Fragments
The Nobility Reigned Everywhere and the Banausic Were Despised
The Period and Circumstances in which a Nation Evolves its Ideal of Existence
The Nobility Reigned Everywhere and the Banausic Were Despised
This [Agonal] period is generally characterized first by the alternating domination of the polis by aristocracy and tyranny; secondly, along with the firm belief in breeding, by the peculiar ideal of kalokagathia, the unity of nobility, wealth and excellence as the distinguishing mark of the Greeks, heralded by Pindar. The nobility reigned everywhere, even in the states that were not transformed by the Dorian migration. The right of the overlords was founded on superior blood, greater landed wealth, skill in arms, and knowledge of the sacrifices and the laws. The banausic, that is tilling the soil, crafts, shopkeeping, commerce and the like, was despised. The only occupation fit for a nobleman was the practice of arms or work for the games or the state, not work concerned with the necessities of life. Masses yearning to be free were encouraged to emigrate to the colonies where they became aristocrats in their turn.
Characteristics of the Nobility and the Spartan Exception
This nobility was neither a scattered rural squirearchy (Junkertum) nor a military caste (Rittertum); it was more nearly comparable to the patriarchate in mediaeval cities, particularly the Italian — a social group living together in the city and taking an energetic part in its administration, while at the same time constituting its society; the ethos of the agon would have sufficed to unite such a group even in the absence of other factors. Tyranny, because of its utilitarianism, was inimical to the agon. Sparta too, with its austere Doricism, where the practice crystallized in a special way, stood apart from the rest of Greece; for here there existed no true society, but a conquering people ruling harshly, directing all their gymnastic and other activities to the practical aim of reinforcing their supremacy. Throughout the rest of Greece things were quite different; the nobility were open-handed and pleasure-loving, chiefly concerned with maintaining fine horses and chariots, and this atmosphere was so marked and so pervasive that even a few tyrants (for instance Cleisthenes of Sicyon) found it necessary to lay claim to noble excellence and to imitate the agon, though of course these are only exceptions that prove the rule.
Festivals and Gymnastics as Educator
Education in this society combined two aspects. One was the festivals, splendid ritual sacrifices, choruses and the dance, all linked with religion, which in its extension as myth was the starting point and root of all culture.
The other was gymnastics; this was not the cause but the consequence of the agon, since personal competitiveness was no longer to be satisfied by training directed simply towards military efficiency. The aim was now to develop the body to the highest perfection of beauty, a purpose for which each individual had to submit to a methodical discipline just as severe as training in the arts, denying himself any personal manifestations of 'genius'. Gymnastics, with all that belonged to it, was able to draw on the general conviction of the value of training, a conviction so powerful that the state had no need to take active measures (apart from building the gymnasia).
Agonal Measure of Life: Quality Over Quantity
An important difference between that age and our own consists in their having (somewhat as the French still do) more respect for quality than for size of population. Besides, when full democracy emerged, it consisted in reality of an aristocratic minority as opposed to the metics and the slaves.
It is only in modern times that men earn as much money as possible to support the maximum number of children, no matter what the privation and drudgery involved and however the quality of the population may suffer in the process; we have already spoken of the means, ruthless as they were, that the Greeks adopted to limit numbers. In any case, this society was a splendid one to contemplate; the poet of the Homeric hymn to Apollo can say of the Ionians as they appeared at the festival of Delos: 'He who meets them all assembled would say that they are immortal and ageless, he would see how graceful they all are and would rejoice in his heart when he saw the men, and the women finely clad, and the swift ships and their many riches.' Then follows special praise for the maidens of Delos and their song, which set the seal of perfection on this magnificent existence.
The Agon Arose Out From the Polis
This brings us to the agon. While on the one hand the polis was the driving force in the rise and development of the individual, the agon was a motive power known to no other people — the general leavening element that, given the essential condition of freedom, proved capable of working upon the will and the potentialities of every individual.
