Meno of Pharsalus

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Menon of Pharsalos ( Greek Μένων Ménōn , also Menon of Thessaly and - erroneously - Menon of Larisa ; * around 423 BC; † 400 BC) was a troop commander of Thessaly . He took part as a mercenary leader in the uprising of the Persian pretender to the throne Cyrus against his older brother, the great king Artaxerxes II. When this campaign failed, Menon was captured. He was later executed. He is best known as a participant in a literary dialogue named after him by Plato .

origin

Menon was of distinguished origin. All that is known about his father is that his name was Alexidemos. His family was rich, they had their center of power in their hometown Pharsalus and traditionally belonged to the leading families of Thessaly. She was connected with the Persian rulers of the Achaemenids through hospitality. At the same time, she maintained good relations with political circles in Athens . As early as 476 BC A Menon from Pharsalus ("Menon I") came to the aid of the Athenian general Kimon in his attack on Eion on the Strymon and was granted Attic citizenship in return. Another Menon of Pharsalus ("Menon II"), probably a descendant of Kimon's ally, led the Athenians in 431 BC. BC - at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War - Thessalian horsemen to. Perhaps this Menon was the grandfather or an uncle of the mercenary commander of the same name ("Menon III"), the son of Alexidemus.

Life

Youth in Greece

The young Menon was valued in homoerotic circles for his beauty. He was a close confidante of the powerful Thessalian politician Aristippus von Larisa , with whom he had an erotic relationship. At the end of the 5th century, Aristippus was the most prominent representative of the aristocratic family of the Aleuads , who had their center of power in the city of Larisa and had long played an important role in the politics of Thessaly.

Like Aristippus, Meno was an admirer of the famous Sophist Gorgias , who came from Sicily and who stayed in Larisa for some time as a teacher of rhetoric . The two Thessalians were among the nobles who attended his lessons there. Gorgias spread his teachings on the art of persuasion with great success and won numerous followers in Thessaly.

Lycophron , the ruler of the important Thessalian city of Pherai , tried to bring all of Thessaly under his rule. In September 404 BC He defeated his opponents, which included the Aleuads of Larisa, and inflicted heavy losses on them in battle. The Aleuads, weakened by the military defeat, and their ally Menon may have had to go into temporary exile.

After this shift in the balance of power in Thessaly, the young Menon came to Athens in 403/402 with an entourage of slaves. He was probably charged with the diplomatic mission to mobilize support for the Aleuads and their allies there. His host was the politician Anytos, who later became one of Socrates' accusers.

Aristippus found help from Cyrus , the younger brother of the Great King Artaxerxes II, who had ruled the Persian Empire since 404. At that time Cyrus was satrap (provincial governor) of Lydia , Greater Phrygia and Cappadocia as well as commander in chief of the troops of Asia Minor in the Persian Empire. He planned an uprising against his brother, from whom he wanted to wrest the rule. The situation in Thessaly gave him an opportunity to recruit mercenaries without arousing suspicion from Artaxerxes. For this purpose he gave Aristippus the pay of four thousand mercenaries for six months on the condition not to make peace with the opposing side for the time being, but to keep the army ready for the time being.

Mercenary leaders in Asia

In the last phase of the preparations for the Persian civil war, Cyrus gave Aristippus the order to make peace in Thessaly and to put the mercenaries at his disposal. Thereupon Aristippus sent him a mercenary army under the command of Menon in 401. Menon arrived with a thousand hoplites (heavily armed) and five hundred peltasts (lightly armed) in the city of Kolossai in Phrygia , where Cyrus was staying. From there the rebels, who were joined by other Greek troops, went to war against Artaxerxes II.

Menon and his mercenaries took over the protection of the Cilician ruler's wife ("Queen") Epyaxa , who set out on her way home to Cilicia after a long stay with the rebel army. Epyaxa had traveled to meet the advancing Cyrus and had given him significant funds. Her husband's territory had to be crossed by the insurgent forces. For Cyrus it was a matter of managing a peaceful march through Cilicia, because Epyaxa's husband, the dynast ("king") Syennesis , as a vassal of the great king, was obliged to offer military resistance to the rebels. Menon was to see to it that the invasion of Cilicia would proceed as smoothly as possible. It turned out to be easy to keep the little belligerent Cilician ruler from resisting. In carrying out this mission, however, Menon lost a hundred heavily armed men under unclear circumstances, who may have been killed while pillaging the Cilicians. To get revenge for the death of their comrades, his mercenaries sacked the city of Tarsus , where Syennesis resided, and its castle. When Cyrus arrived in Tarsus, he nevertheless managed to reach an agreement with Syennesis, with Epyaxa mediating.

