Town country and demes

Use in the book

Hipparchus’ programme is narrated in two geographical stages. Citizens around the town have already been educated and admire his wisdom. He next plans to educate those in the country. The distinction is between locations within the citizen community, not between Athenians and foreigners, or between citizens and non-citizens. What remains unequal is access to the cultural instruction concentrated near Hipparchus.

The Herms mediate that inequality without moving the whole educational enterprise into the countryside. They are set along roads halfway between the urban centre and individual demes. Travellers can read a compact saying, taste the ruler’s wisdom and then come in for further education. The movement is therefore reciprocal but asymmetrical: texts travel outward, while fuller teaching is expected to draw people inward. This is Socrates’ explanation of the project, not a surviving administrative plan.

The midpoint formula matters because it addresses people as travellers between places. A monument can tell them where they are while also telling them how to live. Its civic geography makes ethical instruction part of everyday movement, and its repeated attribution to Hipparchus makes the benefactor’s name travel with it. The text does not specify precise mileage or claim that every route was straight or equally long.

There is a chronological caution in the word “deme.” Local named communities existed before their later formal position in the democratic tribal system. Using the word in a story about Hipparchus need not itself be an anachronism; treating every occurrence as a reference to the complete Cleisthenic organisation would be. The independently preserved Kephale Herm supports the town–locality relation more directly than it supports a full institutional reconstruction.

Places to read

1. 228cοἱ περὶ τὸ ἄστυ τῶν πολιτῶν — The first recipients are the citizens around the town.
2. 228dτοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς — The phrase introduces the people living in the countryside.
3. 228dτοῦ ἄστεος καὶ τῶν δήμων ἑκάστων — The midpoint is defined relative to the urban centre and each deme.
4. 228eφοιτῷεν ἐκ τῶν ἀγρῶν — The intended result is repeated movement in from the country.

Translation in this edition

The edition preserves ἄστεος, while its apparatus records Schanz’s proposal ἄστεως here and at 229a. That is a reported editorial alternative in the form of the noun, not a different geographical theory. “Town,” “country,” and “demes” keep the three spatial terms distinct.