1We are all familiar with the image of the body politic : the perennial affective appeal of a conception of organic unity in the state, combined with the flexibility with which it can be deployed, means that an element in political discourse which can be traced back to sixth-century BC Greece1 remains current today. Rather less familiar is the mirror image or inverse, the conception of the body in terms of a city or state, with which this paper is concerned. As will become evident, although one might expect the two analogies to develop more or less in parallel, the evidence for « the polis as body » considerably antedates « the body as polis », and while the former is widespread in Greek literature, the latter has a much more particular and specialised distribution.

2Given that « polis » has two principal senses, « community » and « settlement2 », it was natural for comparisons between the body and a polis to follow two main lines : on the one hand, an analogy with the physical organisation and topography of the city, and on the other, an image based on the internal workings of the city, which is to say for the most part its constitution and political mechanisms. I shall organise my discussion accordingly, beginning with the former, the assimilation of the body to a city in the concrete sense. The most significant instance of this image is the passage in Plato’s Timaeus which describes the creation of the human body in terms of the layout of a city : the divine soul is located in the head and the mortal soul in the chest, the former separated and quarantined from the latter by the neck, which Plato terms « ἰσθμοὸν  καὶ ὃρον» (69de) ; the mortal soul in turn is divided into « the courageous and spirited » and « the tribe of desires », and the torso is partitioned by the diaphragm as if into male and female quarters. One notes that Plato’s image has characteristically drifted for a moment from polis to oikos, perhaps simply for the sake of the play on ἀνδρῶν and ἀνδρείας, but he immediately returns to the polis with the observation that the spirited passions were planted closer to the head, between neck and phrenes, to restrain the desires whenever these were unwilling to obey the command of reason « ἐκ τῆς ἀκροπόλεως », and their role as enforcers is emphasised by the succeeding denotation of the heart as « δορυφορικὴν οἴκησιν » (70ab).

3Clearly the underlying conception in this analogy is the configuration of a city in such a way as to safeguard the rule and authority of a monarch, but Plato may have a specific situation in mind here : given that the particular topographic layout he sketches out, in which the seat of power is located in a peninsula separated from the main part of the city by a narrow isthmus, is rather reminiscent of Syracuse, as noted by A. E. Taylor3, one might surmise that Plato was consciously or unconsciously influenced by the situation of the elder and younger Dionysius, the autocrats he knew best, which is a salutary reminder that the elements that shape Plato’s imagery can be varied and complex.

4Arguably the most notable feature of the passage as a whole, however, is actually the rather limited development of the image and the relative lack of detail : Longinus famously praises « the description of man’s bodily tabernacle » which he notes « is worked out so elaborately by Xenophon [the reference is to Memorabilia 1.4.5-18] and yet more superlatively by Plato4 », but what his summary of the passage highlights is how varied are the fields of comparison to which Plato refers in examining the workings of the body, embracing architecture, horticulture, mechanics, seafaring and others too ; politics is only one point in the constantly shifting frame of reference, and arguably a minor one at that5.

5In one sense the limited scope of this concrete image of the political body is not surprising, since it mirrors the situation with regard to the image of the body politic, where we also find very limited elaboration of anatomical detail. In fact, the only fifthcentury articulation of the body politic is the distinction of the head from the body in the Delphic oracle given to the Argives shortly before the Persian wars (Herodotus, VII, 148, 3) : « ἐχθρὲ περικτιόνεσσι, φίλ᾽ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι, εἴσω τὸν προβόλαιον ἒχων πεφυλαγμένος ἧσο καὶ κεφαλὴν πεφύλαξο κάρη δὲ τὸ σῶμα σαώσει ». The oracle’s instruction to « guard the head, for the head will save the body » is interpreted by commentators6 as a reference to the remnants of the Argive ruling class laid waste by the Spartans after the battle of Sepeia. A near-contemporary oracle given by Delphi to the Athenians enumerates the parts of the body more fully : « The head is unstable, the trunk totters ; nothing – not the feet below, nor the hands, nor anything in between – nothing endures ; all is doomed7 » ; here, however, the detail is elaborated for rhetorical emphasis, to underline the imminent danger of defeat at the hands of the Persians, and not to make a political point. Plato similarly assumes the basic distinction between body and head in the Laws, 964d-5b, in drawing an analogy between the two types of Guardians and the senses and intelligence located in the head, but he does not go into detail either. Indeed, although the development of political imagery drawn from medicine obviously implies an underlying conception of the body politic, the phrase « τὸ τῆς πόλεως σῶμα » only makes its appearance in Athenian rhetoric of the later fourth century (Dinarchus, I, 110 ; Hyperides, V, col. 25). The detailed description of wounds in the Iliad attests to at least a basic knowledge of internal anatomy early in the archaic period, and so while we should acknowledge the very limited impact made by dissection before the Hellenistic period, and the persistence of unscientific conceptions of the internal economy of the body8, the failure to exploit what would seem to us the full potential of the image cannot simply be ascribed to ignorance, and must be explained in terms of other factors.