In this respect the Greeks stood alone. Even in primitive or barbarian peoples, competitive activities may often develop to a certain point independently of warfare; wrestling games, riding skills and so forth are practised, but always only within the given tribe and the given social stratum. In the Asiatic cultures, despotism and the caste system were almost completely opposed to such activities. By Greek custom every Greek could participate in certain sports which could not possibly have been open to every Egyptian. Within the privileged class in Egypt, anything resembling the agon would probably have been totally excluded, partly by the equality or the hierarchy imposed by despotism, and partly by the undesirability of competing in the presence of the lower castes. Ambition, in the individual Egyptian, would be confined to the hope of an honour from his king for official or military services. Even now the eastern custom is not to compete among equals but rather to have mock fights performed as a spectacle by slaves or paid entertainers. Only small free aristocracies could allow the expression of the will to self-distinction among equals before judges, who were elected or fairly chosen in some other way, and then only in a nation like the Greeks; the Romans, who differed from them chiefly in their dislike of anything 'use-less', would never have developed this practice.
The Gymnasium
The gymnasium was the chief social centre of Greek life. We can hardly date its origin earlier than the seventh century, and the full develop ment of its equipment certainly came later, though in Plato's description it has all the special areas mentioned anywhere thereafter. The palaestrae were simple structures of a more modest character, often in fact merely private institutions, whereas the gymnasia always belonged to the State, which took a hand in this branch of education because it had an immense amount to gain from the regular training of the ephebes (the young men between eighteen and twenty years of age).
These gymnastic exercises proliferated astonishingly and with endless refinements. There were cities in which the practice of them was actually a condition of citizenship. In the city of Pellene in Achaea for instance we learn that the old gymnasium served for the exercises of the ephebes, and that no-one could be admitted to citizenship until he had completed the full course. In Sparta, above all, the whole of gymnastics, as laid down there, was a compulsory part of state education.
Panhellenic Dreams Were Born in the Agon
As well as this athletic training there was the agon with horses. Because chariot fighting was the noblest form of combat in Homer's war of the heroes, the chariot race was very early ranked highest of all competitions in time of peace. Not till the aristocratic period was it identified with horse breeding, that is with the class of the nobility, and it then became the foremost agon. Chariot racing was much less suited than the other sports to be adequately celebrated in the confines of the individual polis. It was altogether the nature of the agon to transcend territorial boundaries, because its interest diminished if the same individuals were always involved; but chariot racing in particular, as the province of a wealthy minority, demanded more generally accessible festive locations.
As soon as competition was introduced with entrants from other places on neutral ground or at some holy site, the Panhellenic agon developed, and very quickly — perhaps not by explicit agreement — more places of competition, with wider participation, came into being, and were soon provided with their foundation myths.
The establishment of these Panhellenic sites, which yet remained exclusively Hellenic, was a very important element in the growth and self-consciousness of Hellenic nationalism; it was uniquely decisive in breaking down enmity between tribes, and remained the most powerful obstacle to fragmentation into mutually hostile poleis. It was the agon alone which united the whole nation as both participants and spectators; those who cut themselves off from it, like the Aetolians, the Acarnanians and the Epirots, forfeited to a greater or lesser extent the right to be counted among the Hellenes.
Pindar — Our Indispensable Informant of the Agonal Spirit
The association between the agon and the aristocratic made it possible for individual families to cherish a tradition of competing and winning. Such families of champions were Pindar's best customers, and it is from him that we learn of them; he is our indispensable informant on the competitive spirit, though we must bear in mind that his clients will have been among the last aristocrats to take part, and that here as in other things we only become acquainted with a phenomenon in its last stages, for soon afterwards democracy was to make the agon dangerous or impossible for this class.
The Dark Side of the Athletic Career
We must not omit the dark side of the athletic career. No true happiness could result from the concentration of the whole of life on a few seconds of terrible tension; the suspense must have meant anticlimax, or profound anxiety about the future, for those involved. In their lifetime enmity and envy were naturally their lot and could continue after death - hence the nocturnal whipping inflicted on the statue of the famous Theagenes. The emergence of younger men forced the aging athlete into a retirement which must have been sorrowful, unless he had the good sense to carry on as a trainer and thus, perhaps through the fame of a pupil, to live on in popular memory. It was intolerable to contemplate the decay of one's own strength.
