Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T02:30:52.318Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ANOTHER PERI TECHNES LITERATURE: INQUIRIES ABOUT ONE'S CRAFT AT DODONA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2018

Emily Hulme Kozey
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Elite, Athenian, male – all three adjectives usually apply to our sources on the ancient world, and the study of ancient ethics (including even so-called ‘popular morality’) is no different in this respect. There are, however, a few exceptional sources that provide a window into a more diverse population and their hopes, desires, values, and insecurities. In the following, I wish to highlight one of these – the corpus of oracular lamellae from Dodona – and demonstrate how this body of evidence can shed new light on an old question. Specifically, I will consider what we can learn about techne (art, craft, profession) from these tablets; but in addition I hope readers with an interest in ancient ethics will see how promising this source is for further study on other topics. As I will show, alongside the better known peri technes literature – a group of texts from the fifth and fourth centuries bce that discuss medicine and other crafts from a theoretical standpoint – there is a small corpus of texts from Dodona that uses this same phrase and discusses the crafts from a far more practical perspective. The object of this article will be to show how these two corpora are mutually enlightening.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

Elite, Athenian, male – all three adjectives usually apply to our sources on the ancient world, and the study of ancient ethics (including even so-called ‘popular morality’Footnote 1) is no different in this respect. There are, however, a few exceptional sources that provide a window into a more diverse population and their hopes, desires, values, and insecurities. In the following, I wish to highlight one of these – the corpus of oracular lamellae from Dodona – and demonstrate how this body of evidence can shed new light on an old question. Specifically, I will consider what we can learn about techne (art, craft, profession) from these tablets; but in addition I hope readers with an interest in ancient ethics will see how promising this source is for further study on other topics. As I will show, alongside the better known peri technes literature – a group of texts from the fifth and fourth centuries bce that discuss medicine and other crafts from a theoretical standpoint – there is a small corpus of texts from Dodona that uses this same phrase and discusses the crafts from a far more practical perspective. The object of this article will be to show how these two corpora are mutually enlightening.

The oracular lamellae are lead tablets inscribed with questions asked of the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, near Ioannina in north-west Greece.Footnote 2 There is evidence for cult activity at the site from the Bronze Age until the fifth century ce; excavators have found tablets dating from the sixth century bce until the second century bce.Footnote 3 On these tablets, men and women consulting the oracle wrote their question,Footnote 4 or questions, having travelled in many cases a great distanceFootnote 5 at significant expense. For instance, one tablet dating from the first half of the fourth century bce reads: ‘Deinocrates asks Zeus concerning health and welfare for him, and by praying and sacrificing to [which] heroes or gods now and in the future he would do better. Whether working the techne and sacrificing to whom…’ (DVC 558B). Notice that this tablet includes multiple questions – Deinocrates has possibly travelled quite far, and, given that some of his questions pertain to how he can make a living, the journey might be prohibitively expensive to repeat.Footnote 6 Hence, he asks multiple questions on this visit. Not all tablets are this complete or include the name of their author (although it is quite helpful when they do, as this opens up the possibility of identifying their geographic origin, ethnicity, and so on).

The questions themselves follow familiar patterns. As Parker points out, usually the questions are firmly practical and focused on a decision: Should I marry this woman? Should I pursue this trade? Should I make a certain trip?Footnote 7 We will focus on the questions pertaining to the questioner's techne. Thirty-three of the tablets published in Dakaris, Vokotopoulou, and Christidis use the term techne,Footnote 8 although this seriously undercounts the number that concern the topic: the verb ergazesthai (to work, perform a deed) picks out roughly the same field and could be used without the noun techne.Footnote 9 Six of the thirty-three use the phrase peri technes in their question, or rather – since they are, in fact, all written in non-Attic-Ionic dialects – peri technas.

A number of scholars have studied techne in the fourth century using more traditional sources – especially the Platonic dialogues, the Hippocratic corpus, and Aristotle.Footnote 10 In the first section, I will discuss the concept of techne as it has been reconstructed on the basis of these sources. In the subsequent section, I will introduce several of the tablets which, I argue, can cast new light on this concept. The technai mentioned in the tablets are all professions which are taken up in order to make money, are pursued over the course of a lifetime, and are often not just a trade but a way of life handed down from father to son, and thus substantially connected to the practitioner's social identity as a member of his family. None of this is incompatible with the concept of techne that has been developed from more traditional sources, but it is a distinct emphasis. Thus, study of these texts can seriously enrich our understanding of techne.

