This Epilogue chapter is a stub that would benefit from Collaborative Research volunteer expansion.
Could you help us expand this Epilogue chapter to include more information generally, including more of what is teased in its Key Concepts section, other general queries for the chapter, and anything else that makes sense?The Propaganda of Order
According to Hermann Fränkel (Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy[1]: p. 416), “‘Order’ (kosmos) was a party slogan of the aristocracy.” This was like the hypothetical ancestral constitution, and much like the right-winger “strict constructionists” today in the U.S.
But the aristocracy rewrote the view of Solon: to say that he merely lowered the rate of interest, and did not cancel debts. And they added to (and no doubt removed from) the works of Theognis according to their own party propaganda.
Hubris, Talent, and Wealth
Hubris as a consequence of wealth. Overweaning pride, becoming infinite in its desires; infinite as insatiable. Tantalus. (Shift to talent from Tantalus. The weight of his head.)
Talent. It originally meant “weight,” then weighed coinage, then riches. Then, the talent which money could buy, or the circular reasoning: that one had wealth because one was talented, which meant literally simply because one was rich, had a heavy weight of coinage.
Religion and the Justice of Righteous Kings
Hocart[1] 1954: p. 32 (Social Origins): Just as in idolatry one confuses the container with the content, so “as centralization and imperium proceed,” the king “tends to become a god in his won right”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Social Origins by Arthur M. Hocart (1954) check these quotations and their citation including the page number (p. 32)?OpenSee All Queries—as a god himself, not merely the equivalent or representative of gods.
Hocart[2] (Kingship, 1927: p. 36) noted that under the Roman Empire the traditional deities Ceres and Fortuna “became specially connected with the Emperor, and similar tutelar powers were added such as Annona, or the Annual Crops, Abundantia introduced by Elagabalus, the Syrian. From Augustus onwards we find on Roman coins such inscriptions as: the Prosperity of Augustus, the Yearly Increase of Augustus, the Welfare of Augustus, the Ceres of Augustus.”
Hocart quoted P.V. Kane[3] (1922–23: pp. 76f.) in Kingship[4] (1927: p. 50): “The Buddhist Revelations… describe the decadence that is to end this age: ‘In the course of time kings who are not of the right lineage will become unjust; the ministers and others will become unjust. By their injustice the god will not rain at all, then the crops will not flourish at all.”
The Indians held that usurpers would not rule justly, and many other parts of the world shared this belief.
And indeed, the Roman Empire was unjust. Its aristocracy had arrogance. And its prosperity dried up, and it collapsed.
As Hocart[5] wrote (1927: p. 95), inevitably, “kings and their courts tried to forget the conditional nature of the royal power. That phase was reached in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts, and it is significant that those kings tried to deny the popular tenure of their power and escape its conditions by altering the coronation oath.”
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