The pankratiast Timanthes in his retirement would daily test himself by drawing an enormous bow; out of practice after a journey, he found it was no longer in his power, so he lit a pyre and burnt himself alive, obviously to imitate the death of Heracles. Others took to bad ways even in their prime, and it would be interesting to count up the Olympic champions who came to a sad end. Either their very successes were evidence of an extraordinary competitiveness, or else their mood after victory demanded stimulants. Or an Olympic victor might become a political agitator like Cylon, who met his death in Athens in the struggle for the tyrant's throne; the Olympic victor Philip of Croton, the most handsome Greek of his day, was a man of boundless ambition and behaved accordingly. Giant strength in itself seems a predisposition to misanthropy even in cases where contests are not alluded to. Thus we learn of the Aetolian Titormus, brother of one of Agarist's suitors and greater in strength than any other Greek, that he shunned mankind and went to live in the remotest regions of Atolia. The famous boxer Nicodorus of Mantinea presents a rare case, becoming in old age a much revered lawgiver to his native city; it is true he was helped in this by Diagoras of Melos. The most favourable outcome for a victor was to go on to distinguish himself in war, like the Pythian champion Phayllus of Croton, who took part in the battle of Salamis with his own ship, or like Milo, who is said to have fought in the great battle of the Crotoniates against the Sybarites wearing his six Olympic crowns with a lion's skin and wielding a club.
The Olympic Festival
We may mention here that the Olympic festival, in common probably with all important competitions, was confined to men, with the female sex rigorously excluded. No doubt the reason for this was the fear that women might respond overenthusiastically to qualities other than gymnastic excel-lence. Young women were allowed to watch only the foot race in the stadium, and the priestess of Demeter Chamyne had her official seat at that event.
Apart from the competitors, splendidly equipped festival delegations brought offerings of animals and gifts from states and individuals; choirs of every kind, especially boys' choirs, came to accompany the ritual sacrifices with their songs. People streamed in from the whole of Greece and the colonies; all dialects, all interests and friendships met there, so that the size and geographical spread of the Greek nation was on display. It was represented as a whole, not only as countless separate poleis, and it was freely and spontaneously held together in its shared intensity by the contests, in which not merely individuals were competing but also, it was felt, the poleis from which they came.
The Agon Refined Greek Sculpture
This brings us to the matter of monuments devoted to the agon as such. The moment was bound to arrive when the Greeks demanded that the sculptor's art, already splendidly developed, should immortalize fame won at the agon, for them the true and almost the only kind of fame; 'you must be able to do it' they might have said, addressing their artists. The principal task (to ignore equestrian victors for the moment) was to represent the athlete, the wrestler, pankratiast, discus thrower and runner.
Their monuments could not take the form of the grave marker, the heroon or the like; allusion and symbolism in the message of a monument were inappropriate here. Nor was the champion, apart from exceptional cases, depicted in relief on a stele or part of a building. Primarily he was an isolated naked figure and meant to be seen in such a way that the spectator should recognize him as a gymnastic or artistic victor; a human life, even in its fleeting instant of winning, was to be rendered immortal. The question arises to what extent, and sometimes if at all, the head is to be thought of as a portrait. Perhaps the sculptor did not invariably see the victor, and had to make do with basic information about his age. Yet the statues were to be personal, and it may be said that portraiture, which in this case begins, by and large, with the whole, necessarily naked figure, never again had such an origin anywhere in the world. The athlete forms an artistic genre before there is any such thing as a statuary of statesmen or warriors, to say nothing of poets.
