Thinking on Pindar, Reflections, and the Road we Follow

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Ancient Greece, ancient greek, Life, Marathon, meaning, philology, philosophy, Pindar, Reflections

Reflections, like dreams, are a state of the mind in which we cannot find what is, but what should be. Perhaps, even, if we are to find something of the truth amongst the shadows of our own lives we must, also, become something more, or something else. I have thought of Pindar several times in the last few days, holidays and all (the US just celebrated Presidents’ Day), and the ideas that make us who we are. Going through old notebooks from classes I took years ago I found this quote by Pindar (Nemean 1, 25-26) and its subsequent translation:

τέχναι δ᾽ ἑτέρων ἕτεραι: χρὴ δ᾽ ἐν εὐθείαις ὁδοῖς στείχοντα μάρνασθαι φυᾷ.
Though skills being one or the other it must thus be that a person marching in a straight and narrow road is made to fight as a boxer by his nobility.

Once again, I have fought the classical translations; not because I did not like them, but rather because I do appreciate them. What Pindar meant here has been a bit of a conundrum to me, but one must appreciate the meaning of the original vs the translation. I love Pindar here because he uses one of my favorite words in the A. Greek, τέχναι. If teknon (child) is that which we make, technē is the skill which makes the child possible. In other words, technology is the product of our mind and our skill. Pindar is using τέχναι and ἕτεραι as comparatives for his audience, a form of the verb to be has been elided as unnecessary for context, something the Greeks loved to do. Ancient Greek students will tell you that elided verbs are the bane of their existence, yet you see it most often with the verb to be and when obvious nouns which don’t belong together seem to be used as an adjective and noun pair. Technically simple, practically hard. Thus, ‘skills [being] one of the two.’ His usage of ἑτέρων as an attributive genitive is fascinating. in other words, he is using the same word  as before, ἕτεραι, but in a different context, to say something like ‘skills [being] one of the two of the two of them.’ A very complex way to say that to each man is a different skill. It is Pindar, after all, composer of the Olympian Odes, right?

The second part of the statement is not so bad. χρὴ δ is a conjunction that introduces a statement which must take place for the previous statement to be true. Thus, what is to follow, must take place if different skills can be attributed to different men. I love χρὴ because it denotes something that must happen, but it also translates as money in χρηματα or, in other words, what one must have. Although, I am not sure if this use of money as the possession that matters most was a thing with the Dorian and Ionian Greek dialects as much as it was in the Athenian Attic. One day I will have to look at that. ἐν εὐθείαις ὁδοῖς is just a preposition+dative construction that indicates the place in which the action is taking place. We may call it a prepositional phrase, I suppose. εὐθείαις is not quite a straight road, but sort of the ‘straight and narrow’ or morally-sound road. Pindar again uses metaphor to indicate that whilst ‘in the straight and narrow road’ στείχοντα μάρνασθαι.

There is no reference to man or a transitive verb in the second part of the secondary clause. Using a participle (στείχοντα) and an passive infinitive (μάρνασθαι), the author expects you will fill in some meaning. Στείχοντα literally means ‘able to be standing;’ don’t think of it as an infinitive, but rather as a hyphenated verb. Then we have μάρνασθαι, ‘to be fought.’ Funny thing about μάρνασθαι (marnasthai), it shares roots with marathon (map-). Now, Marathon was named after the Fennel that peppered the field surrounding the city. Marnasthai relates to a conflict fight of boxers. The root proper refers to a wasting away. Could this be a reference to the ‘wasting away’ of flowers, men, and boxers? More than likely. Words like madness (a wasting away of the mind) come from this root, so the theory seems sounds. At any rate, what we lack is a conjunctive verb. So we can supply ‘to be’ for our purposes. Thus, ‘a [man] marching [is] made to fight as a boxer’ is added to the phrase.

One may think that with only a word left there is not much to be done here. Alas, Ancient Greek is a language far beyond assumptions. Remember what I said at the beginning? That thing about reflections being like dreams? Pindar has brought us on a journey of self-discovery, his rhetoric has served the purpose of a vehicle to our minds and our souls in the search for meaning in ancient words. A single step on the ladder remains, φυᾷ (phua). Physis is the nature of a person, phua is the growth of the soul based on said nature. This growth is only possible by the good things anyone person does in life, say, by walking ‘in the straight and narrow road.’ Another conundrum, Pindar places the word ‘phua’ in the dative, it is the indirect object of the sentence. However, like the Latin ablative, the dative in Greek is the Jack of All Trades. Datives take on certain characteristics, especially when you don’t see their article (τῂ) somewhere in the sentence. What is that mean? Well, the dative is acting as a Dative of Means/Manner or a Dative of Agent – there many other dative constructions but they don’t die here. The first dative form tells us by which means the action is being made or the manner in which it is made. The second, especially when a passive verb exists, tells us the agent by which an action is being done (notice the passive verb in this sentence and the agent ‘which’). Considering that marnasthai is a passive construction, we can conjecture that phua, the nature of the person, is the agent making said person struggle.

