Somehow fragments of ancient stories survived, including these raunchy, phallus-toting-Satyr bits and pieces from various writers and various plays over the ages. The thing that I find fascinating about Ariphrades is that a writer as important as Aristotle was still talking about his work and yet we don’t even have a fragment. He was eradicated. To me that’s a signal that he was important in some way we don’t understand. Maybe he was just popular.
Matthew agreed: “A kind of guilty pleasure and a box office hit.”
“Exactly,” I replied.
“And this is where this kind of issue of the rarity of manuscript materials becomes interesting. Again, only a very few copies might have supported that frequent performance of work. So somebody could be a big box office hit and be very rarely copied out.”
Writers write to communicate ideas and emotions, to entertain and hopefully get people to think and feel more deeply. But for the most part they are writing for the present, for the society they live in. Writing is a real be-here-now kind of endeavor. At least for me anyway.
I don’t think anyone writes with the idea that a hundred years after publication, he or she will still be in print or widely read. One hundred years ago people were reading Colette and D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and F. Scott Fitzgerald. These works still resonate with readers, but the bestselling books of 1921, according to Publishers Weekly, were by Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Canfield, and Zane Grey. Other books in the 1921 top ten bestseller list include works by not exactly household names: Edith M. Hull, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Gertrude Atherton, and Coningsby Dawson.
Two hundred years ago you also had books like Mary Ann Kelty’s The Favourite of Nature and George Matcham’s Anecdotes of a Croat, both published in 1821 and all but unknown today.
Go back five hundred years and you start bumping up against books like Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Art of War and John Skelton’s The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng. Also a surprising number of poets who were burned at the stake.
In 1021 you might find a fresh copy of The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, and Book of Optics, by Arab mathematician Abū ʿAlī al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham.
Because Matthew Battles is also an author, dipping his toes into the continuum of writers and writing, I asked him what he thought about legacy.
“I do think about that quite a bit myself. I think, with my own work, I feel like there are certain things, certain aspects of the pursuit, of some kind of writerly impact that have been constant throughout, but some of them have changed their valence or intensity. I certainly was driven by the thought of being remembered and being remembered a certain kind of way, but it’s become increasingly more important to me to just do the work and to enjoy the momentary satisfaction that comes with whatever kind of magic happens, occasionally as it does.”
This is excellent advice. Just do the work, even if doing the work is sometimes fraught. I’m not sure that people understand that it takes a degree of courage, a willingness to be vulnerable and expose yourself, when you publish a book.
Turning back to Ariphrades, Matthew said, “It’s interesting to start to think about how somebody, particularly in these ancient milieus, would think about fame and memory.”
I’m not sure that Ariphrades thought that Aristophanes’s plays would still be performed two thousand years later, that his own legacy would be to be mocked as a besotted debauchee for thousands of years, but I wonder what he might’ve said if he did. Would he care? Would it have altered what he wrote or how he behaved?
Matthew understood what I was saying. “I got a rite of passage bad review in the New York Times a few years ago, and it was very ad hominem and clearly the guy—who I knew from some professional networks—had it out for me in a way that I was not anticipating. It struck me in the wake of that that the people whose work matters the most to me, like Borges, or Virginia Woolf, or certainly Poe … any literary figure has had people who absolutely hated them. And you have to risk that, right? In fact, it’s almost like de rigueur. If you’re going to have any kind of literary success, you’re gonna have to suck in the minds of many people. And taking that on was something I didn’t really think about too much when I got into this game.”
I could not agree more with his assessment. Writers have to be brave and throw it down on the page. Which is why, throughout history, they have been imprisoned, burned at the stake, exiled, murdered. Of course that all changes when, instead of being remembered as a writer, Ariphrades is remembered for his sexual proclivities.
Matthew agreed. “Yeah, I mean, that’s interesting because it raises the specter of somebody who’s transgressive in a way that’s ontologically or existentially threatening, not just somebody who’s irritating in some way, but somebody who’s very …”
He paused to consider what he was saying.
“I mean these are things that matter to us about latter-day figures, like Elton John. Somebody who scared people by a certain kind of flamboyance, a certain kind of sexual persona. And what’s interesting about this world is that some elements of that sexual ontology are familiar and persist to this day, and some of them are so different from what we are used to. What’s so intriguing about this case is that, in a sense, being submissive with or for a woman in the ancient world was queer, where today it could be a fetish or simply being a good partner. So the whole matrix of some elements of queerness and normativity are rearranged in surprising ways.”
What Matthew calls “queerness,” the transgressive challenging of cultural and societal norms through sexuality, might be the only legacy Ariphrades leaves us.
Maybe that’s enough.
* Around 726 BCE the Byzantine emperor Leo III banned all religious icons and images in the Christian churches, which resulted in widespread destruction of sculptures, paintings, texts, etcetera. It is also where we get the word “iconoclasm,” which is from the Greek for “breaker of icons.”