Competition: Ancient v Modern
Daily life from childhood on, the agora, conversation, war and so forth played their part in educating each boy for the agon. The existence that resulted from all this was of a kind never known before or since anywhere on earth — all of it saturated and dominated by the agon, and all based on the principle that anything might be achieved by education, that is by a principle which left as little space as possible for the family and home influences.
If we look at the role of competition in our own world we are instantly struck by the chief difference, which is that the Greek agon always had the entire population as its audience and witness; while today — whether in the case of performance in person or, as with pictures and books, a silent offering — it is the audience or the public that decides, purchasing or not purchasing, paying an entrance fee or staying away. But mostly our modern form of competition is determined by quite different aims.
If in schools some degree of competitiveness exists, usually slight apart from a few unusually ambitious types, the 'longing for fame' in adult life has been replaced by something very remote from it, which is business competition. Men of today are far more likely to want to win financial success than rapid recognition of their talents, and they know perfectly well why the success they seek is of a material kind; life requires it.
As for education, the Greek paideusis, aiming almost exclusively at future achievement, has been replaced by our higher schooling, aiming at knowledge that is to be 'thorough yet many-sided'. Among the Greeks the feverish striving for hollow fame (kenodoxia) was seen by a later generation, retrospectively, as a motive even in mythical figures.
Salmoneus and others behaved as if they were gods; Trophonius is among those who, according to a rationalizing version of their myth, were said to have hurled themselves into clefts in the earth so it should be believed they had been 'carried up' out of the world. In sum we may well believe that the Greeks sought the value of life too much in the opinions of others, and the agon declined until it came to consist in men staking everything to win the favour of the crowd.
Even the Middle Class in Ancient Greece Scorned Work
The status of work among the Greeks is a subject that requires a brief comparison with the ancient East. In the early civilizations, ideas about the relative dignity of various activities seem to have been established with their very origins. A ruling caste of priests and warriors had appropriated power, war, hunting and good living, and left everything else to the rest of the population, whether or not they were divided into castes according to different inherited occupations. Manufacture, whether mechanical, chemical or craftwork, had no doubt reached a high degree of perfection, but was certainly despised as toil and seen as an inherited fate; agricultural work was nothing but slavery if only because of the heat of the climate.
The nobility in the European Middle Ages evolved similar attitudes of complete contempt for work and commerce; but alongside this there gradually arose a middle class, not only working but holding work in high honour.
Between these two worlds the Greek world stands apart, since here the middle classes themselves held most work in scorn, though unable to dispense with its products. The simple explanation that the Greeks had slaves for work is not enough; for they despised most free work too. Nor can the blame for this be shifted to the climate, which is not so extreme that field work and freedom were mutually exclusive.
The Period and Circumstances in which a Nation Evolves its Ideal of Existence
For the evaluation of work, the period and the circumstances in which a nation evolves its ideal of existence are the most important consideration.
In modern Europe, that ideal derives principally from the mediaeval burgher class, which slowly became not only superior to the nobility in wealth, but also its equal in education, though indeed this was a different kind of education from that of the nobility. In contrast, the Greeks had their image of the heroic period, that is of a non-utilitarian world, and never rid themselves of it.
Their relationship to the world of the heroes, comprising only battles, dynastic tragedies and divine interventions, was immeasurably closer than the relationship of the mediaeval citizen to the world of Germanic legend. But while the heroic age, at least in its decline, in Hesiod's Works and Days, still acknowledges a conception of peasant life as honourable, and even esteems a certain kind of trade, the agonal age that followed was bound to encourage an increasingly exclusive attitude of contempt for physical work.
