The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life

by Bettany Hughes

  Pericles and Socrates were maturing in a city that was rich in ideas, and was quickly becoming filthy rich.

  Yet Socrates, remember, was a man who would ask whether we need warships and walls and glittering prizes in order to be happy. It was not clear whether a burgeoning empire and Socrates’ philosophies were going to make for easy bedfellows.

  13

  PURPLE AMBITION

  The eastern Mediterranean,

  465–415 BC

  [PERICLES:] It is right and proper for you to support the imperial dignity of Athens. This is something in which you all take pride, and you cannot continue to enjoy the privileges unless you also shoulder the burdens of the empire.

  Thucydides, 2.63.I1

  SOCRATES: One mustn’t be much concerned with living, but with living well …

  Socrates to Crito, in Plato, Crito, 48b2

  TODAY A JOURNEY TO THE NATIONAL Epigraphical Museum in Athens is a surprisingly risky one. Its entrance is up a side street – right next to the National Archaeological Museum. Although the authorities have managed to keep the neoclassical façade of the big museum clean, this side passage, with its grassy central spine, has become a favourite haunt for the city’s drug addicts. The few visitors who venture in have to run a gauntlet of thin, angry self-exiles.

  It is worth the effort. Just inside the building and to the left is a stop-still-in-your-tracks vast tribute stone. The inscribed rock stretches over 18 feet high. Carved across the surface of this megalith are the names of the cities who paid tribute to Athens between 454/3 BC and 440/39 BC.3 Byzantium is there, as are Miletus, Mount Athos and settlements right along the Troad (the modern-day Biga Peninsula in northern Turkey). The inscriptions are tight, close. Not one inch of the stone surface has been left bare. That tribute stone represents bags, barrels and chests of cash coming into Athens’ coffers from her ‘allies’ in the League.

  The discovery of all that silver at Laurion meant that the economic weather in the eastern Mediterranean was looking decidedly bright. Particularly for Athens. Because what goes out comes back in again, with interest. Tribute money was used to meet interest rates charged by the goddess Athena herself. When loans were taken from Athena’s treasury on the top of the Acropolis – to fund the building of sacred statues, monuments or military action – the amounts, plus a hefty percentage, were repaid to Athena, now a divine usurer.

  The surplus was poured back into the democratic state: jurors could be paid, theatre was subsidised, public buildings were refurbished, and for some councillors free meals were provided. In Socrates’ lifetime more than 800 triremes were launched from Athenian-controlled harbours: the largest manned navy the world had ever known.

  As Socrates grew up, tributes steadily accrued; from the Black Sea in the north – as far as Olbia (now in Ukraine); from Abydos in Asia Minor; from the east – way beyond Karia in Anatolia; from Dorus in the shadow of Mount Carmel in Palestine; and from the galaxy of islands throughout the western Aegean.4

  Probably from the early 420s,5 Athens required her allies to pay tribute in Athena’s own coinage – the distinctive silver-owl – a measure that gave her dominance in international trade. Now allied city-states were forced to sell their goods directly to Athena (or her trading partners) in order to acquire the correct currency; no coincidence then that the Athenians, who produced their own wine and wool, preferred to drink the best Chian chianti and to wear fine fabrics made from the backs of the sheep of Miletus.6 Resources – land, grain, gold, fish – had long tempted the ancients to roam wide through the eastern Mediterranean, but now Athens needed to satisfy more refined tastes too. Peacocks were imported to the city, lapis from Afghanistan and saffron from the volcanic island of Thera.

  There was also coercion. If a territory attempted to secede from Athenian control it was punished, twice over: not only was it not given its liberty, but extra land was taken to be dedicated to ‘Athena, Queen of Athens’. Erythrae in Ionia (on the western coast of modern-day Turkey) was strongarmed into taking on democracy.7 A careful reading of all the texts and epigraphic evidence available does suggest that the population of the eastern Mediterranean was frequently inspired by the idea of coming under Athens’ wing – even as a subject people, better to be a democrat than to live under oligarchs. But the pull of both poles (oligarch and democrat, Spartan and Athenian) was strong; we will never know how many hundreds of thousands had their lives destroyed in the drag between. Socrates’ lifespan witnesses an epoch of class struggle in its truest and purest form.

