As vicars, traditional or trendy, assert that God is or is not in favour of something, one is reminded that there were cultures for whom divinely inspired scriptures did not exist. Poor old Greeks and Romans! How on earth did they get by?
The 5th C bc thinker Protagoras argued that men must by definition possess a sense of standards, otherwise they could not live in communities at all. In the absence of holy books, tradition played the main role in determining what those standards were, which is why attacks on tradition from radical thinkers like Socrates and Diogenes generated such mistrust. Fables like Aesop’s — which Quintilian, the Roman professor of education, said particularly appealed to ‘country boors and the uneducated’ — popular stories and sayings all reinforced the cultural message.
Taken together, they depicted a society dominated by inequality, hostility and fear, in which hierarchy came naturally, justice was all about maintaining the social order, and harmony was a utopian dream.
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