The members of the ruling class by right of birth were no longer a small minority; instead there came into being a large urban aristocracy, living chiefly on income from property, whose aim in life, and ideal, was combat — not so much in the military sense as in that of equals pitted against each other. The whole nation was convinced that this was the highest thing on earth. The outlay needed was modest, so that large numbers of people were able to participate, and those who could not admired and envied those who could. Many sites for competition thus developed, and many types of contest, and gymnastics as the preparation for them, became the chief purpose of education. However this way of life was incompatible with any economic activity; the agon occupied the whole of existence. (185)
A Positive Vocation: Sailors, Colonists, Merchants
Set against all this, obviously, was the necessity of earning money and the ease with which it could be done; the Greeks had a natural capacity, in fact a positive vocation, as sailors, colonists and merchants. The Phoenicians, with their apparently unique bent for overseas trade, had provided the example; after that it was inevitable that the attraction of movable property, and the early recognition that money was power, should lead to an exception being made in favour of commerce, even in the Hellenic world. Where wit and intelligence counted for so much as they did in travel and trafficking abroad, it was not likely the Greeks would be left behind. Trade and shipbuilding became the chief sources of wealth, and though the colonies were first intended as poleis, most were not viable without commerce; as soon as they were well established, commerce held its own as an occupation in full parity with the dignity of landowning. The colonial attitude, highly commercial, naturally reacted on the motherland.
This does not imply that flourishing trade went together with democratic constitutions. The trading poleis tended rather to be timocracies, and in Ionia and Italy the great merchants and shipowners were often the rulers, just as in mediaeval Western Europe the leading guildsmen would be either of equal dignity with the city fathers or simply the same people. Despite its predominantly mercantile rather than agonal ethos, this ruling class — in the Ionian cities for instance — was, by virtue of its adventurous voyaging, a continuation of the ancient heroic tradition, and as strongly idealistic as any aristocracy, as we see from its poetry and philosophy, large and splendid temples and lavish offerings. One result of successful trade was, no doubt, that these states fell prey to luxurious habits. In this the Ionians must have come under strong influence from the Lydians; but perhaps some things only seemed luxurious by contrast with the general Greek sobriety in dress and diet. The defeat of the Ionians by the kings of Lydia was caused more by internal turmoil than by soft living.
Agriculture: Regarded High and Low
Some authors show clearly enough that agriculture has many attractionsfor the Greeks; in Xenophon's account, Socrates ranks it with war as an occupation worthy of a citizen, and goes on to explain how no other produces more splendid first fruits for the gods or richer festivals, how none is liked so much by slaves or is pleasanter for women and children. But then we have Plato making use of the same Socrates to force the farmers down among the manual workers, excluded from leadership in his ideal state, and this at a time when the real Athenian state would have had good reason to thank the gods if the farmers had still kept a leading role in politics. It is a puzzle to know how the interpretation can have changed so much. Possibly Plato was thinking more of the general view of things, as actual field work was almost entirely done by slaves. It had certainly long been considered more distinguished to live only on income from land, to spend the time in horse breeding, hunting, philosophy and so on, and at most to combine these activities with the personal overseeing of one's estates.
For Aristotle the right to citizenship is essentially linked with bearing arms, so of necessity he must rank the peasants somewhat higher than other manual workers. Yet, in those parts of the Politics where he expresses his ideal of the state, he reckons them with the masses, who are an indispensable element in the polis, but have no say compared with the counsellors and warriors, and whose members may not appear uninvited in the free popular assembly. Evidently their occupation comes under the general heading of the banausic, defined as embracing all those things which would render the freeman physically, morally or intellectually unfit to practise the duties of a citizen, since all daily labour robs the mind of leisure and lofty aspirations. Admittedly when he addresses himself to the real state of things rather than to his ideal, Aristotle himself says that if democracy must be, then an agricultural demos is the best. Thus he concedes that the peasants are not quite negligible, and they might have amounted to something in reality; the great theorists ought to have had second and indeed third thoughts before they assigned them to the lowest place.
Thus it was that despite the old Athenian dictum about 'Landowning for citizens, manual work for the metics,' a large number of immigrants who lived only by the skill of their hands were admitted directly to full citizenship in the time of Themistocles and even as early as that of Solon (Plutarch, Solon 24).
