Banausos
Encyclopedia
Banausos is an epithet
of the class
of manual labor
ers or artisan
s in Ancient Greece
. The related abstract noun – banausia is defined by Hesychius
as "every craft [conducted] by means of fire", reflecting the folk etymology of the word as coming from (baunos) "furnace" and (auō) "to dry". The actual etymology of the words is unknown; they are not attested outside Attic-Ionic or before the 5th Century BC. The epic
hero
es call their smiths – dēmiourgoi.
, the invention of the trireme
and of hoplite
armor, the prevalence of chattel slavery
permitted the rise of a new hoplite
class, who used the term to divide themselves from the artisans.
Banausos was used as a term of invective, meaning "cramped in body" (Politics
1341 a 7) and "vulgar in taste" (1337 b 7), by the extreme oligarch
s in Athens in the 5th century BC, who were led by Critias
. These were the Laconophile
s who yearned for the good old times when there was none of this "equality" nonsense, and you could beat your neighbor's slave in the street (see Ps.-Xenophon: Constitution of Athens). In this usage, it refers to the laboring class
as a whole; i.e. the artisans, such as potters, stonemasons, carpenters, professional singers, artists, musicians, and all persons engaged in trade or retail. It makes no distinction between slave or free.
These extreme oligarchs were opposed both to the moderate oligarchs, such as Theramenes
, and to the democrat
s, such as Pericles
, Cleon
, and Thrasybulus
. They held power at Athens for less than a year, with the assistance of a Spartan army; because of their use of exile, purges, midnight arrests, and judicial murder, are remembered as the Thirty Tyrants
. But while they vanished from the political scene, the word remained.
, the philosopher, was Critias's nephew, and used banausos in much the same sense, although in the Republic
he preferred the installation of philosophers, such as himself, above the hoplites, who were in turn above the artisan. It was also current among the first generation of his pupils, such as Aristotle
, who writes, "Those who provide necessaries for an individual are slaves, and those who provide them for society are handicraftsmen and day-laborers."
Plato further held that commerce had a corrupting influence in communities and acquisition of wealth destroyed their – homonoia (like-mindedness) and was the principal cause of – stasis (faction). He also held that "merchants and craftsmen would be less willing to defend the civic territory than farmers would" and commerce and mercantilism had a morally corrupting influence.
Plato was concerned with the "best" state, which requires citizens who are the best and because they possess arete
. This is in contrast to the attitude, cited by Heraclitus
: "We will have none best among us; if any among us would be the best, let him be so elsewhere and among others."
Plato argued, and Aristotle follows him in this, although not in other things, that the pursuit of arete required leisure. Technical education was necessary but did not make good citizens. Leisure was a necessity of good citizenship something the banausoi do not have. Banausia 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.
After the time of Alexander the Great, however, philosophers largely avoided practical politics. Thereafter banausos mostly appears in glossaries to Plato and Aristotle.
Later philosophic schools had different politics. For example Cassius Dio defined democracy:(dēmocrateía) thus: "when every man gets the honor that is his due."
, who used a linguistic style with many influences from Greek.
Banausos (or rather – banausikos) has also been adapted into English, as the rare word banausic, both as a term of abuse, and to represent Greek usage. According to Dagobert D. Runes
' Dictionary of Philosophy, it means "vulgar and illiberal", particularly when referring to arts or occupations that "deform the body or the mind." Its use in English 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 myth
s 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 World War II, 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:
Epithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
of the class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
of manual labor
Manual labour
Manual labour , manual or manual work is physical work done by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals...
ers or artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
s in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. The related abstract noun – banausia is defined by Hesychius
Hesychius of Alexandria
Hesychius of Alexandria , a grammarian who flourished probably in the 5th century CE, compiled the richest lexicon of unusual and obscure Greek words that has survived...
as "every craft [conducted] by means of fire", reflecting the folk etymology of the word as coming from (baunos) "furnace" and (auō) "to dry". The actual etymology of the words is unknown; they are not attested outside Attic-Ionic or before the 5th Century BC. The epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
es call their smiths – dēmiourgoi.
Athenian usage
The use of banausos follows an economic transition in Greece: the use of coinageCurrency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
, the invention of the trireme
Trireme
A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...
and of hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
armor, the prevalence of chattel slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
permitted the rise of a new hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
class, who used the term to divide themselves from the artisans.
Banausos was used as a term of invective, meaning "cramped in body" (Politics
Politics (Aristotle)
Aristotle's Politics is a work of political philosophy. The end of the Nicomachean Ethics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the...
1341 a 7) and "vulgar in taste" (1337 b 7), by the extreme oligarch
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
s in Athens in the 5th century BC, who were led by Critias
Critias
Critias , born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose...
. These were the Laconophile
Laconophile
Laconophilia is love or admiration of Sparta and of the Spartan culture or constitution. The term derives from Laconia, the part of the Peloponnesus that the Spartans inhabited....
s who yearned for the good old times when there was none of this "equality" nonsense, and you could beat your neighbor's slave in the street (see Ps.-Xenophon: Constitution of Athens). In this usage, it refers to the laboring class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
as a whole; i.e. the artisans, such as potters, stonemasons, carpenters, professional singers, artists, musicians, and all persons engaged in trade or retail. It makes no distinction between slave or free.
