Katarina Nebelin

University of Rostock

The general impact of “Eastern” (e.g. Babylonian, Egyptian and Levantine) cosmological ideas and astronomical methods on the emergence of early Greek philosophy and science is still debated. In this context, it is often stated that the Greeks were inspired by “foreign” ideas that helped them to free their minds from the determinations of their own culture of wisdom and knowledge.1See, for example, West 2001.However, it is extremely hard to determine how this intellectual exchange worked in practice. The Greeks themselves seem to have assumed that they were highly indebted to older, more advanced Eastern cultures, as numerous stories about the fruitful encounters between early thinkers and typical places and agents of “oriental wisdom” illustrate.2Haider 2004, 468–470; Raaflaub 2009, 39–41; Stephens 2013. On the reliability of these stories, see also Palter 1996.Most of these stories are connected to Ionia, where journeys to Phoenicia and Egypt began and where intercultural contacts must have been a daily experience: in agreement with Christoph Ulf, we may describe Ionia as a zone of intense, intimate contact between various different cultures.3Ulf 2009, 95–115; in the case of Miletus, he even speaks of “cultural hybridity” (115).The fact that all the earliest Greek natural philosophers and investigators, from Thales to Heraclitus, were Ionian perfectly fits into this picture of Ionia as a stimulating meeting place and a centre of trade and exchange of ideas.

Although we have some ancient accounts of specific foreign influences on Presocratic thought, they were normally written down long after the lifetimes of the thinkers mentioned, and the stories became more detailed and elaborate the later they were written. The Phoenician origins of Thales’ family, for example, were first postulated by Herodotus, and stories about his measurement of the pyramids and his speculations on the flooding of the Nile must have circulated as early as the sixth and fifth centuries.4Hdt. 1.170.3; see also Diog. Laert. 1.22; FGrHist II B 491–492 F 17.But it was not until hundreds of years later that the direct influence of Egyptian wisdom on Thales’ thinking was postulated.5The earliest example is Flavius Josephus’ polemic Contra Apionem (1.2), first century AD.

In the meantime, the intellectual landscape of ancient Greece had changed radically. First and foremost, the idea that philosophy was “invented” at a precise date, by an identifiable “founding father,” was inconceivable before philosophy had become an autonomous discipline or field of thought.6Nebelin 2014.This, however, did not happen until the early fourth century BC. Michel Foucault has linked the institutionalisation of philosophy as a discipline to the so-called “Great Platonic Division” (grand partage platonicien), by which Plato excluded the sophists and their paradoxes from the “true discourse” that is solely dedicated to the search for truth.7Foucault 1971, 19; see also Nebelin 2016, 311–314.Moreover, the entire discussion about the cultural origins of the ancient “founders” of philosophical thinking was rooted in an antagonistic polarisation between “Western,” i.e. Greek, and “Eastern” cultures and forms of thinking.8For this ancient debate, see Diog. Laert. 1.1: Diogenes himself denies that philosophy originated outside Greece.This dualistic concept did not emerge until the middle of the fifth century; it was stimulated by the Persian Wars and by Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire.9On the development of the concept of Greek identity, see Hall 2009 (esp. 614–617); Miller and H?lscher 2013, 393, and Patzek 2014, 388 point out that this concept emerged late and cannot be postulated for the Archaic period; see also Yue 2006.Any attempt to explain the early history of philosophy has to move beyond such binaries rather than perpetuate them.10On this subject, see the brief overview in Raaflaub 2009, 37–39.

In analysing the influences of Eastern cultures on the early Ionian thinkers, it is therefore unhelpful to look at sources from the Hellenistic or Imperial period. These sources were written much later, under different socio-cultural conditions. It is more promising to concentrate on the fragments of the early Ionian thinkers themselves and try to derive from them the socio-political preconditions of the rise of philosophical thinking. In order to explore this complex process, it is first necessary to focus on its practical aspects. I therefore will first locate the Ionian thinkers within a Mediterranean intellectual koine and determine to what extent they may have borrowed ideas and concepts from foreign thinkers. Second, I will specify the social actors and the social spaces involved in this process. Lastly, I will outline how interaction with foreign cultures fostered and stimulated an “Ionian self-enlightenment.”