Craftsmen and Wagies
In his polis Plato keeps the craftsmen as well as the peasants remote from political activity, and represses them as underlings who yet have to pay taxes. For Aristotle the paramount question is that of the right to citizenship, which is the real meaning of his arete; for him the true disqualification is working for wages. Fundamentally he considers the banausos equivalent to the slave, except that the servitude of the first is limited and of the second unlimited, being determined by nature. In his view all of them should be excluded from the polis as having no excellence. The extremes to which contempt could go, even for the most important services, if they were specialized and somehow involved practicalities, and how narrowly the bounds of liberal activity were drawn, can be seen most clearly in Plato's Gorgias, in the figure of Callicles. Socrates reproaches him with despising the military master engineer and his science too, although the engineer's skill in defending whole cities equals that of the general, and his skill with fine phrases that of the orators themselves; Callicles is unwilling to give his daughter to this man's son or to take his daughter to wife. This may be compared with the important discussion in Plutarch where, in connection with Archimedes, the view is expressed that it is an actual disgrace for mathematics to lend itself to ends of practical importance. Archimedes himself considers this to be banausic and Hieron has had to compel him to undertake this work.
Ancients Would Not Understand Our Obsession with their Art
By chance the whole of representational art fell into the general category of banausia. To us latecomers, the art and poetry of the Greeks seem incontestably the highest and most marvelous of their achievements, and we naturally suppose the Greeks to have taken the same exalted view of art and artists. When we imagine the temples of their golden age, the dazzling statuary groups on the pediments, the halls full of monuments, the fine sacred paintings, we feel sure that the creators of such splendours must have been venerated almost as supernatural beings, that only to approach them must have been thought a privilege, and that it was an incomparable spiritual joy to learn something of their emotional world.
The reality was quite different. The sculptors themselves were subject to the harshest antibanausic prejudices, and no sublimity of soul could redeem them from the fact that they earned their livelihood, and that they wielded the chisel or stood at the anvil.
In earlier centuries, that is the seventh and sixth, when the first notable master artists appeared, they were surrounded by an aura reflected from the holy places they adorned; oracles protected them, and they were still allowed to place their own likenesses beside or near their sacred works.Later masters were no longer religiously venerated in this way. Even in the Iliad, unfortunately, the artist among the gods was not only lame from his fall, but also depicted as physically deformed in the very way that was considered typical of the banausos; Hephaestus is a broad-chested giant with powerful shoulders, but with lame and feeble legs."
As we have seen, the artists were regarded with the same contempt that was the lot of all who devoted their lives to a particular task, a specialty; the musicians and many poets were in the same case. It may sound very grand when the Greeks are praised as the people among whom, as far as possible, everyone cultivated his gifts, and lived in the pursuit of wholeness and not for one thing only; but we in posterity are bound to feel we owe more to some of their one-sided specialists than to those who hardly knew what to do with themselves for sheer harmonious kalokagathia, and most of all in the conditions of the real polis as it was after the Peloponnesian War, when they could scarcely find an appropriate role in which to make use of their 'excellence'. When this stage had been reached it might have been better to accord specialists the status they deserved.
Is a Noble Artist Possible?
On one hand is the man of eloquence and fine appearance, who is awarded praise, prizes, influence, office and fame, and is envied for his intelligence; on the other the unhappy creature in a dirty apron, slavelike, with his lever, chisel and drill, crouching in a corner over his work, bowed down and busy with trivialities, held down in every sense; with no hope of standing upright, or of a manly free decision — condemned to constant care that the statues turn out harmonious and well formed, but not able to care to become harmonious and noble himself, and therefore counting for less than the stones he carves.
Agonal Greeks Lived Without Earning or Income
It must be a source of perpetual astonishment to the modern northern temperament that, as far as we can see, these people lived without earning and apparently without any income. Where did they get the money even to buy their slaves? The whole of modern Europe, it seems to us, would soon be dying of hunger given such a way of life. The explanation is in the first place that moderation and frugality in all things were the general rule, though on occasion everyone gladly joined in drinking and feasting, and expected the really rich, such as Callias and his kin, to show their wealth. One habit that was absent was that of eating and drinking from pure boredom and apathy. They did not suffer from northern boredom and were not listless.
