Banausos

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Βαναυσος (transliterated into English as vanavsos; plural βαναυσοι, vanavsi) is an ancient Greek term coined to describe the bias of the warrior class against the values of the commercial class and in the Greek republics established a social distance between the citizens and the traders. 9 The word refers to the peasants, the laboring class and tradesmen. It includes artisans, such as potters, stone masons, carpenters, etc; professional singers; artists; farmers; musicians and all persons engaged in trade. It makes no distinction between slave or free. Aristotle writes, "Those who provide necessaries for an individual are slaves, and those who provide them for society are handicraftsmen and day-laborers." This ancient Greek term delineates the ethos of the warrior class from the ethos of the commercial class.

βαναυσος is said to be formed from the word βαυνος (vavnos) meaning furnace and αυω (avo) meaning 'to dry'. It acquired the sense of 'cramped in body' (Politics 1341 a 7) and 'vulgar in taste'(1337 b 7). 2 (Though the word is an Ionic Greek idiom and probably only used in Ionic Athens as such, here, it is used to convey the overall sentiment of the whole Greek aristocratic warrior contempt for the commercial ethos then beginning to take hold in the Greek world. Therefore, it is a convenient label for the social distance concept.)

Its strict English connotation is "mechanical" but in Greek it is an epithet of contempt; it is not a complimentary term. "It is used of people who spend money with vulgar ostentation, of accomplishments inconsistent with a perception of the true purpose of life, and it is constantly coupled with the word “aneleutheros”, ‘illiberal’, ‘unworthy of a free man’ (or, as it was said in Victorian England 'unworthy of a gentleman')." 1 In ancient Athens, this derision heaped upon retailers and artisans was so overpowering that a law had to be passed to protect those in the agora.4 "Even where the marketplace was allowed to intrude upon the political life, the merchant and craftsmen were generally objects of contempt, ridiculed on the stage, if not banished from respectable society." 5

Contents

Background

The economic activity of the pre-classical ancient Greeks centered around autarkia (self-sufficiency) based on their agrarianism, gift-giving, and barter. On the other hand, capitalism has its roots in the Near East and was originally foreign to the ancient Greek world. "The seeds of capitalism system were produced in Mesopotamia and sown throughout the ancient world by merchant warriors and their successors." 12 From these semitic merchants, the Phonecians, as sailors, picked it up and spread it abroad the Mediterranean basin. Just as the ancient Greeks picked up their writing system from the Phonecians, they, esp. the Ionian Greeks, assimilated also the capitalist/commercialist system from the Phonecians. The introduction of this new economic system brought with it a clash of cultures--between the old aristocratic warrior class then prevalent and the new and rising mercantile class and finally, between the commercialistic Ionion Athens and the traditional Doric warrior society of Sparta.

The Philosophical and Cultural Significance

The ancient Greek polities were "brotherhoods of peasant warriors". 6 They saw that commerce had a corrupting influence in communities and acquisition of wealth destroyed their hom�noia (like-mindedness) and was the principle cause of st�sis (faction). Furthermore, "merchants and craftsmen would be less willing to defend the civic territory than farmers would" and saw that commerce and mercantilism had a morally corrupting influence. 7 Βαναυσος is a word that describes the "prejudice" of the warrior class for the "values" of the commercial class. Moreover, it was a psycological device to train their people to turn away from the commercial fields of endeavor by it being a word of contempt. Many Greek states implemented steps to exclude those engaged in trade and industry from participation in politics.5 The Doric states of ancient Crete, Sparta, and non-Doric Thebes set up their constitutions to take this into account.3

In political philosophy, the Greeks are concerned with the "best" state and the best state requires citizens who are the best and in consequence practice arete. This required leisure accompanied with pursuit of arete. Technical education was necessary but did not make good citizens. Leisure was a necessity of good citizenship something the βαναυσοι do not have. Βαναυσια deforms the body rendering it useless for military and political duties. Those occupations tire out the body and therefore the mind preventing self education by reading and conversing with others. "It accustoms a man's mind to low ideas, and absorbs him in the pursuit of the mere means of life."