1. Ionian thinkers as part of a Mediterranean intellectual koine

It is striking that the surviving fragments of the early philosophers do not make one single reference to a specific foreign thinker, school of thought or set of ideas. Did Greek philosophy thus emerge autochthonously? Or did Ionian thinkers willingly minimise all foreign influences on their thinking? Neither answer is very satisfying. In order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the whole problem of intellectual exchange, I will introduce three considerations as a way of sketching the specific setting of the early Greek intellectual landscape and the socio-cultural setting of Archaic Ionia. This will help to place the early philosophers in a Mediterranean intellectual koine:11Seybold and Ungern-Sternberg 1993, 233–236 postulate an “Eastern Mediterranean koine,” including notably Phoenicia, ancient Israel and Greece; see also Raaflaub 2014, 430. More skeptical is Ulf 2009.

1. Our ancient sources never give us the names of the Eastern teachers of specific philosophers. Instead, we are told that they had been taught by “priests,” “Chaldaeans” or “scribes.”12See, for example, DK 11 A 1 (Thales); DK 11 A 11 (Thales, Pythagoras); DK 14.4 (Pythagoras); Clemens Strom. 1.14.62.1–63.2; 1.15.66.2 = W?hrle Fr. Th. 202; 204 (Thales); Hippol. Haer. 9.17.2–3 = W?hrle Fr. Th. 214 (Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Plato); Euseb. PE 10.7.10 = W?hrle Fr. Th. 263 (Thales); Diog. Laert. 8.2 (Pythagoras).These standardised references to such “persons of authority” suggest that the Greeks did not possess an intimate knowledge of Eastern wisdom cultures. They tended to regard them as homogeneous and cohesive systems of belief.

2. In their fragments, the early philosophers themselves never mention a foreign thinker. This seems to indicate that references to foreign wisdom simply would not have conferred any special social distinction on the writer. In Archaic Greece, the status of wisdom itself was highly contested. What could “foreign” wisdom mean to a society where even Greek wisdom had neither an institutional basis nor a well-defined function? There was no clear intellectual role, nothing comparable to the undisputed, widely recognised and institutionalised social position of priesthoods and scribal schools in Assyrian, Babylonian or Egyptian society.

3. While the early Ionian philosophers do not mention foreign thinkers at all, they rarely refer to other Greek thinkers, and if they do, they generally criticise and abuse them.13See DK 21 B 11 and B 12 (criticism of Homer, Hesiod and other poets); DK 22 B 40 (criticism of Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus); B 42; 56 (criticism of Homer); B 57 (criticism of Hesiod) and B 129 (criticism of Pythagoras).This indicates an extreme competitiveness among them that often encouraged harsh verdicts on the intellectual inadequacy or even treachery of competing thinkers.14The dominant role of an agonistic intellectual culture involving “public competitions between wise men, and open acknowledgement of uncertainty and error by wise men” is often emphasised as a unique feature of the Greek culture of wisdom, for example by Palter 1996, 254, with reference to the works of G. E. R. Lloyd (see, for example, Lloyd 1996, 20–46, 129–130).Of course, abuse and refutation did not necessarily entail naming of one’s rival.15In DK 21 B 7, Xenophanes ridicules Pythagoras’ theory of metempsychosis without mentioning him by name. In Hdt. 2.20.1, Herodotus explicitly refuses to name the thinkers of ideas and concepts he himself rejects.In sum, these observations show us that although many later ancient commentators had little doubt about the “Eastern” influences on early Ionian philosophy in general, this feeling was not based on secure, detailed knowledge of the actual agents of these intellectual exchanges. This was the result of the early philosophers’ lack of interest in defining their own positions vis-à-vis other thinkers, whether teachers or rivals, whether Greeks or non-Greeks. In order to contextualise these observations, I will take a closer look at the social spaces in which intellectual exchange between Greeks and non-Greeks might have taken place in Archaic Ionia.

2. Social spaces and agents of intellectual exchange

The socio-cultural conditions of Ionia separated it from its non-Greek environment and also partly from the rest of Greece. At the same time, these conditions did not necessarily isolate Ionia; instead, they offered Ionian Greeks a wide range of possible intercultural contact zones:

– Religious factors: In this regard, Ionia did not differ very much from the rest of Greece. Generally, there were no officials – like priests or seers – who possessed superior religious authority or could claim exclusive wisdom about the gods. One could therefore become acquainted with the religious beliefs and customs of non-Greeks on a voluntary basis, encouraged primarily by one’s own curiosity and interest.

