease' in the figurative sense, it could be related to the Buddhist notion of dukkha. In this case, `apatheia' could also be related to the fifth quality of the Aryan warrior, who is reminded that « Craving does ill and aversion does ill ; and there is a middle way by which to avoid craving and by which to avoid aversion : a way which gives sight and vision, which conduces to calm, which leads to clear vision » (Majjhima-Nikaya, 3), since, as has been well observed, to certain late Stoics, « the mark of the foolish person is that he takes a lot of things to be goods and evils which in truth are neither, for instance, life, health, strength, good looks, a good reputation, power, wealth, and their opposites. As a result the foolish person develops an inappropriate attachment to, or revulsion from, these things which he takes to be goods or evils. This attachment or revulsion constitutes an enslavement, because it prevents the foolish person from doing what he would reasonably want to do in pursuit of his own good. It is these presumed goods and evils which become his masters, run and determine his life, in that they now make him compulsively go after them or run away from them, without regard for what he would need to do if he were to follow his own true interests ». Frede, M., A Free Will : Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought, Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 2001, p. 67. Conversely, freedom would be a matter of having the ability to act on one's own, to act at one's discretion, to act on one's own account, to act independently (ibid.). However, no Stoic ever saw past this, which is considered as a starting point in the totalistic ascetic economy of `The Doctrine of Awakening' - to Seneca, « The Body is but the Clog and Prison, of the Mind tossed up and down, and persecute with Punishments, Violences, and Diseases. »
(79) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 133.
(80) Ibid., p. 137.
(81) Ibid., p. 132.
(82) Ibid., p. 75.
(83) Ibid., p. 150.
(84) Ibid., p. 142.
(85) Ibid.
(86) Ibid., p. 144.
(87) If Stoic thinkers, like Aristotle, defined psychology as the capacity for reason, in stark contrast to him « they rejected the idea that there are different `types' of human souls and with it the hierarchical social and political structures that Aristotle advocates in the Politics and elsewhere. » (Richter, D., S., Cosmopolis : Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire, Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press, p. 67). Of course, they rejected them in principle only.
(88) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 150
(89) Ibid.
(90) Ritchie, D., op. cit., p. 35.
(91) Downing, F. G., Cynics, Paul, and the Pauline Churches : Cynics and Christian Origins II, London : Routledge, 1998, p. 17. Both the verb `act out' and the expression `social role' are particularly apt to express the subversive dimension of Stoic `ethical' teaching : you do not have a social function, in accordance to your own nature and qualifications, `you act out a social role' ; `you act out a social role', and, since it is a `role', you may eventually change it, willingly or not.
(92) Ierodiakonou, K., Topics in Stoic Philosophy, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1999, p. 162.
(93) Boym, S., Another Freedom : The Alternative History of an Idea, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 13. To be sure, nor in Diogenes' thought and in his `master''s, nor in stoicism, whether in its Greek or in its Roman flavour, was `inner freedom' about a blank renunciation of worldly things ; Antisthenes' ideal was merely to render himself as independent as possible of external things ; in Roman Stoicism, a great emphasis was put on the notion of duty, an even greater emphasis than on that of self-mastery, so that the idea of inward tranquillity and of that of public duty appears rather balanced in Seneca's work.
(94) It should be clear that much the antitraditional nature of the ideas and of the action of those philosophical schools and religious sects lies in their use of a weapon of the occult war identified by J. Evola as the « deliberate misidentification of a principle with its representatives. » Traditional institutions may have decayed both in Greece and in Rome, partly through the corruption of their representatives, and yet, instead of requiring that individuals unworthy of the normative and operative principles they were supposed to embody and manifest be replaced by qualified individuals, these schools and sects claimed that the principles themselves were false and deleterious, and that they should be replaced with their own tenets. They were fiercely critical of the `polis' as such and of its basis, the `nomos', as such. This wide-ranging criticism means etymologically `apoliteia'.
