The Original Humanity and the Forces of Production

Most classical analyses of early humanity portray a Hobbesian “state of nature,” in which human beings, naked and unarmed, fall prey to the elements and to the depredations of beasts. “Listen,” Prometheus tells the Chorus of Oceanids, “to the miseries that beset humankind—how they were witless before and I made them have sense and endowed them with reason.…First of all, though they had eyes to see, they saw to no avail; they had ears, but they did not understand; but, just as shapes in dreams, throughout their length of days, without purpose they wrought all things in confusion” (PV 442ff.). Prometheus attributes this condition to the absence of technical skills, and he goes on to list the skills that humans lacked: they could not build homes out of brick (450–451), did not know how to fashion things from wood (451: xulourgia), lived in caves like ants (452–453), and had no way to predict the changing of the seasons (454–456). “They did everything without any rational plan (ater gnômês to pan / eprasson)” (456–457). Theseus in Euripides’ Suppliants likewise pictures humans leading lives that were “confused” (Supp. 201: pephurmenos) and “bestial” (202: thêriôdês) before some unnamed god intervened to change their condition. Diodoros’s account echoes the language of Theseus: the first people “established themselves in a disordered and bestial life” (Diod. 1.8.1: en ataktôi kai thêriôdei biôi kathestôtas) and were “warred upon” by wild beasts (1.8.2: polemoumenous hupo tôn thêriôn). In Plato’s Protagoras, Prometheus observes that humans, in their initial incarnation, had nothing to protect them, being “naked, shoeless, with no proper place to rest, and unarmed” (Prt. 321c: gumnos te kai anupodêtos kai astrôtos kai aoplos). In the Hippokratic treatise On Ancient Medicine, human beings initially ate the same raw products of the earth as cattle, horses, and other beasts and “suffered many terrible things from the harsh and savage lifestyle, consuming things that were raw, unmixed, and possessed of very strong qualities.” This led quickly to suffering, disease, and then ultimately death.^[27] Only those with tough constitutions could survive for very long on such a harsh diet.

Each of the Greek “anthropologies” offers its own explanation of how the human race emerged from this feckless state, and most emphasize the manner in which humans learned to control their environment and to produce the things that they needed. In the Prometheus Bound, Prometheus provides humankind first with astronomy (PV 457–458, so that they can discern the seasons), then numbers (459–460) and writing (460–461), and the ability to domesticate animals (462–466) and to build ships (467–468). After a brief pause and exchange with the Chorus, Prometheus goes on to name the other skilled activities of humans: medicine (478–483), prophecy (484–499), and metallurgy (500–504). Plato’s Prometheus steals from Hephaistos and Athena not only fire but the technical skill to use it (Prt. 321d: hê entechnos sophia sun puri), and from this theft mortals acquired all their material needs for existence (321e: ek toutou euporia men anthrôpôi tou biou gignetai). The Chorus in the Antigone skips primitive life and immediately praises human achievements: travel by sea (335–337), agriculture (338–340), and fishing (344). In Euripides’ Suppliants, Theseus praises the unnamed divinity who rescued humans from their condition. The first gift was intelligence (Supp. 203: sunesis), followed by language (203–204), agriculture (205–207), shelter (207–208), seaborne commerce (209–210), prophecy (211–214), and worship of the gods (215). The Hippokratic treatise On Ancient Medicine concentrates on food: the needs inherent in such a primitive state drove humans to seek out (zêteô) food that matched their constitution (trofê harmazousan têi phusei).

Thucydides’ perspective is entirely different. First, he has no interest in the kind of primitive existence from which the other accounts proceed. He takes as exemplars of the “original human” those “who cultivate each individually their own property enough so as to live and who do not possess any surplus wealth” (Thuc. 1.2.2: nemomenoi te ta hautôn hekastoi hoson apozên kai periousian chrêmatôn ouk echontes). Thucydides thus provides one of our earliest descriptions of the classic subsistence farm, the peasant household that produces what it needs with little or no surplus. Thucydides’ category of primitive human does not exist far off on the edge of time but in fact applies to the vast majority of his contemporaries, who lived on their land and had as little contact with the money economy as possible. In Thucydides’ way of thinking, the Peloponnesians are above all small farmers, sufficiently autonomous so that they can imagine themselves as independent of trade and market forces.^[28] Recent scholarship on Aristophanes has emphasized the extent to which Dikaiopolis in the Acharnians, with his disdain for monetary exchange and his affection for the nonmonetary economy of his farm (Ach. 29–36), reflects typical Athenian attitudes. Thucydides does not situate his Urmensch in a distant and politically neutral never-never land. A large number, perhaps a majority, of Athenian citizens would have scored low according to Thucydides’ “indices of civilization.”