– Economic factors: Trade and commerce presented various possibilities for informal, multilateral contact between Ionians and other Ionians, Ionians and other Greeks and Ionians and non-Greeks.16Burkert 1992, 9–25; West 1997, 583–630; Whitmarsh 2013, 10; Kistler 2014; on Miletus’ trading connections in particular, see Gorman 2001, 47–85.Due to its location on the threshold of the Greek and “Eastern” worlds, Ionia was in a privileged position with regard to various forms of exchange of material and immaterial goods.

– Political factors: in this area, the differences between Ionia and the rest of Greece are the most evident. The Ionian poleis were not in a political vacuum, but had to cope and coexist with much larger and militarily stronger empires. They faced political pressure, competition with and even dominance by non-Greeks.17See, for example, West 1997, 611–616; Fantalkin 2014, 35–45.Beginning in the middle of the sixth century BC, Ionia came into close contact with and even became a part of the Lydian and Persian empires. The mainland, however, experienced practically no external pressure before the Persian campaign against on Attica and Euboea in 490 BC and the more ambitious invasion of mainland Greece in 480 BC. As a result, the Persian threat to Greek autonomy was interwoven with the memory of their glorious victory over a powerful enemy. The Ionian experience of Persia and other Eastern empires was quite different. For them, the fight for political freedom and independence was only a single aspect of a complex relationship between Ionia and the rest of the world. Prior to the Ionian revolt (in the late sixth century BC) in which the antagonistic distinction between “the Greeks” and “the barbaroi” seems to have been established,18Yue 2006, esp. 48, 71, 75–77.there had been a wide range of direct and indirect contacts between Ionian Greeks and various foreign cultures, such as the Persians, Babylonians, Lydians, Phoenicians, Egyptians and others.19On the general differences between Ionian and mainland Greek warfare, see Greaves 2010, 145–170.

Given these socio-political preconditions and the specific setting of the Archaic intellectual landscape, some forms of contact and exchange appear more plausible than others.

It seems plausible that in most societies practical wisdom is publicly present and thus more accessible than theoretical thinking.20M. Asper in Maul and Asper 2013, 189 states that Greek practical wisdom did not differ significantly from its Babylonian and Egyptian counterparts.The ancient sources credit the earliest Ionian thinkers (Thales, Anaximander) and the most eccentric of them all (Pythagoras) in particular a number of practical inventions and achievements. For example, Thales is said to have measured the pyramids, “predicted” a solar eclipse and applied mathematical methods to seafaring,21Diog. Laert. 1.23; 1.27; Hdt. 1.74.9; 1.75.3–6; DK 11 A 20; B 1; Thales Fr. 7 B Gemelli Marciano; KRS 76.and Anaximander is said to have constructed a gnomon and a world map.22DK 12 A 6; Diog. Laert. 2.1–2.

These examples are in accordance with the Greek tendency to personalise cultural progress by ascribing complex achievements to outstanding individual promoters of civilisation.23Raaflaub 2009, 39; on early thinkers as “cultural heroes,” see also Cherniss 1951, 323.While individually these stories seem highly contestable in detail, they collectively convey a convincing picture: to travelling Ionians, it must have been easier to adopt certain methods and practices than to gain access to more restricted and distinctive bodies of knowledge that were controlled by priesthoods or similar specialists. It is unlikely that foreigners were initiated into forms of sacral and secret knowledge that were integral parts of a civil service career as scribe and/or priest and required years of study.24Herodotus claims to have been informed by Egyptian priestly and scribal elites (Hdt. 1.1.1; 1.181.5–183.1; 2.13.1; 2.44; 3.55.1; 3.142–144); on this claim, see Stephens 2013, 91–93 and especially Moyer 2011, 42–83. For the significance of Mesopotamian scribal school tradition in the ancient Near East, see Haas 1993, 135–136; Skafte Jensen 2005, 50–51; Burkert 2008, 58. Brosius 2014 assumes that the Greeks were directly influenced by these schools.