Cyrus had initially kept the real aim of the campaign a secret from his troops and pretended that it was only a punitive expedition to Pisidia . When the mercenaries realized in the course of the advance and later officially learned what the company was actually aiming at, they mutinied. Menon managed to keep his mercenaries in line by offering them special perks if they were the first to cross the Euphrates before the other Greeks made their decision. They were persuaded and, to the delight of Cyrus, carried out the order. Then Cyrus himself crossed the river, which was exceptionally possible without ships because of the low water level, and the whole rest of the army followed him.

On the way there was a confrontation between Menon's mercenaries and those of his rival commander Klearchus , during which Klearchus was almost stoned by Menon's men. Only the personal intervention of Cyrus could relax the situation and prevent bloodshed.

Artaxerxes II had been surprised by the uprising and initially did not offer any effective resistance to the opposing advance. It was not until Kunaxa in the area of Babylon , deep in the interior of the Persian Empire, that the advancing rebels encountered an army of the great king, which was personally commanded by him. In the Battle of Kunaxa , Menon commanded the (less respected) left wing of the rebel army. Cyrus was killed in battle. Thus the campaign had in fact failed, although the rebels at Kunaxa had not suffered defeat, but had demonstrated their superior fighting power in the course of the battle.

After the battle, the Greek mercenaries of the slain Cyrus, although undefeated, were in a very difficult position. They were in danger of being surrounded, cut off from supplies and worn out. They now offered the Persian noble Ariaios, a friend and troop leader of Cyrus, the Persian throne in order to continue the campaign against Artaxerxes under him as the new commander-in-chief. Menon was one of the delegation they sent to convince him of their proposal. Menon was a confidante and hospitable friend of Ariaios, who is also said to have been interested in the young Thessalian. When Ariaios rejected the proposal, the emissaries returned, with the exception of Menon, who stayed with his friend.

Ariaios was in contact with the satrap Tissaphernes , the main organizer of Artaxerxes' military resistance to the rebellion, and met with him, accompanied by Menon. The course of these negotiations is unknown. The historian Ktesias claims that Menon worked as a traitor with Tissaphernes to hand over his comrades to the Persians.

The mercenaries also negotiated with Tissaphernes. With them now the troop leader Klearchus, Menon's rival, assumed the position of commander-in-chief. Clearchus and Tissaphernes agreed that both sides should reveal who had committed treason and slander and was in league with the other side. For this purpose, Klearchus and his commanders were to go to the quarters of the Tissaphernes. In the agreement with the leading representative of the opposite side, Klearchus saw an opportunity to expose Menon, because he had learned of his conversation with Tissaphernes and suspected him of treason. Five Greek generals, including Klearchus and Menon, went to the Persian camp with twenty other officers and around two hundred men for the agreed meeting. When the five generals entered the Persian's tent, he had them arrested; the rest of the Greeks waiting outside were killed. The five prisoners were taken to the great king. Ariaios, who was now working with Tissaphernes, went to the Greek camp and claimed to the mercenaries that Klearchus had broken the agreement with Tissaphernes and planned an attack, therefore he was killed; two of the five generals, Proxenus and Menon, had revealed the attack and are therefore now held in high regard by the Persians. The Greeks did not believe this story.

According to Xenophon's report, Menon was not beheaded by the Persians like the other four captured Greek mercenary leaders, but first tortured on the orders of the great king; only a year later he is said to have died “like a criminal”, probably from the consequences of torture. At the time of his death, he was around 23 years old.

The historians Ktesias and Diodorus offer a different, implausible account . According to her, the captured Menon was spared by the great king as a useful traitor, only the other generals were killed.