Ta Kanaria
Ta Kanaria is a taverna in Metaxourgeio. It’s decidedly old school, a funky space with mismatched wooden tables and chairs, a checkerboard floor, and random art on the walls. It is both clean and dusty. It’s not a tourist spot, it’s a ramshackle neighborhood joint that’s comfortable and familiar, like a baggy, moth-eaten sweater that you just can’t throw away because it makes you feel good when you put it on.
(Photograph courtesy of the author)
In the afternoon, after the lunch rush, the usual suspects congregate. Inside, locals play dominoes and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and shoot the breeze; outside, people sit in the sun reading, maybe writing in a notebook. Couples chat. Sometimes someone pulls out a guitar and plays a song or two. But mostly the music is on the sound system, a loud and eclectic mix of guitar rock, heavy metal, and blues. It’s not unusual to hear Reverend Horton Heat and Black Sabbath followed by Muddy Waters and PJ Harvey. The food isn’t fancy, just simple salads, bowls of olives, and assorted snacks; but it’s fresh and tasty. The beer is cold and the wine is cheap. What’s not to love? It is one of Diana and my favorite places in Athens and where we often ended up after a night out, getting one last drink and maybe some eggplant spread and rusks before going to bed.
Most of the staff look like the customers, as if neighbors started handing out menus or got behind the counter and whipped up some sandwiches. Maybe they are. For all I know Ta Kanaria could be an anarchist small plates collective.
One afternoon we sat down for lunch. Our waiter was slightly older than the others, brawny and compact, his arms covered in tattoos. He was wearing a faded Led Zeppelin tour T-shirt, and for a moment I thought it might be possible he’d been a roadie on one of their tours. He handed us menus and right away I noticed a large Ace of Spades tattoo on his forearm. I pointed and said, “Motörhead?”
He smiled and said, “Classic.”
There were only a couple of other tables inside, so he put the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” on the sound system and turned it up. Outside the taverna it was hot, the midday
sun was frying the city, but inside it was dark and the sultry sound of electric guitars softened the day. A pitcher of cold white wine arrived. We relaxed.
This taverna would’ve been on the path between Plato’s Academy and the city gates, and it’s entirely possible that Ariphrades and his brothers might have stopped for a drink somewhere right around here. I imagine he would’ve needed a drink to settle his nerves because—in an entirely fictional flashback—tonight was his big night. Ariphrades looked away from the stage and across the theater toward the rows in front. He could see the judges from his vantage point, their shoulders shaking with laughter, their heads thrown back in howls of delight. They were drunk, no doubt, but they were watching his play and they were obviously enjoying it. He felt a tap on his arm and turned to see his father decant some wine into a cup and hand it to him. Automenes smiled and leaned into Ariphrades. “I think you have a hit.” Ariphrades took the cup and forced himself to have a sip. He hoped his father was right.
From the looks of it, it was a success. The theater was packed, people who couldn’t get a seat were standing on the sides and at the top. Best of all, everyone was laughing, enjoying the performance. He saw Leogoras pounding his knee and howling at a joke. His patron turned and caught his eye and gave him an encouraging nod.
Phoenician Kisses was his best work, he knew it. He took another sip of wine. It was good, but he was too nervous to enjoy it. He turned his attention to the stage, where the Poet, now dressed as a woman, was begging Priapus to restore his manhood. The actor playing the god was dressed in a costume with an outlandish seven-foot-long phallus, which he used to hilarious effect, banging into the chorus, knocking over props, and clobbering the Poet.
POET: I was once the greatest writer alive!
PRIAPUS: We know. You told us. Repeatedly. But look at the bright side! Now you can receive more than just the praise of your admirers, now you can take their semen! Much better than a pat on the back.
[The Poet falls to his knees and begins sobbing.]
PRIAPUS: See! You’re already getting the hang of being a woman.
POET: Help me! Please! I’ll do anything!
[Priapus considers it.]
PRIAPUS: There is a way to reverse the spell.
POET: Anything.
PRIAPUS: I’m not sure you’re up for it.
POET: I have no penis!
PRIAPUS: Don’t get testy.
POET: I am a woman! Wouldn’t that make you angry?
[Priapus waves his giant phallus around the stage.]
PRIAPUS: I like women. All of them.
Ariphrades leaned forward in his seat. This was his favorite part of the play. He watched as Priapus swung his massive cock around in a circle. He then stopped, the phallus pointed directly at the Poet.
PRIAPUS: To become a man, you must lick the hot spot of every flute girl in the city.
POET: What?
The audience howled with laughter. They had been going to the theater for years and knew exactly who the joke was on.
PRIAPUS: You heard me.
POET: That is not how you become a man. That is the opposite of being a man.
PRIAPUS: Suit yourself.
