“We ask you that as supplicants,” said Socrates, with a smile, indicating his disciple’s attitude.
Sophocles did not reply for a moment, his gaze lost in the direction of the silvery sea. His features, framed in the whiteness of abundant hair, respired a mild serenity. Then, in a sonorous and calm voice, he commenced his story.
“It was the spring day on which the Athenians vanquished the barbarians at Salamis.8 During the previous night, taking refuge in their frail boats, they had followed from the sea the conflagration that consumed their houses and triumphed disastrously on the rock sacred to Minerva. They saw themselves wandering henceforth, with no fatherland and no hearths, deprived of their gods, prey to the inconstant Mediterranean. And yet, they were proud and felt light, for, deprived of everything, they had discovered in adversity the divine significance of Liberty, of which no other people before them had had the notion.
“Thus intoxicated by noble thoughts, they were determined to be victorious; and when, the following day, the fleet of Persian ships appeared before them, as infinite as an invading forest, the Athenians experienced no distress. Their blue eyes believed that they could see the shades of the ancient tutelary heroes Ajax and Telamon advancing resplendently to aid them from the shore of Aegina. And coming all the way from the terrain of Eleusis, aureoled by a distant light, they heard the sacred chorus of the god Iacchus, suing by the ancestors, who also came running to mingle their wild and tumultuous souls in the combat.
“Full of courage henceforth, proud of their ancient glory, the Athenians no longer held back. The oarsmen made the sea a vast frisson of foam, and the sacred paean, the harmonious battle-song, responded to the savage cries of Asia. ‘Forward, sons of Greece,’ said the paean, ‘liberate the children, liberate the wives, take back the temples, save the tombs of the ancestors.’
“Then the sun rose, bronze truck bronze, the long bucklers opposed the winged arrows, and blood mingled its horrible color with the azure of the Bay of Salamis.
“The trireme that was carrying the poet Aeschylus, which his brother Amenias commanded, was the first to encounter a Phoenician ship and break it. The Athenian Lycomedes and the Naxian Democritus continued the combat. Prows plunged like darts into the curved flanks of the Persian vessels, oars broke, the sea mingled with men.
“Bows were seen quivering, and lances striking rapidly, while the reflection of blades was extinguished in blood, axes hesitated, blinded, and arrows disappeared into profound wounds.
“The intoxication of death soon confounded the vermilion prows of Athenian triremes and the somber Carian ships. The archers of Babylon, soldiers of Cilicia, whom the vermilion rendered sinister, and dark-complexioned Egyptians, fraternized in death with the hoplites of Greece. Agile and light, furrowing the water and the blood, Themistocles’ trireme sowed victory everywhere.
“The sun, in its decline, was already reddening the foaming sea when Aristides, taking Psytalia, the last refuge of the Persians, put an end to the Dionysiac fury of the melee over which Mars and the Fates were hovering. And in the first anguish of the evening, Xerxes, superbly seated on his throne, posed on the summit of the promontory, saw a fleet that was fleeing, humiliated, which was his own.
“The Athenian bandaged their wounds and offered sacrifices to Jupiter the liberator. Now they watched the enemy flee far from Attica, and hasty and opulent Asia disappear in confusion and shame. The Bay of Phalera was no longer bristling with barbarian masts, and the Acropolis became once again the inviolate sanctuary of Pallas. Invoking the gods, the Athenians then took the road of return...”
Sophocles paused momentarily, and then went on:
“I too remember that day! With the other children, returned from exile, we were waiting for the Victorious. The air of Attica had an unfamiliar lightness, which the flame of liberty rendered as intoxicating as wine. As they approached the city that they had quit without hope, our warriors were weeping with joy.
“I followed them when they went up the sacred rock in order to kiss the maternal ground. While the sun spread gold over the somber olive groves, they sang, imitating the cicadas. I was handsome then, and Themistocles chose me and ordered me to dance before everyone, in order that victory would be crowned by beauty.