(95) Winter, B. W., Philo and Paul Among the Sophists, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1997, p. 225. webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MyAhfT8KQ4cJ:lionelwindsor.net/bibleresources/bible/new/Wisdom_1Corinthians.rtf+%22+boasting%22+paul+imitate+sophists&cd=6&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr.
(96) Downing, F. G., Cynics, Paul, and the Pauline Churches : Cynics and Christian, London and New York : Routledge, 1988, p. 71.
(97) Ibid., p. 72.
(98) Ibid., p. 73.
(99) Goodman, E., The Origins of the Western Legal Tradition : From Thales to the Tudors, Sydney : The Federation Press, 1995, p. 62-63. On the other hand, (popular) Cynicism offered the humbles turned cynics « freedom from restraint, change of scene, wide tolerance of behaviour, and a living (of a sort) without work. » (Dudley, D. R., A history of Cynicism from Diogenes to the 6th Century, London : Methuen, 1937, p. 147) There is no reason why Paul's audience would not have it in mind.

It has been repeatedly pointed out, with some grounds, that Cynicism was an attempt to « cloak rebellion with respectability » : « The opponents of convention had standardized both the manner and the matter of their assault into a conventional form, which demanded of its expositors no originality of thought, but rather, at best, unimpeachable asceticism and sufficient wit and rhetorical power to hold the attention of an audience. » (ibid. p. 127) – like the Sophists, « The Cynics scoffed at the customs and conventionalities of others, but were rigid in observance of their own. » (Sayre, F., op. cit., p. 18) The Greek historian Appian was even more specific in his criticism of Cynicism : « We see many of these now, obscure and poverty-stricken, wearing the garb of philosophy as a matter of necessity, and railing bitterly at the rich and powerful, not because they have any real contempt for riches and power, but from envy of the possessors of the same. » (Mith. 5.28).

The preaching of pious poverty as a leverage tool for social mobility is also a common feature in the lives of many celebrated Egyptian ascetics and notorious bands of Egyptian and Syrian monks, as well as in the career of « a collection of « beggars, fugitives, vagabonds, slaves, day laborers, peasants, mechanics, of the lowest sort, thieves and highwaymen, » who found that « by becoming monks, they became gentlemen and a sort of saints, » (http://www.ftarchives.net/foote/crimes/c1.htm) starting with Georgius of Cappadocia, « born at Epiphanin, in Cilicia, was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and informer, he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a faction to the Episcopal throne of Alexandria. » (Emerson, R. W., Essays and English Traits : Emerson, Cosimo, 2009, Vol. 5, p. 407).

Basically, the more one becomes familiar with the Cynic mindset, the more one realises that it has never been as gleeful as it is today in the barking of committed artists in the broadest sense.
(100) Kleingeld, P., Kant and Cosmopolitanism : The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Cambridge (Engl.) : Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 2.
(101) Ibid.
(102) « Pistis is primarily a term for the basic grasp and conviction that goes into the initial call and conversion to the Christ gospel. In this use it is an occurrent phenomenon that has to do with entering the group. Pistis is of course also something that continues to be there… That is why Paul may use it in 5:6 to introduce the theme of `ethics' within the group, that is, once a person has entered it. Still, pistis apparently has its primary logical place — one might even say its missionary Sitz im Leben — in connection with conversion and entering the group. The pneuma by contrast is an entity that is primarily connected with being in the group. It highlights a certain stable state of the believer. » (Engberg-Pedersen, T., Paul and the Stoics, Edinburgh : T & T Clark, 2000, p. 158).
(103) Goodman, E., op. cit., p. 62-63.
(104) Blumenfeld, B., The Political Paul : Justice, Democracy and Kingship in a Hellenistic Framework, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, p. 23-24
(105) Rasimus, T., Engberg-Pedersen, T., Dunderberg, I., Stoicism in Early Christianity, Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Academic, 2010, p. 180.
