Sisyphus fragment

The Sisyphus fragment is a fragment of verse, preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus and thought to have been composed in the 5th-century BC by a Greek playwright, either Critias or Euripides, and which is thought to contain an atheistic argument.

Text

The Greek text is conserved in Sextus Empiricus 9.54
Several English versions exist. That by R. G. C. Bury runs:-

A time there was when anarchy did rule

The lives of men, which then were like the beasts',

Enslaved by force; nor was there then reward

For good men, nor for wicked punishment.

Next, as I deem, did men establish laws

For punishment, that Justice might be lord

Of all mankind, and Insolence enchain'd;

And whosoe'r did sin was penalized.

Next, as the laws did hold men back from deeds

Of open violence, but still such deeds

Were done in secret,-then, as I maintain,

Some shrewd man first, a man in counsel wise,

Discovered unto men the fear of Gods,

Thereby to frighten sinners should they sin

E'en secretly in deed, or word, or thought.

Hence was it that he brought in Deity

Telling how God enjoys an endless life,

Hears with his mind and sees, and taketh thought

So that he hearkens to men's every word

And has the power to see men's every act.

E'en if you plan in silence some ill deed,

The Gods will surely mark it; for in them

Wisdom resides. So, speaking words like these

Most cunning doctrine did he introduce,

The truth concealing under speech untrue.

The place he spoke of as the God's abode

Was that whereby he could affright men most,-

The place from which, he knew, both terrors came

And easements unto men of toilsome life-

To wit the vault above, wherein do dwell

The lightnings, he beheld, and awesome claps

Of thunder, and the starry face of heaven,

Fair-spangled by that cunning craftsman Time,-

Whence, too, the meteor's glowing mass doth speed

And liquid rain descends upon the earth.

Such were the fears wherewith he hedged men round,

And so to God he gave a fitting home,

By this his speech, and in a fitting placer,

And thus extinguished lawlessness by laws.

.....

Thus first did some man, as I deem, persuade

Men to suppose the race of Gods exists..

Authorship

The authorship of the fragment, which survives in the writings of Sextus Empiricus, is vigorously debated. Modern classical scholarship accepted the attribution to Critias on the basis of an hypothesis first advanced by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1875, and thereafter Hermann Diels, Johann August Nauck, and Bruno Snell, endorsed this ascription for which there is but one source in antiquity. In 1979, Albrecht Dihle in a major paper challenged this ascription and assigned the work to Euripides, arguing that the fragment comes from the latter's satyr play of this name, produced in 415 BCE., Dihle's gained wide acceptance, being endorsed by several modern scholars, among them Charles Kahn, Ruth Scodel, Martin Ostwald, Jan Bremer and Harvey Yunis. Not all have been persuaded however. and, at that time, Walter Burkert, the doyen of scholars of Greek religion for one, remained skeptical.

One source in antiquity ascribed the passage to Critias, one of the thirty oligarchs who ruled Athens in the immediate aftermath of the city-state's defeat in the Peloponesian War: two attribute it, or lines in it, to Euripides. Sextus Empiricus assigned these verses to Critias without however indicating which of his works. The doxographer Aëtius cited Euripides as the author, specifying that it was taken from that author's lost play Sisyphus. In modern times, Wilamowitz came down strongly for the view that it was written by Critias, a disciple of Socrates, and dated it, as forming the coda of a tetralogy, following 3 tragedies by Critias -Peirithous, Rhadumunthus and Tennes -, which he argued was written sometime after his return from exile in 411. The view that it is was written by Euripides frequently identifies it as belonging to the Sisyphus, the satyr play capping his his 415 trilogy: Alexandros, Palamedes and The Trojan Women, though Jan N. Bremer suggests another lost play by Euripides, his Autolykos would be a more attractive candidate as the original source.

A major issue in discussing to authorship of the passage hinges round the question as to whether the speaker's views reflect those of an historic atheist, or whether the lines are simply a dramatic mise en scène of an atheistic outlook, and therefore not one entertained by its author. Dihle argued that there was no evidence in the surviving fragments of Kritias that he was an atheist, except for the testimony of Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch, a point Burkert challenged in the revised English version of his book on Greek Religion by citing the testimony of a fragment of Epicurus from Bk.11 of his work On Nature.

Style

The fragment is composed of 42 iambic trimeters.

Interpretations

Guthrie states that the Sisyphus fragment is 'the first occurrence in history of the theory of religion as a political invenmtion to ensure good behavior,' an approach which was subsequently adopted by the Hellenistic historian Polybius in his 40 volume history of Rome's emergence as an empire. Karl Popper in his The Open Society and its Enemies noted a 'stiking' similarity between the passage ascribed to Critias, and the views Plato, Criotias's nephew, developed in his two dialogues, the Republic and the Laws regarding the Noble lie.

Sources

• Bremmer, Jan N. (2006). "Atheism in Antiquity". In Martin, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 11–26. ISBN 978-1-139-00118-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion:Archaic and Classical. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-36281-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Collard, Christopher; Cropp, Martin, eds. (2009). Euripides. Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus. Other Fragments. Loeb Classical Library. Vol. Volume 506. Harvard University Press. pp. 670–678. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
• Davies, Malcolm (1989). "Sisyphus and the invention of religion ('Critias' TrGF 1 (43) F 19 = B 25 DK)". Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Volume 36: 16–32. JSTOR 43693889. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dihle, Albrecht (1977). "Das Satyrspiel "Sisyphos"". Hermes. Volume 105 (1): 28–42. JSTOR 4475993. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1969). A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. Volume 3. Cambridge University Press. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kahn, Charles H. (1997). "Greek Religion and Philosophy in the Sisyphus Fragment". Phronesis. Volume 42 (3): 247–262. JSTOR 4182561. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Miller, James F.; Woodruff, Paul B. . (2000). "Introduction". In Miller, James F.; Woodruff, Paul B. (eds.). Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy. Oxford University Press. pp. 3–11. ISBN 978-0-195-13322-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Popper, Karl (1966) [1945]. The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato. Vol. Volume 1 (5 ed.). Routledge. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von (1875). Analecta Euripidea (PDF). Borntraeger. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• An English translation of the Sisyphus fragment