Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Thracians, Scythians, and others: Anonymous author on opposing views and the relativity of what is shameful or good (mid-fourth century BCE [?]),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified August 13, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=21205.
Ancient author: Anonymous (mid-fourth century BCE [?]), Opposing Views / Dissoi Logoi 2.1-19 (link to Greek edition by Weber 1897).
Comments: This anonymous work, which may or may not date to the mid-fourth century BCE (Molinelli 2018, 35-44), asserts the relativity or at least situational nature of what is good and what is shameful. In the section below, the author makes extensive use of examples pertaining to the customs of various peoples, arguing for cultural relativity which makes it difficult to assert what is good or shameful in reality. If this is from the mid-fourth century, this would make this work contemporary with Ephoros (link). There are also affinities here with the much later cultural relativity arguments of Sextus Empiricus (link).
Works consulted: S. Molinelli, “Dissoi Logoi: A New Commented Edition” (Ph.D., Durham, UK, Durham University, 2018) (link).
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[Introduction on opposing views]
(1) There are opposing views put forward in Greece by those who engage in the study of wisdom concerning what is good (kalos) and what is bad (kakos). Some say that what is good and what is bad are two different things. Others say they are the same thing and that the same thing is good for some people but bad for other people, or that something is good at one point but bad at another point for the same person. Now I myself agree with this second group, and I will examine the view with respect to human life, with its concern about food, drink and sex. For these things are bad for someone who is sick, but good for someone who is healthy and needs them. . . [omitted sections].
[Example of differing perspectives and practices among peoples regarding what is good or shameful]
(2) Opposing views are also proposed concerning what is good (kalos) and what is shameful (aischros). For some say that what is good and what is shameful are two different things. Since the designation differs, so does the reality. Others, however, say that the same thing is both good and shameful. I will try to carry this out in the following way: For instance, it is good for a boy in the bloom of his youth to please a respectable lover, but it is shameful for a beautiful boy to please someone who is not his lover. Furthermore, it is good for women to wash indoors, but shameful to do this in a wrestling school; but for men it is good to wash in a wrestling-school or gymnasium. . . [omitted paragraph].
[Variations among Greek peoples]
Now I will go on to what cities and peoples (ethnē) consider shameful. With the Lakedaimonians [Spartans], it is good for young women (korai) to exercise naked or walk around barearmed or without a tunic, for instance, but with Ionians this is shameful. And, with Lakedaimonians, it is good for boys to not learn skills associated with the Muses or writing, but with Ionians it is shameful not to know all these things. Among Thessalians it is good for a man first to select the horses from the herd and then train the horses and the mules himself. It is also good for a man to select a steer first and then to slaughter, skin, and cut it up himself. Yet, in Sicily, such activities are shameful and the tasks of slaves. With Macedonians, it seems that it is good for young women to love and have sex with a man before marrying, but shameful to do this once they are married. To Greeks both practices are shameful.
[Variations among other peoples: Thracians, Scythians, Massagetians, Persians, Lydians, Egyptians]
With the Thracians, it is fashionable for young women to be tattooed, but for everyone else such markings are a punishment for those who have done things wrong. The Scythians think it is good, after killing a man, to scalp him and carry the frontal hair on one’s horse’s brow, on the one hand, and cover the skull with gold or silver leaf and to drink from it and offer libations to the gods, on the other hand. Among the Greeks no one would want to go into the same house as a person who had done such things. Massagetians cut up their parents and eat them, and it seems a most beautiful form of burial to be inside one’s children. If someone did these things in Greece, he would be driven out of Greece and die in a terrible manner for doing things that are shameful and horrible. The Persians think it is good for men to dress themselves up like women and to have sex with their daughter or mother or sister. The Greeks think such actions are shameful and unlawful. In addition, with Lydians it seems good for young women to prostitute themselves in order to earn money, and in that way get married [i.e. using it as a dowry]. Among the Greeks no one would be willing to marry such a person. Egyptians do not think the same same things are good that others do. For here [among Greeks] it seems good for women to weave and do manual work, but there it seems good for men to do such things and for women to do what men do here. To them, kneading clay with the hands or dough with the feet is good, but for us it is just the opposite.
[Conclusion of section]
I think that, if a person commanded all humankind to bring together into a single pile everything that each person considered shameful and then to remove from this pile what each thought good, nothing would be left. They would all, severally, take away everything. For not everyone has the same views. (19) Now I offer a poem:
“For if you make this distinction you will see the other law that holds for mortals: there is nothing that is in every respect good or shameful. Rather, the right moment takes the same things and makes them shameful and then changes them around and makes them good.”
In general, everything is good when done at the right moment, but shameful when done at the wrong moment.
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Source of translation: T. M. Robinson, Contrasting Arguments: An Edition of the Dissoi Logoi (Salem, NH: Arno Press, 1979), adapted by Harland under fair use provisions.