(106) Blumenfeld, B., op. cit.
(107) More interesting for the purposes of this study is his claim that « This view of (mystical) citizenship is consistent with the Hellenistic Pythagoreans' view of the king's justice. » It would need further elaboration.
(108) Longenecker, R. N., Paul, Apostle of Liberty, Regent College Publishing, 2003, p. 159-160.
(109) Ellul, J., The Ethics of Freedom, Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, 1976, p. 96.
(110) Deming, W., Paul on Marriage and Celibacy : The Hellenistic Background of 1 Corinthians 7, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995 p. 161.
(111) Basically, the seeds of this interest were sown much earlier in the mystery cults : « The cult of Demeter was connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, and the wild cult of Dionysus accepted, among its initiates, citizens and slaves, rich and poor. Here the old and new, the agricultural religion with the Homeric gods, the rational and irrational merge. These cults, with their egalitarian approach and emphasis on the individual, contributed to the transcendental breakthrough as much as the rational, natural philosophers and the political thinkers of the polis. » (Eisenstadt, S. N., The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, New York : State of New York University Press, 1986, p. 54).
(112) Stoic resonances are clear in Philo. Since the general view is that the link between Stoic thought and Christian thought on slavery is to be found in his writings, through a misconstruction of Aristotle's theory on slavery, it might not be uninteresting to summarise his views on the matter : « Philo's two kinds of slavery are a simplified version of the early Stoic typology… Philo follows the Founding Fathers of Stoicism in placing all the emphasis on slavery of the soul and in characterizing it as submission to the passions or emotions (here they are desire, fear, pleasure and grief). His line on slavery according to the law… is consistent with Stoicism. His teaching on the wise man is recognisably Stoic. There is no contradiction between Philon usage of `slave by phusis' : each is compatible with a Stoic position on slavery. » (Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 173)

« Philo had before him two kinds of slavery : Slavery is applied in one sense to bodies, in one sense to souls. Bodily slavery is a consequence of capture in war or sale or birth. Slaves in the body are not ipso facto real slaves : they are inferior to their masters only in fortune… True slaves, that is, moral slaves, are those who are dominated by feelings or passions. Moral slavery, in Philo as in orthodox Stoicism, was avoidable : it lay within the sphere of our control, responsibility and accountability. (ibid., p. 171).

« Philo also believed that moral slavery was ordained by God, who has created two natures, one servile, the other blessed. He went on to sanction the subjection of moral slaves to institutional slavery, because they need to be controlled, in their own and in everyone else's interest. Philo makes the transition from moral slavery to physical slavery. Moral slaves, it seems, should be physical slaves. » (ibid., p. 172).

For the Stoic strain in Christianity, see Arnold, E. V., Roman Stoicism, Cambridge (Eng.) : University Press, 1911.
(113) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 173.
(114) Ibid.
(115) Dodd, B. J., The Problem With Paul, Downers Grove. III. : InterVarsity Press, 1996, p. 100-101.
(116) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 176. As the literary form known as chiasmus is used and abused in the Old Testament, in which « The history of Israel was commonly (internally) interpreted and summarised using the motif of divine reversal, involving the downfall of enemies and the vindication of the suffering people of God » (http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/1812/1/Paul_and_the_Rhetoric_of_Reversal.pdf, p. 35), so it appears significantly in many parts of the Gospels - whose « writers utilise the theme of reversal, and see it as coming to fulfilment in the events associated with the coming, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus Christ », whose gospel « is presented as a message of impending (but inaugurated) reversal. » (ibid. p. 40) -, playing a considerable role in Paul. This significant use is rooted in the fact that chiasm « infused the thought and speech patterns of the Semitic mind, and in this manner found its way into the Old Testament and then into the New Testament. » (Man, R. E., The Value of Chiasm for New Testament Interpretation, `Biblioteca Sacra', 41, April-June 1964, p. 146) This rhetorical device is part of the Pauline strategy of `status reversals', or rather of inversion of values which lies at the heart of the « good news ». 1 Corinthians 7.22 (« For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman : likewise also he that is called, being free is Christ's servant ») is most illustrative of this rhetoric.