Plato and Aristotle teach that the highest thing in man is reason and therefore, the purpose of human perfection lies with the activity of reason; i.e. the 'theoretic' or contemplative life. Trade, industry and mechanical labour prevent this idea. These activities are necessary for a good human condition of life but when these activities are merely regarded as means to making money and not as acts of service to truth, service to others and arete, then these, occupations become base.

In Athens, in the sixth century B.C., the Cretan seer Epimenides warned in prophecy the dangers inherent in the commercial trade then going on at the Munychia. Cicero also commented on the dangers to republics that commerce entailed and that maritime trade brought with it "a corruption and degeneration of morals". 8

Revivals

This Greek martial idea of the Greek republics influenced the English and German language. The word βαναυσοι became an adjective for the mechanical trades. (See below: "Occurences of the word".)

It has been conjectured that the Elizabethan use of "mechanical" (as in e.g. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream) is a translation of banausos. This is certainly possible — the earliest recorded usage (OED s.v.) is from John Lyly, who knew more Greek than was good for his style.

Banausos (or rather βαναυσικός – banausikos) has also been adapted into English, as the rare word banausic; both as a term of abuse, and to represent Greek usage. "Banausic" is not found before 1845, with the Victorian revival of classical learning.

One of the contributions of classical philology to the Kultur-movement in Wilhelmine and post-Wilhelmine Germany was the use of banausisch as an insult — along with the myths that the German Soul is essentially Greek, that the ancient Greeks were blond, and that the modern Greeks are not descended from them. Today in German Banause is used to mean an uncouth person indifferent to high culture, like English philistine.

These ideas have become less accepted since about 1945, but they were occasionally reflected in the English-speaking world. For example, Edith Hamilton ingenuously accepted them as the best scholarship of her schooldays. Again, a junior colleague of Sir Gilbert Murray permitted himself (in 1935) the following, which goes well beyond Greek usage:

The aim of a journalist may either be to enlarge the circulation of a paper or to give his readers a true and intelligent picture of the world; of a lawyer either to extend his practice or to help justice be done; of a business man either to grow rich or to play his part as a 'nurse' of the community. These alternatives are not exclusive. But where the former predominates, the amount of arete generated will be small, and journalists, lawyers and industrialists will be banausoi rather than men.

Excerpts from classical texts

Plato

  • Socrates, "And then one, seeing another grow rich, seeks to rival him, and thus the great mass of the citizens become lovers of money.
Adeimantus, "Likely enough.
Socrates, "And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.
Adeimantus, "True.
Socrates, "And in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the State, virtue and virtuous are dishonored.
Adeimantus, "Clearly.
Socrates, "And what is honoured is cultivated, and that which has no honour is neglected.
Adeimantus, "That is obvious.
Socrates, "And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become lovers of trade and money; they honour and look up to the rich man, and make a ruler of him, and dishonor the poor man. (The Republic, trans. by Jowett, §550-551; pp 301-302.)
  • "There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same State to any considerable extent..." (ibid, §555; pg 308.)
  • "And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy". (ibid, §562; pg 318.)
  • "For such an organization (talking about his {Plato's} planned state that no citizen can sell his land) leaves no great room for the making of fortunes; 'tis a consequence of it that none has either need or license to make them in any sordid calling--as even the sound of the reproach 'base mechanical' repels the man of free soul--and none will stoop to amass wealth by such devices." (Laws, Plato, 731d-e.)

Aristotle

  • "Citizens must not live a mechanic or mercantile life (for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue {arete}), nor yet must those who are to be citizens of the best state be tillers of the soil (for leisure is needed both for the development of virtue (arete) and for active participation in politics)." Politics, Aristotle, Loeb, Book VII, viii., 2; 1328b35f; pg 575.
  • "A task and also an art or a science must be deemed vulgar if it renders the body or soul or mind of a free men useless for the employments and actions of arete. Hence, we entitle vulgar all such arts as deteriorate the condition of the body, and also the industries that earn wages; for they make the mind preoccupied and degraded. And even with the liberal sciences, although it is not illiberal to take part in some of them up to a point, to devote oneself to them too assiduously and carefully is liable to have the injurious results specified." Politics, Aristotle Book VIII, ii, 1-2; 1237b 5-10; pg 639.
  • "And besides all this, agriculture contributes notably to the making of manly character; because unlike the mechanical arts (βαναυσοι), it does not cripple and weaken the bodies of those engaged in it, but inures them to exposure and toil and invigorates them to face the perils of war". Oeconomica, Aristotle, Loeb, Bk I, ii, 3; 1343b 1-5; pg 331.