6In fact, we do find parallels drawn between parts of the body and other human associations : in Memorabilia, II, 3, 18, Xenophon compares the dysfunction of strife between brothers to dysfunction in co-ordinate bodily systems such as the hands or feet. The image is also applied to military contexts : Polyaenus (III, 9, 22) reports that Iphicrates compared the parts of an army to the parts of the body, the head being the general, without which the army would not simply be lame or maimed (as it would be by the loss of hands [i.e. light-armed troops] or feet [i.e. cavalry]) but helpless, and Aesop 130 [Perry] (κοιλία καὶ πόδες) makes a similar comparison, the stomach in this case somewhat surprisingly being the general. We might rather expect the lesson drawn from the same sort of analogy by Menenius Agrippa in Livy (II, 32, cp. Dion. Hal. VI, 86), that despite its apparent passivity, the stomach has a vital part to play, but in fact it is hard to find a parallel in the Greek world for his commendation of the Senate/stomach as « sleeping partner9 ». Nevertheless, one can see how the articulation of diverse anatomical detail could lend itself to the exploration of roles and relations within a polis or other community. It is less easy to discern any scope for similar elaboration within the anatomy of the political body, especially since Plato in particular is chiefly interested in power relations, which for him almost exclusively concern the relationship between soul and body, as we shall see, and he has little time for the inclusiveness and diversity of democracy, the constitutional model to which the developed image would seem most suited10.

7Another factor which may have impeded the development of a political model of human anatomy was the persistence of controversy as to where in the body the seat of consciousness was to be located. Plato, as we have seen, identifies it with the brain, as did Alcmaeon and much Hippocratic opinion, but the rival view which privileged the heart had important proponents, chief amongst them Aristotle11. Hence in Parts of Animals (670a26), Aristotle makes the heart an acropolis ; since he echoes Plato and the Timaeus in making the φρένες a «  παροικοδόμημα[…] καὶ φραγμὸν »(Parts of Animals, 672b19-20), it seems likely that there is an element of polemic here, but as far as the image itself is concerned, the effect is to play down the physical or spatial implication in favour of a general impression of hierarchy.

8It seems, then, as though a combination of factors limited the evolution of the physical or anatomical conception of the body in political terms, that is, in relation to the topography and physical organisation of a polis. The case is rather different for the other branch of the political body, its conception in terms of political relations, i.e. of constitutional and political mechanisms. The roots of this line of development appear to be in medicine rather than philosophy : our earliest testimonium for discussion of the body in terms of political organisation is the well-known fragment of Alcmaeon (B4), in which he is reported by Aëtius as having believed « τῆς μὲν ὑγιείας εἶναι ουνεκτικὴν τὴν ἰσονομίαν τῶν δυνάμεων, ὑγροῦ ξηροῦ θερμοῦ γλυκέος καὶ τῶν λοιτῶν, τῆν δ᾽ ἐν αὐτοῖς μοαρχίαν νόσου ποιητικήν φθορποιὸν γὰρ ἐκατέρου μοναρχίαν ». After an account of the aetiology of disease couched principally in terms of imbalance (either excess or deficiency), the fragment concludes « τὴν δὲ ὑγείάν τὴν ούμμετρον τῶν ποιῶν κρᾶσιν ». While there is an obvious need to be gei`cautious in dealing with a paraphrase in indirect speech transmitted at two removes, I would agree with Ostwald that we can « be confident that the words ijva and sonomimonarciva formed a part of Alcmaeon’s original statement » ; in that case the use of a political conception of the internal functioning of the body goes back, on the majority view of Alcmaeon’s floruit, to the first half of the fifth century, a period when these words were very much live terminology in political discourse and debate12. However, it is increasingly recognised that isonomia is not a watch-word of democracy as such but rather serves to denote constitutional government13. There is therefore no reason to assume that Alcmaeon is insisting on strict equality among his elements, rather than on an appropriate balance and integration ; he does however clearly take a constitutionalist view, according to which imbalance among the dynameis causes disease, and sole rule of any of them is destructive.

