Thinking on Loss, Pain, and Aeschylus

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300: Rise of an Empire (film), Aeschylus, Ameinias, Athens, Battle of Marathon, Cynaegirus, loss, Marathon, Oresteia (Play), Pain, Persians (Play), Suppliants (play)

Pain.

How we wished it did not exist.

No matter how strong we are, or how well positioned we stand in this thing we call life, we would not last long under constant, unending pain. It has broken the greatest of us. It will yet break many more. There, however, in the horizon, a bit of hope. Aeschylus, arguably the greatest dramatist to have ever lived (sorry Shakespeare lovers), described pain and anguish for us in a way that we could understand it and relate to it. The playwright had fought and lived through the first great Greco-Persian War. In 490 BCE Cyrus, king of Persia, attacked Greece by attempting an amphibious assault upon the bay of Marathon. There, Aeschylus and his fellow Athenians waited for days; they waited for Spartan aid that never came. The Persians, feeling the advantage, sent men and horses via ships to Athens. The Athenians were desperate, their families were going to be obliterated. It is likely that it was at this moment that, by vote of the clan leaders, the Athenians charged down the sloping bay at the Persians. It was the only way they could win. There was no turning back. Honor, glory, fame, it had all faded into the nothingness of combat. They won that day, the Athenians; but Aeschylus had to look down upon a familiar face. During the battle, Cynaegirus, his brother, had too eagerly pursued the Persians to their ships and become separated from playwright and their brother Ameinias. He had died saving Athens. There was not time to bury the dead, the exhausted Athenians marched to Athens, getting there in time to make a show of force before the ships, which turned and fled. The bodies of the heroes of Athens laid in the dirt as their brothers saved their city.

I don’t think very many people noticed, but that second Athenian from the right in this shot from “300: Rise of an Empire”, behind Themistocles, is none other than Aeschylus himself, played by Hans Matheson.

Aeschylus’s pain was beyond hope. He turned to writing. First, the Persians came to him in 472 BCE, Seven Against Thebes in 467, Suppliants in 463 BCE. Then, in 458, he was inspired by the muses to write the Oresteia, a trilogy that spoke of death for the common good, of pain at the loss of a dear one, and vengeance. Agamemnon, king of the Achaeans, has sacrificed his own daughter to the gods both to redeem his men for the murder of a deer sacred to Artemis and to secure wind for safe passage to Troy. His wife, Clytemnestra, could not stop the ritual killing. She was there, with her daughter, when she died; she saw her pass on with honor, as a volunteer for the cause, and yet she could not forgive her husband. She suffered for ten years in this inextinguishable pain. She wandered the halls of her palace alone, thinking of her dear daughter, of her loss. No honor could restore her sanity, no worthy death could bring back her beloved child, no more than fourteen, now gone from her side. Aeschylus wrote of the pain he felt, of the desperation at the death of his brother thirty-two years prior. When pain is too much to bear even for the reader, the following words appear, as soothing balm to the blistered soul:

Ζῆνα δέ τις προφρόνως ἐπινίκια κλάζων τεύξεται φρενῶν τὸ πᾶν: τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώσαντα, τὸν πάθει μάθος θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν. στάζει δ᾽ ἔν θ᾽ ὕπνῳ πρὸ καρδίας μνησιπήμων πόνος: καὶ παρ᾽ ἄκοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν. δαιμόνων δέ που χάρις βίαιος σέλμα σεμνὸν ἡμένων.
A noisy shout upon the victory forward-thinking Zeus gains a purpose for himself, to make man wise. He, being mindful of mortals, to make things passable, has set up a path as law, having rule-like power: Pain lets fall, in sleep towards the heart, memories of misery; and along unwillingness comes wisdom. Thus violent seems the grace of the spirit-gods enthroned up on their high seats.

I have read five translations of this same passage, mine is coarse and literal. My favorite, that by Edith Hamilton, often quoted by JFK and RFK, is the least accurate, but the most beautiful:

“And in our sleep, pain that we cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, and against our very will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god.”

Yet another translation. ‘God’ simply supplants Demons (spiritual guides) in most versions.

