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{{Short description|Greek concept of order and unity}}
{{About|the philosophical movement|the plant genus|Homonoia (plant)|other uses|Homonoia (disambiguation)}}
{{One source|date=August 2022}}
[[File:Mappa di Eratostene.jpg|thumb|250px|The Hellenistic world where Alexander tried to rule his new Empire through the concept of Homonoia]]
'''Homonoia''' ({{IPAc-en|h|oʊ|m|oʊ|'|n|ɔɪ|ə}} {{langx|el|Ὁμόνοια}}) is the concept of order and unity, ''being of one mind together''<ref name= "Mauriac p. 106">{{harvnb|Mauriac|1949|p=106}}</ref><ref name= "Tarn p. 400">{{harvnb|Tarn|2002|p=400}}</ref> or ''union of hearts''.<ref name="theosociety.org">{{cite web |date= October 1974 |url = http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sunrise/24-74-5/br-gfk2.htm |title = Of One Mind, of One Heart |work= [[Sunrise (magazine)|Sunrise Magazine]] |publisher = theosociety.org | access-date = October 13, 2009 | last=Knoche, Grace F. }}</ref> It was used by the Greeks to create unity in the politics of classical Greece.  It saw widespread use when [[Alexander the Great]] adopted its principles to govern his [[King of Asia|vast Empire]].
==Interpretation==
===Classical Greeks===
The concept of Homonoia was an ancient Greek concept which traditionally was not applied beyond their own culture.  The Greeks viewed Homonoia as an absence of factional fighting in their city states.<ref name= "Mauriac p. 106"/> The Greeks viewed outside cultures as "barbarians".  The famed scholar [[Aristotle]] once told his student, a young Alexander the Great, "treat Greeks as friends, but [non-Greeks] as animals."<ref name= "Mauriac p. 106"/>
It was the scholar [[Isocrates]] who first looked beyond the Greek people.  While he didn't preach that the savages of the non-Greek world could be on par with the superior Greek people, he did believe they could be made Greek and thus be ''of one mind together''.  He claimed that Greekness could become a matter of nurture rather than nature.<ref name= "Low p. 62">{{harvnb|Low|2007|p= 62}}</ref> It was during his time spent in the court of [[Philip II of Macedon]] that Isocrates was able to teach the concept to an influential audience.  Philip II took much of the concept to heart, but he too viewed it as a method reserved for the Greeks. He used the concept as his driving force behind creating the [[League of Corinth|Corinthian League]], an alliance to unite the Greek States for a war against the [[Achaemenid Empire|Persian Empire]].  After Philip II was [[assassinated]], his son Alexander the Great became King of Macedonia and himself became a proponent of Homonoia.
===Alexander the Great===
Alexander's tutor, Aristotle, viewed non-Greeks as barbarian animals.<ref name= "Mauriac p. 106"/> Alexander however, ignored his teacher's indication and expanded on the concept of Homonoia.  With an Empire covering most of the known world, Alexander sought to rule his subjects, whether they were Greek, Persian or Egyptian, under the concept of Homonoia.<ref name= "Mauriac p. 106"/> In his short time as ruler of his vast Empire he tried to adopt customs of the cultures he conquered such as Persian dress and customs at his court, notably the custom of ''[[proskynesis]]'', either a symbolic kissing of the hand, or prostration on the ground, that Persians paid to their social superiors.<ref name= "Arrian VII, 11">{{harvnb|Arrian|1983|loc=VII, 11}}</ref> He also married the officers of his army to Persian wives in an effort to further create a sense of oneness in his new Empire.<ref name= "Tetlow p. 171">{{harvnb|Tetlow|2005|p= 171}}</ref> Through his policies he wanted to create a new Greco-Oriental empire as distinct from the more traditional system of a small ruling class of conquerors ruling over the recently vanquished.  It was his practice to place the old style Persian satrap as governors but in the newly created offices of taxation and finance he placed Macedonians.<ref name= "Mauriac p. 108">{{harvnb|Mauriac|1949|p=108}}</ref> After his death most of his reforms lived on even as the Empire fragmented into [[Diadochi|successor states]].