  Thucydides writes about the state of affairs passionately, despairingly:

  Practically the whole of the Hellenic World was convulsed, with rival parties in every state – democratic leaders trying to bring in the Athenians, the oligarchs trying to bring in the Spartans … in the various cities these revolutions were the cause of many calamities – as happens and always will happen while human nature is what it is, though there may be different degrees of savagery …8

  And still the tributes came rolling in. Athens was able to beautify itself. Walls, monuments and life-sculptures were erected. Aphrodite’s hoary, soot-blackened husband, Hephaestus, was given a new temple overlooking the Agora. In the city’s spanking-new Odeion, citizens enjoyed public cultural performances and contests, male-voice choirs fifty to 1,000 strong competed here; new clothes were bought for performers and for the gods that their music honoured, and Athens’ snaking walls crept four miles further south to Piraeus. Pericles’ building programme was silhouetted on the Athenian skyline: the Propylaia, and perhaps too in his mind the glimmer of a plan for the Erechtheion – a kind of holy-hotel for many gods – famously buttressed by staunch caryatids.9 And, above all, Athena’s Parthenon: decorated green, blue, gold – dazzling like a peacock. Athena Parthenos, gilded and glowing with crystals and hippopotamus ivory, towered 39 feet high within the temple. Her gold clothes and accessories weighed 120 lbs, her skin gleamed, and on her outstretched palm perched a 6½-foot-high statue of Nike, the goddess of victory. In a pool of water below, Athena could glimpse her own splendid beauty; the reflected light’s play rippled her skin; she seemed to live.

  Travelling around Athens today it is still hard to escape the Parthenon. Gleaming at dawn, ghosting at twilight, it is always there: a double exposure on an old-fashioned photograph. Plutarch, writing 500 years after the Periclean building programme, marvels:

  Though built in a short time they have lasted for a very long time … in its perfection, each looks even at the present time as if it were fresh and newly built … It is as if some ever-flowering life and un-ageing spirit had been infused into the creation of these works.10

  Enduring spirit indeed. In the Byzantine era, from the mid-sixth century AD (the precise date has not been recorded), the Parthenon became no longer Athena’s, but the ‘Mother of God – The Lady of Athens’’ earthly home. Shadowed remnants of those days as an early Christian centre are still visible: carved on the columns of the Parthenon are the names of two Byzantine bishops – it is still just possible to make them out – Theodosios, Marinos. In about AD 1175 the new Byzantine Archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, praised the city during his inaugural sermon within the booming interior of the Parthenon as ‘the queen of cities’, ‘nurse of reason and virtue … exalted in fame not just for the monuments, but for virtue and wisdom of every description’. Choniates’ new church was a particular delight to him: ‘lovely’, he declared. Three hundred years later it would be a Muslim leader’s turn to eulogise. When Mehmet the Conqueror took over Byzantine lands he made a state visit to Athens in 1458. The Acropolis left him staggered; he was ‘absolutely passionate’ about the town. In 1687, while Venetian forces attacked the Turks who still held the territory, no fewer than 700 cannonballs were fired into the sides of the building (the pockmarks are still visible). Locals described rescuing the scraps of precious Arabic manuscripts that had been stored inside. For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Pericles’ Parthenon had suffered a
true body-blow, walls were cracked, columns collapsed, the roof fell in. At last it resembed a ruin, and from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, diplomats, tomb-raiders and adventurers did their bit to further decay. The Parthenon was chipped away at like an old Stilton.11 The new Acropolis Museum is subtly, quietly doing what it can to gather back in from all corners of the globe the sculptural and architectural crumbs that have been removed.