Huh? I know. Nuts. But here is the thing: in life we only fight ourselves and our reflection in the mirror of life. We become great at what we do, whatever that skill is, only because we struggle the most against the thing that matters the most to us. We love our families because we can’t let them go, we fight for them. We love architecture (for example) because we have put in the time and money to learn the skills necessary to make it happen. We love writing because we have struggled to understand the intricacies of the written language. Life shows us who we are now, telling us we do not deserve the future we have planned for ourselves. But we can understand who we are only because we take time to reflect, to see ourselves in that mirror of life and choose to fight ourselves by virtue of the noble road we seek to take rather than the path we are currently taking. We change, because we have the courage to see ourselves as we are, and then fight ourselves, like a boxer in the ring against an equal, to make something else happen in our lives. Fight yourself, reader, for your own sake. Let us reminisce on that one for a while.

Χαιρετε!

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Thinking on Books, Freedom, and Liberty

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Ancient Greece, E pluribus unum, Founding Fathers, Freedom, John Adams, latin, Liberty, Responsibility, rome, United States, US Coins

You may be thinking, reader, that I have extrapolated the power of books from some philosophical read and given them power over life and death. Certainly, freedom and liberty are a matter of life and death to many of us. Allow me to set your mind at ease by giving you the Latin of the noun, adjective, and noun I have just given you.

Liber, liber, libertas.

Indeed, the root in Latin is the very same. Well, I should not say that. Latin nouns can be expressed in twelve different spellings depending on their singularity, plurality, and case represented in a sentence. Our root comes from the Genitive, the second case singular, in which case the roots are ‘liber, libr, and libertat’; however, jump with me into this bandwagon of Nominatives cases, reader. I promise it will be a grand wild ride. If you are not familiar with Latin, either way, what I have just said is only confusing, might as well ignore it.

Consider this completely-made-up phrase:

Liber liber libertas est.
The free book is free.
El libro libre es libre.

It is interesting that the same thing happens in Spanish. Libre, like Liber, denotes a state in which something is free of attachment, such as payment. Thus, a book can be free in the sense that it does not cost us anything. Also, as in the Latin, book as ‘libro’ denotes a sense of liberty by the person who wrote. To write, one needs time. When time is not spent on anything else, it becomes free time; thus, when one uses free time to write something the result is a liberty, that is, a book. In English, we preserve this concept by saying ‘I took the liberty of…’. We Think of ‘taking the liberty’ as something we do when we are free. In reality, we take liberties because having the spare time, we choose to waste it doing something only we can do; whether it is writing a book, helping someone else, or promoting a cause not our own. In other words, free time is productive time spent on something we have the freedom to enjoy. Similarly, to read what was produced by someone else and their free time is a freedom only those with freedom from other responsibilities can enjoy.

Freedom is all that matters. Freedom is what grants possibility, opens up worlds, and gives time for leisure in Ancient Rome. However, ‘liber’ is something else entirely, to the Romans. ‘Liber’ is freedom in responsibility. I have written about responsibility at least in four of my posts in this blog, here, here, here, and here; yet, I am surprised at the fact I had not defined Liberty as of today. Let’s take a look at that before we continue – pick up a US quarter, if you have it, and take a look at its obverse side.

John Adams, first Vice President and second President of the United Sates once said “The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” John Adams was more of a Classicist than myself. Here, he ties Liberty to duty. In other words, his duty was to enjoy his liberty in the pursuit of “the sciences of government” so that his children would have the liberty (duty) to learn to feed the country, and his children’s children the liberty to educate it. Duty, as law, must be respected, and our freedom spent within the studies of what is dutiful for us to pursue.  John Adams was not thinking of freedom when he spoke of liberty, he was thinking of duty and responsibility within the law. The fascination of the Founding Fathers with Rome and Roman values should not be taken at my word, of course, simply look at that quarter again, this time at its reverse side.