We begin, then, by considering the conclusions drawn by earlier scholars before turning to the relevant lamellae.

I. The Peri Technes literature

‘Good God! You never shut up about cobblers and fullers and cooks and doctors!’ So Callicles charges Plato's Socrates with an excessive fascination with the technai in the Gorgias (491a; see also Xen. Mem. 1.2.37, 4.4.5–6). Socrates is not alone among ancient philosophers in finding the technai to be, as they say, ‘good to think with’: Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics with an observation about the technai (1.1); and Plato himself describes political knowledge in the Statesman by using an extended analogy with weaving (279b–311c). It is impossible, then, to study ancient ethics without understanding the concept of techne. Scholars have reconstructed such a concept using, chiefly, these philosophers themselves and the Hippocratic corpus.

In her analysis of the Protagoras, Martha Nussbaum argues for four features of the technai that are especially salient to understanding Plato's project in the dialogue.Footnote 11 On her reconstruction of the concept, there are four main features of techne: universality, teachability, precision, and concern with explanation.Footnote 12 The technai are universal in that they can treat all similar cases: a doctor cannot treat only this particular man with a migraine, but all people with migraines. The technai are teachable in that they prescribe rules which can be transmitted to someone else. The technai are precise because they use standards and measuring techniques in order to achieve their goal. And, finally, the technai are concerned with explanation because they do not merely report experiences (‘cheese has given Meno a stomach ache three times’), but can explain what is causing an effect (‘the lactose in the cheese is irritating his stomach lining’) and thus make predictions (‘ice cream will, too’).

Why, then, were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle fixated on the technai? Earlier philosophers did not share their obsession: it seems instead to be a feature of Socratic (and subsequent) philosophies that arose in the context of the sophistic movement and other fifth-century trends. For one, rhetoric and sophistry in this period claimed the mantle of techne, which makes sense given that techne was associated with teaching; Plato would attack the sophists precisely on the grounds that they were merely practising a pseudo-techne, more like magic than a rational, transmittable skill. The dialogue that shows this most clearly is the Protagoras. In the Protagoras, Socrates’ young friend is inclined to go to Protagoras as a pupil (310d); Protagoras explicitly calls sophistry a techne (316d; see also 348e) and claims to be able to teach virtue to young men (327e–328c). Plato describes Protagoras as more like a magos (that is, someone who does not have a techne) who enchants than a rational teacher who instructs (314e–315b) and Socrates, in the cross-examination in the last part of the dialogue, shows how irrational Protagoras’ teaching is (348c–361d).Footnote 13

Second, these sophists, along with others, wrote and distributed treatises about various particular technai, sometimes under the title Peri Technes. The most famous of these is the Hippocratic work with that title; but we have evidence for other works titled either Peri Technes or Peri Technon by Simmias of Thebes and Crito of Athens (two members of Socrates’ circle), Xenocrates of Chalcedon (a pupil of Plato), and Aristotle himself.Footnote 14 In the same vein, Thrasymachus was supposed to have written a Megale Techne and/or a Techne Rhetorike (Schol. ad Ar. Av. 880, = LMFootnote 15 D3), which would presumably be a treatise about rhetoric; Protagoras wrote a techne of eristic (Diog. Laert. 9.55, = LM D1); and Gorgias was fêted for his techne on an inscribed statue base at Olympia (IvO 293, = LM P34b).Footnote 16

Nussbaum and others, by drawing on texts like the Hippocratic Peri Technes, do accurately capture the most important features of techne in those works. The author of the Hippocratic Peri Technes, in the course of defending the status of medicine as an art, does defend its universality (chapters 4 and 8), teachability (chapter 5), and rationality and ability to make predictions (chapters 6 and 14).Footnote 17 These texts, however, do not give a full picture of the concept of techne. For example, the technai were the professions pursued by men who did not own enough land to live a life of complete leisure, and thus were looked down upon by most elites.Footnote 18 This is the picture we get from a variety of sources: Solon made it a rule, according to Plutarch, that fathers had to teach their sons a techne so that they would be able to make a living (Vit. Sol. 22.1–3); Xenophon criticizes craftsmen as shoddy friends and citizens (in comparison with property owners, in particular), since they lack leisure time (Oec. 4.2–3); Herodotus describes the contempt most Greeks feel towards those who practise a techne (Hdt. 2.167). So, while techne is associated with low social status in a variety of sources, this does not come to the surface when we focus on, for example, the Hippocratic corpus.Footnote 19 Besides needing to attend to this feature in order to gain a complete picture of the concept of techne, it is important for interpreters, since specific passages in Plato and Aristotle clearly draw on the low-status association of techne (for example, Pl. Resp. 6.495c–d; Leg. 5.741e; Arist. Pol. 2.1268a14–32).

