Recovering Reputation by Andreas Avgousti;

Author:Andreas Avgousti;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

His dissatisfaction with his immediate ancestor is unmistakable. His father inherited more than what Cephalus will leave to his sons and squandered it—thanks to their father’s character, Polemarchus and Lysias have had their patrimony augmented.29 The success of Cephalus is enabled by his departure from Syracuse, his acceptance of an invitation by Pericles to set up shop in Athens, and that politician’s pursuit of war against Sparta, which had created a greater need for the craft of men like himself.

The mixed option of character permits Cephalus to emphasize his agency, contrary to the many who might want to curtail it. By appearing to others as moderate with respect to his wealth, Cephalus can inhabit that indeterminate region where he cannot be reproached for being either a spendthrift, as happens with those who inherit all their money, or a miser, as happens with those who acquire it (1.330b–c). And he can also rely on the asymmetry between a good character and a bad one: wealth helps only the former bear old age (1.330a), just like Themistocles claimed it was his character rather than his place of origin that earned him his high reputation. Again, by imitating the statesman-general who concedes the contribution Athens made to his reputation but rejects the Seriphian’s charge that it is sufficient, Cephalus can say that “there is something in what they [the many] say, though not as much as they think” (1.329e).30

The story of Themistocles and the Seriphian, which most scholars either overlook entirely or pass by with little comment, flatters the democratic many. There would be no victory for Themistocles at Salamis had the general not emphasized naval power that they, not their wealthier hoplite counterparts on land, constituted. The story is a tale that circulates among a people, and is not easily, if at all, verifiable.31 In telling it, Cephalus plays at being an Athenian insofar as the “Athenians’ view of their past—and, deriving from that, their own self-image—was very largely formed by the telling and re-telling of stories . . . about famous figures of the past.”32 It is also a tale a man of advanced years would tell; in fact, Cephalus is full of stories, mentioning two others: the anecdote of what the playwright Sophocles (c. 497–c. 405 bce) said in his presence about the loss of virility (1.329b–c), and the myths (muthoi, 1.330d) about Hades, which turn out to be true. Old age is the red thread running through these stories, and in being full of them, Cephalus is consistent with Socrates’ narration of how old he appears (1.328c). To judge that these stories, in not being his, “reduc[e] his responsibility for what he says and deflec[t] criticism from what he does” is to miss that this is precisely what we would expect from a wealthy metic concerned with his reputation among the many, for he and they are preoccupied with the same things: “money, reputation, [and] the upbringing of children (chrêmatôn kai doxês kai paidôn trophês),” as Socrates tells Crito of the many.

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