According to Stefan Maul, “theorising” and formulating abstract theorems would have gone against the Mesopotamian conviction that each learner had to prove himself worthy of god-given wisdom by acquiring it himself25S. Maul in Maul and Asper 2013, 167–169.– a principle that would have prevented the fast transfer of knowledge to “outsiders;” interestingly, this attitude also appears in a very similar form in the writings of Presocratics like Heraclitus.26DK 22 B 1; B 2; B 17; B 40; B 72; B 101; B 123.Another option is that the intercultural transfer of ideas was based primarily on written books, whether translated into Greek or not – but as Martin West states, this is quite unlikely.27West 1997, 592–593; also Burkert 2008, 55–56. A different view is expressed by Brosius 2014.In general, it is not easy to transfer a body of knowledge that is embedded in a peculiar cultural setting and bound to peculiar intellectual roles into a totally different cultural environment, a point also stressed by Kurt Raaflaub.28Raaflaub 2009, 39: “The more complex the foreign ‘object’, the more complex the process of integrating it into the receiving culture.” Similarly, ibid., XXI; 2014, 425–429. On the differences between Eastern and Greek intellectual culture, see Maul and Asper 2013, 164–175.

Practical wisdom, on the contrary, is easier to acquire and more open to outsiders. Perhaps it was their practical skills and fame as (practically) “wise men” that inspired king Croesus of Lydia to open the doors of his court to Thales and Solon.29According to Herodotus, Solon gave wise but unwelcomed ethical advice to Croesus (Hdt. 1.30–33), while Thales is said to have diverted the river Halys (Hdt. 1.75.3–6); notably, Herodotus qualifies this story as a Greek legend in which he himself does not believe in.Another possibility is that they were valued not as experts, but as members of a Mediterranean-wide and remarkably “orientalised” elite that were welcomed as guest-friends at foreign courts and by other local elite members. Some modern scholars have even gone so far as to posit the existence of a distinct Mediterranean koine of elites, directly connected through travelling members,30Mediterranean koine: Raaflaub 2014, 428–430; see also above, n. 10.among them merchants, traders and mercenaries – and perhaps also technically skilled experts.31Matth?us 1993 identifies merchants and artists of Greek, Phoenician and Syrian origin, besides local elites, as the main carriers of Eastern influences on Greek material culture. On the prominence of Greek merchants and mercenaries in Egyptian sources, see H?lbl 2007, 447–449; for Greek mercenaries in Babylonia: Erler 2011, 226–227; on Ionian mercenaries in general: Greaves 2010, 166–168; on traders in general: Patzek 2004, 431; on Eastern migrant workers in Greece: West 1997, 621–624; on Naukratis as a contact zone between Greeks and Egyptians: Fantalkin 2014. On “the role of traders and merchants as border crossers and as cross-cultural brokers,” see, for example, Ruffing 2014, 144, who discusses examples for cultural contacts of the Roman Empire with Eastern cultures.

The social contexts in which these men circulated were transcultural elite networks held together by gift exchange. The symposion, a key institution of elite culture all around the Mediterranean, was an important social space of such interelite exchange.32Kistler 2014, 187: “Dabei begründete das Gastmahl den sozialen Raum, über den die fremdethnischen und fremdkulturellen Kontaktsituationen in ihrem Konfliktpotential entsch?rft werden konnten.” Xenophanes’ poem describing an ideal symposion (DK 21 B 1) demonstrates the significance of this social practice for elite culture in which the early Ionian philosophers participated. On this topic, see Nebelin 2016, 49–80.Archaeological research has demonstrated that material goods like drinking and sacrificial vessels and tripods were distributed by extensive networks of travelling trading and gift-giving elites.33According to Murray 2009, 521, “[i]n ecconomic terms, the symposion was the foundation of the Mediterranean-wide trade in luxury goods that developed from the eighth century onwards.” Kistler 2014 explores in detail the role of Mediterranean elites in the diffusion of material goods and (drinking) customs via guest-friendship networks and gift exchange; on the cultural context of the so-called “orientalizing revolution” in late Archaic Greece that led to the adoption of a wide range of Eastern drinking, sacrificing and clothing customs in general, see Burkert 1992 and Matth?us 1993.Their exchange consisted not only of material objects, but also of immaterial practices and techniques, for example the aromatising of wine by adding herbs or the practice of lying on klinai while drinking34Kistler 2014, 19–20 (herbs), 195 (lying).– a custom that seems to have spread from East to West. It is first attested in the second half of the eighth century BC in ancient Israel and about a century later in mainland Greece.35Fehr 1971, 128–130 reconstructs nomads in Iran as “inventors” of couched feasting; from there, the custom spread to Assyria and thence to Lydia and Ionia – a complex chain of transfer that cannot be explained by models of diffusion (cultural transfer from “more” to “l(fā)ess developed” cultures). According to Baughan 2011, 22, the earliest archaeological and written evidence seem to indicate a Cypro-Phoenician origin of the symposion. See also Murray 1983, 198; 1990, 6. Matth?us 1993, 177–178 refers to Amos 6.3–7 (approx. late eight century BC) as the earliest source for distinctive ritualised elite feasting and drinking manners. What the biblical prophet harshly criticises is perfectly consistent with what is described as central features of the symposion in later Greek sources (see part 3).