Plutarch

  • "Oftentimes, we take pleasure in the work, but despise the workman (dēmiourg�s)—as in the case of perfumes and dies. For we enjoy these things, but regard dyers and perfumers as unfree men (aneleuth�rous) and as rude mechanicals (bana�sous)...If a man applies himself to servile or mechanical employments, his industry in those things is a proof of his inattention to nobler studies. No young man of noble birth or liberal sentiments, from seeing the Jupiter at Pisa, would desire to be Phidias, or, from the sight of the Juno at Argos, to be Polycletus; or Anacreon, or Philemon, or Archilochus, though delighted with their poems." Plutarch's Life of Pericles (Langhorne's translation).

Septuagint

  • A section (chap. 38) in the Book of Ecclesiasticus in the Septuagint mirrors that of the Greek idea. This is an example of the infiltration of Hellenic culture into Hebrew literature. Notice the underlined phrase below in its exact rendition of how the word banausos came to be coined.
"(24)The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise. (25) How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen and is ocupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks? (26) He giveth his mind to make furrows; and is diligent to give the kine fodder. (27) So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboureth night and day: and they that cut and grave seals, and are diligent to make great variety, and give themselves to counterfeit imagery, and watch to finish a work:
(28) The smith also sitting by the anvil, and considering the iron work, the vapour of the fire wasteth his flesh, and he fighteth with the heat of the furnance: the noise of the hammer and the anvil is ever in his ears, and his eyes look still upon the pattern of the thing that he maketh; he setteth his mind to finish his work, and watcheth to polish it perfectly:
(29) So doth the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number; (30) he fashioned the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over; and he is diligent to make clean the furnace: (31) all these trust to their hands; and every one is wise in his work. (32) Without these cannot a city be inhabited: and they shall not dwell where they will, nor go up and down: (33) they shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges' seat, nor understand the sentence of judgement: they cannot declare justice and judgement; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. (34) But they will maintain the state of the world, and [all] their desire is in the work of their craft.
But he that giveth his mind to the law of the Most High, and is occupied in the medittion thereof, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and be occupied in prophecies."

Occurences of the word "banausic" in English literature

  • "When the Banausic principle (we must coin a word from the most expressive of languages to express all its intense vulgarity) to obtain.", G. Smyth in Oxford & Cambridge Review, Aug. pg 206, 1845. OED
  • "Alleged that the teaching music as a manual art was banausic and degrading." Grote, Ethical Fragments, vi, pg 227. OED
  • "A sensitive, self concious creature...in sad revolt against uncongenially banausic employment". London Magazine, July 1957. OED
  • "Herodotus specifies that the Spartans of his time were more contemptuous of the banausic trades than any other people." 17

Quotes

  • "Phoenicians make fine sailors but are all rogues."—Homer 14
  • "The man enslaved by wealth can never be honest."—Democritus 15
  • "Where money is prized, virtue is despised".—Socrates. 16
  • "The yeoman of America are not the canaille of Paris."—Thomas Jefferson