  But more of the Parthenon has lasted than we realise. Each time there is building work in the central area of Athens another fragment appears: a hand here, an arm there, a sliver of the side of a face, a stone spear. Archaeological teams are working week in, week out to reunite body-parts.12

  The Parthenon has become a hallmark of the tenacity of ‘Western’ civilisation. For many it is a symbol of a certain set of values. But at the time of its construction there were those who raised their voices in protest. Is this really what a juvenile, wet-behind-the-ears political system should be focusing on? One sclerotic critic opined that Pericles was way out of order as he tarted up Athens with tribute money, dressing her up ‘like a courtesan’. Around 443 BC the naysayer found himself ostracised.13

  But Pericles knew of the value of nourishing a society that has confidence in itself, that is reminded day in, day out that it can achieve great things. Just listen to the General, in a grand finale of one of his speeches to the people of Athens, delivered to recorded history with a flourish by Thucydides:

  Yet you must remember that you are citizens of a great city and that you were brought up in a way of life suited to her greatness; you must therefore be willing to face the greatest disasters and be determined never to sacrifice the glory that is yours.

  … The brilliance of the present is the glory of the future stored up for ever in the memory of man. It is for you to safeguard that future glory and to do nothing that now is dishonourable. Now, therefore, is the time to show your energy and to achieve both these objectives.14

  Fine words. But Socrates was fully aware that Athenian democratic greatness had been built on war-blood and the sweat of another’s brow, as well as on honest endeavour. Although we hear nothing of Socrates’ philosophical opinions before c.420 BC, when he is forty or so, his ideas, passed on to us as Socrates’ own by Plato, do seem to have been forged in a fiery, rough furnace. Socrates matured in a city-state that taught the lesson – for those who wanted to learn it – that the search for money, glory and power could bring compromise, heartache and trouble.

  Through the 450s the Athenians were fighting aggressive wars on all fronts. Against the Persians on the one hand and the Spartans on the other, and against players in the theatre of power that was the eastern Mediterranean, who simply did not want to be bullied into being democrats. Between 459 and 454 BC they attempted to conquer no less a territory than Egypt itself; in 457/6 they besieged the nearby island of Aegina, which capitulated; in 456 Athenian soldiers destroyed the Spartan dockyards at Gytheion and captured the Corinthian territory of Chalcis in Aetolia. Uncompromising lessons for Socrates’ youthful years.

  Socrates was fully exposed to the casualties of ambition. In 449 BC his compatriot Cimon was killed on campaign – dying in Cyprus, probably from infected wounds – attempting to deal a crippling blow to Persian forces and holdings, in particular their worryingly effective navy, co-owned by the Phoenicians. Cyprus must have been a strange land to die in – with its many kings and its barren rocks, its adoration of the goddess Ishtar, a promoter of love and war since the Bronze Age. Accounts from the fifth century tell us that Cyprus had an edgy, threatening feel. But it was an island that the Greeks passionately wanted to ‘liberate’.15 The saturated heat of the Middle East blew a hot wind to Europe even then.

  We do not know precisely when Socrates started to question the point of empire, the point of super-wealth. We do not know what he thought of Athens’ early career as the region’s premier usurer. But he was, it seems, underwhelmed. His attitude to empire was more than a little curmudgeonly. The questioning philosopher flicks his thumb at wars and walls and ships.16 Others in the city had started to smell that bit sweeter, rubbed with rose oil imported from Syria, their bodies draped in linen from Corinth, their homes boasting the increasingly fine, black-figure dinnerware – so precious it was buried with its owners. Socrates, it seems, was stubbornly anti-material, anti both public and private grandstanding. He appears to have realised that great works might come of great strength – but they neither represent nor guarantee it.

  O beloved Pan and all the gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful within, in my soul, and that all external possessions match my inner state. Let me take wisdom for wealth; and may I have just the right amount of wealth that a self-restrained man can bear or endure.17

  There was one city-state that seemed to share some of Socrates’ reservations.

  Laconic Sparta

  Thucydides, the great historian and contemporary of Socrates, was prescient when he mused:

  Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained. I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that the place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be … If on the other hand the same thing were to happen to Athens, one would conjecture from what met the eye that the city had been twice as powerful as it actually is.18

  If you walk through the modern city of Sparti today it is very hard to imagine this as one of the world’s greatest and most fearsome civilisations. Ruins are diminutive and neglected, squashed between carelessly built 1960s condominiums, twentieth-century architecture on occasion brought tumbling down, as it was in Socrates’ time, by regular earthquakes and tremors.