(117) Johnson, L. T., The Writings of the New Testament : An Interpretation, London : SCM Press, 1999, p. 401.
(118) Ibid.
(119) Ibid.
(120) Rodriguez, R. R., Racism and God-Talk, New York : New York University Press, 2008, p. 145-146. It is hardly surprising that Ephesians, 6:9 (« And you, masters, do the same things to them, forbearing threatenings, knowing that the Lord both of them and you is in heaven; and there is no respect of persons with him ») is thought by Chrysostom to indicate that masters are to serve slaves.
(121) Garnsey, P., op. cit., p. 155.
(122) Byron, J., Slavery Metaphors in Early Judaism and Pauline Christianity, Tuebingen : Mohr, 2003, p. 17.
(123) Bickerman, E. J., Studies in Jewish and Christian History, Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1986, p. 148.
(124) Chadwick, W. E., The Social Teaching of St Paul, Cambridge (Eng.) : The University press, 1906, p. 80 - Incidentally, Paul's whole rhetoric of moral exhortation is drawn entirely from the paraenetic tradition of his Pharisaic background.
(125) See, for example, Edwards, J. R., The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition, Grand Rapids : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2009.

(126) Kee, H. K., The Beginnings of Christianity : An Introduction to the New Testament, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005, p. 453 – « The third witness is Josephus (37-93 AD), a Jewish historian writing in Greek. In his works, Josephus sometimes mentions Stoicism and Epicureanism. Contra Apionem contains the following remarks : "I do not now explain how these notions of God are the sentiments of the wisest among the Grecians… and how they were taught them upon the principles that he [Moses] afforded them… for Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Plato, and the Stoic philosophers that succeeded them, and almost all the rest, are of the same sentiments, and had the same notions of God's nature." (Ap 168) ».
helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/21575/thedrama.pdf.txt;jsessionid=27E40E8736826129738470D3D035E4CA?sequence=1.
(127) www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/bets/vol09/9-1_yamauchi.pdf.
(128) Davis, R. W., op. cit., p. 43. See also Kent, C. F., The Makers and Teachers of Judaism From the Fall of Jerusalem to the Death of Herod the Great, New York : Scribner's, 1911, p. 101.
(129) Byron, J., op.cit., p. 4. This notion later found its way in Islam, in which `Adb Allah' means `slave of God' : « According to Abu Hafs, being a slave is an adornment of God's bondsman, and whoever gives it up divests himself of this adornment. (Qushayri, Risala 91, Bab al-cubudiyya ; Sendschreiben 283/25.6). There is nothing more honorable than being a slave of God and no more perfect name for the believer than that of slave. During the most honorable hour which was allotted to the Prophet on earth, that of his Ascension, God designated him with the name : "Lofty is He who caused His slave to travel at night" (surah 17/1 ; according to ibn `Atâ Allah, pious men have become sultan by chosing to be slaves of God (Sharh al-hikam, 2/128). » (in Ritter, H., The Ocean of the Soul : Man, the World, and God in the Stories of Farīd Al-Din Aṭṭar.Translated by John O'Kane, with editorial assistance of Bernd Radkte. Leiden : E. J. Brill, 2003, p. 291).
(130) Davis, R. W., op. cit., p. 43.
(131) Hooke, S. H., Myth, Ritual, and Kingship : Essays on the Theory and Practice of Kingship in the Ancient Near East and in Israel, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1958, p. 24.
(132) Raaflaub, K. A., op. cit., p. 269.
(133) Evola, J., op. cit., p. 241.
(134) Glotz, G., Ancient Greece at Work : An Economic History of Greece from the Homeric, Hildesheim : Georg Olms Verlag, 1987, p. 187.
