21 Athens was a city that worked to a regular, languid, predictable biological beat. That insistent dripping water-clock, that marking of hours in the court, was still, in many ways, a spectre of the future. The rise of the moon and the turn of the seasons marked time here. Rituals that celebrated these events dictated when the fields were worked, when harvests were gathered, when wars were started. The ideal rhythm of the city was utterly unsyncopated. Disruption meant stasis, and stasis meant the disintegration of the body politic. Stasis was a Greek’s greatest fear.
22 Our source is Plato, Parmenides, 127a. Plato’s account tells us that Parmenides was about sixty-five when he made the visit in around 450 BC. But if we depend on Apollodorus’ Chronicles, then Parmenides was born c.544/541 BC. Did Parmenides visit Athens as a very old man? Is Plato imagining the encounter? Zeno came from the southern Italian town of Elea. It seems he rarely left his home-town. Plato may indeed have fabricated the meeting between Socrates and these two ‘fathers’ of philosophy – and yet, if we know that so many did flood to Athens at this time, why not these two?
23 Plato, Parmenides, 127b-c. Trans. F. M. Cornford (1973). Cf. Sophist, 217c.
24 This event was almost certainly reserved for the elite of society. The fact that we do not hear of Socrates participating is further evidence that he was low-born.
25 See Davidson (2007), passim.
26 I have relied here heavily on Davidson (2007).
27 Aristophanes, Frogs, 1096.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pericles: high society, and democracy as high theatre
1 Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002) [adapt.].
2 PCG iv Thrattai Frag. 73=Plutarch, Pericles, 13.16. Trans. Miller (2004), 219.
3 Once an ambitious pretender to Athena’s throne, Cylon, had attempted to take Athens by taking the Acropolis. His bid failed, and he and his entourage looked set to starve up on the Acropolis rock. But this would mean pollution. The failed agitators were promised safe passage – but Pericles’ ancestors wanted revenge, and even though Cylon et al. clung to the altar of the Furies, they were hacked down. Thus men with blood on their hands, and their families, were exiled.
4 Rhetor came to mean professional politician in Athens.
5 Plutarch, Pericles, 16.3; Hansen (1999), 38.
6 Thucydides, 2.65.8–9. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
7 During Pericles’ rivalry with Cimon (late 460s/early 450s), he introduced payment for juries (in response to Cimon’s philanthropy with private funds). Cf. Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 27.3–4; Plato, Gorgias, 515e; and Nails (2002), 225.
8 Thucydides, 2.60.5. Trans. D. Kagan (1981).
9 Cf. Meier (1995), 389–90.
10 Cf. Lapatin (2007), 127.
11 The exact appearance of the original Odeion (which was burned down in 86 BC during Sulla’s siege of Athens) is unknown; Vitruvius (5.9.1, first century BC) alleges that it had a wooden roof made from the spoils of Persian ships. What is certain is that it was a structure on a colossal scale with a forest of interior columns.
12 Cf. Plutarch, Pericles, 13.9–11. And the frieze of the Parthenon was perhaps inspired by decorative work at Persepolis.
13 Cf. Isocrates, Antidosis, 235, and Wallace (2007), 225.
14 Olympiodoros, Commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades, 138.4–11. ‘The songs which Perikles learned from Damon through which he harmonized the city.’
15 Plutarch, Pericles, 13. Cf. Wallace (2007), 226, and Kimball and Edgell (2001), 91.
16 PCG iv Thrattai Frag. 73=Plutarch, Pericles, 13.6. Trans. Miller (2004), 219.
17 Anaximander, recorded in Censorinus, De Die Natali, 4.7.
18 Simplicius, In Phys., 156, 13ff. [Diels-Kranz 59 B12].
19 Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 270a. Trans. H. Fowler [LCL].
20 Socrates would have been very young when he went to Pericles’ house. There is a possibility that he never did, and just met Anaxagoras elsewhere in the city. Plato’s use of Aspasia, Pericles’ consort, in his dialogue, though, might suggest that Socrates had an early acquaintance with the two in Pericles’ own home (which Pericles shared with Aspasia).
