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then be supported by parallels from other ancient authors,34 but are simple enough not to require us to imagine a determinate external context. On the other hand, far more confusion seems ultimately to have derived from Protagoras' second red herring, his assertion that what Simonides' poem is really about is  .35 Since Wilamowitz, an ethical reading of the poem has been dominant. This reading has many variants, and no two of its proponents agree on all its details, but perhaps it can be synthesized as follows.36 In the first two strophes, Simonides begins by considering the aristocratic morality, characteristic of the Archaic period, which determined a man's worth by his social standing, his property and power, and his success in action. Simonides undermines this ethos by showing that, on its terms, human worth depends entirely on the gods and can change radically from one moment to the next so that, strictly speaking, it is not hard to be good, but impossible. Then, in the third strophe, the poet introduces his own alternative, a new morality based on conscience and intention, by declaring that he loves and praises all who do nothing shameful willingly. Finally, in the fourth strophe, he characterizes in more detail the positive model he advocates, stressing in particular those political virtues like justice which are potentially available to all citizens. Proponents of this reading celebrate Simonides' poem as a turning-point in the moral development of ancient Greece: here for the first time inner criteria of moral worth are substituted for external ones, democratic ideals for aristocratic ones, and attainable goals for absolute ones. For one scholar, "Simonides was in the van of ethical thought in his day";37 for another, "he was an important innovator in the formulation of higher ethical thought";38 for a third, ''conscience as the primary source of morality is Simonides' gigantic contribution to the Greek, and also to the Western world."39 |
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There is much to be said against this interpretation of Simonides' poem. Methodologically, the "trickle-down" theory of intellectual history, according to which the great ideas are invented by great men and communicated by |
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34 Fränkel (1962) 352 n. 13 cites Sen. Epist. 22.135 for his view, which has affinities with the one proposed here; Easterling (1974) 423 adds Soph. Ag. 750ff. and Trach. 1ff. |
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35 Or, more precisely, from a wide-spread confusion concerning the precise meaning of this assertion: for in fact Protagoras does not go on to discuss the content of the views about  propounded by the poem, but rather the question of whether the poem is itself a good poem or not, inasmuch as the  of a poem is not to contradict itself. |
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36 For representative examples, see Babut (1975) 267, 527; Balasch (1967) 4752; Bowra (1934) 2319 and (1961) 32736; Christ (1941) 215; des Places (1969) 240; Donlan (1969) 7190; Fränkel (1962) 3506; Gentili (1964) 2905; Gundert (1952) 87; Kegel (1962) 1327; Maschke (1926) 238; Pfeiffer (1929) 148; Reinhardt (1916) 12931; Rohdich (1979) 1225; Schütrumpf (1987) 1922; Segal (1985) 2234; Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1913) 16980; Woodbury (1953) 15963. |
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37 Bowra (1961) 327. |
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38 Donlan (1969) 71. |
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39 Balasch (1967) 47. |
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