(135) Ibid., pp. 187-88.
(136) Ibid. p. 190.
(137) Richter, D., S., op. cit., p. 57.
(138) Henrichs, A., in `Harvard Studies in Classical Philology', vol. 88, 1984, p. 140
(http://www.spiritual-minds.com/religion/Gnosticts/The%20Sophists%20and%20Hellenistic%20Religion,%20Prodicus%20as%20the%20Spiritual%20Father%20of%20the%20ISIS%20Aretalogies.pdf). John S. Nelson (What Should Political Theory be Now ? Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York, 1983, p. 219) speaks of the « Sophistic counter-tradition », without fully realising how appropriate the term is ; it is no exaggeration to say (Perkinson, H. J., How Things Got Better : Speech, Writing, Printing, and Cultural Change, Westport, CT : Bergin & Garvey, 1995, p. 47), despite the anachronistic use of the expression « Western civilization », that « The intellectual and moral arguments of Plato and Aristotle against the Sophists (and the destruction of the written works of the Sophists by the disciples of Plato and Aristotle) branded the Sophists as enemies of the Western civilization. »
(139) Ibid., p. 56. It is noteworthy that Carvakas appear to have been Brahmans, albeit apostate.
(140) Ibid., p. 77.
(141) Guénon, R., Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, Hillsdale : Sophia Perennis, translated by M. Pallis, 2d revised edition, 2001, p. 134.
(142) Haight, E. H., Essays on Ancient Fiction, New York : Longmans, Green and Co, 1936, p. 87.
(143) « A borrowing and transformation of diatribe occurred, so that "Jewish traditions and midrashic methods of interpretation were acquainted with Hellenistic rhetorical and literary methods." » Gadenz, P. T., Called from the Jews and from the Gentiles : Pauline Ecclesiology in Romans 9-11, Tuebingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2009, p. 36.
(144) In Navia, L. E., Classical Cynicism : A Critical Study, Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 67.
(145) Fairey, E., Slavery in the Classical Utopia : A Comparative Study, ProQuest, 2006, p. 59 (http://www.emilyfairey.info/drupal/sites/default/files/SlaveryintheClassicalUtopia.pdf).
(146) Foucault, on the basis of the similarity between the Greek words for money (`noumisma') and law (`nomos'), interpreted this oracle as a command to break the rules ; more generally, he saw « the Cynics' extreme, indeed scandalous, pursuit of the true life as an inversion of, a kind of carnivalesque grimace directed toward, the Platonic tradition. » Bernauer, J., Rasmussen, D., The Final Foucault, MIT Press, 1988, p. 110.
(147) Sayre, F., op. cit. p. 46.
(148) Nakamura, H., A Comparative History Of Ideas, Dehli : Motilal Banarsidass Publishing, 1992, p. 182.
(149) Navia, L. E., op. cit., p. 20.
(150) See Shea, L., op. cit.
(151) Vogt, K. M., Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City : Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa, New York : Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 24.
(152) Richter, D. S., pp. 57-58.
(153) Ibid., pp. 57-59.
(154) See Baslez, M. F., Recherches sur les conditions de pénétration et de diffusion des religions orientales à Délos (IIe-Ier s. avant notre ère), École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, 1977, p. 364 ; Clermont-Ganneau, C., Leroux, E., Recueil d'archéologie orientale, vol. 1, Paris, 1888, p. 187.
(155) Wallace, R., The Three Worlds of Paul of Tarsus, London : Routledge, 1998, p. 57
(156) Richter, D. S., op. cit. p. 58.
(157) Ibid., p. 57.
(158) Bevan, E., Stoics And Sceptics, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1913, p. 14.