“E pluribus unum” is what you will see in every coin. What is that mean? You may wonder. If American historians have done their job, any US citizen will know the Latin statement means ‘out from many, one.’ The statement is not only representative of the US melting pot, but also of the Roman Empire itself. Rome was quite renowned for bringing many cultures under its system of government through acculturation. Arguably, when Rome failed to assimilate one of the people they had conquered, the Empire crumbled. You may remember the northern Germans and Teutoburg forest in 9 AD. Of course, many other things brought about this collapse, but assimilation of foreign cultures was the main engine of an expansive empire, and it remains so today as well.

Thus, freedom in the Roman context, and the North American, is liberty, not freedom per se. Responsibility is part of the make up of Rome, indeed, it is ingrained into its culture ad nauseam. It is no wonder the Founding Fathers identified themselves with the Romans. You may see that Romans used the word ‘freedom’ to refer to a man, therefore they must have thought freedom was possible. Well, sure it was, but a free man, even when used to describe someone who had free time, meant that said man had said freedom because he had first and foremost fulfilled his duties. Liberty, thus, was what happened when all duties had been fulfilled – take a look at duty here. A man was held down my his duty as a slave was held down by his/her master. Only when the master decreed it, was one at liberty. The Romans saw themselves in this way.

Here we are, then; Books, Freedom, and Liberty. Responsibility, obedience to the laws, and duty, linked together for the purpose of granting men vision, hope, and potential. When you next hold a quarter, or virtually any other US coin for that matter, do not think only of the Founding Fathers, think also of the Romans; think of how books, freedom, and liberty are inextricably linked. Consider, reader, all the great men and women who have come before, the giants on whose shoulders we stand now. Fortunately, the metaphor does not only apply to men of history or science, it applies to all of us, together. It applies to our liberties. We all, wherever we are, come from a long line of imperfect human beings who sought to invest upon us the right to liberty, leisure, and duty.

Valete!

Thinking of Sparta, its Citizens, and thier Civic Duty

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Aeolians, Ancient Greece, ancient greek, civic duty, Dorians, Ionians, leonidas, Sparta

Leonidas is the best known king and general of Sparta. We all know the story, few of us understand the history behind it. Even historians, up to their knees in the history of the wars between Greece and Persia, can tells much of who Leonidas was. Our greatest sources are Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus, all of whom gives, at best, a couple of paragraphs on the elusive king of Sparta. Interestingly, the geographers Strabo and Pausanias confirm the existence of Leonidas, at least as to his part on the defense of Thermopylae, by giving us eye witness accounts of the place at which he died. One could consider this archeological evidence, and therefore assert Leonidas’ existence should not be questioned. It is to the character of Leonidas we suffer most, for we know very little of it. There are some statements attributed to him by Plutarch in his Apophthegmata Laconica (51.2, is where this statement is located); today we will look at one of those statements and try to gather some meaning from it.

Ἀγαθὸν γαμεῖν καὶ ἀγαθὰ τίκτειν.
(To) marry a good man and have good children.
Casarte con un buen hombre y tener buenos hijos.

The statement is a response to his wife Gorgo, according to Plutarch. In this example, Gorgo came up to Leonidas before he left for Thermopylae and asked him what she was to do if he died; the king of Sparta replied in that statement. It is no secret that Spartan culture is a complex one, and also quite removed from all other cultures in regards to beliefs and understanding of the world. The great works of Paul Cartledge may help us understand how this culture was different from all others. However, in the ancient world, Spartan culture was admired for its frugality and resourcefulness. Believe it or not, Ancient Greece had a different culture for every city-state (polis) that existed in the land. Women in Sparta were considered to have more freedom than in virtually any other city state. If we take this thought by Leonidas as accurate, we must then make assumptions about spartan culture from it as well. What I have found is that Sparta was a family-based culture which respected women. Here is why.

In order to understand how Spartan culture differed from the rest of the city states one must first know that they were Dorian men. Dorians came into Greece later on, becoming part of the culture rather than existing before hand, according to the archeological record. The Aeolians (part of them were the Achaeans of Agamemnon and Menelaus) and Ionians (Athenians and Coastal Turks) had shared the land with the Spartans for some seven hundred years when Leonidas’ statements had been made. The Spartans, for their part, had conquered the aeolian helots of Messenia. The culture of Sparta was one forged in war for this very reason. After the cultural breakdown of the 12th century BCE, each polis had been left to its own devices, giving rise to a strong concentration of power amongst local groups sorted by tribes and families. By the 8th century, as Sparta attempted to conquer the messenians, they were not much different than any other city state, seeking to make a place for itself after four hundred years of dark ages.

