Gripla - 20.12.2009, Síða 112
GRIPLA112
the Hellenes; they were a category of people beyond the intelligible world.
At various points in time, different people were depicted as ‘standard-bar
barians’. In Greek pottery-art the Scythians were singled out as prototypi
cal barbarians, being a nomadic people of horsemen and bow-fighters who
in their life-style contrasted starkly with people of the Greek polis, the city
state (Hastrup, H 1997). this is a first significant observation of an asym
metrical relationship between the civilised and the un-civilised, the former
providing the yardstick of civilisation itself.
This skewed relationship was to become cemented in the third century
BC, when political thinking developed further with Plato and his pupil
Aristotle, who dealt with the nature of the state – that is the polis itself. In
Book one of his Politics, Ch. 2, Aristotle frames his position by referring
to a natural order of things in which some are born to rule, others to be
ruled; among the latter are women and slaves, internally distinguished by
nature by their different functions. He continues: “But among barbarians
no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no
natural ruler among them: they are a community of slaves, male and
female. Wherefore the poets say – “It is meet that Hellenes should rule
over barbarians”; as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were
by nature one” (Aristotle 1943, 52). Interestingly, the will (and capacity) for
distinction here becomes a mark of civilisation itself, along with a recogni
tion of born rulers.
Being the highest mark of human achievement and the natural goal of
development, “it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that
man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere
accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like
the “Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one”, whom Homer denounces – the
natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war” (Ibid., 54). In the political
domain, lacking a state is a token of homelessness on a comprehensive
scale. the counterpoint to civilisation is a freeroaming outcast, tribeless,
lawless, hearthless – and stateless. Already we detect the Icelandic sequel.
I shall refer to only one more example from Aristotle, namely his dis
cussion of slavery. In Politics, Book one, Ch. 6, he maintains that “there is
a slave or slavery by law as well as nature” (Ibid. 1943, 60). The former
refers to the Hellenic order, within which slavery is simply a practical con
vention, while the natural slaves are found elsewhere.