21 Aristophanes, Clouds, 157–68. See also trans. McLeish (1979): STUDENT: Chairephon asked him his opinion on gnats: / ‘Do they buzz from the front end … or the back?’ / STREPSIADES: And what was his opinion concerning gnats? / STUDENT: He explained that the guts of a gnat / Are hollow, a sort of narrow tube. The air / Is sucked in at the front, and forced / Under pressure down and out the back. / It’s the narrowness of the hole that makes the noise. / STREPSIADES: It’s a kind of trumpet, then, a gnat’s behind? / What a brilliant man he must be, / What an expert on gnat’s anatomy! / Compared to that, it’s child’s play to win in court.
22 Plato, Protagoras, 314e-16a.
23 Plato, Phaedo, 97C. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [adapt.] [LCL].
24 Socrates advised against going on trying to work out the astronomical properties of the heavens, ‘their distances from the earth, their orbits and their sources’. Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.7.4–5. Trans. J. Fogel (2002). Socrates, it seems, stared up into the night sky, to comprehend its usefulness and its beauty – but not to understand it as a series of scientific facts: ‘He said that these things were capable too of filling up a person’s lifetime, and of stopping one from pursuing many useful kinds of learning.’ Xenophon, Memorabilia, 4.7.5. Trans. J. Fogel (2002).
25 See, e.g., Athens Acropolis Museum, 607. Base for a ritual water-basin dedicated by Smikythe the washerwoman, or Athens National Archaeological Museum, x6837, miniature shield with the face of a Gorgon dedicated by Phrygia the bread-seller.
26 Although most wealthy Athenians had country estates where their food was grown, many managed the running of the estates themselves. Socrates did not fall into this social category.
27 See also current excavations at Vari led by Barbara Tsakrigis.
28 Some sources tell us that Pericles’ clever bedmate Aspasia also held salons at the home that she, unofficially, shared with the General. Scandalously Aspasia was allowed to speak; even more shockingly, Pericles invited not just his colleagues, but their wives to hear what she had to say.
29 Herodotus said of Babylon ‘the magnificence of this city is not matched anywhere else in the world’. In Egypt the mighty pyramids at Giza, monuments of polished stone decorated with the carvings of animals, stood as testimony to the powers of human endeavour (Herodotus, 2.124.1–125.7).
30 Herodotus, 3.80.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Delos – and the birth of an empire
1 Trans. W. R. M. Lamb (1925) [LCL].
2 Herodotus, 6.46–7. Trans. A. De Sélincourt (1954).
3 Gold wreath with myrtle, apple and pear blossom, late fourth century BC. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (restored as part of the ‘History Lost’ exhibition, made up of pieces rescued from the illicit antiquities trade, presented by the Hellenic Foundation for Culture).
4 Cf. Powell (2nd edn., 2001), 20–1.
5 Cf. Meier (1999), 291.
6 Thucydides, 1.100; Plutarch, Cimon, 12–13.
7 Eventually, the Peace of Callias came in c.449 BC, an agreement between Athens and Persia to stop hostilities. In theory the League could be disbanded; but everyone guessed that this was no real peace, just an uneasy stand-off.
8 List taken from pp. 125–6 of Beard (2002).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Purple ambition
1 Trans. R. Warner (1972).
2 Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
3 IGI3 259–72 9EM6647 + 13453 + 13454.
4 Meiggs (1972). See Appendix 14 for a wonderfully comprehensive catalogue of all six tribute districts. See also J. Hale (2010).
5 Rhodes (2005), 174.
6 Cf. French (2006), 121–2.
7 Cf. Rhodes (2007), 221–2.
8 Thucydides, 3.82.1–2. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
9 The one building on the Acropolis that would inspire Pausanias to a whole paragraph 700 years later. Cons
truction did not begin on the Erechtheion until 420 BC.
10 Plutarch, Pericles, 13.1–3.
11 In this section I have relied heavily on Mary Beard’s fine little book The Parthenon (2002).
12 Material presented by Dr Alexandros Mantis, Director of the Acropolis Ephorate, Greek Archaeological Committee (UK) Lecture, 22 October 2008, King’s College London.
13 Cimon’s relative Thucydides, son of Melesias: Plutarch, Pericles, 12.2 and 14.2.
14 Thucydides, 2.61.4; 64.5–6. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
15 The pro-Athenian King Evagoras, born in Salamis in 435 BC, worked with the Persians to rout Spartan forces, his ambition to reunite the eastern Mediterranean under Athenian rule, with Cyprus its easternmost outpost. Evagoras was given honorary Athenian citizenship (c.407 BC) and honoured with the erection of a statue next to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, in the Athenian Agora. See Karageorghis (1982).
