What does the Greek proverb "nothing done with intelligence is done without speech" emphasize? And how to interpret it culturally?

Answer 1

Here it is important to understand the dual meanings of the word logos in the attic dialect. Logos means both speech and reason (or, perhaps more precisely, logical structure). So, in translation, we miss the play on words active in this saying. To Greek ears, the saying would sound like: "nothing done with the capacity for speech is done without speech." Now, common "doxa" (opinion) among the Greeks was that humans are distinguished from animals by being political. What were politics for the Greeks? Well, if we follow Hannah Arendt's writing on the topic (and her opinion here is well founded in Aristotle's writings of which she was intimately familiar) politics for the Greeks (Athenians) meant getting together and discussing the best course of action before deciding on it. Every source will agree this was essential to Athenian democracy (although the Athenians had very restrictive ideas about who could contribute, which we would have good reason for reproving today). They also used logos to refer to the quality of a speech being well-structured. So we can also add the nuance that logos invokes the idea of a speech that is well thought out. So really, for an Athenian, the saying "nothing done intelligently is done without speech," was really a truism. Their whole idea of what intelligence was, was speech.