This study represents a further instalment in C.'s attempt to redress perceived idealisations of Athenian politics through treating its citizens as virtuous political actors. Where his The Bad Citizen in Classical Athens (2006) surveyed a broad range of activities in which individual Athenians might evade expectations of their participation within the democracy, this new study develops a narrower theme, first touched on in his The Litigious Athenian (1998, pp. 121–4): the vexed concept of altruism, and a claim that it is largely absent from the behaviour of Athenian citizens in the classical democracy.
As C. acknowledges in his introduction, altruism is a particularly problematic concept, in the analysis of both contemporary and ancient societies: its origins in Comte's humanism, and rejection by proponents of the ‘homo economicus’ model, complicate its application to ancient Athens. C. briefly surveys recent studies (from the fields of social psychology) in which the term ‘altruism’ is largely replaced by the much less specific ‘helping behaviour’ or ‘prosocial behaviour’ (pp. 4–6). He prefers the term ‘helping behaviour’, although reverts to ‘altruism’ when criticising its supporters (as at pp. 49–50).
Even with this broader definition, C. argues, against other recent scholarship, that the helping behaviour of Athenian citizens, despite rhetorical claims to the contrary, was largely confined to narrow networks of family and friends. He thus takes a polemical stance against G. Herman's Morality and Behaviour in Democratic Athens (2006) and R. Sternberg's Tragedy Off-stage (2006), describing their models of Athens, in which helping behaviour plays important roles, as ‘mistaken’ and ‘utopian’ respectively (p. 12).
A broader analysis of altruism as a political and ethical concept could have situated these critiques within the contemporary debate between communitarian and libertarian perspectives, in which altruism and egoism provide opposing models for the motivation of political actors. A more theoretical approach could have provided benefits beyond depersonalising these criticisms, positioning C.'s own model within established debate in political and ethical theory.
C. divides ‘helping behaviour’ into four main categories: helping behaviour between private citizens (Chapter 1), helping behaviour and democratic citizenship (Chapter 2), helping and community in the Athenian law courts (Chapter 3), and helping others in Athenian interstate relations (Chapter 4). This final chapter situates C.'s analysis within the debate between realist and idealist models in international relations theory (pp. 120–6); similar discussions would have strengthened the earlier chapters.
Chapter 1 surveys the propensity of Athenian citizens to become involved with helping each other in individual and private capacities. C. draws on forensic oratory to show that Athenian citizens were reluctant to become involved in the lives of those outside their own philia networks. Where altruism might be exemplified by bystanders intervening in physical assaults, or third parties instigating litigation, C. finds little evidence of such activity, and argues against accepting some examples. He suggests, for example, that the passage of time (four years) between events and prosecution, as well as the high rhetoric of the passage, and failure to call witnesses, mark Lysias 3.6–7 as an invented account (pp. 36–7); likewise, he disregards the help given to Ariston after Conon's assault (Demosthenes 54.7–9) because it was not an intervention in the fight itself (pp. 33–4).
Chapter 2 looks at helping behaviours in the context of democratic citizenship. Here C. opens up a promising line of investigation, the gap between Athenian civic ideology, where Athenians build their identity on a series of mythical acts of benevolence to other Greeks, and the everyday political practices of its citizens.
On one hand, C. suggests, the ideology of helping is in many cases a construct of ‘elite critics of democracy’ (p. 50); in this context C. cites Isocrates' Areopagiticus 31–4, which praises the euergetism of the elite in his idealised vision of patrios politeia Athens (pp. 62–3). On the other hand, the Athenian ideology of helping is grounded in the narratives of their great deeds of benefaction in the democratic funeral speeches (pp. 59–60). There is a tension here that could be explored further.
In this chapter C. needs to interpret the Athenian value of homonoia in a weak sense, as ‘an emphasis on leaving each other alone’ (p. 54 n. 10) that underpins a commitment to ‘negative freedom’ (p. 61 n. 31), rather than unanimity or concord. He also downplays philia; a brief survey of the analysis of friendship in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics could have explored the limitations Aristotle sees in ‘political friendship’ in more detail (pp. 51–3). C. could also have cited Aristotle's Politics 2 critique of Plato's conflation of state and family structures in the Republic, which prefigure his views (p. 64).
The remainder of Chapter 2, and Chapter 3, both focused on citizen interactions in the law courts, display much more detailed handling of sources and provide valuable insights into them. C. argues persuasively that the courts provide an arena within which citizens can enact the role of helper of the wronged, and thus enact the role established in Athenian democratic ideology. He shows how many speakers issue pleas for help in formulaic language, using the verb βοηθέω (such as Demosthenes' client at 35.56, p. 96, or Antiphon's, 1.3–4, p. 104). These pleas position the speaker as a victim and the jurors as bystanders with an opportunity to help. Accepting the argument of the speech and voting in favour of the speaker enables individual Athenians, in their role as jurors, to act altruistically to those outside their framework of reciprocal philia networks.
C. presents Lycurgus' Against Leocrates as the most vivid example of the use of the language of helping (pp. 86–7, 108–9), showing how Lycurgus embarks on a strong defence of the role of volunteer prosecutions. C.'s largely synchronic approach to his chosen period (430–322 b.c.e.) comes apart a little here (earlier, he asserts that ‘Athenian values and beliefs … do not appear to have changed dramatically in this relatively stable period for the city’, p. 7). Lycurgus' speech arguably presents a distinctive take on democratic ideology that typifies the post-Chaeronea period, where individual philanthropy by leaders became more prevalent.
Chapter 4 moves the focus to collective Athenian interventions on behalf of other states. Here the egoism of the earlier chapters is replaced by its international relations theory equivalent, realism, but C. adopts a more cautious tone than in his earlier chapters, acknowledging P. Low's arguments (Interstate Relations in Classical Greece [2007]) that domestic and civic ethics permeate the normative framework of Greek interstate relations, but seeing some merit in realist positions that he sees as present in historiographical sources. Case studies of Athenian support for Plataea, Thebes and the Ionian cities, drawn from the historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, show Athenian diplomatic and military behaviour that falls short of funeral speech ideals, although just as with the rhetorical examples none of these accounts provides straightforward evidence.
A longer section on ‘Demosthenes and the rhetoric of Athenian helping’ identifies a gap between ‘the prospective pragmatism of Athenian decision making and the retrospective idealism of Athenians in envisioning their past’ (p. 163). C. argues that Demosthenes' deliberative speeches exemplify the former, while his self-defence contained in On the Crown exemplifies the latter. This distinction is helpful, catching the orator in the act of self-mythologisation.
C.'s detailed knowledge of Athenian litigation and legal rhetoric results in some interesting and insightful interpretations of citizen political behaviour, and the indirect presence of ‘helping behaviour’ in Athenian democratic rhetoric and ideology. While C. hopes that the work might contribute to broader cross-cultural study of altruism, a stronger, explicit engagement with political and ethical thought on this topic would have better contextualised his examples.
