The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 107
thrown by the political and social upheavals of the sixth century, and
his words and ideas were remembered and had a powerful influence
on enemies of democracy well into the fourth century, when they were
quoted with approval by Plato. Theognis divided mankind into two
distinct types: the good and noble and the bad and base. The distinction
is based on birth and establishes a clear and firm tie between social
status and virtue. The noble alone possesses judgment (gnome) and
reverence (aidos); therefore, the noble alone is capable of moderation,
restraint, and justice. These are qualities enjoyed by few, and the
many who are without them, who lack judgment and reverence, are
necessarily shameless and arrogant. The good qualities, moreover, are
acquired only by birth; they cannot be taught: "It is easier to beget
and rear a man than to put good sense into him. No one has ever
discovered a way to make a fool wise or a bad man good .... If thought
could be made and put into a man, the son of a good man would never
become bad since he would obey good counsel. But you will never
make the bad man good by teaching."'
The Theban poet Pindar, "the Voice of Aristocracy" as Werner
J aeger has called him, must have exercised an even greater influence
on the Athenian upper classes. He lived past the middle of the fifth
century, and his odes celebrated the athletic triumphs in the games
that were so important in aristocratic culture. His message was much
the same as that of Theognis: the nobly born were inherently superior
to the mass of people intellectually and morally, and the difference
could not be erased by education.
The splendor running in the blood has much weight.
A man can learn and yet see darkly, blow one way,
then another, walking ever
on uncertain feet, his mind unfinished and
fed with scraps of a thousand virtues. 4
The capacity for understanding is innate. Only the natively wise can
comprehend his poetry and other important things:
There are many sharp shafts
in the quiver
1
Theognis 429-438.
4
Nemea 3·4(}-42, in The Odes of Pindar, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, 1959),
101.