9Alcmaeon’s schema finds echoes in some early Hippocratic treatises. The author of On the Nature of Man declares that men enjoy best health « ὃταν μετρίως ἒχῃ ταῦτα τῆς πρὸς ἂλληλα κρήσιος καὶ δυναμίος καὶ τοῦ πλήθεος καὶ μάλιστα μεμιγμένα ῇ » (IV, 2), while the author of On Ancient Medicine demolishes the idea of a simple opposition between hot and cold in favour of a more complex balance between elements and humours (XVI, 1, 8), which following Alcmaeon he terms δυναμίαι (XVII, 2 ; XIX, 4, 5 ; XXII, 1 ; XXIV, 1). In this terminology he seems to be unique among the Hippocratic writers, but there is a group of treatises which deploy the language of sole power on the one hand (δυνάστης, δυναστεύω) and of mixture (κρῆσις) on the other : the former terms are found in On Ancient Medicine, Airs Waters Places, Breaths, and (used in the conventional sense of political power) Regimen, and the latter in On Ancient Medicine, On the Nature of Man, Regimen and (applied to the seasons) Airs Waters Places. It looks as though concepts and language drawn from contemporary political debate are one of the elements being deployed in the highly polemical world of early medical theory14. Thus the author of On Ancient Medicine denies, in the passage to which I have just referred, that cold and heat « δυναστεύειν ἐν τῷ σώματι » ; and later, he attributes ill-health to a situation in which « ὁ τοιοῦτος χυμὸς τυγχάνει πλείων ἐνεὼν καὶ μᾶλλον ἐνδυναστευών ἐν τῷ σώματι » (20). In Airs Waters Places the same language is applied in a slightly paradoxical manner to environmental factors when it is asserted that growth and gentleness are most favoured in an environment « ὁκόταν μηδὲν ᾖ ἐπικρατέον βιαίως ἀλλὰ παντὸς ἰσομοιρίη δυναστεύῃ » (12). For these opponents of elemental autocracy in the body, the remedy lies in appropriate mixture : we have already noted this in On the Nature of Man, which also speaks of the contribution made by the various elements in conception (III, 2), and the same kind of assumptions are laid out as a given at the beginning of Regimen (ch. 2). I have already suggested that Alcmaeon’s use of the term isonomiè does not imply absolute equality, and that argument is reinforced by the observation in On Ancient Medicine (XX, 6) that bodily constitutions vary, and with them the impact of different imbalances among the humours. Again, the viewpoint is constitutionalist, but not specifically democratic.

10It would seem that some of the Presocratic philosophers applied the same kind of ideas of blending and balance to human psychology : Theophrastus (De sensibus, 58 = DK68 A135) reports that Democritus said that reason came about « συμμέτρως ἐχούσης τῆς ψυχῆς κατὰ τὴν κρῆσιν », and there is perhaps a link to the conception of soul as aJvrmonia ascribed to Philolaus (A23 = Aristotle, De Anima, 407b27f) and other Pythagoreans15. Of course, Democritus was reportedly the first person to describe man as a « μικρὸς κόσμος » (B34) ; he also referred to the body as a « σκηνή »or « tabernacle » (B37) and drew pictures of the mind and the senses at odds (B125) and of the body taking the soul to court (B159).

11The doctrine of κρᾶσις as a desirable state is also reflected in the political discourse of the late fifth-century through certain instances of medical imagery. A fragment of Euripides, from the Aeolus (fr. 21), which speaks of « τις σύγκρασις » of rich and poor, suggests that the basic idea was common currency in contemporary intellectual circles. More striking is the passage in Thucydides’ Sicilian debate where Alcibiades is made to argue that « ὁμοῦ δὲ τό τε φαῦλον καὶ τὸ μέσον καὶ πάνυ τὸ ἀκριβὲς […] ξυγκραθέν » is the strongest combination in the city (Thucydides, VI, 18, 6)16. In context, the image seems to be deployed by Alcibiades as a riposte to Nicias’ call to the presiding magistrate to « act as ἰατρὸς to the city when she has made a bad decision » by re-opening an issue already settled by vote, and J. Jouanna17 has argued persuasively that the debate also draws on another contemporary medical controversy, that concerning the appropriate character of change or alteration in treatment. Thucydides was evidently well-versed in contemporary medical thought, so it is no surprise that he uses the κρᾶσις image editorially in his assessment of the government of the 5 000 when he observes that μετρία γὰρ ἣ τε ἐς τοὺς ὀλίγους καὶ πολλοὺς ξύγκρασις ἐγένετο (VIII, 97, 2).