These extreme oligarchs were opposed both to the moderate oligarchs, such as Theramenes
Theramenes
Theramenes was an Athenian statesman, prominent in the final decade of the Peloponnesian War. He was particularly active during the two periods of oligarchic government at Athens, as well as in the trial of the generals who had commanded at Arginusae in 406 BC...
, and to the democrat
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
s, such as Pericles
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...
, Cleon
Cleon
Cleon was an Athenian statesman and a Strategos during the Peloponnesian War. He was the first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics, although he was an aristocrat himself...
, and Thrasybulus
Thrasybulus
Thrasybulus was an Athenian general and democratic leader. In 411 BC, in the wake of an oligarchic coup at Athens, the pro-democracy sailors at Samos elected him as a general, making him a primary leader of the successful democratic resistance to that coup...
. They held power at Athens for less than a year, with the assistance of a Spartan army; because of their use of exile, purges, midnight arrests, and judicial murder, are remembered as the Thirty Tyrants
Thirty Tyrants
The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Contemporary Athenians referred to them simply as "the oligarchy" or "the Thirty" ; the expression "Thirty Tyrants" is due to later historians...
. But while they vanished from the political scene, the word remained.
Philosophers
PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, the philosopher, was Critias's nephew, and used banausos in much the same sense, although in the Republic
Republic (Plato)
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man...
he preferred the installation of philosophers, such as himself, above the hoplites, who were in turn above the artisan. It was also current among the first generation of his pupils, such as Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, who writes, "Those who provide necessaries for an individual are slaves, and those who provide them for society are handicraftsmen and day-laborers."
Plato further held that commerce had a corrupting influence in communities and acquisition of wealth destroyed their – homonoia (like-mindedness) and was the principal cause of – stasis (faction). He also held that "merchants and craftsmen would be less willing to defend the civic territory than farmers would" and commerce and mercantilism had a morally corrupting influence.
Plato was concerned with the "best" state, which requires citizens who are the best and because they possess arete
Arete (excellence)
Arete , in its basic sense, means excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential...
. This is in contrast to the attitude, cited by Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
: "We will have none best among us; if any among us would be the best, let him be so elsewhere and among others."
Plato argued, and Aristotle follows him in this, although not in other things, that the pursuit of arete required leisure. Technical education was necessary but did not make good citizens. Leisure was a necessity of good citizenship something the banausoi do not have. Banausia 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.
After the time of Alexander the Great, however, philosophers largely avoided practical politics. Thereafter banausos mostly appears in glossaries to Plato and Aristotle.
Later philosophic schools had different politics. For example Cassius Dio defined democracy:(dēmocrateía) thus: "when every man gets the honor that is his due."
Revivals
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 use of "mechanical" (OED s.v.) is from John LylyJohn Lyly
John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
, who used a linguistic style with many influences from Greek.
Banausos (or rather – banausikos) has also been adapted into English, as the rare word banausic, both as a term of abuse, and to represent Greek usage. According to Dagobert D. Runes
Dagobert D. Runes
Dagobert David Runes was a philosopher and author. Born in Zastavna, Bukovina, Austro-Hungary , he emigrated to the United States in 1926. He had received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1924. In the U.S. he became editor of The Modern Thinker and later Current Digest...
' Dictionary of Philosophy, it means "vulgar and illiberal", particularly when referring to arts or occupations that "deform the body or the mind." Its use in English is not found before 1845, with the Victorian revival of classical learning.
One of the contributions of classical philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
to the Kultur-movement in Wilhelmine
Wilhelmine
Wilhelmine is a term for the period of German history, also known as the German Empire. The term Wilhelmine Germany refers to the period running from the proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Kaiser at Versailles in 1871 to the abdication of his grandson Wilhelm II in 1918.Although the father of...
and post-Wilhelmine Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
was the use of banausisch as an insult — along with the myth
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
s 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
Philistinism
Philistinism is a derogatory term used to a particular attitude or set of values perceived as despising or undervaluing art, beauty, spirituality, or intellectualism. A person with this attitude is referred to as a Philistine and may also be considered materialistic, favoring conventional social...
.
These ideas have become less accepted since World War II, but they were occasionally reflected in the English-speaking world. For example, Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton was an American educator and author who was "recognized as the greatest woman Classicist". She was sixty-two years old when The Greek Way, her first book, was published in 1930...
ingenuously accepted them as the best scholarship of her schooldays. Again, a junior colleague of Sir Gilbert Murray
Gilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...
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 areteArete (excellence)Arete , in its basic sense, means excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was ultimately bound up with the notion of the fulfillment of purpose or function: the act of living up to one's full potential...
generated will be small, and journalists, lawyers and industrialists will be banausoi rather than men.
External links
- Word frequency information for βάναυσος from the Perseus Digital Library at the Classics Department of Tufts UniversityTufts UniversityTufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...