52 ALAIN BRESSON (TRANSLATED By EDwARD M. HARRIS)
the same idea (“the products that are imported” “those that one must
import”); second, τούτους is a demonstrative “hanging in mid-air,” which
requires an explanation. One wonders if the two τίνων are not masculine
(referring to τούτους), denoting communities that are indispensable for
the city either for exports or for imports; but the construction is clumsy.^43Gauthier has well pointed out the difficulties in M. Dufour’s translation. There
is nothing more to add except that one must reject this translation because it
is unacceptable. As for the syntax of the sentence, it does not actually pose any
real problem as long as one accepts the clear meaning of Aristotle’s words. The
verb δέομαι has two meanings, one very close to the other: to lack something
(constructed with the accusative or the genitive of the object) and to ask for
something from someone, which is constructed either with the genitive of
the person and the accusative of the object or with the genitive of both sub-
ject and object.^44 It is clearly the second meaning with the construction using
the double genitive, which fits the context here. One should translate: ‘[And
one must know] the states from which to request an export license, and those
from whom to request an import license in order to conclude συνθῆκαι and
συμβολαί with them’.^45 The idea that a city might be concerned with foreign
trade – and remember that, according to Aristotle, it is one of the five key
subjects about which statesmen must deliberate – and even request import and
export licenses from other cities contradicts the ‘New Orthodoxy.’
There can be no doubt that there existed certain συνθῆκαι and συμβολαί
concerning to exports and imports. Gauthier’s attempt to reduce the συνθῆκαι
in question to more or less vague clauses (‘conditions of access to the port, to
markets, exemptions from taxes?’), which relate less to the ‘commerce of prod-
ucts than to the possibility for individuals to go about their business without
fear of injustice’,^46 seems in our opinion to be unacceptable, at least in the terms
of the analysis proposed by Gauthier for this passage. To start with, the possibil-
ity of exporting to - or importing products from – another city (two activities
that naturally go together because it is impossible to have the one without the
other) has as a necessary precondition the security of the merchants who come
there. There is no reason to add anything more about this topic. When dis-
cussing Aristotle’s phrase συνθῆκαι περὶ τῶν εἰσαγωγίμων (agreements about
imports) between the Etruscans and Carthaginians,^47 Gauthier believes that
such clauses come from the non-Greek world because one cannot find any
parallels in the Greek world. But if the Etruscans and Carthaginians on one
side and the Greeks on the other differed on this point, Aristotle’s argument
in this passage (treaties like συνθῆκαι, συμβολαί and γραφαὶ περὶ συμμαχίας
are not sufficient to make two partners into one city) would become quite
pointless. On the contrary, it is because the Greeks viewed the realities of
Etruscan and Carthaginian society regarding life in a community (κοινωνία)