“Since then, I have often experienced the intoxication of success and have seen Athens acclaim me many times in the theater of Bacchus, but no emotion can compare with the triumph of that morning when, in dancing, I delighted the eyes of the Victorious by means of the cadenced movements of my naked body.
“And it was on that same evening of triumph that the miracle of the birth of Tragedy was accomplished, crowning the victory. Aeschylus, the victorious soldier of Salamis, returned after the rejoicing to Eleusis, his native soil. He experienced, he said, a kind of powerful intoxication, and his breast was swollen by the generous exaltation that floated over Athens. The liberty and courage that had germinated in that elect city inflamed him. The very soul of the homeland seemed to acquire consciousness within him, desirous of being transmuted into poetry.
“And in the middle of that night, in his sleep, Aeschylus saw Dionysus, the god of Eleusis, crowned with grapes, advancing on a chariot ornamented with all the gifts of renewal and drawn by lions and panthers. The god had a visage full of shadow, but his body was resplendent with an ardent beauty.
“He approached the poet, smiling, leaned toward him and put a kiss like a divine burn on his forehead. Then, penetrated by a sacred and supernatural light, Aeschylus conceived the idea of evoking on the stage, by means of a grandiose and harmonious dialogue, the disarray of the Mede and the triumph of the battle of Salamis. And he wrote The Persians.
“Thus, the veritable and, so to speak, primal tragedy, was born of the miraculous kiss that Dionysus placed on the forehead of the warrior, who felt the triumphant and exalted heart of his homeland beating in his breast. It was like the crown of merit that descended to circle the marmoreal head of victorious Athens...”
Sophocles fell silent.
A white cloud, obscuring the bright light of the sun, rendered the air more caressant, and the tranquility of things milder. On the island of Aegina a crimson-tinted aureole with opalescent fringes appeared, as if composed of the soul of the roses that were born in abundance on its plains. The purity of the air was such that it was possible to distinguish, on that distant soil, the temple of Minerva glistening with gold and marble.
“That is a unique conception!” said Socrates, in an emotional voice. And, addressing Sophocles: “That Tragedy, scarcely known to Phyrinicus,9 which Dionysus revealed truly to Aeschylus, you have made into a more moral and more human work, and you have enriched it with unknown accents. And I see in that a creation that might perhaps survive in duration the marbles of Phidias, and which will be capable of recounting the glory of Athens, better that any other superb edifice, when our children’s children are no more.”
After a pause, he went on: “Sophocles, if you do not want me, quoting from memory, to alter the sublime verses in which Antigone sings the unwritten and imprescriptible laws, recite us a few strophes of your new Oedipus.”
“I have to go to the agora,” said Sophocles, without hiding the pleasure that Socrates’ eulogy provoked in his heart. However, I’ll recite a few lines on the death of Oedipus, which are prowling in my head and which mark the conclusion of my tragedy:
“…A subterranean thunder was heard, and at that noise, which chilled them with fear, Antigone and Ismene fell at their father’s knees, weeping, groaning and striking their breasts incessantly. He, meanwhile, had enveloped them in his arms and said to them: ‘My children, it is finished. From this day forward, you no longer have a father; nothing of him any longer remains to you.’ For a long time he held them in his embrace, weeping and sobbing together; in the end, fatigued by their dolor, their plaints died away, and there was no longer anything but a great silence. Suddenly, a voice burst forth, the terrible sound of which made the hair stand on end. That divine
voice summoned Oedipus unrelentingly: ‘Oedipus Oedipus,’ it cried, ‘why this delay? You are awaited...’”
For a long time, Sophocles recited sublime lines in that fashion, and the Attic air was still quivering under those tones when he stood up.
“By Jupiter,” Socrates said to him, “the gods must have been present at your birth in order to heap you with such gifts, and I can call you fortunate without hesitation.”
And while the tragedian drew away, addressing Phaedo, Socrates went on:
“See him fading way in the sunset. Yes, look at him well. The gods are forming a cortege for him! It might be that the ideal of Athens, which we were attempting to specify just now, will be realized by him. That harmony of the soul and the body, that divine measure in joy and in sadness, Sophocles eternalizes, as well as Phidias, but no longer attributing it to the divinities of Olympus, like the sculptor, but to earthly humans. And he adds thereby to liberty and ease of human thought, calm in the face of adversity, the wisdom in dolor and the domination of the passions that are the very substance of the Greek soul.