Miscellania

  • The Christian scriptures also warn of the corrosion of money:
    • Old Testament "He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver: and who has loved gain, in the abundance thereof? this is also vanity". Septuagint Ecclesiastes 5.9.
      • "And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of every one that is greedy for gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof". KJV Prov. 1.18-19.
    • New Testament "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows". KJV, I Timothy 6.10.
  • Speaking of the Peloponnesian War, the orator Demosthenes lamented the fact how money corrupted and changed the old Greek laws of war:
"Whereas all the arts have made great advances, and nothing is the same as it was in the past, I believe that nothing has been more altered and improved than matters of war...The Laced�monians, like all the others, used to spend four or five months—the summer season—in invading and ravaging the territory of their enemy with hoplites and civic armies and then retire home again...They were so bound by tradition or rather such good citizens of the polis that they did not use money to seek advantage, but rather was by rules and out in the open". 13
  • Montesquieu also recognizes the power of commercialism. He writes: "...to attack a religion is by favor, by the commodities of life, by the hope of wealth; not by what turns away, but by what makes one forget; not by what arouses indignation, but by what renders men lukewarm—so that other passions act on our souls, and those which religion inspires are silent". He said this approach would work by pointing to a real historical event, the advent of the United States, a "democracy founded on commerce". 10
  • Christopher Lasch writes ". . . individuals cannot learn to speak for themselves at all, much less come to an intelligent understanding of their happiness and wellbeing, in a world in which there are no values except those of the market. . . . the market tends to universalize itself. It does not easily coexist with institutions that operate according to principles that are antithetical to itself: schools and universities, newspapers and magazines, charities, families. Sooner or later the market tends to absorb them all. It puts an almost irresistable presure on every activity to justify itself in the only terms it recognizes: to become a business proposition, to pay its own way, to show black ink on the bottom line. It turns news into entertainment, scholarship into professional careerism, social work into the scientific management of poverty. Inexorably it remodels every institution in its own image". 11

See also

References

  1. Greek Ideals, pg 105.
  2. Politics, Loeb Classical Library, 1990 Vol. #264, editors footnote, pg 52.
  3. In Sparta and Crete, the citizens were not allowed to perform any mechanical, artistic job. "And the bestowal of a share in the government...as at Thebes, to people after they have abstained for a time from mechanic industries". Politics, Loeb, 1990, Vol. #264, pg 517.
    1. "In some states these theories were actually applied. Sparta excluded the industrial, commercial and farming class from citizenship. In Thebes no retail trader of artisan was eligible for office till ten years after he had retired from business.", "Humanism in Politics and Economy", Sir, Livingstone, Martin Classical Lectures, Vol V, pg 105-106.
  4. "The fact that there had to be a law at Athens against heaping insults on those practicing a profession in the agora indicates just how difficult it was to overcome this prejudice." Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 251
  5. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 44.
  6. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 45.
  7. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 46.
  8. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 59.
  9. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 68.
  10. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. III, pg 50. Quoting Montesquieu, EL 5.25.12
  11. Revolt of the Elites, Christopher Lasch.
  12. The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations, Cyrus H. Gordon, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1965. pg 35-37.
  13. A War Like No Other; How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, Victor Davis Hanson, Randon House, NY, 2005. pg 300.
  14. It is a paraphrase from Homer's Odyssey: "Phoenicians came there, famous sailing men, greedy rogues, who carried countless trinkets in their black ship." §530.
  15. The Presocratics, Philip Wheelwright, Macmillan Publishing Company, NY, 1966. pg 185.
  16. It is a paraphrase from Plato's Republic, �550-551.
  17. Republics, Ancient and Modern, Rahe, Vol. I, pg 294 (n.20)

Bibliography

  • Newman's edition of the Politics, vol. i, p. 98f.
  • Chap II, "Opinions, Passions, and Interests", Republics, Ancient and Modern, Vol. I, Paul A. Rahe, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 1992.
  • The People of Aristophanes, Victor Ehrenberg, New York, 1962. pp 113-146.
  • Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle, Kenneth J. Dover, Oxford, 1974. pp 39-41; pp 172-174.
  • "L'idée de travail dans la Grèce archaïque", André Aymard, Journal de psychologie 41, 1948. pp 29-45.
  • "Hiérarchie du travail et autarcie individuelle", André Aymard, Études d'histoire ancienne, Paris, 1967. pp 316-333.
  • "Work and Nature in Ancient Greece", Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, London, 1983. pp 248-270.

Commentary works

  • "Humanism in Politics and Economics", Greek Ideals and Modern Life, Sir R. W. Livingstone, Martin Classical Lectures, Vol. V, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA., 1935.

Ancillary works

  • Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and Its Aftermath, L. Kallet, Berkeley, 2001.

External links

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