The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life
Page 45
Kleisthenes himself recognised the potency of the Aphrodite-Peitho combination. When he advanced his reforms and set Athens on the road to democracy, around 507 BC, he cast Athena on the front of his triobol coins and on the obverse a female Janus – a woman with two faces – the potent Aphrodite-Peitho, Love and Persuasion, hybrid.14
Socrates too promoted the unifying power of love within human society. Aphrodite was one of the goddesses that he worshipped with most reverence. In fact the philosopher suggested that it is only when you look for your own goodness in others, and find it – in other words, allow yourself to love others – that you yourself can be a truly good person:
As the effluence of beauty enters him through the eyes, he is warmed; the effluence moistens the germ of the feathers, and as he grows warm, the parts from which the feathers grow, which were before hard and choked … become soft … as nourishment streams upon him.
Love is the one thing in the world I understand.
I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not in love with someone.15
APPENDIX TWO
MYSTERIA – THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES
GREEK RELIGION MADE A LOT OF NOISE.
Just imagine one of the most secretive of rituals, the procession out of Athens from the Sacred Gate along the Sacred Way to Eleusis. Beginning in the Kerameikos, and striding the 14 miles to Demeter’s lauded sanctuary, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands (Herodotus tells us there were 30,000 in one parade) of Athenians would travel – each in search of enlightenment. Aeschylus had journeyed here, Sophocles, Herodotus and Aristophanes. Centuries later Plutarch and Pausanias too will be Eleusinian mystoi, initiates. Participants would cry out to the spirit of Iacchus (almost certainly a mutated form of the god of drink, Dionysos) a haunting chant that could be heard for many miles around. They carried with them blazing pine torches. A clanging gong marked their search for Kore, Demeter’s daughter. The spirits of the Underworld were believed to accompany the initiates along the way.
As with the cult of Bendis down at Piraeus, these votaries are doing something that is less than normal in Greek religion. They are part of a travelling cult. The Eleusinian cult in particular is concerned with individuals; it speaks to each man and woman about the possibilities of a mystical, eternal life. The rituals have their own name, they are mysteria, mysteries. The word comes from the Greek and means ‘with mouth, and/or eyes closed’. And indeed these were rituals that should be neither spoken of nor seen by non-initiates. In the museum at the Eleusis site there is a large bronze cinerary urn, packed with the semi-burnt remains of a woman. We don’t know her name,1 just that she requested to be buried at Eleusis’ sacred site, so that she could take her secrets not just to her grave, but into the very clods of Demeter’s earth itself.
To be an Eleusinian initiate, you had to be Greek-speaking, pure (untainted by a blood-crime, a murder) and it helped if you were rich.2 The tight cabal of Eleusinian worshippers frequently comprised self-made businessmen. Although the cavalcade itself was fairly egalitarian, with rich and poor alike – even some slaves – walking (although a few well-bred women managed to ride in wagons or on a donkey, the jangle of tack adding to the noise of the procession), all was controlled by a powerfully influential dynasty of Eleusinian priests. In years to come these priests would be central to the persecutions of ‘radical’ thinkers in Athens: men, like Socrates, who believed in challenging the status quo.
Eleusis is writ large in Socrates’ drama.3 We have no hard evidence that the philosopher himself was an initiate – although the ecstatic language of Plato’s works suggests that perhaps this pupil, possibly even Socrates himself, had experienced the Mysteries. The heady, primitive atmosphere of the worship at Eleusis, its development of the importance of the individual and the fact that Eleusinian influence could be seen all around the city meant that Socrates’ story was played out as an Eleusinian backdrop waited in the scene-dock. The Sacred Way ran from the Kerameikos through the Agora and on up to the Eleusis sanctuary (as it still does today). It was along this sacred, arterial track that as an initiate, Socrates would have stepped every single year of his life. The Archon who conducted his trial was the high-priest of the Eleusinian cult. In years to come, when Alcibiades mucks about with and mocks the Eleusinian Mysteries, he brings a death penalty onto his own head and infects Socrates with the disgrace. Eleusis was, in a sense, the spiritual touchstone of Athens. Not of the whole city-state, but of those who had really made it in the world.
The Mysteries were one of the most anticipated and drawn out of Athenian festivals.4 In spring – the month of Anthesterion (March) – the Lesser Mysteries, a dress-rehearsal for the main event, were celebrated near the banks of the River Ilissos, in the region that Socrates himself frequented. Candidates were coached, in secret, by the Eleusinian priests. In the year of Socrates’ death (399 BC) these Lesser Mysteries would have been in full swing in that no-man’s-land time for the philosopher, probably April, between his abrupt meeting with Meletus in the Agora and his trial itself in the Archon Basileus’ law-courts.
