Like a worm I' the bud? A heterology of classical Greek slavery

Abstract

‘Classical’ Greece? The very term exudes stability, permanence, confidence, authority, excellence, perfection (in a teleological sense), even possibly glory – as in ‘The Glory that was Greece’. Consider, for instance, the following paean of eulogy pronounced in 1914: ‘The Greeks were explorers in every field of knowledge and art, where they showed in the highest degree the desire for truth and the love of the beautiful’. All of them, always? In any case, to quote that well-known philosopher Pontius Pilate (John 18. 37–8), what is Truth, and is not Beauty in the eye of the beholder?</jats:p