The ancient Greeks themselves have identified some aspects of sympotic feasting with “oriental,” especially Lydian customs.36On the connection of reclining banquets, sympotic luxury and habrosyne in general with Lydia, see Baughan 2011, 31, 41–44. See, for example, Xenophanes’ criticism of “Lydian” luxury in contemporary elite culture in DK 21 B 3.This connection of the symposion to Eastern cultures was particularly strong in Ionia: Elizabeth P. Baughan has suggested that “the image of the reclining banqueter was so much more visible in the monumental arts of Ionia than elsewhere in archaic Greece” because of its “proximity to Lydia and other Anatolian cultures where elite status was often expressed in term of the reclining banquet; and [because of Ionia’s; KN] connections with Cyprus, where the Phoenician tradition of reclining banquet was strong.”37Baughan 2011, 43.It is therefore not unthinkable that immaterial, intellectual goods such as ideas, myths and tales could have been spread in the same way and by the same routes as the social practice of reclined banqueting.38For the importance of symbolic exchange in general, see Renfrew 1986, 8.

3. Consequences: Self-enlightenment and intellectual self-alienation

According to Xenophanes, the exchange on worthy, dignified issues should be part of an ideal symposion.39DK 21 B 1.But how might a “sympotic” exchange of ideas and concepts have worked in practice and have stimulated the Presocratic Ionian thinkers? In general, the Greek symposion was a formalised social event with specific rituals and practices, for example feasting in a specialised room, reclining on klinai, eating and drinking separately, choosing a symposiarch and excluding respectable women.40Murray 1983, 197; 2009, 512–513, 518–519.There were many different forms of entertainment: playing instruments and taking turns singing, various performances by professional musicians, dancers and actors, as well as lyric and epic recitations.41Murray 1990, 9; 2009, 509–512, 515–518. See also Sch?fer 1997, 16–20, 25–29 (rhetorical agones and poetry at symposia).The equality of all participants was an important feature; there were only limited means to express differences of rank between them.42According to Murray 2009, 514, the (original?) “Assyrian and near eastern motif of the king” feasting “in solitary glory” was adapted by feasting elite groups, as Amos 6.3–7 (see above) and Greek sources indicate. See also Dentzer 1982, 21–69; Matth?us 1993, 177–179; Sch?fer 1997, 25; Lill 2007, 178–179.43 This was the case in Persia, see Miller and H?lscher 2013, 383–385; or in Republican Rome: Stein-H?lkeskamp 2005, 101–111.But the symposion seems to have been a social ritual flexible enough to accommodate local cultures. For example, social hierarchies could be reflected by the arrangement of the participants.43It was precisely such adaptations that show the intercultural potential of the symposion. With respect to the Western Mediterranean and especially Italy, Irad Malkin even evokes a shared “sympotic lifestyle” that connected Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans and other Italian groups.44Malkin 2002; see also Ulf 2009, 523.Their encounter took place on a comparably equal level, as the “l(fā)ocal elites could neither dictate to nor ignore one another.”45Malkin 2002, 153.According to Malkin, this was not the case in the empires and kingdoms of the East,46Ibid., 154.because in this political setting, local rulers and kings used the social rituals of sympotic feasting and gift-giving to integrate the elites and create court-like systems of allegiance. However, Anne Lill has argued that although the “Greek symposium in the circle of friends differed from the banquets of the Oriental kings in the number” of participants and in their hierarchical arrangement, in other respects the two forms of banquet did not differ that much.47Lill 2007, 183. See also Baughan 2011 on the – perhaps too stereotypical – distinction between “communal banquet” or symposion on the one hand and “monoposiast[ic]” feasting that carries “eastern(and royal) connotations.”

