Sosenkov, F. S. On the Problems of Isocrates’ Political and Legal Views on Territorial Integrity

Abstract: The article is devoted to the political and legal views of a famous philosopher Isocrates living in Athens. The author of the article underlines that it is quite a new subject of research in studies of Ancient Greek political and legal traditions. Due to the fact that Ancient Greece consisted of polises back in those times, so far the issues of state unity have being mostly revealed in terms of spiritual but not territorial integrity (in particular, in Plato’s and Aristotle’s works). The author of the article analyzes the speech for Archidamus written by Isocrates to prove the rights of Sparta to become independent from Messenia. Based on that, the author defi nes Isocrates’ arguments for retaining territories. The majority of these arguments are quite specifi c and applicable only to the states of the ancient world. These include legends (mythology), decisions of an oracle, legality and fairness of territory seizure as a result of a war, the length of ownership of territories and the absence of objections from neighboring states. Special attention is paid to the absence of mechanisms facilitating the integration of the state and therefore military power being the main way to retain territories in the ancient world. The author concludes that the aforesaid speech had particular political tasks to solve and in that speech Isocrates was one of the fi rst to express his idea of the territorial integrity and protection of a state.

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