12To return to the political body : failures in the body’s internal harmony are not always a matter of imbalance : sometimes Hippocratic writers conceive of illness as being caused by the separation of an element which, as it were, falls out of solution18. Such isolation at the very least marks a breakdown in the body as a society made up of co-operating components, and the separated element could be seen as anti-social – not πολιτικόν, in Aristotelian terms. That would not automatically make it autocratic, but it is easy to see how such « standing aside » could be represented as μοναρχίη according to Alcmaeon’s model. Like him, the Hippocratic proponents of κρῆσις take a constitutionalist view of bodily organisation and health, and so for them δυναστρία, unconstitutional autocracy, is the least desirable state (in both senses).

13Nevertheless, this is not to say that all medical writers shared this view of bodily organisation – indeed, it could hardly have been so, given the competitive and polemical atmosphere of the discipline. Some thinkers based their ideas on the predominance of a single element, like the author of Breaths, for whom the cosmos is dominated by ἀήρ, and who therefore naturally stands on the other side of the political controversy. Accordingly, he extols air as μέγιστος ἐν τοῖσι πᾶσι τῶν παντῶν δυνάστης (Flat, 3) and speaks of it as δυναστεῦων καὶ ἐν τοῖσι σώμασι τῶν ζῷων (15). Indeed, even a writer who in broad terms is a constitutionalist can have recourse to these kinds of ideas, although the language is subtly different when the author of Regimen refers to τὸ θερμότατον καὶ ἰσχυρότατον πῦρ, ὃπερ πάντων κρατει, διέπον ἅπαντα κατὰ φύσιν […] τοῦτο πάντα διὰ παντὸς κυβερνᾷ (Vict. 10). The use of the verb κυβερνᾶν a term widely used by Presocratic writers, and indeed by Plato, to describe the governance of the universe19, implies that the Hippocratic writer is here, perhaps unconsciously, drawing on an earlier and more benign conception of monarchic rule and control20. Plato’s use of the same image, and particularly its application to the « guidance » of the younger gods in the Timaeus in the context of the forming of the soul, likewise suggests that both cosmological and medical streams of thought fed into his doctrine of the political organisation of the body as a monarchy.

14In fact, Plato’s model of monarchy in the body is less physiological than psychic, since it is grounded fundamentally on the right of the soul to rule the body. For him, soul is the divine element, and hence both prior and the source of reason, all of which gives it a natural claim to authority21. Occasionally, he expresses the principle in physical terms, drawing on his belief in the head as the seat of consciousness : thus in the Timaeus (44d) he describes the head as having been made master (δεσποτιῦν) of all the parts of the body, which is its servant (ὑπηρεςίαν), and he goes on to describe the front of the body as « τιμιώτερον καὶ ἀρχικώτερον » than the rear (45a) because it is the location of perception. In the same way, in the Laws (942e) he terms the head « ἀρχικώτατον » because it is the seat of the senses22.

15Aristotle likewise develops his own conception of the rule of consciousness in an intriguing way in de Motu Animalium : in general, the ψυχή is said to be located in an ἀρχή, which is apparently identified with the heart, in line with the physiological doctrine referred to earlier (e.g. 701b25, 29, 702a37). In one striking passage, however (703a30-b2), Aristotle remarks that the constitution of an animal is like a well-governed (or well-ordered) polis, and once τάξις has been established, it does not need a κεχωριαμένου μονάρχου to oversee it : each individual performs its own role and the organism runs smoothly by ἒθος, which in an animal equates to φύσις. It is tempting to see another implicit piece of polemic against the Timaeus, where as we have seen there is indeed a monarch in splendid isolation in the head, but perhaps the point is simply that Aristotle wants to accommodate instinct, and for all his commitment to the sole rule of reason, sees no need to involve it in every act – in micromanagement, in the modern jargon.

16By and large, however, where the rule of the soul is concerned, Aristotle follows his teacher : in De Anima, for example, he says that it is impossible for anything to be superior to and in authority over ψυχή (410b13-15). At the same time, he introduces characteristic refinements. In the early exposition of the Politics (1254b2-9), he points to the authority of soul over body and of reason over the appetites as natural and advantageous, but distinguishes between different types of rule in the two cases : that of soul is despotikè (like the authority of the head in the Timaeus), while that of reason is politikè or basilikè. This distinction between types of authority is of course programmatic for the Politics, and also sets him markedly at odds with Plato and Xenophon, for whom there was a single art of rule which took the same form in different contexts, uniting the king, the father and the shepherd23. The same distinction is at work in a passage in the Nicomachean Ethics in which Aristotle speaks of there being a kind of justice between the parts of the soul within man, specifically that between « master and servant or that of husband and wife (τὸ δεσποτικὸν ἢ τὸ οἰκονομικόν) », which he glosses later in the paragraph as « justice […] as between ruler and ruled » (Nicomachean Ethics, 1138b5-13). Here, however, we are dealing with the workings of psychology, i.e. the interior economy of the soul, rather than of the body-soul complex with which we have been concerned hitherto.