  But there is good reason for the Spartan feel. The ancient society here believed passionately in the value of experiential over material delights. The Spartans did not regularly commission beautiful works of art; they banned coined money and perfumes. They did not write their own history, and did not believe in inscribing their laws. Unlike Athens, they mistrusted words – both spoken and written: the good Spartan, living as he did in the region of Lakonia, was expected to be ‘Laconic’.

  But Spartans did have a fiery zest for life. They sang obsessively, chanting sensual oral poetry; they worshipped their gods with an ecstatic devotion, often dancing late into the night; they even capered into battle (albeit with regular, choreographed steps), piping complicated, erotic rhythms on their haunting auloi – double-flutes. Girls as well as boys were allowed to train in the gymnasia (liberation unheard of in Athens); young women could spend heady evenings together by the banks of the River Eurotas, where they stroked one another with olive oil until they gleamed, while chanting of ‘limb-loosening desire’ in the ‘ambrosial night.’19

  Homer described Sparta as ‘the land of beautiful women’ and lauded ‘Lacedaemon’s lovely hills.’20 The territory here at the heart of the Peloponnese is flat and fertile; in stony, mountainous Greece, Lakonia appeared Elysian. The wide River Eurotas, which dashes and then meanders through the Taygetan valley, is fed by snow-water from the top of the Taygetan mountain ranges, and in turn feeds Spartan lands. And it is in fact the riverbed and its environs that have yielded the latest clues to the extreme excellence of the Spartans.

  In 2008 work was completed on an unpromising-looking rectangular stone structure – believed to date from the early fifth century BC. The building is a botched job, adapted and mucked about with over the years: but this DIY is revealing. It turns out this was a sanctuary with a long history, a spot overlooking the River Eurotas where dead heroes of the city were idolised.21 Today the locale is uninspiring: nettles rim the site; to enter, one has to squeeze past a smashed-up car, and gawping Gypsy children fix on winsome smiles at the effort. But the Spartan authorities today are right to have preserved the remains, because the authorities back in Socrates’ day would have kept this spot buzzing with activity. For the Spartans, dying well a
nd living well were paramount. Soldiers, draped in their trademark red cloaks – red so as not to admit that blood might be spilt inside – could come back dead or alive as long as they were true to the Spartan ideals of absolute obedience and unstinting effort. At appointed days throughout the year, and particularly in late autumn after the campaigning season, these heroes would be fervently worshipped by the men and women of Sparta. With the Eurotas silver at sunset and the landscape behind a petrol-blue, with the clouds scudding down from the Taygetan mountain range that protects the city-state, it takes only a short moment of adjustment to imagine the passions that ran high here, the rigid sense of self-belief and specialness that the Spartan state enjoyed.

  Supremely confident, the Spartans had no need of PR; unlike the Athenians, they did not glorify their own name or write themselves into history. And also unlike Athens, they mocked the need for city walls. Sparta was wall-less.

  Back in Athens, Socrates would have heard reports of the glory of the Spartan youths who emerged from their years of gruelling training; the Spartans’ boast, you may remember, was that ‘our young men are our walls, and our battlements the tips of their spears’.22

  He would have known that the supreme aim of this über-race was to achieve a ‘beautiful death’, one moment where you died well, in battle, cleanly, courageously. This, the kalos thanatos, was considered the epitome of Spartan achievement.

  There is something horribly, magnetically enthralling about the single-minded purpose of Spartan life. Socrates matured at a time when Sparta was Athens’ mortal enemy. Socrates himself – as a hoplite soldier – spent decades fighting against Sparta and her allies, yet he never seems to have despised his Peloponnesian cousins. Rather the opposite: he – and those associated with his circle – aped these extreme men.23 Socrates admired the tight structure of their society. He approved of the Spartan drive to live life exceptionally well, to focus on the fundamentals rather than the fripperies of existence. Even though he preferred the laws of Athens, Plato has him concede that Sparta is ‘well-governed’.24