At that time, at the crux of their cultural change, appeared the figured of Tyrtaeus and Lycurgus. The former gave spartans courage in war, the second established an unalterable code of laws. It is in these two things that spartiates realized their need to serve the state, man or woman. Dying for the state became the greatest honor in Spartan society, while in many other polis cultures service for the city was a more honorable curse, not death, such as in Athens. Other cities such as Corinth focused on economic growth, while Thebes focused on agricultural prowess. All cities, however, admired or hated Sparta because their women were free to do much more than in any other polis, they were fed better and had the right to own land and control over their children – to the point of taking their lives if necessary, according to Plutarch. In this system of strong women and men, only those who died for the city were buried with a headstone. While for men that meant to die in combat, for women it meant dying in giving birth to the sons of Sparta.

Based on this understanding of the culture and the differences that set it apart from all others, Gorgo knows exactly what her duty is; so why would she ask Leonidas to tell her? The reason is simple: Leonidas was the exemplar of Spartans, leaving the city, the center of his universe, for the defense of a pass quite far away that would guarantee the safety of the city proper. It is likely that husband and wife were not alone when they spoke to each other, and that Leonidas statement was as much an order as it was a bit of good advice. Also, Leonidas spoke for the 300 men he took with him. He was answering not only his wife, but those of the men he was taking to an uncertain future. It was the duty of the man of Sparta to defend the city and die, if needed, in the struggle. Equally, it was the duty of women to bear children for the polis and, if necessary, die in the struggle as well. Both deaths were considered equally honorable to the Spartans as a whole, and it was the reason why they respected and admired their women, giving them rights and freedoms that other Greek poleis saw as too-much.

Modern historians will say that it is not true equality to expect women to die in birth and men to die in combat, and they would be right. But Sparta believed in a division of labor that was admired and respected in the ancient world, and created a system of government that outlasted even the Democracy of the Athenians. When Athens had completely given up its autonomy to the Romans, the latter were still visiting Sparta to observe the ‘strange’ customs still prevalent there; men who trained for combat and women who feared no man. The Spartan family was thus the core of the city; a city focused on the training of boys for war and women to give birth. Leonidas told Gorgo he was going off to do his civic duty; he was implying that those staying behind should take to doing their duty as well.

Χαιρετε!

Thinking of Homer, Twisted Words, and Twisted Minds

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Ancient Greece, ancient greek, Aristotle, Erechtheus, heroes, Homer, Husband, Iliad, Ion, John Milton, meaning, Men, Odysseus, Odyssey, religion, Theseus, Toni Morrison, twisted, Twisting

ἅνδρα μοι ἕννεπε, μοῡσα, πολύτροπον…
Of the man/husband/hero tell me, ō muse, the one of many turns…
Dime, musa, del hombre/esposo/héroe de muchas vueltas…

There is an inherent beauty in the first words of every Ancient Greek play. The reason is as simple now as it was innovative then: the first word of the play or poem dictated the theme for the work, especially amongst near-eastern writers born in Ionian lands beyond Attica, such as Homer. This archaic style would have been ancient even to the ancients, easily predating the classic writers of the 4th and 3rd centuries by at least 300 years. It is inevitable to compare Homer and our very own Victorian-era poets and their obsession for Latin, conservative views on life, and understanding of history. Homer, in much the same way, was obsessed with Linear B (which he spoke by tradition, not because he understood it), thought the previous culture quite conservative, and attempted to understand the history he was trying to portray.

A bit of a digression is in order. It is quite obvious that while making the attempt Homer fails to really portray the culture of the 12th century. At best, the ancient poet is speaking of the culture of the 11th to 10th centuries. We should think of the Iliad as a frame. Homer knew the borders were set, with some names, a battle, and perhaps the knowledge of a couple of events, but no more. What is within the frame can be defined as a painting, completely made up by the author based on his understanding of history centuries after the war in Troy, his assumptions, and his imagination. Those facts did not stop even the great Aristotle from using the Odyssey to make assumptions about the Athenian constitution. The philosopher had no qualms about ascribing post-12th century political advances, such as the creation of the village, to pre-12th century individuals such as kings Ion, Theseus, and Erechtheus. We suffered from the same ailment, for early historians such as Bede ascribed historical facts to mythological characters such as king Arthur. The historian knew some battles against the Saxons had taken place in 4th and 5th century England, and that someone amongst the Anglos had taken the lead to defeat them. More than likely, this man was multiple men, although Bede combined the battles he thought took place and ascribed the success of the Anglo push against the Saxons to King Arthur (Ambrosius) as early as the 8th century. Mark Twain said that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Writers suffer from the same problem. They do not repeat each other, but they rhyme nicely.