Five moons later, in the calendar month of Boedromion (around September), sacrifices and processions through the heart of Athens – the start of the Greater Mysteries – prepared the faithful for the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary itself. The build-up to the excursion was long and demanding; initiates had to purify themselves, were obliged to carry ritual objects from the Eleusinian shrine in Athens back to Demeter’s sanctuary, and libations and sacrifices were demanded. Secret chants were learned – if the students mocked these they could be executed.
The site of Eleusis is currently being re-excavated and is slowly yielding its secrets. Today we are asked to contemplate the grimy, once primary-coloured monuments to heavy industry that lie between Eleusis and the Aegean Sea beyond. But in Socrates’ day this would have been an idyllic spot. The land was rich and fertile – hence its connection to the goddess of grain, Demeter. The limestone bedrock erodes to form a natural auditorium. A building called the telesterion, developed within this space in the fifth century BC, has now been identified. Windowless, punctuated by columns, this vast area was where many thousands of the faithful gathered together. Initiates could not reveal what went on in here, on pain of death. On these earth-made benches, men and women would sit to watch scenes played out in front of them. These religious stories constitute the earliest form of Western drama. What the initiates saw was said to leave them ‘shivering, and trembling with sweat and amazement’. Apparitions (early theatrical tricks) produced ‘every kind of terror’.5
The burning torches were both an enactment of Demeter’s desperate search for her daughter and a symbol of light that was extinguished and then returned again. Walking together, in orange light and then pitch-dark, initiates were encouraged to confront their fears. This is a story where terrible things happen: a girl is raped, a mother loses her child, the pain of brutality spurs the goddess to dreadful vengeance – parching the earth of water, draining it of food, bleaching out life until all is barren and dying. But then Kore is found. The climax of the Mysteries was heady, joyful. At the point of reunion on the ritual ‘stage’ men and women in the ‘audience’ perhaps engaged in the sexual act. The rituals inspired collective terror and then collective relief.
The popularity of the cult in the fifth and fourth centuries BC shows that this was an epoch when ordinary, mortal men were questioning the ordin-ariness of their lives. If individuals could have potency in the political arena, if they could vote when warships were launched and against whom, then row these very warships themselves, if their lives were that valuable, might the value not extend beyond the grave? Socrates lived through a time when life itself meant more, when man’s potential on earth was being explored, when an afterlife became something that was not to be feared, but desirable.6
The rites at Eleusis speak volumes about the subtle play of power, old and new, in Athens.7 Despite the new democratic, equable structure of the state, there were those who
wanted to keep things ‘a little bit special’, to find ways of distinguishing the haves from the have-nots.
Socrates ate and drank with aristocrats, he slept with them, and yet he was not automatically welcomed into their ranks. He walked for days on end with the ordinary people of Athens through the Agora and streets, he fought alongside them, and yet he would not always just join them in their popular expression of communal spirituality. Socrates, like the Eleusinians, looked to the possibility of a life after this one, but unlike them, his was a personal, internal experience. This delight in privacy made many in Athens suspicious of the remotely clever philosopher. It certainly helped to bring about the demand for his death.
TIME LINE
Year: 470/469
Life of Socrates: Birth of Socrates
Year: c.470
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Repairs of Opisthodomos? Construction of the north citadel wall of the Acropolis
Year: 470-460
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the Peisianaktios (later known as Stoa Poikile)
Year: 465-60-455/50
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Bronze Athena (Promakhos) by Pheidias
Year: 467
Culture: Aeschylus, Laius, Oedipus, Seven against Thebes, Sphinx
Year: 466
History: Hellenic victory over Persia at Eurymedon River
Year: 465
History: Athens blockades Thasos. Artaxerxes 1 reigns 465-425 BC
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the Tholos
Year: 463/2
Life of Pericles: Pericles participates in unsuccessful prosecution of Kimon
Culture: Aeschylus, Suppliants, Aigyptioi, Danaids, Amymone
Year: 462/1
Life of Pericles: Pericles joins Ephialtes in the attack on the Areopagus
History: Radical democracy established at Athens. Athens abandons alliance with Sparta against Persia. Reduction of the Areopagus. Kimon ostracised
Year: 461
Life of Pericles: Pericles rises to power in Athens
Year: 460
History: First Peloponnesian War
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the wall of Kimon. Construction of the south citadel wall of the Acropolis, pre-Erechtheion. Reconstructed Klepsydra Fountain (north-west slope of Acropolis) constructed
Year: 460-450
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Mourning Athena relief
Year: 459/8
History: Athens’ expedition to Egypt
Year: 458
History: Cincinnatus appointed dictator of Rome and defeats the Aequi
Culture: Aeschylus, Oresteia, Agamemnon, Libation-bearers, Proteus, Eumenides
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Building of Long Walls connecting port of Piraeus to Athens begins. Erection of the statue of Athena Promachos.