With the thought, then, that there is more to techne than the four characteristics described by Nussbaum, we turn to the oracular lamellae. In the Hippocratic texts, the fact that the technai were pursued as a way to make money is completely obscured; in contrast, the lamellae make this quite clear. We will see how these tablets do this, and then will consider two other connected features of the technai in these tablets. The first is that the technai are life-long vocations; the second is that the techne someone practises is often connected to their family identity, since they would learn their trade from their father. We turn, now, to this other peri technes literature, looking to articulate further dimensions of this important concept.

II. Oracular tablets and techne

A. The economic function of the technai

The practitioners of the technai were a group that had to work for a living; they did not earn enough income from property to sustain their families, so they learned a trade. At best, these demiourgoi worked in their own workshop, perhaps accompanied by a slave or two, as individual entrepreneurs;Footnote 20 nevertheless, they were ultimately dependent on others to buy their goods. A frequent query asked of the oracle is related to this: will I make money in my trade (or should I switch to another one)? For instance, DVC 1394 asks, ‘God, good luck. Does the god reply to Phaikylos that he should practise his ancestral techne, fishing, and do better?’Footnote 21 Many others ask roughly the same question: DVC 1248A, which dates from the fourth century bce asks ‘would it be better for me to work my techne in the coming time?’; and 2246A asks ‘Eumedon asks Zeus of Dodona whether it would be better to perform the techne he has.’ Indeed, so many tablets ask this sort of question that we can pretty confidently conjecture that more fragmentary tablets such as 183A, ‘concerning the profession, P…good luck…which good…of the profits’ would have asked some version of the question ‘will I be financially successful in my trade?’

A variant of this question relates the trade to travel, and basically asks where the questioner should pursue his trade. For instance, the author of DVC 2114A asks ‘if he should remain at home practising his ancestral techne’; similarly, the author of DVC 2169A asks if ‘remaining at home would it be better for myself and my techne and money (kremasi)’, while the author of Lhôte 88 asks if, leaving home, he would find work in the techne. The author of Lhôte 86 gets specific, asking ‘if it would be better for me to work with Diotimos in Megara’. For the authors of these questions, either the opportunity has arisen to work abroad or they are unsure whether they should actively seek such an opportunity. We should remember that craftsmen in antiquity were notably mobile. Famously, Eumaeus in the Odyssey considers craftsmen to be the only group of people who travel for legitimate purposes (Hom. Od. 17.382–6):

Who, pray, of himself ever seeks out and invites a stranger from abroad, unless it is one of those that are masters of some public craft, a prophet, or a healer of ills, or a carpenter, or perhaps a divine minstrel, who gives delight with his song? For these men are invited all over the boundless earth.Footnote 22

Indeed, a number of architects, artists, and doctors were known to have travelled extensively in their lifetime.Footnote 23 From the evidence of these tablets, we can see that this kind of travel was not unusual in the classical period either, nor was it restricted to only the most famous artists; rather, as in Homer, craftsmen might well expect to have to travel to make a living.Footnote 24

From these tablets, it is clear that, first and foremost, the technai fulfilled an economic function. The analyses provided by scholars such as Nussbaum miss this point; the technai were not hobbies or mere skills, like learning to swim, play cards, or dice tomatoes. They were professions that required full-time work and were only pursued to the extent that their practitioners could make a living from this work.Footnote 25 What, then, would one do if, being a shoemaker or doctor or scribe, one were not making enough money to support one's family? To answer this question, we turn to tablets that discuss changing jobs.

B. Changing technai and the importance of training

Overwhelmed by debts, the author of DVC 2421A asked if he should give up his techne – and become a cook! Parallels can be found in other tablets: DVC 450A, a very fragmentary tablet, asks ‘should I change my techne’, without any further information about what new trade would be taken up. And it would make sense if several of the fragmentary ones asking about their techne were specifically asking if they should change course.Footnote 26 After all, the questioners have travelled, in some cases, hundreds of kilometres, so generally the question is going to be about a serious decision.

