Ideas of SUCCESS ancient and modern

BERGER 

MUGGERIDGE

I find myself stumped as to what to say about ‘ideas of  success in antiquity’ on live radio next Wednesday night at 2200 pm. I've been invited to help mark the 50th anniversary of a famous BBC radio broadcast when ‘the nature of success in contemporary society’ was discussed by an (of course all white male) team:  one hero of mine—the Marxist intellectual & art historian John Berger—the self-appointed pontificator Malcolm Muggeridge, and actor Michael Redgrave. I dread to think which one I am supposed to be the substitute for.

REDGRAVE

While I can happily explain to the BBC listenership the rather bland Latin root verb succedo, which can mean all kinds of different movement through space, time, systems and procedures, my problem is that there was no ancient Greek  word for ‘success’. There are words for material prosperity, excellence, military or athletic victory, glory won on the battlefield, immortal fame, good luck and for happiness. Aristotle spend his life trying to work out what defined the ‘Good Life’ and how to achieve it permanently. But there was no simple way of translating ‘success’ in sentences like ‘Alan Sugar is a success’ or 'Alan Sugar has enjoyed success.'

EXCELLENCE

EUDAIMONIA

I wonder whether my planned interlocutors, academic Peter Francopan and theatre director Kwame Kwei-Armah, will agree with me that success is intimately related to capitalism, entrepreneurship and accumulation of material goods. Having only recently paid off a longstanding mortgage, and feeling ecstatic freedom from pressure to work-for-money if I don’t want to that I have not felt for quarter of a century, my own sympathies lie with Bob Dylan. Neither fame nor fortune has made him happy, and he says, ‘A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.’ Success is freedom. It is not having to be at someone else’s beck and call in order to survive. On this definition,  a universal basic income would make successes of us all.

But that is not how the word is generally used. A man (and this is gendered) is a ‘success’ if he has wads of cash, a luxury home, a prestige-brand car and can buy/marry high-value sexual partners. In ancient Greek thought, people who accumulated money and the concomitant access to unlimited physical pleasures were often very far from ‘successes’ if their lives were taken in the round: Midas’ obsession with gold resulted in death from starvation; the fabulously wealthy Croesus of Lydia, far from being the happiest man in the world, as he believed, lost his son, his wife and his kingdom.

SUCCESS STORY?

Alexander the Great was a successful imperialist, but dying of drink in his thirties surely disqualifies him. Medea was a successful pharmacist, but led rather an unstable life. Pericles begins to get there for me, having made a good speech, planned some nice buildings and enjoyed a rich personal life. But must have died, probably in agony from the plague, knowing that he was leaving the Athenian democracy in trouble.

So please help! Is there anyone out there who can help me with a ‘faithful’ translation of SUCCESS into an ancient Greek concept, or think of a classical myth, hero, text, historical figure who could illuminate the idea of SUCCESS for a 21st-century audience? I will be eternally grateful!