III
As long as the city-state existed and was looked upon
as the model form of political organization, loyalty was
confined within walls from which even Socrates could
not, as we have seen, wholly escape. But after
Alexander's conquest of the so-called barbarians, the
loss of Greek independence, and the rise and spread
of the Stoic philosophy after Zeno (336-264 B.C.), men
spoke of the brotherhood of man, of the family of man,
of the unity of the race and of nations, of all men as
children of one father, of all men as citizens of one
world. At the same time the Stoics emphasized their
belief that it is the rational quality of men that unites
them—it is in sharing rationality and goodness that true
kinship is found. “My father is nothing to me,” said
Epictetus, “but only the good” (Discourses, III, iii). But
loyalty, fidelity, trustworthiness, according to Epicte-
tus, is as essential to human nature as are rationality,
goodness, and justice. In the Discourses (II, iv), the
following characteristic scene is reported:
As Epictetus was remarking that man is born to fidelity,
and that the man who overthrows this is overthrowing the
characteristic quality of man, there entered one who had
the reputation of being a scholar, and who had once been
caught in the city in the act of adultery. But, goes on
Epictetus, if we abandon this fidelity to which we are by
nature born, and make designs against our neighbor's wife,
what are we doing? Why, what but ruining and destroying?
Whom? The man of fidelity, of self-respect, of piety. Is that
all? Are we not overthrowing also neighborly feeling,
friendship, the state? In what position are we placing our-
selves? As what am I to treat you, fellow? As a neighbor;
as a friend? Of what kind? As a citizen? What confidence
am I to place in you?... For, assuming that you cannot
hold the place of a friend, can you hold that of a slave?
And who is going to trust you?
(Loeb trans.).
Marcus Aurelius spoke of “the natural law of
neighborliness” (Meditations, III, 11, Loeb trans.). But
all men are neighbors, and all are citizens of the highest
state, the Universe, “of which all other states are but
as households” (ibid.). There is a law common to all
mankind. This, said Marcus Aurelius, means that the
law is operative in a state; the Universe must be that
state; we are all, therefore, citizens of one state (IV, 4).
All things, he said,
are mutually intertwined, and the tie is sacred, and scarcely
anything is alien the one to the other.... For there is but
one Universe, made up of all things, and one God immanent
in all things, and one Substance, and one Law, one Reason
common to all intelligent creatures, and one Truth...
(VII, 9).
Man is a citizen of the world-city (XII, 36). What is
advantageous to the whole cannot be hurtful to the
part (X, 6).
In Hebraic thought, as we have seen, loyalty to God
transcended all other duties. To Socrates, loyalty to
one's soul, one's true self, transcended all other duties
and was identified with loyalty to God. In the
Hellenistic philosophy of the Stoics, loyalty to Natural
Law, the law of the Universe, to the rational principle,
by which man is defined, become merged with loyalty
to the true self and loyalty to God. In all these instances
parochial loyalties are transcended—and yet, as we
have noted in the incident of Epictetus and the man
caught in the act of adultery, the closer, narrower
loyalties are preserved and validated; for a man will
be faithless to humanity and God if he is not trust-
worthy in his own home and neighborhood. Plato and
Aristotle, however, placed their emphases on loyalty
to the state—in Plato's ideal polities the emphasis on
this loyalty seems over-arching.
At the same time there were philosophers who, by
implication, viewed the whole business of political and
moral loyalty with considerable skepticism. In Plato's
Republic (336A-354C) Thrasymachus understands by
justice the interest of the stronger, the notion that
might is right, or whatever is to the interest of the
ruler. He himself then draws the inference that a man
ought to try to satisfy his own interest, and not that
of another—at least insofar as he can prudently do so.
The result of this view may well be nihilism. In the
same dialogue (357-367E), Glaucon speaks for the view
that justice is purely a matter of convention, grounded
in fear, and is the necessary protector of the weaker.
In the Gorgias, Callicles speaks for the theory of the
natural right of might, and for the idea that all law
is made by the weak to defraud the strong of their
just rights. When justice is to do what one can, and
what one can get away with, or is obedience to author-
ity when one must obey but otherwise is to do what
one wants, then loyalty is no virtue and has no virtue.
But throughout biblical literature and in the Hellenic
and Hellenistic writings, the ideal of loyalty as the soul
of friendship is kept alive in poetry, drama, elegy,
oratory, and philosophic debate and analysis. Plato's
Lysis deals with friendship, and Aristotle is deeply
concerned with the subject and writes movingly on it
in the Ethics (IX, viii). Cicero's De amicitia, influenced
by Aristotle, Xenophon's Memorabilia, and a lost
treatise on friendship in three volumes by Theophras-
tus, deal with the subject elaborately and lovingly. It
has been suggested that friendship is a topic which
plays a much more prominent part in ancient than in
modern ethical literature for the reason that conjugal
affection and romantic love were given small scope
for expression; there were, therefore, two outlets for
unselfish loyalty—the city-state and the lifelong friend
(Taylor, Plato, pp. 64-65).
