Best of us all the best he be leic, go go, the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with

the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the

LMU in Munich. Online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, Purple Prose, Byzantine political philosophy.

Maybe you've seen this old sketch from the American TV show Saturday Night Live

in which customers to a diner are rudely made to understand that the only thing they can order is a cheeseburger.

Given that the skit is set in a Greek diner, I've always assumed it was meant as a satire of political life in the Byzantine Empire.

There the menu of options was similarly limited to one choice, absolute rule by a single man or

occasionally woman.

For this reason, scholars have made rather discouraging remarks along the following lines.

Byzantium did not produce any original political theory, nor did it trouble itself to discuss rival theories and the nature of the empire.

And perhaps the most striking feature of middle Byzantine political culture is the posity of political theory, the dearth of treatises on government and of philosophical discussions

about the ideal constitution and the function of the state.

Untrameled imperial power was their cheeseburger, and it never occurred to them to order anything else.

Actually, though, the Byzantine intellectuals were more like customers who just happened to prefer cheeseburgers. They were well aware of other ways of structuring society.

A standard class assignment for students of rhetoric was to write an essay about the relative merits of the three classically recognized constitutions, namely monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

monarchy was the preferred option, on the grounds that a single authority is needed to ensure a stable and harmonious state.

And another kind of authority encouraged this way of thinking, the intellectual authority

of Plato, whose republic was an influential text among the Byzantine's.

They were persuaded by his vision of a completely just society ruled by philosopher Kings and

Queens, and also by his critique of the other constitutions as defective.

This ideology of the single wise virtuous ruler

...