The dialogue Euthyphro is, at least superficially, an inquiry into piety, and the duties that one owes to one's family--particularly a parent--and the duties that one owes to the gods, the government, and the laws that bind us together as a society. It is also the second of the dialogues belonging to Plato's "The Death of Socrates" series, which chronicle the indictment, trial, and suicide of the Athenian "gadfly."
It begins when Socrates meets Euthyphro, a friend and citizen of Athens, outside the chambers of the Basilius Archon (Chief Magistrate) of the Athenian courts. Euthyphro is bringing charges against his father for the criminally negligent homicide of a "servant" who had killed one of his father's slaves several years before. The death occurred on the island of Naxos , then a tributary state of Athens, which had been returned to its own rule after the Athenian defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesean War.
After killing the slave, the "servant" had been bound by Euthyphro's father and left in a ditch, while word was sent to Athens asking what should be done to the servant for killing the slave. In the ensuing time, the "servant"--without shelter or food--died in that ditch from exposure, making the instructions from Athens irrelevant. Years later, Euthyphro, driven (supposedly) by some inner sense to see justice done for the "servant," is bringing it to the attention of the courts in Athens.
Here in the United States in the Twenty-first Century, most of us can easily understand Euthyphro's position. Let justice be done, no matter who did the crime. But in ancient Greece, such an action, committed for the sake of a mere "servant," could have been a scandal. It was an act of filial impiety, and any son committing such an act should not be surprised if Zeus sent the Furies to hound him until the end of his days.
Except this man wasn't a mere "servant," although every translation Mr. Stone and I have found of Euthyphro --and his research was much more exhaustive than mine-- gives the word "servant," "serf," or something similar as the English translation. The murdered "servant" was in fact a thes (pl. thetes), a citizen of the working class who had every right under the law that Euthyphro and his father did.
A mere "servant" in ancient Greece would have denoted a freeman: perhaps a former slave or child of an emancipated slave, or someone else who was not a citizen of the city-state. These individuals performed functions around the house or farm such as steward or overseer.
A "thes" on the other hand was part of the fourth and lowest class of citizens under the laws of Solon. He was a member of the working class. Often times he earned his daily bread as a laborer hired by the landowner to work his fields, for a wage agreed to between him and the landowner. If he was a native of Naxos, he might well have been the original owner of the land Euthyphro and his father exploited after the Athenians took over Naxos, and the slave he killed might originally have been his.
We know nothing of the circumstances under which the slave died--it might have been self-defense, or any one of many other justifiable reasons. We only know that the death of the hired man, who might have been a citizen of either Naxos or Athens itself, was criminally negligent homicide, to use the modern term. We also know that under Athenian law, Euthyphro's father deserved to be hauled into court and made to answer for his crime. Historically, we also know that the sole jurisdiction that could legally handle the case of an Athenian aristocrat (which Euthyphro and his father were) was the courts of Athens.
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