Chapter 5
In: Brill's Companion to the Legacy of Greek Political Thought
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Abstract
Ancient Greek culture and political ideas were pervasively present in early modern English education and elite culture, but in highly diffuse and mediated forms which make it difficult to trace distinctively Greek strands in early modern thought. Partly for this reason, the place of Greek thought in the English republican tradition in the seventeenth century remains contested. The chapter explores two constrasting case-studies in the republican thought of the English Revolution, looking at John Milton and James Harrington. Both authors argued for the importance of learning from the ancients, and referred to Greek political thought and constitutional ideas, but their concerns were often different. Milton’s often Aristotelian republican thought had an ethical emphasis which led both to an emphasis on individual and collective moral and political choice, and to a pervasive belief that the wise and virtuous should rule those who were less so. By contrast, Harrington drew on ancient constitutions, particularly Sparta, and developed a theory about the balance of property underpinning political power, concluding that only a democracy could be a perfect commonwealth. Both were ultimately committed to a politics of virtue resting on Greek thought; but the influence of Greek thought in this period was always complex.