The increasingly well-known tablet written by Epilytos (DVC 2367), who indeed travelled quite far, is especially vivid. As Parker translates it:

God. Good luck. Epilytos asks Zeus Naios and Diona by doing what he would be successful and by sacrificing to what god and whether I should practice the trade which I was trained in or turn to another and whether I will get it if he attempts it and whether I should take Phainomena as wife or another woman and whether indeed I should take a wife (now) or wait.Footnote 27

This tablet, strikingly although not unusually, asks multiple questions. Given the distance (and expense) the journey to Dodona would entail, it is not surprising that Epilytos (like Deinocrates, the author of the first tablet cited) would try to make the most out of his consultation with Zeus and Diona.Footnote 28 The other question he asks, about whether to marry a particular woman or indeed marry at all, is another common inquiry at the oracle (see, for example, DVC 210, 449, and 2052). That this is the other question should underline how serious Epilytos’ first question is.

Furthermore, we should attend to the way in which Epilytos asks the question about his trade: should he change to a new one, or keep working in the field he trained in (ἐπαιδεύθην). The reference to his training points us to why changing fields would be a big decision. Training was essential for success in any techne. Most practitioners of a given techne were trained by their father – the repeated references we have seen to an ‘ancestral techne’ recall this, as do descriptions in other sources of fathers training their sons.Footnote 29 But one could also serve as an apprentice and learn a trade, if either one's father did not practise a trade or (as these tablets seem to assume) one was moving from whatever trade was first practised to a new one. This would be a fairly costly change: some apprenticeships charged tuition, and, even for those that did not, every month spent re-training was another month spent foregoing full-time wages. To give one example, an apprenticeship in weaving in Hellenistic Egypt required the pupil to pay tuition and took four years of full-time work.Footnote 30

In short, then, a techne was a serious commitment: not a quick money-making scheme that could be picked up in a few weeks, but something that took serious study and effort. Hence, a change to a new one would be an important decision, just like marriage. Like marriage, in fact, it would have serious ramifications for the questioner's financial status and family. Especially because the techne on the tablet is so often called the techne patroia, the question about techne turns out to be connected to one's family in two ways: a techne is something learned from a man's father, and practised for the well-being of his wife and children. With that thought, then, we can make the transition to a final suggestion: might one's techne not just be a way of making money, but also part of one's social identity?

C. Techne and social identity

Of the thirty-three tablets that have the term techne, ten of them explicitly refer to an ‘ancestral’ techne, using words or phrases like patroia or tou patros to modify the techne.Footnote 31 This may even be undercounting the number that concern an ‘ancestral’ techne, since further fragmentary inscriptions could well have had one of these phrases, too. Already, we have seen examples of these kinds of phrases in DVC 1394 and 2114A. In one of them, the ancestral techne is mentioned, fishing (DVC 1394). In other tablets, the ancestral techne is not specified. Why do these speakers mention the fact that their techne was followed by their father as well? Any answer will necessarily be a matter of conjecture, but it is worth sketching one possibility.

Perhaps the questioner is emphasizing the fact their trade was handed down to them from their father in order to characterize properly what giving up that trade would entail. In other words, perhaps giving up a trade is different from giving up an ancestral trade. The latter might be felt to be betraying one's family: a bit like finally selling the family farm.

Why might this be? For one thing, the trade someone practises, or that someone's family practises, affects the kinds of social connections and even religious rituals that they pursue. A family of blacksmiths, for instance, is likely to know other blacksmiths, and individuals either involved in related trades (for instance, gold-working) or who are frequent patrons of blacksmiths (for instance, wealthy families who need to buy armour).Footnote 32 Furthermore, the religious practices of blacksmiths might be rather different from the religious practices of carpenters or potters or flute-players. For instance, blacksmiths would celebrate the Chalkeia (FGrH 325 F 18), celebrating the new year and honouring Hephaistos and Athena.Footnote 33 At a much smaller scale, they may have had totems, like clay figures of Hephaistos near their hearth (schol. ad. Ar. Av. 436).Footnote 34 After their death, their family may have featured their techne on their tomb: for instance, the family of a bronzeworker in Attica named Sosinos did so (IG II2 8464, end of fifth century bce).Footnote 35

In short, the trade a person practised had an impact that went beyond the economic sphere: it influenced their social world and their religious life. In a quite dense sense, then, your techne was who you were. This would make abandoning any techne difficult. When that techne was the one pursued by one's family, abandoning it would be that much more difficult. The individual would be leaving not just the trade he was taught but foregoing rituals his father practised and relationships his father cultivated.Footnote 36 That this decision would be highly fraught – and worth an expensive visit to a distant oracle – need not surprise us.