Role in Plato's literary dialogue

→ Main article: Menon
The beginning of the Menon dialogue in the oldest surviving medieval manuscript, the Codex Clarkianus written in 895

The plot of Plato's fictional dialogue Menon takes place during Menon's stay in Athens. The young Menon, surrounded by a large retinue of slaves, meets the old philosopher Socrates , Plato's teacher. He asks him whether virtue can be learned, whether it is practiced or whether it is innate. With virtue ( arete ) is meant not only a desirable moral trait, but also qualification in a broader sense (proficiency, suitability for a certain task, excellence). Socrates first turns the conversation to the more fundamental question of what virtue actually is. Here Menon refers to Gorgias, whom he considers a first-rate authority, and starts from his teaching. Various proposed definitions are examined and prove to be unsuitable. In the second part of the discussion, the debate revolves around the problem of the teachability of virtue and the theory of learning. The third and final part is about how to achieve virtue. The dialogue ends aporically , it is not possible to find a satisfactory solution. However, this does not mean that the reader should get the impression that the problems discussed are unsolvable. The unsatisfactory result is related not only to the difficulty of the questions, but also to Menon's inadequate capacity for philosophical discourse.

Assessment in ancient sources

By far the most important source is the detailed description of Cyrus' uprising in the Anabasis by the Athenian historian Xenophon , who took part in the campaign. As an eyewitness Xenophon was well informed, but because of his obvious and intense hostility to Menon, bias and exaggeration must be expected. Xenophon deals extensively with Menon's character, about which he passes a devastating judgment.

According to Xenophon, Menon was primarily greedy and made no secret of it. He also strived for power and fame, but only as a means of further increasing his wealth. He sought friendship with the most powerful because he needed their protection in order not to be held accountable for his crimes. His means were perjury, lying, deceit, and slandering his rivals. He saw honesty as stupidity. He used to betray those whom he called his friends. On the other hand, he respected his enemies and those who looked like him, since he could not deceive them and considered their vigilance dangerous. Xenophon also suggests that he thinks little of Menon's military qualifications. He suggests that Menon used his sexual attractiveness to get Aristippus to get command of the mercenaries despite his youth and inexperience.

The picture that Ktesias creates is even more negative than Xenophon's portrayal. Ktesias was present at the battle of Kunaxa as the doctor of Artaxerxes. For him, Menon is the traitor, who, in agreement with Tissaphernes, insidiously persuades the mercenaries to send the delegation of the five generals to the Persian camp, and thus deliberately surrendering the Greek commanders to the enemy and causing their deaths. As a reward for the betrayal, he is then spared by the Persians. This version probably goes back to an oral report by the general Klearchus who was arrested by the Persians and which Ktesias was able to question. Plutarch and Diodor’s information is based on it . Also Athenaios , relying on Xenophon attributes the death of the Greek generals to a betrayal Menon, although this assertion is not found in Xenophon. Athenaios made use of information that probably ultimately goes back to a lost work by the grammarian Herodicus of Seleukia. For the orator and philosopher Maximus of Tire (late 2nd century) it is also certain that Menon committed this betrayal.

Meno appears in a less unfavorable light in Plato, who, however, has a different phase of the life of the Thessalian in view than the historians. Plato's Meno is at least superficially interested in philosophy; he seems to strive for knowledge and has even given innumerable speeches about virtue to large audiences. He is not only self-confident, but also arrogant and does not appear astute. His opinion is conventional and unreflected, he does not argue in a focused and persistent manner. He evades a deeper engagement with the topic of the dialogue. By depicting Menon's failure, Plato also wants to discredit his teacher Gorgias.

literature

  • Truesdell S. Brown: Menon of Thessaly . In: Historia 35, 1986, pp. 387-404
  • Monique Canto-Sperber : Plato: Ménon . 2nd (corrected) edition, Flammarion, Paris 1993, ISBN 2-08-070491-5 , pp. 17-26
  • Richard Goulet: Ménon de Pharsale . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques . Volume 4, CNRS Éditions, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-271-06386-8 , pp. 484f.
  • Debra Nails: The People of Plato. A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics . Hackett, Indianapolis 2002, ISBN 0-87220-564-9 , pp. 204f., 318f.