Let us return to the issue at hand, then. The Odyssey begins with five words out of which the first is one of the most diverse and twisted concepts in all of Homeric Greek. A twist, as Homer understood it, was a witty turn of fate made by humans against the will of the gods. A twisted man was one able to wiggle his way out of any problem or thorny situation. Not every man could be twisty; only the most cunning and self-driven of men received such a title. Further, men themselves were divided into many categories, from φώς (not to be confused with φῶς – light) to ἅνήρ; it is the latter, out of all his choices, which Homer uses to open his rhapsody. The word can be translated as man/husband/hero, and it dictates, as stated, how the Odyssey will be themed. After all, who is Odysseus and what are his chiefly concerns if not the ones represented by this very word? The Odyssey is reminiscent of a time in which the gods, demigods, and heroes are extinct. It is a man, son of humans, that becomes the most important figure in the epic poem. This man, who is a hero by virtue of his many twists is also a husband to a traditional and loyal wife. Ἅνδρα, thus, describes the Odyssey perfectly. Further, Homer summons the muses to his aid. The idea there is that man no longer knows his history, it can only be revealed to him. Compare his calling to the summoning of the muses by John Milton in “Paradise Lost,” the epic poem about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (if you haven’t read it, you are missing out). Both Homer and Milton admit, by their summoning of the muses, that the period they are about to describe cannot be ascertained by research, only by revelation. It is ironic that one of the muses, Clio, is in charge of history. Although, irony is made practicality when we consider Clio represents oral history. Also, it is interesting that Homer uses an Imperative form of the verb ‘to tell’ in order to summon the muses. This indicates active research by the writer, since inspiration can only come when one has done the legwork to learn what could have taken place. In essence, research is the rite that summons the inspiration of the muses.

I described the word ἀνήρ as twisted, and gave you an idea of what the adjective meant in Homer’s time. The reason for it was that I consider the statement by Homer highlighted in this post, like his first word, twisted beyond twisting; in the good sense, of course. Πολύτροπον, thus, was an appellative of Odysseus because he was ‘twisty;’ able to wiggle out of any situation by sheer smarts. In many ways, there are many twisty writers today, able to wiggle out of grammatical problems and story dead-ends with amazing understanding of language and plot twists that engage the reader and baffle even the most skeptic of critics. This is why I love Homer, he is as twisty as Odysseus; his plot twists are unexpected and diverse. There is never a dull moment in the Odyssey, just as Odysseus’ life is never dull.
Thus, here we are. We have untwisted Homer’s first phrase in the Odyssey. Perhaps it is the role given to the reader to untangle the tangled words of the artist. If such is true, then we are failing at doing our jobs. However, the problem is only exacerbated by the fact that few writers twist their words anymore. We think of twisting as a bad thing, not to mention the twisted as bad people. Toni Morrison comes to mind, for she is an extremely twisted writer. It takes time to understand her work, which is also dreary and dark, filled with African-American issues, Womanism, and family problems, making her a very complex writer. I think we can say, with some certainty, that twisting and untwisting are essential to create meaning. We cannot long survive without the complexity needed to write good, twisted works. Writing well, then, is not only about proper grammar and syntax, it is about proper twisting as well.

Thus, reader, be twisted in writing and speaking. Give us, those who still care of the untangling, a chance to enjoy the process of making meaning.

Valete.

Thinking on Oaths, Family, and Standing at the Battle Line

Tags

Ancient Greece, Athens, courage, Ephibic Oath, honor, Hoplite Combat, Oaths, Sacred Band, Sparta, Thebes

It is Greek Wednesday, and while thinking on what to post I noticed this little meme hopping around on the net. Needless to say, it is perfect for hoplite warfare. The quote is from “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield (pp.75-6). The sentiment is fully Ancient, however. I am reminded of the importance of oaths in the Ancient World, especially those of the hoplite tradition. Although most of these oaths have not survive, in Ancient Greece, the oath was the only form of legal contract. Especially at Sparta, the loyalty of the man in the phalanx was all there was.