Conclusion

Techne can and should be viewed as both an intellectual and a social phenomenon. The technai are rational, teachable fields, as Nussbaum emphasized; but they are also ways of earning money in an unforgiving world. The oracular tablets from Dodona throw light on this latter aspect: the technai fulfilled an economic function, entailed time-consuming training, and were part of a person's identity.

Beyond the specific topic of this article, I hope more generally that I have also shown how valuable these tablets are for the study of Greek ethics. I would highlight as especially promising for future study the tablets written by enslaved men and women, which connect to a number of topics: their general hopes for freedom in their lifetime;Footnote 37 their fears that their masters’ promises will fall through;Footnote 38 and how to make the best of their terrible lot.Footnote 39 It is rare that we have such a window into non-elite values, and the existence of this corpus should inspire reconsideration of questions previously dismissed as unanswerable. In that sense, the oracle is still functioning after all.

References

1 See Dover, K. J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), 2–4Google Scholar.

2 Readers of Greece & Rome will be particularly familiar with the tablets from Parker, R., ‘Seeking Advice from Zeus at Dodona’, G&R 63 (2016), 69–90Google Scholar, who studies ‘how clients used, and were allowed to use, the oracle’ (72). A major impetus for study of these tablets has been the publication of thousands of them in Dakaris, S., Vokotopoulou, J. and Christidis, A. P., Τα Χρηστήρια Ἐλάσματα της Δωδώνης των νασκαφών Δ. Ευαγγελίδη, 2 vols. (Athens, 2013)Google Scholar, referred to hereafter as DVC. An older publication of 167 of the tablets (Lhôte, E., Les Lamelles oraculaires de Dodone [Geneva, 2006]Google Scholar) remains essential. Eidinow, E., Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, interprets and translates many of the tablets published before that point (including all the tablets from Lhôte relevant to this study). A current project, Dodona Online, is beginning to publish some of the tablets from DVC with translations in French and English, as well as commentary. For the history of the oracle, see Parke, H., The Oracles of Zeus (Oxford, 1967), 1–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Dakaris, S., Dodona (Athens, 2000), 11Google Scholar; Parker (n. 2), 70.

4 The tablets exhibit wide variation in dialect and handwriting, which has led scholars to suppose they were written by the men and women consulting the oracle themselves, rather than a professional scribe. How the tablets were actually used at Dodona (were they handed to the priestess? did they complement a question asked orally, or supplant that task?) is a matter of great controversy. See especially Johnston, S. I., Ancient Greek Divination (Malden, MA, 2007), 60–72Google Scholar, esp. 68–71; and, Piccinini, J., ‘Beyond Prophecy: Oracular Tablets of Dodona as Memories of Consulation’, IncidAntico 11 (2013), 63–76Google Scholar, who reviews the evidence for the tablets being written by the questioners themselves in the course of advancing her argument that the tablets were not actually used at the site but were mementoes of a journey and consultation.

5 We do not know how far many questioners travelled, since we do not know where they were coming from; but a few data points will show the scope of individuals’ travel to this site. Using modern roads, Dodona is roughly 400 km from Athens; using ORBIS, which models the Roman road and sea transportation network, a journey from Athens to Nicopolis (the closest point on their model to Dodona) would take four days by sea or fourteen by road. A man named Diognetus would have made this journey from Athens (Lhôte 23). Many questioners were coming from a substantially shorter distance, as, for instance, the contingent of Corcyreans asking about harmony in their city in Lhôte 1–4; others made more arduous journeys, as, for example, Epilytos (DVC 2367, discussed below in section II.B) and a group from Tarentum (Lhôte 5), both travelling from Magna Graecia, and the author of DVC 2554B, who came from Thouria in Messenia.

6 Deinocrates does not give us his city of origin and his name is too common to know with precision where he is from – there are forty-five men with this name in LGPN. But, the closest attestations are from Illyrian Apollonia and Phocis, each over 200 km from Dodona by modern roads.