(159) They were felt first in the area of language. « Greek… was now being written by many persons of non-Hellenic or at least mixed descent. Again the vocabulary of educated men had become enormously more technical. Someone has said that Plato had been able to construct a system without using more than one technical word. If we turn to… the Stoics, we find that a whole vocabulary of technical terms must be learnt by heart before their writings become intelligible. It is true, no doubt, that in some ways an increase in technical terms marks an advance in thought… but the habit among these writers goes far beyond what is necessary. Simple verbs are abandoned for compounds without any gain in expressiveness ; abstract terms are found everywhere, and so on. » Bury, J. B., The Hellenistic Age ; Aspects of Hellenistic civilization treated by J. B. Bury [and others], Cambridge : University Press, 1923, pp. 34-35.

If we turn now to the Sophists, it is also worth mentioning in this respect that « questions of language, philology, and grammar of absorbing interest to them [the Sophists] had already been introduced by such great Indians as Yaska and Panini. These two scholars had finished their important studies on language before such considerations had arisen in Greece. » Riepe, D. M. Naturalistic Tradition in Indian Thought, Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass Publishing, 1996, p. 55.
(160) Grant, A., Sir, The Ethics of Aristotle, vol. 1, London : Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885, p. 308.
(161) Ibid., pp. 309-310.
(162) See Zizek, S., The Puppet and the Dwarf : The Perverse Core of Christianity, Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2003. Chap. 2 ; see also Charrier, J. P., La construction des arrière-mondes : La Philosophie Captive 1, Editions L'Harmattan, 2011, chap. 4. On a related matter, it has been observed that the portrayal of Babylonian rabbis is parallel in several respects to the Sophists and rhetors who derived primarily from the eastern half of the Roman empire in the second and third centuries CE. Among Sophists known from the second century, there are Asiarchs and high priests (http://www.wosco.org/books/Philosophy/Greek_Sophists_in_the_Roman_Empire.pdf).
(163) Long, A. A., Stoic Studies, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001, p. 134.
(164) This is put forward in the `Astronomicon', a didactic poem on astrology composed by Marcus Manilius, a North African Stoic philosopher and astrologer of the first century A.D, and, in particular, in its preface, a short history of the origins of astrology, whose tone is distinctly evolutionary. « His account combines four (typically distinct) themes from earlier treatments of the origins of human civilization : (1) the revelation of arts by divine culture-heroes, (2) the role of Nature in facilitating human progress, (3) the development of sciences by barbarian nations of extreme antiquity, and (4) the slow process by which animalistic humanity forged themselves into civilized beings by discovering knowledge under the pressure of Necessity (1.42). » (p. 31) The institutionalisation of monarchy and priesthood is claimed to have occurred "beneath the eastern sky, whose lands are severed by the Euphrates or flooded by the Nile, where the stars return to view and soar above the cities of dusky nations. » (1, 40-67), and is closely related to the development of systematic astrology.
(165) Cumont, F., Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, New York : London : G. P. Putnam's sons, 1912, pp. 68-69.
(166) Ibid., p. 82.
(167) Ibid., p. 70. Regarding Posedonius, he was « a stoic disseminator of the Chaldean theology at or near its peak of popularity by most civilized races. He had an enormous reputation and following during the first half of the first century a.d. Although most of his writings have been lost, it is reasonably clear that he melded the Semitic tradition with Greek thought and was an intellectual mediator between East and West who greatly influenced the thinking of the aristocracy. He eloquently combined mysticism and learned knowledge of the day with what modern historians call the exact sciences in a system that included an enthusiastic adoration of the powers of nature and the God who permeates the universal organism. Cicero attended his lectures. He inspired much literature from his followers, including the famous Astronomies of Manilius. His ideas are reflected in the works of Seneca. This permeation of stellar concepts into intellectual circles ultimately became widespread among all classes at the same time that the seeds of Christianity were being planted. » Willner, J., Westin, L., The Perfect Horoscope, New York : Paraview Press, 2001, pp. 33-34.
(168) Ibid., p. 73-74.
(169) Ibid., p. 99.