“There he goes, disappearing, with his white tunic agitated by the Phalerian breeze. He is immortal! The verses of Homer, magnifying the power of Art, come irresistibly to my lips: As soon as you had tasted divine nourishment, Phoebus, golden loincloths could to longer retain your impetuosity, cords no longer stopped you and all your swaddling clothes were torn apart... Suddenly, the brilliant Apollo said to the goddesses: ‘Give me a harmonious lyre and I shall henceforth reveal to men the certain oracles of Jupiter...’”
And as they got to their feet in order to depart in their turn, Socrates added: “Man immolating himself, accepting dolor, dominating the passions, equaling the gods by means of virtue or the force of proofs, that, I believe, is the substance of the Prometheus of Aeschylus and the Oedipus of which Sophocles has just given us an idea. It is the very substance of tragedy. And I think that the new morality of goodness and renunciation that is forming us and kneading us with its hands us so great that it will be capable in future of giving birth to a new religion...
“But the air is freshening. Let us go up to the Acropolis in order to watch from there the sun extinguishing its gold over Saronica...”
II. Theodota
When Critias stopped speaking, Socrates went to look for his sandals, which he only wore rarely and exceptionally. He put them on.
“Since you say that the beauty of Theodota is indescribable, it is necessary to go see it,” he said. “Only the eyes can enlighten us with regard to what words cannot express.10
As he went out, escorted by his disciples, he took the route that passed through the Ceramicus.
“I would like to take the tanner and shoemaker Simon with us,” he explained. “I hold him in high esteem. Abandoning himself to a monotonous métier, he nurtures just thoughts in the silence of his shop, which the even fall of the hammer n the leather accommodates to the laws of harmony. He has written a treatise on Amity and I believe him to be an excellent appreciator of beautiful things.”
And after having saluted his friend, the armorer Pistias, who was repairing and adjusting an old Persian bow, the unusual length of which recalled the glorious days of Plataea or Salamis, Socrates approached Simon.
The shoemaker was sitting in front of his workshop, against the door of a low building that contained his shop. His beard was covering a red leather sandal ornamented by long laces, which he was holding between his hands.
“Winter is easing, Socrates,” Simon said, smiling at his friend from a distance with an amiable expression. The day is mild and the air coming from Olympus has lost its bite.”
“I’ve come to procure you a happy afternoon and to instruct you in your métier,” said Socrates, drawing nearer.
“How will you do that, Socrates?”
“By Jupiter! Nothing is easier: by showing you a beautiful woman! Perhaps you’ve heard mention of Theodota who, recently arrived from Sicily, her homeland, is already inflaming Athens. We’re going to see her. If you accompany us you’ll obtain a double profit from it. As a philosopher and a shoemaker you pay tribute to beauty, as much because of your craft, which necessitates gracious forms, as the tendencies of your thoughts. Let go of that sandal you’re holding in your hands like a cherished nursling, then, and come with us.”
Meekly, Simon rose to his feet, took off his apron, and walked with them.
They went around the Acropolis, passing before the grotto of Pan.
“Since, according to all probability, we’ll soon be judging a lovely woman, let us sharpen our eyes on a beautiful landscape,” said Socrates, without stopping. “Nothing refines the taste better and renders the serenity of thought more perfect.”
The sun was scarcely declining, and the daylight still retained a brilliant and pure youth. The air was limpid and appeared to be resonating like crystal under the vibration of the light. The mountains stood out clearly, and one might have thought that their line were drawing together in order to embrace blue Saronica more tightly.