16 Plato, Alcibiades, I, 134b. What we do not know is how terrible – or not – he thought it to be apolis, cityless or exiled from the city. As Herodotus and Sophocles had already made clear, this was a fate of tragic status. Nb In 399 BC Socrates refused to flee the city.
17 Plato, Phaedrus, 279b–c.
18 Thucydides, 1.10.2. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
19 Alcman, Partheneion, 3.61.
10 Homer, Odyssey, 13.412; Iliad, 3.443.
21 See The River Eurotas Monuments, Ministry of Culture, 5th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Sparta (2008).
22 King Agesilaus in Plutarch, Moralia, 217e (cf. 210e).
23 The historian Xenophon had fought for the Spartans as a mercenary. Perhaps Xenophon exaggerated Socrates’ Spartan affiliation in his Oeconomicus. But unless he wanted to be laughed out of town, there must have been a kernel of truth in the historian-general’s opinion. These Laconophile tendencies have already been flagged in Aristophanes’ Birds, 414 BC.
24 Plato, Crito, 53b. Trans. G. M. A. Grube.
25 Plato, Parmenides, 128c. Trans. M. Gill and P. Ryan (1997).
26 Plato, Republic, 8.558a-c. Trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Cooper (1997) [adapt.].
27 Authors include Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch, Andocides, Lysias and Demosthenes.
28 See recent discussion of this mosaic by H. A. Shapiro in Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War ed. Olga Palagia. CUP 2009. Chap 10 passim.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paddling in the river, sweating in the gym: Socratic youth
1 Trans. J. Fogel (2002) [adapt.].
2 See Chapter 53 where Socrates bathes before he dies.
3 Plato, Phaedrus, 229a. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1954) [LCL].
4 Plato, Apology, 40c. Trans. H. Tredennick (1954).
5 Plato, Phaedrus, 230b-d. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1954) [LCL].
6 Theognis, 1335–6. See also trans. by T. K. Hubbard (2003).
7 Sarla, Evangelou and Tsimpidis-Pentazos (1973), 26; Plutarch, Themistocles, 1.
8 Aristophanes, The Knights, 309.
9 Now in Athens’ Epigraphical Museum, cat. no. 12553.
10 Pseudo-platonic Axiochus, 364a-5a. Trans. J. P. Hershbell [adapt.].
11 Herodotus describes a sanctuary here in 490/89 BC. The ‘white-bitch’ or ‘swift-dog’ was supposed to have stolen a piece of sacrificial meat offered by the wealthy Athenian Diodymous. Suda k2721 e3160
12 Herodotus, 5.63.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gym-hardened fighting men
1 Trans. J. Davidson (2007).
2 Plato, Lysis, 203a; Euthydemus, 271a.
3 Aristophanes, Clouds, 1005–15. Trans. A. H. Sommerstein (1973) [adapt.].
4 Themistocles tried to tempt non-nothoi down here, to break class barriers, as it were. And after Socrates’ death, a disciple of his, Antisthenes, set up a ‘Socratic’ school at Kynosarges – but partly because of its sub-prime reputation, the venture never had the lasting impact of the Academy or the Lyceum.
5 The ephebes went on to cite as their witnesses an impressive array of gods and goddesses to this oath: ‘Aglauros, Hestia, Enyo, Enyalios, Ares and Athena Areia, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hege-mone, Herakles, (and) the boundaries of my fatherland, the wheat, the barley, the vines, the olives, the figs.’ If you considered going back on your words, there would have been very few places to run to, nowhere to hide. Trans. P. Harding, quoted in Loren J. Samons, What’s Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship, Ch. 2.
6 At first it appears that we have opened a window onto a violent society. The literary evidence seems to back up this picture – just think of the gore of Greek tragedy, the chill of Aristotle’s words ‘revenge is sweet’ (Aristotle, Rhet., 1370b30), or of the lex talionis – a tacit understanding that all civilians, Hellenic and Barbarian alike, could be killed or enslaved during warfare (cf. Thucydides, 3.36). But in comparative terms, Athens was an ordered place, focused – particularly in Socrates’ youth and middle-age – on trying to achieve some kind of heroic perfection on earth that was not animated by blood-lust.