The only real examples we have of these oaths are found in Lycurgus’ speech against Leocrates (1.77). In this speech, Lycurgus argues he has perjured himself against the gods – witnesses to the oaths – and his fellow citizens. The oath of the Ephebe was as follows:

Οὐκ αἰσχυνῶ τὰ ἱερὰ ὅπλα, οὐδὲ λείψω τὸν παραστάτην ὅπου ἂν στοιχήσω: ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἱερῶν καὶ ὁσίων καὶ οὐκ ἐλάττω παραδώσω τὴν πατρίδα, πλείω δὲ καὶ ἀρείω κατά τε ἐμαυτὸν καὶ μετὰ ἁπάντων, καὶ εὐηκοήσω τῶν ἀεὶ κραινόντων ἐμφρόνως. καὶ τῶν θεσμῶν τῶν ἱδρυμένων καὶ οὓς ἂν τὸ λοιπὸν ἱδρύσωνται ἐμφρόνως: ἐὰν δέ τις ἀναιρεῖ, οὐκ ἐπιτρέψω κατά τε ἐμαυτὸν καὶ μετὰ πάντων, καὶ τιμήσω ἱερὰ τὰ πάτρια. ἴστορες θεοὶ Ἄγραυλος, Ἑστία, Ἐνυώ, Ἐνυάλιος, Ἄρης καὶ Ἀθηνᾶ Ἀρεία, Ζεύς, Θαλλώ, Αὐξώ, Ἡγεμόνη, Ἡρακλῆς, ὅροι τῆς πατρίδος, πυροί, κριθαί, ἄμπελοι, ἐλάαι, συκαῖ … ”

“I shall not shame the sacred arms, nor leave behind he who stands alongside me (τὸν παραστάτην) at whatever place I am formed up (στοιχήσω). I will defend the  sacred rites [of the gods] (ἱερῶν) and what has been made sacred [by men] (ὁσίων), and will not leave my country smaller, when I die, but greater and better, so far as I am able by myself and with the help of all. I will respect the rulers of the time duly and the laws (θεσμῶν) duly and all others which may be established in the future. And if anyone seeks to destroy the ordinances I will oppose him so far as I am able by myself and with the help of all. I will honor the cults of my fathers. Witnesses to this shall be the gods Agraulus, Hestia, Enyo, Enyalius, Ares, Athena the Warrior, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, Hegemone, Heracles, and the boundaries of my native land, wheat, barley, vines, olive-trees, fig-trees. (The original translation is from Perseus Digital Library, although I have updated some of the concepts – I like the most literal translation possible).

Notice the emphasis on both the things made sacred by the gods and the things made sacred by men. The gods and the things were the tools of the oath, a physical item to which the oath was attached and which became sacred (inviolable) upon doing so, they were “ὅρκους” (Thuc). The oath themselves were made (ὀμνύντων) upon these objects, such as a shield, a stone engraved with the oath, or something else. When the Greeks were about to face the Persians in 479 at Plataea, they made an oath to tithe the city-states who had joined with the Persians but not to destroy them (Herodotus VII.132.2), recorded by Thucydides (V.18.9).

If anyone questions the strength of the oaths, we should consider they were the main reason why the Greek phalanx was as strong as it was. In Sparta, where soldiers fought together for decades building the brotherhood of battle to a level never seen before, the oath simply reinforced the warrior code. At Athens, after the heyday of hoplite warfare, those who fought with you were also actual brothers; with fathers, uncles, and neighbors fighting on the line. The Athenians, unlike the Spartans, fought by household and neighborhood. “The things made sacred” by men were family and the good death of combat. The person to your left was not only a fellow citizen, he was family. The Thebans, similarly, cultivated pair relations between bond-friends (φίλοι) who fought to the death for each other; they defeated the Spartans in the fourth century. These oaths, although poorly preserved, became the backbone of hoplite warfare when hoplite warfare itself could not longer maintain the courage of the line.

Thinking on the Ancient Greek Gods, Youth, and Death

Tags

Ancient Greece, ancient greek, Athens, comedy, courage, death, drama, generations, Life, Menander, playwright, sacrifice, Sparta, the gods, valor, youth

Fellow thinkers,

It is Greek Wednesday.