(170) Ibid. The « key operational term `Semitic' » is considered « nebulous » by most modern students of Stoicism. Oddly, the term « Greek » is not. Besides, they « possess little information pertaining to the cultural views of the non-Hellenic peoples of the Near East during this period. » Obviously, they are not able to infer the race of the spirit of these people from their culture, their beliefs, their art, their economy, etc. As to the « antecedents » that can be readily found for precisely those views that some scholars have mistakenly and invidiously labelled `Semitic' » (Bryant, J. M., Moral Codes and Social Structure in Ancient Greece, Suny Press, 1996), what if they are essentially Semitic themselves ? What is truly pathetic is that such people cannot even write the word `Semitic' without putting it in quotation marks.

A `circulus in probando' is also used here : « But I think that the Oriental element introduced into Greek philosophy by the early Stoics has been exaggerated by some recent writers. There is hardly an element in early Stoic doctrine which cannot be traced back to an earlier Greek origin. The most we can say is that their contacts with the Eastern, especially the Semitic world may have made the Stoics inclined to emphasize, as they certainly did emphasize and develop some doctrines which were probably of Chaldaean-Semitic origin but which had appeared in Greek philosophy as early as Plato… » Armstrong, A. H., An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, p. 119.
(171) www.annettereed.com/reed_abraham.pdf, p. 33.
(172) Ibid., p. 4.
(173) Ibid., p. 34.
(174) Ibid., p. 9.
(175) Radin, M, The Jews among the Greeks and Romans, Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society of America, 1915, p. 241.
(176) deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/84456/1/ezl_1.pdf, p. 9.
(177) Gagarin, M., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, New York : Oxford University Press, 2010 vol. 1, p. 22.
(178) O'Sullivan, L., The Law of Sophocles and the Beginnings of Permanent Philosophical Schools in Athens, `Rheinisches Museum für Philologie', 145, 2002, p. 251. At the same time, the Jewish propaganda in Attica was rife : often the heathen gods were conceived by Jewish writers « to be not absolute nullities, but demons really existing and evil— a belief which the early Christian church firmly held and preached. » « Even books intended primarily for Jewish circulation contain polemics against polytheism and attacks upon heathen custom, which the avowed purpose of the book would not justify. » (Radin, M, op. cit., p. 159) Despite the widespread existence of this Jewish anti-Greek propaganda, there does not appear to have been attempts at checking it.
(179) von Wilamovitz-Moellendorff, U., Antigonos von Karastos, Philologische Untersuchungen 4, Berlin, 1881, p. 271. In our countries, the right of free religious association willingly granted by the occupying power is precisely one of the most effective legalistic screens behind which the leaders of the extra-European mob that this power has been importing hide their subversive political agenda.
(180) Fabre d'Olivet is correct in stating that Cato, « hearing Carneades speak against justice, denying the existence of virtues… and questioning the fundamental verities of religion, held in contempt a science which could bring forth such arguments. He urged the return of the Greek philosophy, so that the Roman youth might not be imbued with its errors ; but the evil was done. The destructive germs that Carneades had left, fermented secretly in the heart of the State, developed under the first favourable conditions, increased and produced at last that formidable colossus, which, after taking possession of the public mind, having obscured the most enlightened ideas of good and evil, annihilated religion, and delivered the Republic to disorder, civil wars and destruction ; and raising itself again with the Roman Empire, withering the principles of the life it had received, necessitated the institution of a new cult and thus was exposed to the incursion of foreign errors and the arms of the barbarians. This colossus, victim of its own fury, after having torn and devoured itself was buried beneath the shams that it had heaped up… » As much as his diagnosis of the ills from which the Graeco-Roman world suffered is accurate, the cure he thinks he has found in Zeno, « raised up » by « Providence » to oppose the ravages of Pyrrhonism, then in Descartes and in Bacon, is worse than the disease. (The Golden Verses of Pyhagoras, New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917, p. 203-204)