It seems at least plausible that in the specific atmosphere of the symposion, intellectual exchange between foreigners and Greeks would have been rather free and tolerant. One should therefore not think of a kind of “classroom situation” in which participants literally gave lectures on complex theories and concepts. Such a schoolmasterly behaviour would not have fit the specific social setting of this event. Sympotic performances of epic poetry and myths and discussion of a wide range of topics must have taken place on a more informal and egalitarian basis. Although it is still debated whether there was an oral tradition of Mesopotamian epic, most commentators today assume that myths were not passed on in scribal schools alone, but may also have been part of performances of court singers and at public feasts.48Raaflaub 2014, 435–436. See also the careful hypotheses on the audiences of “court singers” at Eastern courts in West 1997, 602. Skafte Jensen 2005, 48 assumes that audiences of oral epic recitations in the East were “seldom narrowly restricted.” See also the example of Babylonian myths and epics of creation that were performed to a wide audience at a public feast (the so-called Akītufestival) examined by Gabrieli 2017, 56, 65, esp. 72–73.The playful atmosphere of the symposion encouraged allegorical interpretations and philosophical or even vulgar adaptations,49A wide range of examples of such “playful adoptions” is given by West 1971; 1997; Burkert 1992, 88–127; Erler 2011, 229–231; see also Barnabé 2004 (Hittite influences on Homeric Hymns and Hesiod). Haubold 2014, 327–339 states that “oriental elements” were an inseparable part of the poetic tradition of the Homeric epics.as the extemporaneous speeches on the god Eros given by the participants in Plato’s Symposium demonstrate. This might explain how Anaximander came to know Babylonian theories on the order of celestial bodies that he seems to have adopted,50Burkert 1963; 2008, 71.or how Thales learned about common Egyptian, Phoenician and Babylonian cosmic ideas that seem to have influenced his “water cosmogony.”51Id. 1992, 92, based on DK 11 A 12 (Aristotle’s famous claim that Thales regarded water as the principal substance of all material objects).Presumably the early philosophers did not distinguish between “foreign” and Greek myths. They used both fairly freely as inspiration for their cosmic explanations that functioned without reference to the deeds of anthropomorphic gods.

However, the symposion cannot have been the only social space of Greek philosophy. Speeches and discussions alone would not have led to the development of elaborate theories about a variety of cosmic and earthly phenomena. With the possible exceptions of Thales and Pythagoras, all of the early Presocratic thinkers wrote their thoughts down, many of them in prose.52Of course the fact that they were able to write down their theories at all was a result of the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet; even this important step would not have been possible without deep and fruitful contacts between Greeks and “the East.”In doing so, they decontextualised the written word from a specific performance situation – which enabled the early thinkers to criticise and abuse even intellectual rivals who were not present.53Wirbelauer 2004, 191–192, 198–202 speaks of the “Dissoziierung” (dissociation) in space and time that was fostered by writing. On the entire complex, see also Nebelin 2016, 61–62, 77–80.Even in this regard, they might have been influenced by the much older cultures of writing in the East.

