After advising the democratic rulers of Athens how they could overcome the necessity under which they found themselves of acting unjustly, Xenophon reminds them of the limitations of his advice, and, indeed, of all human advice, by giving them the additional advice to inquire of the gods in Dodona and in Delphi whether the reforms suggested by him would be salutary to the city both now and in the future. Yet even divine approval of his suggestions would not suffice. He gives the Athenians the crowning advice, in case the gods should approve of his suggestions, that they further ask the gods to which of the gods they ought to sacrifice in order to be successful. Divine approval and divine assistance seem to be indispensable for salutary political action. These remarks must be of special interest to the interpreter of the Hiero on account of the place where they occur in the Corpus Xenophonteum, for they occur at the end of the Ways and Means.1 Still, their content cannot be surprising to any reader of our author: pious sentiments are expressed, more or less forcefully, in all those of his writings in which he speaks in his own or in Socrates’ name.
One of the most surprising features of the Hiero, i.e., of the only work of Xenophon in which he never speaks in the first person, is its complete silence about piety. Simonides never mentions piety He does not say a word about the advisability of asking any gods whether his suggestions regarding the improvement of tyrannical rule would be salutary. Nor does he remind Hiero of the need of divine assistance. He does not admonish him in any way to worship the gods.2 Hiero, too, is silent about piety In particular, when enumerating the various virtues, he was almost compelled to mention piety: he fails to do so.
It might seem that this silence is sufficiently explained by the subject matter of the work. The tyrant, and indeed any absolute ruler, may be said to usurp honors rightfully belonging to the gods alone.3 Yet the Hiero deals, not so much with how tyrants usually live, as with how tyranny can best be preserved or rather improved. If we may believe Aristotle, piety is rather more necessary for preserving and improving tyrannical government than it is for the preservation and improvement of any other political order. We might be inclined to credit Xenophon with the same view, since he indicates that the regime of Cyrus became the more pious in proportion as it became more absolute.4 But Cyrus is not a tyrant strictly speaking. According to Xenophon, tyranny is in any case rule without laws, and according to his Socrates, piety is knowledge of the laws concerning the gods:5 where there are no laws, there cannot be piety. However, the identification of piety with knowledge of the laws concerning the gods is not Xenophon’s last word on the subject. In his final characterization of Socrates he says that Socrates was so pious that he would do nothing without the consent of the gods. When he describes how Socrates made his companions pious, he shows how he led them to a recognition of divine providence by making them consider the purposeful character of the universe and its parts.6 It seems, then, that just as he admits a translegal justice, although his Socrates identifies justice with legality, so he admits a piety which emerges out of the contemplation of nature and which has no necessary relation to law; a piety, that is, whose possibility is virtually denied by the definition suggested by his Socrates. We shall conclude that the silence of the Hiero about piety cannot be fully explained by the subject matter of the work. For a full explanation one would have to consider the conversational situation, the fact that the Hiero is a dialogue between an educated tyrant and a wise man who is not a citizen-philosopher.
While the Hiero is silent about piety, it is not silent about the gods. But the silence about piety is reflected in what it says, or does not say, about the gods. In the sentence with which he concludes his statement about friendship, Hiero uses an expression which is reminiscent of an expression used in a similar context by Ischomachus in the Oeconomicus. Hiero speaks of those who are born by nature, and at the same time compelled by law, to love. Whereas Hiero speaks of a cooperation of nature and law, Ischomachus speaks of a cooperation of the god (or the gods) and law.7 Hiero replaces “the god” or “the gods” by “nature.” Xenophon’s Simonides never corrects him. He seems to be the same Simonides who is said repeatedly to have postponed and finally abandoned the attempt to answer the question which Hiero had posed him, What is God?8 It is true, both Hiero and Simonides mention “the gods,” but there is no apparent connection between what they say about “nature” and what they say about “the gods.”9 It is possible that what they mean by “the gods” is chance rather than “nature” or the origin of the natural order.10
The practical bearing of the difference between Ischomachus’ and Hiero’s statements appears from the different ways in which they describe the cooperation of gods or nature and law in the parallel passages cited. Ischomachus says that a certain order which has been established by the gods is at the same time praised by the law. Hiero says that men are prompted by nature to a certain action or feeling, to which they are at the same time compelled by the law. Ischomachus, who traces the natural order to the gods, describes the specific work of the law as praising; Hiero who does not take that step, describes it as compelling. One’s manner of understanding and evaluating the man-made law depends then on one’s manner of understanding the order which is not man-made and which is only confirmed by the law. If the natural order is traced to the gods, the compulsory character of the law recedes into the background. Conversely, the law as such is less likely to appear as an immediate source of pleasure if one does not go beyond the natural order itself. The law assumes a higher dignity if the universe is of divine origin. The notion linking “praise” and “gods” is gentlemanliness. Praise as distinguished from compulsion suffices for the guidance of gentlemen, and the gods delight at gentlemanliness.11 As we have seen, Hiero’s and Simonides’ gentlemanliness is not altogether beyond doubt. Ischomachus, on the other hand, who traces the natural order to the gods and who describes in the cited passage the work of the law as praising, is the gentleman par excellence. What the attitude of the citizen-philosopher Socrates was can be ascertained only by a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Xenophon’s Socratic writings.