CHARLES H.KAHN

Philosophical ethics is often thought to begin with Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.E.). There is no doubt that the example of Socrates, as represented in the writings of Plato (430-347 B.C.E.), helped establish moral philosophy as a distinct subject. But the age of Socrates is also the age of the Sophists. The debates we find in the Clouds of Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 388 B.C.E.), the tragedies of Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.E.), and the History of Thucydides (c. 460-c. 400 B.C.E.) demonstrate that in the last decades of the fifth century B.C.E. the basic issues of normative ethics were under intense discussion. The philosophical roots of this discussion can be traced back as far as Xenophanes (c. 540-500 B.C.E.) and Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.E.) at the end of the sixth century. And before philosophy there was poetry. A survey of Presocratic ethics must at least take cognizance of this earlier, prephilosophical moral tradition.

The heroes of the Homeric (Homer: c. 800-700 B.C.E.) epics provided the Greeks with their predominant moral ideal. The code of the hero was summed up in the advice given to Achilles by his father: "Always be first and best [aristeuein] and superior to the others" (Iliad 11.784=6.208). The heroes of the two epics-Achilles first in battle and passion, Odysseus first in cunning and endurance-both embody the agonistic paradigm that Jakob Burckhardt (1818-1879) found to be so characteristic of Greek culture. But in Hesiod's (c. 700 B.C.E.) Works and Days we meet a different view. Hesiod puts his trust in the justice of Zeus, which guarantees disaster

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