Life itself, and the spectacle it offered, counted for something — and still does in the south, here and there. Since there was no pressing hurry about anything, people could give themselves up to the particular scene, and to the wise and witty comments on it that some of the bystanders would make. Those who wanted a change from the agora and the Cerameicus went to Piraeus to look at the ships. Thus, even in the Roman period, all four of the speakers in Lucian's Ship have gone down to the Piraeus to see the free spectacle of an extraordinarily large ship which has anchored there, one of those which ferried corn from Egypt to Italy; the crowd of onlookers is so great that one of the friends gets lost in it.
On Giving Women Political Power
A particular archetype becomes widespread; we might call it the Tarpeia plot. This is where the woman, in love with an enemy, commits the worst crime then possible, which is betrayal of the polis, her own city. The story of the founding of Lesbos includes the account, handed on by Parthenius, of Peisidike, princess of Methymna. From the walls of her city, which is bravely resisting a siege led by Achilles, Peisidike sees him and falls in love with him. She sends her nurse with a message to promise him the city's surrender on condition that he marries her. The traitress draws the bolts of the gate and looks on while her parents are murdered and the women dragged away to the ships; but her deed disgusts Achilles and she is stoned to death by his men! Generally speaking the stories tend to demonstrate the conviction that terrible events are women's doing. Denunciations which result in the man's death play an important part here; it could be said that just as in the Middle Ages the rule was a romantic idealization of the female as an angel, here it is a romantically ruthless image of implacability. And where these legends and foundation myths left off, tragedy later continued in the same vein.
The Symposium
The symposium was the basis of social life from early times, but it was a very different institution from one stage of Greek development to another. The brusque, sober conviviality of the Spartans at their syssitia, with its artificial insistence on moderation and ridicule of others, was capable of any amount of laconism but not of spontaneity, nor of poetry. This was the principal lack in Spartan culture; the syssition was not a symposium, and like everything else in Sparta it essentially lacked freedom. By contrast, it was the free Hellenic custom to have all kinds of parties on no particular pretext, quite apart from those of a public nature, which might be banquets on political or religious occasions, and family feasts like weddings, celebrations of the naming of a child or of a victory at the agon and so on. The eranos (or communal picnic) is very ancient too, occurring in Homer and in Hesiod, and clearly represents an additional degree of freedom; for whether those invited paid their contribution in money (as was often done later) or brought it with them in a basket, they incurred no obligation to anyone in either case. The eranos made it possible for anyone, not only the rich, to offer hospitality, and so represented a form of equality. But even when someone sent invitations to a symposium in his own house, there was no order of precedence by rank (at least in pre-Roman times) and although, as a rule, the invitation was sent early enough for the guests to dress appropriately, it was all so informal that they were free to bring others who were not invited. This is conceivable only if the whole point of the thing was the conversation, outweighing all other enjoyments.
Besides conversations on the agora, those at the symposia represent a second aspect of a specifically Greek style of life, and how much they were treasured can be seen from the lament used of someone who died: “For him there is no more feasting and no more music.”
Hippocliedes Early Example of Athenian Versatility
In this case the Athenian aristocrat had of course exceeded the bounds of noble dignity, which allowed the display of gymnastic and musical skills, but only in restricted forms. In Athens it was the aim to amuse oneself and other people and to go in for everything that was found entertaining.
The Athenian who knew Spartan and Attic dances, and could even dance like a tumbler, while in other places only the local dances were known, is a prototype of the later Athenian versatility. Even if he did forfeit a good match by showing off, the Athenian could take it lightly, not only out of frivolity but because, in living life to the full, he was sure to find many other ways to console himself. In the end, though, it was to an Athenian that Cleisthenes gave his daughter in marriage.