17That brings us to perhaps the best-known Platonic treatment of political authority and the soul, namely the celebrated comparison of constitutions and individual types in Books VIII and IX of the Republic. Like the passage from the Nicomachean Ethics just cited, this passage seems to me to be concerned with the inner workings of the soul rather than with the physical body, and so to be somewhat tangential to my theme, since although Plato and Aristotle do in their psychology make use, among other concepts, of ideas of power relations24, that psychology is arguably a separate topic. Indeed, not only does the body play no part in Plato’s imaginative conception of the inner workings of the timarchic, oligarchic, democratic and tyrannical man, but there is surprisingly little physical scene-setting even within these sketches : pursuit of profit is set on a throne like a Persian king within the oligarchic man (553c), and the base desires seize the acropolis within the democratic man (560b), but apart from this there is only the sense of inside and out implied by the topoi of exile, expulsion and external aid which arise from the underlying theme of stasis. In just the same way the unhealthy bile is said in the Timaeus to be « ejected from the body like an exile from a city suffering from stasis » (85e-6a) ; and again, no detail is needed beyond the conception of a border or limit25.

18It might indeed be argued that this passage is anomalous within Plato’s conception of the political relationship of soul and body. As we have seen, Plato regards the rule of soul over body as natural and just : hence in the Timaeus he sets up a normative picture in which the rational soul occupies the « acropolis », its rule protected by the spirited passions. He envisages potential problems arising from the disobedient passions, but does not seem to anticipate that the rational soul will ever be overthrown, or indeed that the basic character of the constituent parts of the human psyche will change beyond certain limits. By contrast, the scenario in Books VIII and IX of the Republic is a highly dynamic one, in which the mind or disposition which controls="true" the individual can change over time, and instead of a single rational soul which may be challenged by passions or desires, Plato seems to be working with a model of a struggle for power between different types of better or worse desires (reason being removed from the field with the Guardians).

19What has caused this divergence from the normative monarchic model ? To a great extent, it is a natural consequence of the « political analogy » established between city and individual early in the dialogue : in the real poleis of Plato’s time, there was no constitutional monarchy, only the tyranny with which he concludes. Moreover, the agenda laid out at the beginning of Book VIII is the analysis of the imperfect real-world states which fall short of the ideal rule of the Guardians ; that implies a world of competition for power and of a plurality of options, and those aspects are highlighted because Plato is also working with a dynamic model of constitutional change along a gradient of increasing moral decline – that is, the actual oscillation between democracy and oligarchy of fourth-century Greece is being adapted into a linear theoretical schema26. Even Plato’s ideal as expressed in society, however, leaves monarchy behind in favour of a multiplicity of Guardians, not to mention the Auxiliaries, so plurality is part of the argument in the Republic from a quite early stage ; he will address the possibility of ideal monarchy later, in the Statesman, but the starting-point of the sequence here is already the rule of more than one. And the fact that he is dealing with states and individuals that are morally and socially deficient makes it easier to let go of the normative model27.

20What general conclusions emerge from the foregoing discussion ? First of all, in contrast to the image of the body politic, which could – and can – appeal to a mass audience of lay people, the political body is a tool for specialists, developed and used by medical writers and philosophers. For the latter, its function is largely normative : it clarifies the necessary conditions for psychic health and, in its physical or anatomical version, explains in a teleological way how the body is organised to promote and preserve such health. In Plato’s hands, the image of the body as political community can also be used to illuminate the « systems failure » which causes the breakdown of internal health, but the function here is purely explanatory : there is no suggestion of intervention to restore health, let alone the articulation of principles on which to do so. Doubtless the answer lay in moral education, for which this image is perhaps not well-suited ; at all events, the contrast with Plato’s medical imagery, a positive charter for expert intervention, is marked28.

21By contrast, the dominant Hippocratic conception of the political body as a system of dynamiai and of a constitutional balance between them is both an explanation of health and a model for treatment where needed, and is founded on a more general communitarian model of the body which also underlies the more frequent imagery of disease and treatment in terms of warfare29. In both respects it is analogous to the medical imagery of politics which it frequently reflects : both assume a basic internal stability through appropriate krasis, and, while accepting that problems may arise through the breakdown of krasis, they also envisage the possibility of successful intervention to restore order and health by appropriate treatment. In the end, we may say that both Hippocratic images are founded on an optimistic conception and representation of the body30.