Priapus left the stage, and the chorus came on to convince the Poet of the joys of being a woman. Their examples were, naturally, scathingly sarcastic, poking fun at the patriarchs of the city and their treatment of women. But as the Poet slowly realized that he must go on a quest to lick every flute girl’s hot spot, the chorus burst into song, an ode to something that couldn’t be named, a celebration of pleasuring women, a rebuke to the narrow-mindedness of the naysayers. Like the title of the play, Ariphrades called the song “Phoenician Kisses.” It was a showstopper.
Ariphrades was delighted to see the audience cheering the singers and laughing along with the lyrics. Some drunken revelers in the stands stood up and danced in place. It seemed as if everyone in Athens, the entire city, was cheering. He looked around to see if he could catch Aristophanes’s reaction, but his shiny bald head was nowhere in sight.
I know it’s a bit of a Hollywood ending, but I wanted to give Ariphrades a win. Not that he won the festival that year, that’s too contrived, but he won the hearts and funny bones of his fellow Athenians. I think for him that was enough, even if posterity and decades of scholarship from historians might think otherwise. Would the world be different if the comedies of Ariphrades had survived? Who can say? What if his habit of pleasuring women had become popular back in the day? Would equality in sexual pleasure equal equality in society?
Imagine a world where men and women are equals. It embarrasses me to acknowledge that in 2020 the U.S. government has still not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Is it really so difficult to give women equal rights? I mean … seriously? And while the patriarchy controls the story for now, there are gaps, opportunities for an alternative interpretation. The treatment of women, the injustice toward people of color, the economic terrorism of the corporate class. These are all cracks in a patriarchal system of oppression, and with enough pressure that crack can turn into a fissure, a fissure that becomes a fracture that brings the whole rotten construct down. I believe it can happen. Because consciousness is not static, it moves forward.
Would it matter if the narrative were reframed? If we realized that patriarchy is no way to live in the world? Professor Hanink has a thought: “It matters because ideas about what antiquity really means—and controversies over who owns its legacy—have played an enormous role in shaping the West’s sense of its civilizational roots.”1
I agree. I think we all know who claims the legacy, but I’m not sure we’ve gotten the whole story. There are so many gaps, and they’ve been filled by men in power with their own biases and agendas. Like in Philip K. Dick’s novel The Man in the High Castle, you start to wonder which story is real. It’s time we changed it up.
Have you ever noticed that the opening riff and the closing riff of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” seamlessly connect back to each other? I did. Because the song had been playing for so long that Diana pulled out her phone and looked up how long the song actually was—seven minutes and forty-seven seconds as it turns out. We were now into some strange half-hour version of the song. Every time it looped back on itself we were surprised, like we were in a Möbius strip of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” I looked across the taverna and saw that another couple had noticed the same thing.
Maybe I’m giving Ariphrades too much credit. Perhaps his plays were aimed at the lowest common denominator, like a classical Jackass: The Movie. We’ll never know, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was subjected to some of the most public of public ridicule that a person could endure and Aristophanes tried to cancel him repeatedly, but he kept on keeping on, a thorn in Aristophanes’s side for more than thirty years.
It’s time to reclaim his story and revive the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure. Instead of Stoicism and militarism, how about some sex and comedy? And while we’re at it, why don’t we let the Greek people decide what’s best for themselves and their history? We act like we own that civilization. We don’t. If anything the West has exploited it, performing some kind of narrative jiujitsu.
After forty minutes, or just over five repetitions of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” we were laughing so hard that Diana had tears streaming down her cheeks. The other couple in the restaurant were howling, as if it were the single funniest thing ever. The waiter was oblivious, carrying on with his work, futzing around in the kitchen, taking plates to people eating on the sidewalk. Although I did notice his coworker glaring at him, an astonished expression on her face as the song began once again.
Why does Ariphrades’s story matter? Because creativity matters. Desire matters. Making an effort matters. The world needs people like Ariphrades, people who aren’t afraid to challenge the aristocracy, the ruling class, the status quo; people who have the potential to change the way people live. We need to cultivate enthusiasms like his.
We need more people to go down on each other. In a speech to the European Congress of Ethnic Religions, Greek writer Vlassis Rassias said, “We reclaim the European identity. We reclaim our true value systems and our true ways. Our purpose is clear, to restore the once defeated[,] but not extinct, cultures of joy, freedom, polytheism, dignity, piety and uprightness, and, being a Hellene, please let me [add] of reason, humanism, eunomia and polyarchy.”2 Joy. Freedom. Humanism. I can get behind these. Let’s stop being so cynical and greedy, have a little faith in each other, and bring about a more creative world.
As Henry Miller said so well:
To live creatively, I have discovered, means to live more and more unselfishly, to live more and more into the world, identifying oneself with it and thus influencing it at the core, so to speak. Art, like religion, it now seems to me, is only a preparation, an initiation into the way of life. The goal is liberation, freedom, which means assuming greater responsibility. To continue writing beyond the point of self-realization seems futile and arresting. The mastery of any form of expression should lead inevitably to the final expression—mastery of life.3
Rude Talk in Athens Page 15