Praise of Solon
Athens in that age deserves to be dwelt on a little longer. Plutarch's account of developments there in the seventh and sixth centuries, though it may be distorted and tendentious, gives a better idea of the inner life of the people than we have of any other nation; consciousness and reason do not exist elsewhere to the same degree. When Solon, to take one example, finds the golden mean (meson) between the various predominating interests, he reveals a profound and many-sided social culture. A glance at his poems shows an extraordinarily lucid reflective power directed to every aspect of the world. All in all, he not only makes by far the most outstanding impression of all the Seven Sages, with Thales the nearest to equalling him, but in his special consciousness as an Athenian he seems the incarnation of his city's finest qualities.
Individuality and Celebrity
In this period, celebrities gradually begin to appear; people, that is, whose names were known all over the Greek world, and who began to put the victors at the agon in the shade. These were first the tyrants, then poets and artists and later, particularly, the founders of weird cults, and the Seven Sages. Most of them have been mentioned in other connections; they were characteristic of a time when mere weight of numbers was not yet the dominant factor, and when powerful individuality was still felt to be important.
Now individuality as such emerged, and it was this development that made the Greeks a nation different from any other. At the same period, when personal fame selected individuals from the mass, it was soon possible for one of them to triumph over another without any victory in the agon or similar formal advantage. Wit and sardonic malice began to exert an influence they had never previously had.
The Greeks Knew How to Absorb to Enhance
I am inclined to believe that the question can be answered by reference to the great increase in the slave population at that time; and Aesop, historical personage though he was, would be the living symbol of this fact. What I imagine is that the foreign slave in a Greek household, as soon as he could speak a little stumbling Greek, would tell the children simple and primitive versions of the fables that had long existed in his oriental or Libyan homeland. They must have made a strong impression on Greek hearers, for the wisdom of these stories was common to all peoples. Perhaps they revealed a quite unknown world beside the myths of gods and heroes; the Greeks took pleasure in it and increased the value of this treasury they had been given, as a truly wealthy nation becomes richer by accepting what they can from others and developing it further.
Pythagoreans Were Hostile to the Agon
We do not know whether he intended to counteract the Dionysian excess then raging throughout the Greek world, and that later became notorious in southern Italy as the cult of Liber and Libera and of Bacchanalian orgies; the women followers of Pythagoras at a later time still practised simplicity and purity. At least in one way he was at odds with the current attitude, for his warning to everybody was “to beware ambition and love of fame, which cause the worst envy, and to avoid going among crowds" — as much as to say: “Away with the agon, or it will dominate the whole of life!”
In contrast and in opposition to him was the whole of the polis as it developed in Greater Greece. Inevitably it became jealous, since all his adherents, but particularly the inner core of disciples, dissociated themselves from their fellow citizens by proclaiming the ascetic way of life against colonial affluence, rather as Savonarola's followers did from the rest of the Florentines.
We should also remember the mysterious symbolical utterance of the Pythagoreans, and think of the natural contrast between the spiritually potent leader and the great mass of the people, even if in each town this mass only consisted of the thousand wealthiest, to understand the hatred of the unconverted, which brought about the fall of the sect in Croton and Metapontum. Yet Pythagoreanism lived on. As late as the fourth century it found expression in the conspiracy of Damon and Pythias against Dionysus the Younger.
Fewer Terrible Wars; Only Glorious Wars
The most enviable feature of the age, though, was the rarity of wars among the Hellenes. Apart from the expansion of Sparta into Messene, Arcadia and Argolis and perhaps the fighting in Euboea, a few raids in the name of the Delphic Apollo and some fierce battles in Ionia, there were hardly any wars to speak of; restless elements were absorbed by colonization, and the Greeks were not yet preying on each other. Synoecisms, carried out by force with the aim of accumulating power, were still in the future; so were the city-hegemonies, like Thebes, which would encourage the destruction of those who resisted them, and the annihilation of cities by a stronger polis in order to clear their own neighborhood of Spartan allies, as Argos, after the Persian Wars, annihilated Mycenae and Tiryns. This time, though, was infinitely rich in beauty: the visual arts were preparing for greatness, and poetry was already splendidly mature.