7 Gabriel Herman discusses this in ‘How Violent was Athenian Society?’ in Hornblower and Osborne (1994). See also Herman (2006).
8 Thucydides, 1.6.3. Trans. R. Warner (1972) [adapt.].
9 Antiphon, Tetralogies, 2.1.1; 2.2.3–7. Translation taken from Davidson (2007), 69. Ch. 3, ‘Age-classes, Love-rules and Corrupting the Young’ is extremely helpful for anyone interested in the issues of age divisions in Athens.
10 Theaetetus, 169bc. Nb Although Plato’s background as a wrestler encouraged his overuse of athletic and wrestling metaphors in his Dialogues, his portrayal of Socrates as a keen competitor rings true. This statement is in fact an allegory for the need to wrestle with words. It also echoes Socrates’ predilection for the thoughts of, e.g., Hesiod, quoted at Plato, Republic, 364d.
Vice in abundance is easy to get
The road is smooth and begins beside you,
But the gods have put sweat between us and virtue.
Trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve (1997). See Ch. 35.
11 Plutarch, Agesilaus, 34.7. Trans. J. Davidson (2007).
12 Numerous refs. See, e.g., Bacchylides, Ode 17.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Golden Age’ Athens
1 Trans. E. O’Neill, Jr (1938).
2 Konstam and Hoffman (2004).
3 The new Acropolis Museum does what the Attic landscape once did naturally. The soft, sand-blasted porous concrete inside the Museum building is designed not to fight for the light – it is those lifelike sculptures and cast figures that greedily grab the light-lines.
4 See Rose (2003). See also Aristotle, History of Animals, 585b, 586a, and Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 721b.
5 Plato, Crito, 52e–53a. Trans. H. N. Fowler (1914) [LCL].
6 A lost work by Aristophanes of Byzantium, The Vocabulary of Age-groups, explained exactly how this system worked.
7 Aeschines, 1.173, 170. Trans. J. Davidson (2007).
8 The Greeks don’t seem to have made a connection with the fact that most Athenians didn’t marry until their early forties (Aristotle thought thirty-seven was the perfect age to get hitched) and so in their middle years were probably in a state of permanent semi-arousal. The roaring trade of those brothels is also explained.
9 Aristophanes, Peace, 762–4. Trans. E. O’Neill, Jr (1938).
10 Plato, Charmides, 155d.
11 Xenophon, Apology, 20.
12 Plato, Apology, 23c-d. Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
13 In Libanius’ fourth-century AD Apology of Socrates, the aristocratic poets that Socrates is said to have quoted, and therefore used to corrupt the young men of Athens, are Pindar and Theognis.
14 In the fifth century BC the mechanics of the fleet (which meant a big boost to the economy and a massive influx of people to Attica) encouraged the Athenians to define ‘metics’ (literally someone who has transferred homes) as foreigners, as ‘others’ (as opposed to citizens)
. Then in 445/4, the citizenship lists were purged: Philochorus, FGr Hist 328 F119; Plutarch, Pericles, 37.4; Stadter (1989), 336–9 (from p.137 of Raaflaub, The Origins of Democracy).
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Aspasia – Sophe Kai Politike
1 Pseudo-Xenophon, Constitution of the Athenians 2.2. See also Xenophon Poroi.
2 The early history and geology of Miletus are thoroughly documented in Greaves (2002).
3 An extremely useful introduction to Greek philosophy, which details the lives of the thinkers mentioned here, is Brunschwig and Lloyd (2000).
4 See also Hippocratic Corpus, DW (‘On Diseases of Women,’ 36 of the Hippocratic Corpus) 1.2, L 8.14; DW 1.3, L 8.22.
5 See, e.g., Aristotle PA 650a8 ff.; GA 775a14–20.
6 Aristotle, Politics, 1.1260a (quoting Sophocles, Ajax, 293).
7 See also the disputations of Demosthenes in the fourth century BC.
8 Free women were alluring, petrifying things. The story of the prostitute Neaira, brought up in the house of Nikarete as her ‘daughter’, shows that sex with a ‘free woman’ came at a higher premium than sex with a slave.
9 Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 7.30. Trans. S. Blundell (1998).
10 Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 7.5. Trans. H. G. Dakyns (1890).
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life Page 50