It was not until the rise of the early forms of propositional logic championed by the sophists in the fifth and early fourth centuries BC that Plato established philosophy as a discipline focused on the ideal of an abstract and nonpersonal truth.54Foucault 1971. Assmann 1992, 280–292 has conceptualized this form of intertextuality (texts competing directly with other texts) as hypolepsis. See also Nebelin 2016, 38–43.Previously, there was simply no generally accepted way to test theories or propositions and therefore no common ground for intellectual debate between Greek thinkers. The absence of authorities and institutionalised intellectual roles forced the early Greek philosophers to focus on themselves and their self-claimed intellectual brilliance, thus ascribing a central role to their individual sophia. Each thinker claimed that he was the only one in possession of superior wisdom, having attained it all by himself: “I enquired into myself,” as Heraclitus said.55DK 22 B 101. This even applies to Parmenides, who describes himself as the disciple of a wise goddess in his poem, but at the same emphasizes that he received this instruction only because he was already superior to other men in (human) wisdom (DK 28 B 1,9). Lloyd 1987, 56–70 discusses the pressure on Greek authors to “write themselves into their texts” and prove their originality, a pressure that according to him was not felt in the same way by Babylonian and Egyptian authors. Burkert 2008, 67 argues, however, that “l(fā)ogos optimism” was typical of non-Greek, “oriental” wisdomliterature, too.As a result, to be part of the Greek intellectual community, one had to reject established authorities, above all Homer and Hesiod, in addition to traditionally held beliefs.56Nebelin 2016, 43–47, 104–110. Lamberton 2005, 166 states that Homer and Hesiod were seen as representatives of the “traditional worldview” and as such attacked by other thinkers.

The combination of the sympotic practice of setting ideas in new, different contexts, the early and – given the importance of direct, often agonistic forms of interaction in archaic Greece – surprising predominance of writing and ruthless intellectual rivalry seems to have promoted the notion that one had to rely on oneself. It was impossible to adopt foreign ideas, traditional beliefs or established theories without expending effort – they always had to be acquired actively.57Barnabé 2004; see also Ulf 2009, 509.Of course, this applies to every idea, but especially to those ideas that were originally developed and passed on in specialised, institutionalised social settings such as scribal schools that had no parallel in the receiving culture.

The process of the active intellectual acquisition of knowledge and techniques can be called “self-enlightenment.” It combined introspection with a broad, open-minded and critical outlook. Ionian thinkers were thus stimulated to take a closer look at different ways of living, of thinking and of explaining the world and its order. They tended to take an outsider’s perspective not only towards their own culture, but also towards human civilisation in general. Xenophanes, for example, suggested that human conceptions of the gods are modelled on their own appearance. He illustrates this argument by citing the anthropomorphic gods of the foreign, exotic people of Ethiopia and Thrace,58DK 21 B 16: “Aethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair” (trans. Freeman). See also Heraclitus’ criticism of Greek religious rituals in DK 22 B 5 and B 15.but it also holds true for the Greek gods as well. The point is underpinned by a thought experiment: Xenophanes claims that animals like oxen, horses and lions would do the same if they were able to form images of their own gods.59DK 21 B 15: “But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies (of their gods) in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses” (trans. Freeman).In this way, Xenophanes questions the religious attitudes of his own culture by demonstrating the absurdity of an anthropomorphic conception of the gods in general.60Gemelli Marciano 2007, 408 states that Xenophanes’ and also Heraclitus’ criticism of the Greek and especially the Greek poets’ conceptions of the gods may have been stimulated by Persian religious conceptions, especially those concerning Ahuramazda. In this case, the self-alienation of the Presocratics would have been directly influenced by their exposure to differing traditions of thought.

To alienate, generalise and question were typical intellectual operations of early Ionian thinkers. Their self-image as outsiders was a consequence of the weak institutionalisation of the intellectual landscape of Archaic Greece. Without uncontested theories or authority figures,61Asper in Maul and Asper 2013, 192 underlines that “die Bedingung der M?glichkeit von Wissenschaft in Griechenland“ was “Folge eines Mangels an stabiler Autorit?t […], seinerseits Folge eines Mangels an Ressourcen und des Fehlens von etablierter Institutionalisierung,” and so, ultimately, “Folge einer gewissen Provinzialit?t.”every thinker had to rely on himself. At the same time, thinkers were relatively free from direct interference from their own and other societies. Other traditions of thought might influence and inspire, but could not restrict or determine them. Ultimately, the emergence of Ionian philosophy by self-enlightenment was a product of the relatively free engagement with other conceptions about the order of cosmos and nature. This engagement was promoted by the specific geographical, political and economic setting of ancient Ionia. It was in this stimulating environment that intellectual exchange and inspiration, but not intellectual domination was fostered, and it is likely that the Mediterranean practice of reclined banqueting contributed to it.

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