7 Parker (n. 2), 74. Both Parker and Eidinow (n. 2) construct categories of question types. For instance, Eidinow groups questions about travel, marriage, children, work, etc. (72–124).

8 These are: 183A, 290B, 372A, 426A, 450A, 488A, 558B, 567B, 851B, 1026A, 1082A, 1215B, 1239A, 1248A, 1394 (= Lhôte 83, = Eidinow, Work 6), 1782B, 2077B, 2102, 2114A, 2169A, 2246A, 2271A, 2367, 2421A, 2489B, 2954A, 3147B, 3267B, 3453B, 3697A, 3817B, 3895A, 4048A. DVC, in their commentary on 183A, list forty-five tablets, including all of these and a few others which do not actually use the word techne but are firmly on this theme (for instance, 953A, which is simply the word kerameu[s], ‘potter’). Lhôte has an additional four tablets which use the term techne: 84 (= Eidinow, Work 5), 87 (= Eidinow, Work 8), 88 (= Eidinow, Work 7), 89 (= Eidinow, Work 9); DVC 1394, which I count among the thirty-three, was previously published as Lhôte 83.

9 E.g. Lhôte 86.

10 See especially Nussbaum, M., ‘The Protagoras: A Science of Practical Reasoning’, in The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge, 1986), 89–121Google Scholar, esp. 94–9; Roochnik, D., Of Art and Wisdom. Plato's Understanding of Techne (University Park, PA, 1996)Google Scholar; Schiefsky, M., Hippocrates. On Ancient Medicine (Leiden, 2005), 5–18Google Scholar; Mann, J., Hippocrates. On the Art of Medicine (Leiden, 2012), 1–7Google Scholar.

11 Roochnik (n. 10), Schiefsky (n. 10), and Mann (n. 10), among others, have focused broadly on these same features. I explain Nussbaum's concept because she is especially clear and concise, and because it has been very influential.

12 Nussbaum (n. 10), 95–6.

13 See also the Gorgias, esp. the critique of rhetoric as not a techne but a mere empeiria at 463a–465a (and reprised at 500a–501c).

14 See Rihll, T. E. and Tucker, J. V., ‘Practice Makes Perfect: Knowledge of Materials in Classical Athens’, in Tupline, C. and Rihll, T. E. (eds.), Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture (Oxford, 2002), 287Google Scholar. Technical treatises in general probably date from earlier: we hear of Chersiphron and Metagenes, architects of the temple of Hera at Samos, and Theodorus and Rhoecus, architects of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, writing treatises about architecture, which would date from the sixth century. See Pollitt, J. J., The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven, CT, 1974), 12Google Scholar; Hahn, R., Anaximander and the Architects (Albany, NY, 2001)Google Scholar, 251 n. 43.

15 LM = Laks, André and Most, Glenn (eds.), Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, 2016)Google Scholar.

16 See Segal, C. P., ‘Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos’, HSPh 66 (1962), 116–17Google Scholar.

17 Precision does not play an important role in the Peri Technes; it does play an important role in Peri Archaies Iatrikes (On Ancient Medicine). See On Ancient Medicine, chapters 9 and 12, in Jones, W. H. S. (ed. and trans.), Hippocrates. Volume II. (Cambridge, MA, 1923)Google Scholar, (Peri Technes is included in vol. i).

18 This description of techne is meant to bring out the central characteristics of the trades most commonly described as technai (in other words, to bring out its focal meaning and to suggest what trades are prototypes for the concept techne), and thus (by design) it does not encompass equally well the marginal cases of technai. The most important marginal cases, on this description, are farming and elite practices such as generalship. Why do I take it that these are marginal cases of technai? Because they are frequently contrasted with the term techne or examples of mainstream technai such as weaving, bronzeworking, and pottery (compare, for instance, bronzeworking, which is never contrasted with techne). See, for instance, Hdt. 2.166–7, which contrasts those who have learned a techne with warriors (cf. Isoc. Bus. 15); Pl. Leg. 7.806d–e, which contrasts farming and military practices with the technai (cf. Pl. Criti. 110c); Isoc. Panath. 46, which describes how the Lacedaemonians neglected both agriculture and the technai; Dem. 25.51, which describes how the defendant ‘does not practice a techne, nor agriculture, nor any other work’ (οὐ τέχνης, οὐ γεωργίας, οὐκ ἄλλης ἐργασίας οὐδεμιᾶς ἐπιμελεῖται); and Xen. Cyr. 4.3.12, which says that some men make farming their business while others pursue their techne. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that farming and military practices are sometimes assimilated to the conventional technai, and themselves called technai. See, for instance, Pl. Plt. 289e, describing merchants as the men who carry around ‘the products of farming and the other technai’ (τά τε γεωργίας καὶ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν ἔργα); and Euthyd. 291e, which asks about the techne of agriculture. On the polemike techne, see Thuc. 1.142 and 2.87; and Xen. Mem. 2.1.28 (but note that in his treatise On the Cavalry Commander, Xenophon never describes the commander's expertise as techne, favouring the term phronesis, and the adjective phronimos, instead).

