The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [138]
Diotima was a priestess. A priestess from Mantinea.3 It is difficult to tell how accurately she is represented in Plato. It could quite possibly be that she is fictional. But then again, no one in Plato’s Dialogues is entirely made up, apart from the mysterious ‘Eleaic Stranger’, so it would be slightly odd for Plato to fabricate her entirely. And then, too, there is the fact that Diotima’s demeanour, her life skills, are very believable. She talks in public – as priestesses were allowed to;4 she represents herself as a kind of messenger (priestesses from the Oracle at Delphi and those in charge of the sacred mysteries at Eleusis were also the message-carriers of the gods). And (in some aspects) Diotima is believable as a woman. When ruminating on love, she looks for a productive middle way – she thinks that it is love that inspires humankind; desire forces us to want to be better: better philosophers, better lovers, better humans.
This, when once beheld, will outshine your gold and your clothing, your beautiful boys and young men, whose aspect now so astounds you and makes you and many another, at the sight and constant society of your darlings, ready to do without either food or drink if that were in any way possible, and only gaze upon them and have their company. But tell me, what would happen if one of you had the fortune to look upon essential beauty entire, pure and unalloyed; not infected with the flesh and colour of humanity, and ever so much more of mortal trash? What if he could behold the divine beauty itself in its unique form?5
Sometimes described as an anomaly, in fact Diotima reminds us that priestesses were a highly visible part of the Athens where Socrates lived, worked and loved.6 These women were not just arranging antiquity’s equivalent of flowers on the altar – they were responsible for the smooth running of ritual and religion, and therefore of life itself. The Athenians thought their good fortune came only from their good relationship with assorted spirits and Olympian deities and it was all down to the women of the city to keep this relationship sweet. One fragment from a lost play by Euripides – performed, in Athens, during the Peloponnesian War – makes that poetically clear:
And in divine affairs – I think this of the first importance –
we have the greatest part. For at the oracles of Phoibos
women expound Apollo’s will. At the holy seat of Dodona
by the sacred oak the female race conveys
the thoughts of Zeus to all Greeks who desire it.
As for the holy rituals performed for the Fates
and the nameless goddesses, these are not holy
in men’s hands; but among women they flourish,
every one of them. Thus in holy service woman
plays the righteous role.7
So the women in Socrates’ day didn’t just drift around at home: many of the best-born were busy priestesses. Virgin, wife, old maid alike – these women had practical duties. If they were well heeled, they would be expected to fund the building of cisterns, porticos, temples. They supplied oil for gyms and animals for sacrifice.8 Priestesses could be temple key-holders – a big job given that these sanctuaries doubled up as banks, a safe depository for the community’s wealth.9 The temple keys themselves were enormous things, more like the starter-handles of early-twentieth-century cars, and on a number of carved stelai we see women confidently wielding them.
And then, often at night, the female religious leaders were joined by their devoted followers: mature women or girls bearing the finest of baskets – willow-woven, bronze, gilded, silver – which contained the most precious, the most mysterious of things. Banish the image of women just balancing water on their heads after another back-breaking trip to the well; these creatures had the honour of bearing the holiest of liquids.
This is not to deny that some of the all-female activities ring a little discordantly in twenty-first-century ears: the Thesmophoria, for example. This festival’s origins stretch back to the Stone Age. Married women (no men were allowed) congregated