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Review
| Morality and Custom in Ancient Greece, by John M. Dillon. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004. 217 pp. $24.95, paper.
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| The teaching of ancient history has long suffered from a lack of good brief monographs on topics in social and cultural history that are suitable for assignment to students. In recent years this situation has begun to be corrected. Morality and Custom in Ancient Greece is a welcome addition to the growing number of such works. John M. Dillon is a leading authority on ancient Platonism. The present work, however, developed out of a course entitled Greek Popular Morality that he has regularly taught at Trinity College, Dublin. Studies of Greek ethics tend to be abstract, focusing on detailed analysis of philosophical works such as Aristotle's Nichomachian Ethics. In fact, however, Greek ethics was rooted in social practice, not philosophical theory. The novelty of Professor Dillon's approach is that he focuses on the reality that underlies philosophical discussions of ethics, using Athenian judicial speeches and comedy to illuminate Athenian family life and its significance for social practice. |
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In its organization the book reflects the standard Greek idea that cities ideally consisted of an in-group of self-sufficient households or oikoi. Accordingly, after a chapter on the family for better or worse, Dillon treats relations within and without the oikos, beginning with noncitizen women, that is, women excluded from citizen oikoi. He then moves to problems of inheritance and the preservation of oikoi; relations between oikoi (friendship and enmity); the male life cycle (rules of homosexual behavior); masters and subjects within the oikos (slaves); and relations with the gods. Finally, in the last chapter Dillon analyzes the methodological problems involved in the use of anecdotes as sources for ancient social history. |
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What sets Morality and Custom in Ancient Greece apart from other studies of Greek social practice is Dillon's method. Each chapter is built around several case studies, each consisting of extended translated excerpts and paraphrases of Greek court speeches, philosophical texts, and comedies. So, for example, chapter two centers on the tangled story of the ex-prostitute Neaira and her family's efforts to achieve respectability in Athens, chapter three on the orator Demosthenes' long and bitter fight to gain control of his estate from his crooked guardians, chapter four on the sex life of the politician Timarchus, and chapter five on the contrast between philosophical discussions of "natural" slavery and the reality portrayed by the orators and the comic poets. |
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No book is perfect and Morality and Custom in Ancient Greece is no exception. Thus, the case study approach makes for an exceptionally vivid portrayal of Athenian society, but the extensive translations limit the space for analysis and often give the book the feel of an anthology rather than a monograph. Likewise, the selection of sources—judicial speeches, comedies, and philosophical texts—not only focuses the analysis on Athens but also Athens within a narrow span of time, the late fifth and first half of the fourth century BC. Finally, the book still retains obvious traces of its origin in class lectures, making allusions to British television programs and using English slang such as "rent boy" that will not be familiar to American students. These are minor blemishes, however, on an excellent study that will be a welcome addition to the limited teaching tools available to ancient historians. |
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| California State University, Los Angeles |
Stanley M. Burstein |
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