Greek Religion and Philosophy in the Sisyphus Fragment

CHARLES H. KAHN

The Sisyphus fragment (DK 88B.25) consists of 42 iambic trimeters cited by Sextus Empiricus as an expression of the atheistic views of the tyrant Critias.1 Sextus does not mention the name Sisyphus, but another citation (in the doxography known as Aetius) tells us that the speech was delivered by Sisyphus in a play by Euripides. I translate the text as given by Snell.2

There was a time when the life of human beings was disordered and beastly, and life was ruled by force, when there was no reward for the virtuous nor any punishment for the wicked. And then I think that humans decided to establish laws to punish [wrongdoers] so that justice might rule and be master over crime and violence ( hybris). And they punished anyone who did wrong. Then, since the laws held public deeds in check and prevented men from open acts of violence, but they acted secretly, then it was, I believe, that a shrewd and clever-minded man invented for mortals a fear of the gods, so that there might be a deterrent for the wicked, even if they act or say or think anything in secret. Hence from this source the divine was introduced [with the claim] that there is a deity who enjoys imperishable life, hearing and seeing with his mind, his thought and attention on all things, his nature so divine that he will hear whatever is said among mortals and be able to see whatever is done.

Accepted March 1997 1 This is a revised version of a paper delivered at a conference on Reason and Religion in the Fifth Century at the University of Texas, Austin on September 20, 1996. Some improvements have been made in response to comments by an anony- mous reader for Phronesis. 2 Tr. G. F. 1.43 F 19, with two corrections. Following Dihle, I read tŒ p‹nta for te taèta in verse 19 and s¡law for d¡maw in verse 33.

If ever you plot some evil deed in silence, even this will not escape the gods. For they have knowledge. It was such stories that he told when he introduced this most delightful teaching and hid the truth with a false tale. He said the gods dwell there and placed them where they might make the greatest impression upon human beings, there where he knew that fears come to mortals and bene ts also [to relieve] the miseries of life, from the vault on high, where they beheld the shafts of lightning and fearful blows of thunder and star- lled gleam of heaven, the beautiful design of Time the clever builder, parade-ground for the brilliant mass of the sun and source of rainfall moistening the earth below. Such were the fears with which he surrounded humans and by which this clever man established the deity in the proper place, with a handsome story, and extinguished lawlessness by means of laws. . . . . It was thus, I think, that someone rst persuaded mortals to believe that there is a race of gods. I propose to discuss this text as a remarkable document for the interaction between reason and religion in the fth century. It is the best- preserved example of fth-century accounts of the origin of religion, and it is the most outspoken example of fth-century atheism. 3 My aim here will be to situate this text within the larger framework of the interaction between religion and early Greek natural philosophy. SisyphusÕ specula- tion concerning the origin of belief in the gods has familiar parallels in the theories of Democritus and Prodicus, theories which belong to the tradition of Kulturenstehungslehre or accounts of the rise of human civili- zation. And these accounts in turn, like the later prehistories in Lucretius and Diodorus, have their place within a tradition of explaining the origin of mankind and the origin of the world – a tradition that began in fth century Miletus. These accounts of human prehistory were rst formulated within a speculative narrative that began with cosmogony and ended with the development of human beings and human life in society. We know that the biological origin of human beings was already a topic in the ear-

3 The atheism is explicit in verse 26 ceudeÝ kalæcaw t¯n l®yeian lñgÄ , implicit in the closing lines oìtv d¢ prÇ ton oàomai peÝsaÛ tina/ynhtoçw nomÛzein daimñ nvn eänai g¡now .