Second, Thucydides does not glorify the means by which humans provide themselves with their sustenance.^[29] Good farmland is the obvious source of agricultural wealth, and agriculture itself is taken for granted. In primitive forms of life, however, fertile land was simply an incentive for civil strife and invasion: “The richest soils were always most subject to this change of masters; such as the district now called Thessaly, Boiotia, most of the Peloponnese, Arkadia excepted, and the most fertile parts of the rest of Hellas. The goodness of the land favored the aggrandizement of particular individuals and thus created factions that proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion” (Thuc. 1.2.3–4). Athens itself derived much of its early strength from the very poorness of its soil, because Attika, being an unattractive prize, became a safe haven for refugees from without (1.2.5). Thucydides not only minimizes the role of agriculture but subjects it to an apparently polemical analysis as he demystifies agricultural toil.

Third, Thucydides does not generally include in his outline of human development the growth of productive forces at all. Thucydides singles out exchange, rather than production, as the source of prosperity. Other analysts of “human progress” mention seafaring as a major human activity,^[30] and conservative poets such as Hesiod and Solon had singled out seaborne trade for skeptical consideration long before the fifth century.^[31] Thucydides, however, is unique in singling out maritime commerce and the free intercourse of people by land and sea as critical elements for prosperity—their absence is a fundamental cause of the weakness described at 1.2.2. Trade is the basis for increased prosperity. To Thucydides and others of his time, prosperity derived primarily from the different products of different regions and the trade that allowed these to circulate freely.^[32] Stability and security are, however, the key elements on which all else depends, and centralized, authoritarian rule, archê, appears as the best framework by which to provide stability and security.

Thucydides’ use of the prôtos heuretês, “the first discoverer,” ^[33] illustrates his attitude toward progess. Greeks tended, as they constructed histories of human society, to identify specific advances with particular individuals. Sophokles’ first play was about Triptolemos, who introduced from Demeter cultivated wheat and became the teacher of humankind (frags. 596–617). In Aristophanes’ Frogs, we hear that Orpheus invented cultic ritual (Ran. 1032: teletai), and Mousaios was responsible for medicine and prophecy (1033: exakeseis te nosôn kai chrêsmous). Homeric Hymn 20 attributes to humans the cave-dwelling, bestial existence (3–4) that we have seen elsewhere, but praises Hephaistos for providing humankind with the skills they need to pass their lives at their ease in their homes (5–7). The Prometheus Bound and Plato’s Protagoras, both possibly influenced by Protagoras, develop the traditional figure of Prometheus as fire giver, responsible for making human existence possible. Theseus in Euripides’ Suppliants does not name anyone, but he makes it clear that some individual divinity was responsible for human progress (Supp. 202–203: ainô d’ hos…theôn).

Thucydides expatiates on only one such prôtos heuretês: roughly three centuries before the end of the Peloponnesian War (i.e., c. 700 B.C.), Ameinokles of Corinth constructed for the Samians the first four triremes ever built, and thus opened new possibilities for the application of naval power.^[34] To Thucydides the trireme was not just a tactical instrument for individual sea battles, but a strategic resource on which naval empire could depend. On a less technical level, Thucydides presents Minos as the first man known to have created a navy (Thuc. 1.4: Minôs gar palaitatos hôn akoêi ismen nautikon ektêsato) and to have exerted mastery (ekratêse) over the Aegean. Neither of these individuals contributes anything to the actual process of growing food, building shelter, fashioning useful things from metal, predicting the future, or caring for the sick—none of which are of any interest to Thucydides in the Archaeology. Other people, unnamed and unconsidered, produce useful things. Thucydides focuses on the means by which to extract^[35] or, at best, exchange wealth. He seems to assume that increased seaborne trade generates as its by-product an overall increase in wealth.^[36] While he does not spell out the mechanism that links trade and wealth, Thucydides sees that these two phenomena drive each other. If naval power creates the climate in which wealth can accumulate, wealth can be invested in further naval power^[37] and thus form a system that reinforces itself. The only cultural heroes who merit Thucydides’ praise are those who can contribute to this process of redistribution and extraction.