Have you ever heard the phrase Alea iacta est? If you immediately thought of G. Julius Caesar you hit the nail on the head. Why does Latin intrude into our Greek? You ask. Well, Menander was a dramatist who lived ca 341-290 BC. Most of his work has been lost, but some fragments (including today’s phrase – 111) have survived to modern times. The playwright was quite reputed for his dramatic imitation of Euripides, although he could be funny as well, as Aristophanes, making him a very good representative of Athenian New Comedy; facts which made him quite loved in Rome during later periods. According to Plutarch (Plut. Pomp. 60.2), the phrase used by Caesar was a direct translation of Menander’s Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος, quite literally meaning ‘the cube (die) has been cast,’ used by the author in his play “Arrhephoros” (not extant). The phrase is representative of the dramatic art in the playwright, just as is this one:

ὅν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῡσιν ἀποθνῇσκει νέος
The gods love he who dies young.
Los dioses aman a aquel que muere jóven.

The sentiment needs little translation here, but its meaning…well, that is another story. Consider the subject here, οἱ θεοὶ (the gods), they are the dictators of many things, but not of destiny or time. The Fates do that. The gods, when it comes to death, are completely powerless. They may try to kill, but whether you die or not is up to you and the will of the Three Goddesses. There is only one thing (amongst a few they are allowed) the gods are actively doing here: loving. Further, notice the kind of love we are seeing here, φιλοῦσιν (bond-love), for it is most telling as well. The gods don’t love you because they have gotten to know you and shared experiences with you, that would be ἀγαπεῦσιν. They do not love you because they have to, out of paternal need, στοργοῦσιν; they don’t even desire you, ἐροῦσιν. The gods relate to you, that love that comes from them seeing themselves reflected in you. Ponder that in mind for a moment; the gods see the need to relate to human beings.

Who, then, can be the subject of the gods’ love? Who can strive, according to Menander, to be loved by the highest beings in existence? Who do the gods relate to? ‘He who dies young.’ It is in youth that the gods see themselves in; that youth who runs not from battle, but who “bestrides [the dying man] in his need,” for it is “noble for a brave man to die, having fallen opposite the foremost ranks, whilst fighting for his father-land;” otherwise, said young man “disgraces his race, and belies his fair beauty” (Tyrtaeus). Interestingly, to the Ancient Greeks youth, beauty, goodness, worthiness and valor were thoroughly interconnected. Youth was beauty, it was goodness, it was courage. In a world in which most children with any disadvantage died before their first year was up, the gene pool that was allowed by the Fates to survive was of the highest quality, that quality in which the gods saw themselves.

Imagine the youth, then, who dies in battle. The young man who having been given all things by his parents, the Fates, and the gods, bestrides the older man fallen in front of him, facing the insurmountable wall of spears advancing and threatening his friends and family. He fights with honor, fights with courage, and dies while helping his fellows. To those dying and dead men the gods paid homage, the gods loved. There was nothing more moving to an Ancient Greek than a youth who had given his life for the state. The Spartans boasted the best trained youths in Greece, the Athenians the most resolute, the Thebans the most independent; but they all agreed that their sacrifice would come at the cost of little doubt, if at all, once spear and shield had destroyed the older men.

In the same way, these ideas applied to the political and artistic arena. Giving your youth to the arts and politics was a great sacrifice – especially in Roman times. However, those who arrived to old age were looked upon as having been a bit too safe, not having fought as many wars, or having done so away from the line (the Athenians certainly thought so, albeit mistakenly, of Socrates). Just as Spartan men who had fought and suffered many wounds for the state but died in peace were not given a headstone, aged Athenian men were seen as having lost their edge. Many often retreated to their villas and were never seen again.

The gods love he who dies young; but specially they love those who, having been given everything in life, had chosen none the less to fight for their country, and paid the ultimate price. Let us not, Menander says, be fooled by prosperity. We must seek, especially in our youths, that which deserves our efforts and put ourselves to use; and if we die in this cause while still in years counted only as youthful and carefree, then we have assured ourselves a place in the minds of the gods and future generations.

Χαἰρετε!

Thinking of Ancient Greeks, Deeds, and Time.

Tags

Ancient Greece, ancient history, future, isocrates, Past, Present, rome, time

Imagine, for a moment, that you are inside your own head. The space is empty, not of thought, of course, but of anything else, it is the void of physicality. You stand, alone, at the center of this world, looking at something distant and magnificent. The physical takes shape in the most intimate of your memories. What do you see? This, the Ancient Greeks say, is your past, that which has happened and cannot change, it is the perfect. What you are seeing is not a figment of your imagination, but an accumulation of everything you have done up until now (πᾶν ἐστι ἄνθρωπος συμφρονη – man is an accumulation of choices). Facts that can be lied about but never changed.

