著者

長谷川 岳男

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典學研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.58, pp.12-24, 2010-03-24

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Fustel de Coulange considered that ancient Greeks had never had any private spheres in their poleis and the polls was a fusion of state and society. In the entry 'polis' in the 3^<rd> edition of OCD 0. Murray basically followed his ideas and gave Sparta as a typical example. Thus the general understanding seems to have been that polis could not be translated as 'state'. M. Hansen, however, argued against taking Sparta as a typical case and insisted that there was a differentiation between public and private spheres in Athens and many other poleis and consequently concluded that we may view a polis as similar to a modern state. However S. Hodkinson, as part of his studies aimed at rescuing Sparta from a 'fossilized society' themepark and normalizing her position as a polis, objected to the idea that Sparta was a polis where the state and society were inseparably fused together. He argued that Xenophon showed no clear cases of Spartan authorities taking active control over every aspect of Spartan citizens' life in his Lakedaimonion Politeia which is the most credible source concerning the Classical Spartan society. Moreover, building on Humble's thesis that the characteristic feature of Spartan citizens was not σωψροσυνη but αιδωζ, it seems that Spartan citizens were only careful how they behaved in public spaces and in private they could do as they pleased. Therefore it can be recognized that there was a distinction between the public and private sphere in Sparta. Indeed, not only Xenophon, but also Thucydides painted the picture of the Spartan society as a system of voluntary corporations among citizens rather than one of severe controls over them. Hodkinson then insisted that there was no social control on the part of the Spartan authorities, but only social pressure from the citizens themselves within their society. I agree with his conclusion regarding the importance of social pressure in Sparta, but I do not think that there was no social control over the citizens, because the existence of social pressure reveals the existence of Gramsci's theory of the 'hegemony'. I think it is a flaw in Hodkinson's argumentations that he did not point clearly to the substance of the authorities in Sparta so that the reality of social control became obscured. In order to complement his contention, I would introduce the thesis on which Berent insisted in a series of articles, namely, that a polls is not a state but a stateless society. A polis did not have the public coercive power so that Greeks had to devise ways to keep order in their polis and prevent an outbreak of a stasis. If we are right to perceive a polis as a stateless society, it followed that it was of paramount importance for Greeks to reach consensus on public matters. As a result, politics became entangled with ethical considerations and education which internalized ethics became important. In consideration of this context, the images of Spartan society seem fit for achieving consensus among its citizens, the fact that made it an object of high esteem among other Greeks. We should realize from this conclusion that a polis was not a monolithic entity and that it was susceptible to being torn apart because of the lack of public coercive power, and that Sparta (and Athens) were exceptional in preserving their stability.