===In the Romanized East===
''Homonoia'' was extended under Roman rule in the highly urbanized East as a symbolic mechanism for dealing with intra-city tensions and for linking the sometimes intensely individual eastern city-states.<ref name= "Price pp. 126-32">{{harvnb|Price|1985| pp=126–32}}</ref> A ''temple of Homonoia'' at [[Aphrodisias]] in Caria appears as the setting for the wedding of Callirhoe and Dionysios in the first-century CE romance ''[[Chariton|Chaereas and Callirhoe]]''; the temple is objectified in coinage of Aphrodisias that shows the [[cult statue]] of Aphrodite of Aphrodisias with those of other cities, under the legend ''homonoia'': "Deities in the coin issues served as symbols that mediated the power within regional alliances, bolstered the prestige of the divine realm in human activity and provided the glue that bound together the political and the cosmic spheres."<ref name= "Edwards p. 709">{{harvnb|Edwards|1994|p=709}} and bibliography<br/>Edwards notes several examples of ''homonoia'' coinage.</ref> In the first century CE, the Greek [[rhetor]] [[Dio Chrysostom]] sought in one of his ''Discourses'' to establish ''homonoia'' between two cities that each claimed the sobriquet "first city", [[Nicaea]] and [[Nicopolis]].<ref name= "Chrysostom 28.22">{{harvnb|Dio Chrysostom|1983|loc=28.22}}</ref>
==See also==
*[[Homonoia (mythology)|Homonoia]] ({{langx|el|Ὁμόνοια}}) Greek goddess of order and unity
==Bibliography==
;Notes
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;References
*{{cite book | author = Arrian | author-link = Arrian | title = Arrian: Anabasis of Alexander, Books 5–7. Indica. |date= October 1983 | publisher = [[Loeb Classical Library]] | isbn= 0-674-99297-0}} <small>- Total pages: 608 </small>
*{{cite book |author= Dio Chrysostom |author-link= Dio Chrysostom |translator= J. W. Cohoon |title= Dio Chrysostom, II, Discourses 12-30 |date= 1983 |publisher= [[Harvard]] |url= http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/L339.html |access-date= 2009-10-26 |archive-date= 2009-01-03 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090103194448/http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/L339.html |url-status= dead }}
*{{cite journal |last=Edwards |first= Douglas R. |date=Autumn 1994 |title=Defining the Web of Power in Asia Minor: The Novelist Chariton and His City Aphrodisias |journal= [[American Academy of Religion|Journal of the American Academy of Religion]] |volume= 63 |issue= 3 |pages=699–718 |jstor=1465210 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|doi= 10.1093/jaarel/LXII.3.699 }}
*{{cite book | last = Low|first= Polly | title = Interstate Relations in Classical Greece: Morality and Power |date= 2007 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]] | isbn= 978-0-521-87206-5 }} <small>- Total pages: 313 </small>
*{{cite journal |last=Mauriac |first= Henry M. de |date=January 1949 |title=Alexander the Great and the Politics of "Homonoia" |journal= Journal of the History of Ideas |volume= 10 |issue= 1 |pages=104–114 |jstor=2707202|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |doi=10.2307/2707202}}
*{{cite book  |last=Price |first=S. R. F. | title = Rituals and power: the Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor  |year=1985 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]] | isbn= 0-521-31268-X }} <small>- Total pages: 289 </small>
*{{cite book | last = Tarn|first= William Woodthorpe | author-link = William Woodthorpe Tarn | title = Alexander the Great, Volume 2 |date= 2002 | publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]] | isbn= 0-521-53137-3 }} <small>- Total pages: 476 </small>
*{{cite book | last = Tetlow|first= Elisabeth Meier | title = Women, Crime, and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society |date= 2005 | publisher = Continuum International Publishing Group | isbn= 0-8264-1629-2}} <small>- Total pages: 300 </small>
[[Category:Concepts in political philosophy]]
[[Category:Political philosophy in ancient Greece]]
[[Category:Ancient Greek philosophical concepts]]