You may see a previous time, person, even a city; this is where you came from, who you are now. As you look left and right, you also come closer to the horizontal line that represents the present; a line that divides the past, where you are looking, from the present where you stand, and the future to your back. Imagine, now, that you are standing on a compass and, as such, when you turn, the past is no longer the past, but something else, it is a past turning into present. You are then normalizing your past experiences in order to relate them to you, yourself, today; experiences that become entangled in time. Everything becomes imperfect, less certain, more malleable. If you are looking due East at thirty degrees, the imperfection of your actions is so tangled with your present you can think of these things you see as happening now, they can be changed. Imperfect action is part present, and present can be affected by it; it more than likely is.

In order to effect this change you need to see more, see better; try to understand another aspect of your compass, that what is behind you. However, you cannot turn, something holds you in place, restricting your movements solely to your neck muscles. You try, as much as possible, to look beyond the present; to see what lies across that line, but you cannot turn more than fifteen to thirty degrees from this present line, no more than sixty to eighty degrees from your past; you, everything you are, is fixated upon it. We can only focus on the future in limitations of time.

The future you can imagine is directly dependent upon the present you see and a small, predictable possibility. You may, blindly, speak of a perfect future, a time not visible in which you hope your present has become past, but nothing more. You are trapped, as it seems, by your present; a present that locks you, limited by your own physicality, gazing on the past. What is the future, after all, if not a prediction? What is ‘what is to come’ if not an estimation of present circumstances given frame by the actions we can clearly see from our past and the past of others? It is a gamble, an action of time which, inexorably, passes without our moving. We remain, helplessly, locked into our compass; north is the past, south is the future, a future south we cannot see, only make conjectures about.

The Ancient Greeks thought of time exactly in this way. A man was an accumulation of choices. An accumulation of perfect past actions that had come from behind you and moved with time to the present and the past. You can only see what has been done after it had left the future, transited the present, and become the past. This is how the Ancients Greeks broke down time, how they saw their day-to-day. They would say “count no man lucky, until he dies” and “look to the end” because it was impossible to make a decision on the life of someone whose future was still at their back; in the same light, it was impossible to see a man’s end until the ending itself had caught up with him. An ending determined by the Fates, who spin, determine time,  and cut the threads of individuals that make the thread of life on this earth.

Thus, the Ancient Greeks would say ‘look to the past,’ see your choices, accept them, good or bad, and make changes to the present. The future is coming, it cannot be avoided, all you can do is live now, this very moment, the very best way possible. Socrates, when charged with corrupting the youth and impiety to the gods, and asked to make a defense for himself, replied: “I have lived a good life, isn’t that the best way to prepare my defense?” Socrates needed only to point to his past to demonstrate who he was; there was no need to make up a story about him; his history, that record which he and everyone else could clearly see, was the very argument that should save him from death. Socrates died, in the end, and once he had capped his life with sacrifice in obeisance to the polis, the Athenians whom he sought to protect from themselves realized he had indeed lived a good life, and regretted his death.

Of course, Romans would disagree with me and the Ancients Greeks almost in every way; but that, dear friends, is another story, for another time. In the mean time, look to your past, see the mountain you have become, and decide how to make it even more grandiose to those who, in awe, watch you move backwards into the future, building time now and moving on, constructing a personal empire that will last for generations.

Thinking on Penelope, Women, and Archaic Greece.

Tags

Ancient Greece, Ithaca, marriage, Odysseus, Odyssey, Penelope

Penelope, cousin of Clytemnestra and Helen by virtue of her father, Icarious of Sparta. She was queen in Ithaca after Odysseus had won the right to marry her by virtue of a foot race. Understanding of the age tells us that she was no more than 14 or 15 years old when she was married which, considering she had only one son by Odysseus (Telemachus), makes her no more than 36 when the Odyssey is taking place.

Penelope is usually placed in high regard as, having been placed in virtually the same position as Clytemnestra, she remains faithful to her husband. She was described as extremely beautiful, smart, capable of great political skill, and the only individual in the Odyssey to match Odysseus in cunning.

Check out this brief article from the University of Waterloo and learn more about the “ever-faithful” Penelope of Ithaca.