There was, above all, a harmonious correspondence between the curves of the rocks, the slopes of the hills, and the meanders of the coves and bays. The landscape, disengaged from all vegetation, offered itself so perfectly in its divine nudity, that it could only be separated by the savant and rhythmic creations of man. The Parthenon on its rock, the smiling statues on the banks of the Ilissus and the sculpted fountains seemed akin to a natural florescence of Pentelic marble, a superb vegetation produced by the sun and the Attic soil. And all of it was animated by the hum of beehives, by the bleating of flocks wandering between the olive groves, and the clear laughter of young women drawing water for the Fountain of Nine Jets.
A joy of gods and children was mingled with the clarity of the day.
“Don’t you think,” said Socrates, “that Bacchus is confused with the son of Latona and that the fruit of the vine has yielded its virtue to the light? The air is as intoxicating today as old Samos wine, and fills the lungs with an orgiastic joy. As there is scarcely any vegetation in Attica, the new season is flourishing, impetuous and sacred, in the very hearts of men. But let us press on, in order to see Theodota sooner.”
When they went into the courtesan’s house, they found her posing for the painter Parrhasius, who wanted to lend her face and breasts to Venus, whom he was depicting appeasing the anger of Mars.
In order to resemble the goddess more closely, Theodota was wearing a diaphanous linen tunic that, while designing the lines of her body, made a charming mystery of her flesh and gave her skin the clarity and softness of a dawn over Hymetta. Only the breasts, in emerging from it, enclosed in their extended curves, all the joyous opulence of fecundity. That naked and perfect flesh was so radiant that it only allowed the severe beauty of the face to appear through a white aureole. Thus, the sight of Theodota enveloped the newcomers in the voluptuous and ample waves of a soft harmony.
Socrates, marveling, began to recite the Homeric hymn to Venus Anadyomene: “The Hours with the golden thigh-bands welcomed with delight the one who gave birth among the gods to sweet desire. Covering her with immortal vestments, they placed on her head a resplendent diadem, attached flowers sculpted in precious metal to her ears, and ornamented her neck and breast with necklaces that they wore themselves when they mingled, in their father’s palace, with the gracious choirs of divinities. Having completed her adornment thus, they took her among the Immortals, who saluted her and extended their hands to her, each desiring to take her for a spouse and draw her into his bed, so struck were they by the beauty of the Cytherean with violets in her hair.”
And while Theodota smiled, very flattered, Socrates turned to Parrhasius and said to him:
“If it is true, as we agreed the other day, that painting does not only have the aim of imitating by means of colors, hollows and protrusions, light and darkness, softness and hardness, but also of expressing the passions and the movements of the soul, this is a marvelous model for you; for T
heodota, such as I am contemplating her at this moment, is not limiting herself only to offering us the beauty of Venus; she also possesses the expression, and Laughter and Desires, admirably coupled, are nested in her body. You can consider yourself fortunate, Parrhasius. Apart from the figure respiring life and desire that Polygnotus painted on the wall of the Poecile, immortalizing the features of his lover Elpinice, I do not know any painting more expressive than the one you are in the process of finishing.”
While Parrhasius picked up his brushes and lecyths and got ready to leave, Socrates addressed his companions.
“Do you think it necessary for us to thank Theodota for having allowed us to enjoy her beauty, or is it rather her who ought to be grateful for our admiration. I agree that she is gaining nothing from our commerce but eulogies, but we shall spread them far and wide, and she will surely profit from them. As for us, bitten in the heart by her perfection, we shall take away the desire to caress that at which we have only been able to gaze. In that fashion we shall be her slave and she our sovereign.
“By Jupiter!” replied Theodota, laughing, “is it necessary, then to render you thanks after having offered you the spectacle of my body?”
Already she was consulting her large ivory mirror. Her maidservants surrounded her, amicable and agile, presenting her with her garments, her jewelry and her golden clasps. Over her tunic she put on a crimson mantle bordered with white embroidery, and on her head she placed a circle of gold starred with hematite.
“You are rich, Theodota,” Socrates said to her, humbly, seeing her ornament herself so superbly. “Do you own land?”
“None.”
“Do you possess houses, then?”
“I don’t even have a house of my own.”
“She has slaves that work for her in the mines,” Socrates said, with conviction, turning to his companions.
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