Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

AGAMEMNON'S HOMECOMING 145
metrical balance of good and bad fortune among men. 5 At this point
Ranulf asks whether something is not being read into the Greeks simply
because we, today, do not find it deifying that our envy-mechanism
should come from the gods. As an example of the horror this idea
inspires in nineteenth-century scholars, Ranulf cites U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
who in his introduction to Agamemnon discusses the
envy ofthe gods:
Every child knows 'Polycrates' Ring, ' the story told by Herodotus .... It
illustrates the idea that unalloyed happiness ineluctably turns into great
misery. This is but an expression of a far-reaching emotion. Everything that
is perfect, beautiful, rich or brilliant is especially threatened because it
provokes the envy both of men and of the gods. More especially when one of
these things is ostentatiously displayed or openly publicized by one's own
praise or that of others, the danger of envious destruction is more likely than
ever. For envy need not damage by physical contact: the evil eye can bewitch
and compel from afar. Man and god can thus wish evil upon others. Hence
the cautious man protects himself by secretiveness or by apparent selfabasement.
... Now it is certainly a good and just feeling that men should
be aware of their own weakness. . . . The admonition to modesty and
moderation in all things is also truly Greek. But here it plays only the most
minor role. Rather, it is the basest aspects of man's nature which freely
manifest themselves-envy which fears harm from its fellows because
itself wishing them harm, and unseemly fear that cravenly drags down the
gods to its own despicable mentality .... Hence the avoidance of the use of a
certain divinity's name for such as is deemed harmful. ... 6
Erwin Rohde was similarly repelled by the Greek idea of the envy of
the gods.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, envy as a governing
principle was, indeed, almost universally proscribed. True individual
thinkers like W. Roscher, Jacob Burckhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Oliver Wendell Holmes in America recognized certain emergent social
philosophies which evidently appealed to the envy-motive. But generally
5 S. Ranulf, The Jealousy of the Gods and Criminal Law at Athens, Copenhagen,
1933, Vol. 1, p. 117.
6 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische Tragodien abersetzt, Vol. 2, 6th ed.,
1910, pp. 21 f.