19 Not all technai were of uniform low status. For instance, there appear to be certain ‘gentleman’ doctors, like Eryximachus in Plato's Symposium, and famous sculptors such as Phidias and Polyclitus who earned some degree of respect. On the latter, see especially Schultz, P., ‘Style and Agency in an Age of Transition’, in Osborne, R. (ed.), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2007), 163–87Google Scholar. These cases are exceptions to the rule and, even as exceptions, they should be qualified. On medicine, see, for instance, the discussion in the Gorgias that assumes that Socrates and Callicles would look down upon doctors (512d) just as they look down upon engineers (mechanopoioi) and pilots (kubernetai); on sculpture, see the especially pungent remark in Plutarch that, although they may love the works of a sculptor like Phidias or Polyclitus, no well-born young man ever wished to be a sculptor himself (Per. 2.1). On the overall low social status of visual artists, see Tanner, J., ‘Culture, Social Structure and the Status of Visual Artists in Classical Greece’, CCJ 45 (2000), 137–47Google Scholar. On medicine, see further n. 25 below.

20 See Acton, P., Poiesis (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for detailed estimates of the average workshop size of various industries in classical Athens.

21 In this tablet and subsequent ones, I translate λώϊον καὶ ἄμεινον as ‘better’, a stock phrase in the tablets. See Eidinow (n. 2), 74.

22 Translation from Murray, A. T. (transl.), Homer. Odyssey, Volume II. Books 13–24, rev. Dimock, G. E. (Cambridge, MA, 1919), 183Google Scholar. For those who did not practise a trade, travel was negatively associated with begging, profiteering, and piracy, and even for those who did practise a trade, the mere fact that they travelled could lead to suspicion. See Garland, R., Wandering Greeks (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 15–33Google Scholar and 173–4; Montiglio, S., Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture (Chicago, IL, 2005), 108–15Google Scholar. Professional travel could also be dangerous: see Garland (this note), 168–9.

23 Burford, A., Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society (Ithaca, NY, 1972), 66–7Google Scholar, discusses the travels of several well-known artists and sculptors. For instance, she notes that Myron the sculptor worked in Athens, Olympia, Samos, Ephesos, Aegina, Orchomenos, and Akragas. Nutton, V., Ancient Medicine, second edition (London, 2012), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with 349 n. 3, notes evidence for the peripatetic lifestyle of the Hippocratic writers.

24 On economic migrants in antiquity in general, and craftsmen as a subclass of these migrants in particular, see Garland (n. 22), 150–66, esp. 150–1 and 165–6.

25 This was probably as true for doctors as for other demiourgoi. See Nutton (n. 23), 87–8; Horstmanhoff, H. F. J., ‘The Ancient Physician: Craftsman or Scientist?’, JHM 45 (1990), 187–96Google Scholar; see also Pleket, H. W., ‘The Social Status of Physicians in the Graeco-Roman World’, in van der Eijk, P. J., Horstmanshoff, H. F. J., and Schrijvers, P. H. (eds.), Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context (Amsterdam, 1995), 27–34Google Scholar. It is true that doctors – especially public doctors – were recognized as a valued part of the community more than many demiourgoi, as is suggested by the many extant honorary inscriptions for doctors and additional rights granted to them, but this seems to be in addition to payment for services. See Samama, É., Les Médecins dans le monde grec (Geneva, 2003), 45–58Google Scholar.