Edith Hamilton translates and comments, but Aeschylus does not speak of man’s unwillingness, nor of the constant remembering of pain. He speaks of his brother, of the pain he felt upon his bed when he laid there at night, with nothing else to do and the cutting memories of his death were dropped by the demons (δαιμόνων) Pain, ordered by Zeus to bring wisdom to man even upon the moment of victory (ἐπινίκια). Aeschylus felt the need for restraint upon the victory, even as the clashing (κλάζων) seemed to favor a side, and the victory song was raised; he cautioned care, for his brother had not taking it, and he had paid the price. This is how Zeus brought wisdom to man, by causing them anguish and pain so the cutting edge of memory would etch within our hearts the hard-won lessons of the past. If those lessons are not learned, they bring only destruction. Nothing had Agamemnon learned in Troy; for all his suffering he learned no mercy, for all his killing he learned not how to live. He was the same. His heart was untouched by the remorse of his daughter’s sacrifice and the death of his men.

Clytemnestra was the opposite, and yet her result was the same. For ten years she had suffered the miserable reminder of her daughter’s passing. She was reminded, time and time again, of her inability to help then. There was little else in her mind, but she had also hardened her heart. She slept little, she ate even less. She allowed no wisdom to pass into her spirit and she was driven mad; one purpose haunted her: to kill her husband. Four times Aeschylus speaks of wisdom in this passage: Zeus’ wisdom to teach men restrain even in victory comes first, then man’s lack of wisdom in this fact as the reason for the law; after, the coming of wisdom to humans through the law of Zeus, and finally the setting of wisdom through the pain of miserable memory. But a heart must be open, something that usually happens in dreams, during sleep, when mortal minds are less liable to be controlled by a sometimes-illogical brain. Aeschylus learned, I am certain, that his brother’s death was not for naught. In the telling, he also let go of some of that pain. A pain that, over time, had cut him a little less.

One more word I absolutely love in this passage is βροτοὺς, its Nominative is βροτοι, and it literally means ‘those who bloom.’ The translation is usually rendered as ‘mortals,’ of course, because we, like flowers, bloom, are beautiful but for a day, and die soon after. Pindar expressed the feeling behind the word best:

“Brief is the coming time of joy for mortals (those who bloom) and brief the flower’s bloom (hence the pun) which falls to earth shaken by grim fate. Things of a day. What are we? What are we not? Man is but the shadow of a dream.”
(Edith Hamilton’s translation – I remove the Biblical “Vanity of vanities, it is all vanity” which she added because it made the whole thing more dramatic).

Thus it is dreams, once again, that makes us liable to redemption from pain. Dreams is where we can see those we have lost, feeling the pain more often and yet a little less each time we see them. They are thus, forever, etched into our hearts. The reality of pain is eventually reduced to memory, but the memory of those gone is eventually turned into the reality of our love for them, and it becomes what we recall most.

To Cynaegirus
Χαιρετε!

Thinking of Themistocles, Defiant Speeches, and the Saving of Democracy

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ancient greek, Athens, democracy, speeches, Themistocles

Themistocles, one of the greatest politicians of the ancient world (if not of all time) found himself on an island once, surrounded by men with cities to defend. These men, with Athens burning only a few miles from them across the narrow gap of Salamis and also with their own navies at stake as they feared Persian retaliation, threatened to leave the alliance after the sack of Athens. A Corinthian had put down the Athenian statesman because he was now a man without a city and without land, unworthy of calling himself a free Greek. The Spartan commander, in disdain, proposed that Corinth and Sparta should defend the Isthmus of Corinth and forget Attica altogether. According to Plutarch (Them 11.4) Themistocles replied:

ὦ μοχθηρέ, τὰς μὲν οἰκίας καὶ τὰ τείχη καταλελοίπαμεν, οὐκ ἀξιοῦντες ἀψύχων ἕνεκα δουλεύειν, πόλις δ᾽ ἡμῖν ἔστι μεγίστη τῶν Ἑλληνίδων, αἱ διακόσιαι τριήρεις, αἳ νῦν μὲν ὑμῖν παρεστᾶσι βοηθοὶ σώζεσθαι δι᾽ αὐτῶν βουλομένοις, εἰ δ᾽ ἄπιτε δεύτερον ἡμᾶς προδόντες, αὐτίκα πεύσεταί τις Ἑλλήνων Ἀθηναίους καὶ πόλιν ἐλευθέραν καὶ χώραν οὐ χείρονα κεκτημένους ἧς ἀπέβαλον.