Remarks

  1. ^ Plato, Meno 78d.
  2. ↑ Demosthenes 13:23 and 23,199. On this menon see Michael J. Osborne: Naturalization in Athens , Vol. 3/4, Brussels 1983, pp. 20-23.
  3. ↑ Thucydides 2,22,3.
  4. ↑ Monique Canto-Sperber: Platon: Ménon , 2nd edition, Paris 1993, p. 19; John S. Morrison: Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias . In: The Classical Quarterly 36, 1942, pp. 57–78, here: p. 75 and note 1.
  5. ^ Hans Beck : Polis and Koinon , Stuttgart 1997, p. 127 and Hans-Joachim Gehrke : Stasis. Investigations into the internal wars in the Greek states of the 5th and 4th centuries BC Chr. , Munich 1985, p. 189f. assume a banishment that also affected Menon.
  6. ↑ Richard S. Bluck (Ed.): Plato's Meno , Cambridge 1961, pp. 120-122; Monique Canto-Sperber: Plato: Ménon , 2nd edition, Paris 1993, p. 19; John S. Morrison: Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias . In: The Classical Quarterly 36, 1942, pp. 57-78, here: 75f.
  7. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1,1,10. Cf. Otto Lendle : Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (books 1–7) , Darmstadt 1995, p. 11f .; John S. Morrison: Meno of Pharsalus, Polycrates, and Ismenias . In: The Classical Quarterly 36, 1942, pp. 57-78, here: 66f.
  8. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1,2,1; 1,2,6; 2,6,28. Cf. Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (books 1-7) , Darmstadt 1995, pp. 12-13, 16.
  9. ↑ See John WI Lee: The Lochos in Xenophon's Anabasis . In: Christopher Tuplin (Ed.): Xenophon and his World , Stuttgart 2004, pp. 289-317, here: 293-295; Lee suspects that the text is flawed and that there were actually two hundred men.
  10. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1, 2, 20-26. Cf. Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (Books 1-7) , Darmstadt 1995, pp. 19f., 25-29; Joseph Roisman: Klearchus in Xenophon's Anabasis . In: Scripta Classica Israelica 8/9, 1985/1988, pp. 30-52, here: 33.
  11. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1, 4, 11-18. Cf. Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (Books 1-7) , Darmstadt 1995, pp. 40-43.
  12. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1, 5, 11-17. On the rivalry, see Truesdell S. Brown: Menon of Thessaly . In: Historia 35, 1986, pp. 387-404, here: 390-392; Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (books 1–7) , Darmstadt 1995, p. 49f.
  13. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 1,8,4.
  14. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 2,1,4-5; 2.2.1; 2,6,28.
  15. ↑ Ktesias, Persika F 27.
  16. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 2.5. On these incidents see Sherylee R. Bassett: Innocent Victims or Perjurers Betrayed? The Arrest of the Generals in Xenophon's Anabasis . In: The Classical Quarterly New Series 52, 2002, pp. 447-461; Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (books 1–7) , Darmstadt 1995, pp. 127–130.
  17. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 2,6,29.
  18. ↑ Ktesias, Persika F 27 and F 28; Diodorus 14,27,2.
  19. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 2, 6, 21-27.
  20. ↑ Xenophon, Anabasis 2,6,28. See to this and the possible background Otto Lendle: Two Gorgiasschildren als στρατηγοί . In: Christian Mueller-Goldingen , Kurt Sier (Hrsg.): Lenaika. Festschrift for Carl Werner Müller , Stuttgart 1996, pp. 151–164; Otto Lendle: Commentary on Xenophons Anabasis (books 1–7) , Darmstadt 1995, pp. 139–145.
  21. ↑ Ktesias, Persika F 27 and F 28.
  22. ↑ Plutarch, Artaxerxes 18.5; Diodorus 14,27,2. For this version, see Domenica Paola Orsi: Il tradimento di Menone . In: Quaderni di storia Volume 16 No. 32, 1990, pp. 139–145.
  23. ↑ Athenaios 11,505a-b and 11,506b.
  24. ↑ Maximos of Tire, Dialexis 34.9.
  25. ^ Plato, Meno 80b.
  26. ↑ Michael Erler : Platon (= Hellmut Flashar (Ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy . The philosophy of antiquity , Volume 2/2), Basel 2007, p. 167f .; Jens Holzhausen : Menon in Plato's 'Menon' . In: Würzburger Yearbooks for Classical Studies New Series, Vol. 20, 1994/1995, pp. 129–149.
personal data
SURNAME Meno of Pharsalus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Menon of Thessaly
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek mercenary leader
DATE OF BIRTH around 423 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 400 BC Chr.