26 In this section, I focus particularly on individuals who changed from one techne to another, but there are certainly also cases where someone changed from a given techne to a way of making a living that did not involve a techne at all: for instance, they could become a manual labourer, a merchant, or a farmer (here following the idea that farming can be contrasted with the technai, as described above in n. 18). See esp. DVC 3147B, which (possibly) asks whether one will be more successful pursuing a techne or working as a seafaring merchant; and the Works and Days, which neatly describes many of the ways of making money (viz. kinds of erga): within Hesiod's family, there is seafaring (618–34), farming (639–40 et passim), and poetry (1–10 and 656–62; cf. 26), and he also describes others performing manual labour (602) and crafts such as bronzeworking (493–7).

27 Parker (n. 2), 77. See also ibid., 77 n. 25, on the change from first to third person.

28 The authors of DVC connect Epilytos with southern Italy.

29 See Burford (n. 23), 82–7, and below n. 31.

30 See Hasaki, E., ‘Craft Apprenticeship in Ancient Greece: Reaching beyond the Masters’, in Wendrich, W. (ed.), Archaeology and Apprenticeship. Body Knowledge, Identity, and Communities of Practice (Tucson, ASZ, 2012), 186–7Google Scholar. See further Westermann, W. L., ‘Apprentice Contracts and the Apprentice System in Roman Egypt’, CPh 9 (1914), 295–315Google Scholar; and Bergamasco, M., ‘Le διδασκαλικαί nella ricerca attuale’, Aegyptus 75 (1995), 95–167Google Scholar, esp. the ‘Prospetto dei Documenti’ (162–7), which lists the lengths of courses and payment methods recorded in these contracts.

31 These are: (with little or no restoration): 1394, 2102, 3147B; (with extensive restoration): 567B, 1215B, 1239A, 2077B, 2114A, 3454B, 4048A. Strikingly, this kind of phrase is very rare in literature of the classical period – there are more uses of it in the tablets from the fifth and fourth centuries bce than all literary works from this same period combined. The literary citations are as follows: Hdt. 6.60; Soph. El. 1500 (the relevant craft there being prophecy, with which cf. DVC 1082A); Pl. Leg. 3.695a; Dicaearchus fr. 57A Wehrli; and Aristoxenus fr. 51 Wehrli (which mentions Socrates’ patroia techne, sculpting). This brings our total to five uses of this phrase among literary works from this period, versus the ten uses among the tablets (this number goes down to three when the restored tablets are removed, although it is still quite high for a collection of a few thousand tablets versus all ancient Greek literary texts of the period). This is not to say that it was uncommon for trades to be passed down from father to son; on the contrary, this seems to have been the standard model. See especially Burford (n. 23), 82–7, for evidence of this in trades such as weaving, ship-building, painting, and sculpture; for the evidence of it in the mantike techne, see Flower, M., ‘Who is a Seer?’, in The Seer in Ancient Greece (Berkeley, CA, 2008), 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Sobak, R., ‘Sokrates among the Shoemakers’, Hesperia 84 (2015), 669–712CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses the social connections developed by demiourgoi in the Athenian Agora.

33 See Simon, E., Festivals of Attica. An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, WI, 1983), 38–9Google Scholar; see also Parker, R., Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 464–5Google Scholar.

34 See Harrison, E., ‘Alkamenes’ Sculptures for the Hephaisteion: Part III, Iconography and Style’, AJA 81 (1977), 425–6Google Scholar.

35 See further discussion of the epitaphs for craftsmen in Burford (n. 23), 176–83. I am grateful to Elliot Wilson for reminding me of this point.

36 Doyle, J., ‘Socrates and Gorgias’, Phronesis 55 (2010), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, introduces the idea of ‘ethically charged’ professions, like rhetoric or philosophy. The notion is that some technai speak to who a person ‘fundamentally is’ and their ‘way of life’. I find his idea quite attractive, albeit too narrowly defined; he thinks that shoe-making, for instance, need not be ‘ethically charged’ because the craft uses ‘non-ethical practical knowledge’ (5 n. 7). I suggest that the practical craftsmen who travelled to Dodona may have thought of their craft as more substantially who they ‘fundamentally’ were than Doyle indicates, on the lines argued above: they identified their trade as part of their ancestral heritage; their social world was moulded by the craft they participated in; and they enacted rituals and worshiped gods in accordance with their role as a certain kind of craftsmen. Perhaps the picture we should have, then, is of a gradient, rather than a simple binary: there are not just two categories, ethically charged and not ethically charged, but a range of crafts that relate more or less tightly to their practitioner's fundamental identity.

37 See e.g. DVC 1395B.

38 See e.g. DVC 1411.

39 See e.g. DVC 3276B.