Year: 457
History: Zeugitae eligible for archonship
Year: 456
Culture: Death of Aeschylus
Year: 454/3
Life of Pericles: Pericles campaigns in the Gulf of Corinth
History: Greeks in Egypt defeated by Persian satrap Megabyzus. Treasury of the Delian League moved to Athens
Year: 451/0
Life of Pericles: Periclean legislation to restrict Athenian citizenship to those with two Athenian parents
History: Kimon returns from ostracism
Year: before 450
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Agora planted with plane-trees
Year: 450
Life of Alcibiades: Birth of Alcibiades
History: Expedition to Cyprus Death of Kimon
Culture: Birth of Aristophanes. Dramatic date of Plato, Parmenides (Aug)
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Academy rearranged
Year: 450s
Life of Pericles: Pericles proposes dikasts should be paid
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the Desmoterion Poros building Square stone bases socketed to hold temporary wooden posts on the Pan-Athenaic Way installed - starting posts for races
House of Simon
House of Menon
Houses C and D (house/workshops east of the Street of Marble Workers) Construction of the Synestrion
Year: after 450
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Strategelon
Year: 450-445
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Temple of Athena Nike authorised
Year: 449
Life of Pericles: Pericles proposes building programme
History: Peace of Callias - end of war with Persia
Year: 449-444
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of Hephaisteion on Kolonos Agoraios
Year: 449
History: Renewed hostilites with Sparta
Year: 447/6
Life of Pericles: Pericles commands the expedition to put down the revolt in Euboea
History: Revolt of Megabyzus, Persian satrapof SyriaBattle of Coronea
Culture: Death of the poet Pindar
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Building of Parthenon begins
Workshop Construction of Parthenon terrace
Periclean add-on to south citadel wall
Year: 445
History: End of First Peloponnesian War Thirty-year peace treaty between Athens and Sparta sworn
Culture: Prometheus Bound
Year: 443/2
Life of Pericles: Pericles elected one of Athens’ strat-egoi
History: Thucydides, son of Melesias, ostracised
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Public baths
Year: 442
Culture: Sophocles, Antigone
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Parthenon frieze carved
Year: 441
Life of Pericles: Pericles supports Athens’ intervention in the conflict between Samos and Miletos
History: Revolt of Samos
Year: 440
Life of Socrates: Socrates serves in Samian campaign?
History: Athens besieges Samos. Legislation prohibits certain kinds of comic abuse
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Odeion of Pericles
Year: 438
History: Pheidias leaves Athens after being accused of embezzlement
Culture: Euripides, Alcestis
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Statue of Athena by Pheidias dedicated in Parthenon
Year: 437-42
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of Propylaia on Acropolis (never finished). Architect:
Mnesikles
Athena Nike bastion remodelled
Artemis Brauronia sanctuary remodelled
Year: 437/6
History: Comic-abuse legislation repealled Founding of Amphipolis
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Athens waterworks, public project
Year: 435
History: Athens concludes defensive pact with Corcyra
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of Erechtheion (finished 395)
Year: c.434
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Demeter and Kore sanctuary, precinct wall and entrance?
Year: 433
History: Treaty between Athens and Corcyra
Year: 432
Life of Socrates: Siege of Potidea by Athens begins: Socrates serves there
History: Revolt of Potidea
Culture: Dramatic date of Plato’s Protagoras, Alcibiades (Second Alcibiades)
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Parthenon completed
Year: 431
Life of Socrates: Outbreak of Peloponnesian War Sparta invades Attica
Life of Pericles: Pericles gives his funeral oration Pericles persuades hoplite farmers to move inside the city walls
Culture: Euripides, Medea. Thucydides begins to write his History of the Peloponnesian War
Year: 430
Life of Pericles: Demos fines Pericles and removes him from office
Life of Xenophon: Birth of Xenophon
History: Plague in Athens
Culture: Euripides, The Children of Herakles
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Temple of Ares
Chalkotheke precinct
Great steps west of the Parthenon
Stone funeral reliefs reappear inAthens
Construction of South Stoa llissostemple
Year: 420s
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Shrine of Athena Hygiela
Year: 429
Life of Socrates: Socrates returns to Athens from Potidaea
Life of Pericles: Pericles re-elected Death of Pericles
History: Surrender of Potidaea
Culture: Dramatic date of Plato, Charmides (May)
Year: 428
History: Island of Lesbos, led by the city of Mytilene, rebels against Athens
Culture: Euripides, Hippolytus
Year: 427-425/4
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Building of Temple of Nike on Acropolis (second phase)
Year: 427
Life of Plato: Birth of Plato
History: Capture of Mytilene by Athens and execution of rebels
Year: 426
History: Earthquake in Athens - affects buildings in Kerameikos
Year: 425
History: Athenians capture Sphacteria and Pylos
Culture: Euripides, Andromache Aristophanes, Achamians
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Erection of the Eponymoi Construction of the Stoa of the Hermes Diateichisma
Year: 425-400
Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construciton of the Stoa of Zeus
Eleutheorios Rebuilding of the Sanctuary of The Twelve Gods
Old Bouleuterion changed into Metroon and archive room
Construction of the New Bouleuferion
Construction of the Argyrokopeion