Ō wretch, indeed, we have come down and left behind us our houses and our city walls, not deeming it worthy for the sake of such lifeless things to be enslaved; but we still have a city, the greatest in Hellas, our two hundred triremes, which now stand ready to be made assistants to you on account of your own prerogative; but if you go off and betray us for the second time, straightway many Hellenes will learn that the Athenians have won for themselves a free city and a territory that is far better than the one they cast aside.

Herodotus (61.2) reported that Themistocles threatened the Corinthians with invasion; the Spartans, as we see above, with abandonment. I have always been curious though, as to the manner of Themistocles’ speech, here. It is a reminder, not an insult, that first escapes the mouth of Themistocles. The vocative form of μοχθηρέ indicates both the addressing of the man directly, and his plight for aid. One who is in such plight, especially when needing aid from the ones he is insulting, should not be the one barking orders. You need us, says Themistocles with his very first words. Further, he also states that the Athenians, who have lost everything, are not the buildings they lost nor the riches contained there in. Athens is its people. A people that would not become enslaved by virtue of their possessions, as the Corinthians and Spartans would if they resorted to defending their homes. I love the use of καταλελοίπαμεν, because the preposition κατα is attached to the verb. Literally meaning ‘down’ attached to ‘leaving behind’ it represents the fall of Athens, the descent of its citizens to the lower levels of the sea, the very journey the body of Athens has made, and the very pain they are experiencing. They have not only left the city behind, they had to descend from the very symbols of its power located in the heavenly acropolis to the lowest pits of hell. Low had they fallen indeed, the Athenians, in their descent.

The word Themistocles (or Plutarch) uses for ‘lifeless things’ is ἀψύχων, literally meaning ‘without breath,’ and which by that time meant the soul. He demonstrates, with that usage, that it was worth more to save the souls of the Athenians than the things which they treasured. Again, because the citizens were the city, not the other way around. It may seem natural to us to say, ‘ya, citizens are the state;’ but to the Corinthians and the Spartans the state represented its citizens. It is a show of democratic thought seldom understood by Sparta and Corinth, that individual citizens mattered. In Sparta, the citizen gave it all for the state, it was merely a moving part in a grand clock; to Athens, the citizen was everything; the citizen was the god of the city-state. Thus, Themistocles asserts, Athens was alive and well, still the greatest of Hellas, for it lived contained within the 200 triremes of the Athenians. It was not a bold claim to make, not even a controversial one, that without Athens the allied forces had no navy to speak of.

The touch of the master came when Themistocles said Greece would learn, should Athens be betrayed again, of the greatness of the land represented by the 200 triremes and the souls of the people that had been saved. Corinth was flat-out threatened with destruction, Sparta with separation. Both the Corinthian and the Spartan leader backed down and decided, there and then, that it was best to have Athens as an ally and to recover its lands than have it run, amok, in the Peloponnese and eventually to southern Italy. I can still, even now, picture the hand gestures of the Athenian general; his pointing at the Corinthian, his description of the way down from Athens and the glory that it was. I can hear his belief in Democracy, the power of the people, and the breathing-individuals that composed it. I smile when I think of the Corinthian and Spartan commanders looking at each other and realizing, in the end, that they had no power over a man, and a people, that had lost every thing, but saved every one. I’d like to think it went something like this…

It is no wonder that in the next Olympic games where all of Greece gathered to honor Zeus, as bored spectators waited for the games to start they arose as they heard the sound of roaring applause; they saw Themistocles, walking into the stadium, and they too begun to applaud and cheer for the man who had not only recovered Athens, but also saved all of Greece by virtue of his intelligence and defiance.

Themistocles is the great forgotten hero of the Greco-Persian Wars, and the true savior of democratic thought.

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

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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

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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!

Athens, Democracy, and Truth

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Athens, democracy, isocrates, metics, parthenon, Plato, thetes

How Athenian Democracy is viewed today has much to do with scholars in the early 20th century. Unfortunately or, in my case, fortunately, many misconceptions have arisen that make us question the true validity of a system that begun in 509 and had imploded by 327. What is appreciated about Athenian Democracy is its intent to become representative of all, not its process which, already discussed by Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Isocrates, amongst many others, cannot work for cities beyond 10,000 people.

Slaves, women, metics, thetes…they were all excluded even from the Radical Democracy of Pericles’ time. Most countries have a Roman Republic method of Democracy, especially the United States. It was a much better system, but with the spirit of Democracy at its heart.

Check out this article by Ancient History Encyclopedia