The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [20]
Stage-set democracy
Complicated systems were developed to ensure fairness in all things. Public officials, juries, state administrators were all chosen by lot. The selection process was closely scrutinised to prevent tampering or corruption. Public records were displayed on inscribed stone and inked papyrus notices across Athens – the workings of the democracy were expected to be transparent. Old dynastic ties were weakened by law. Showy displays of wealth were frowned upon. Athens had built itself a robust and ground-breaking political system, and now architects put their minds to how they could create spaces and buildings and courtrooms and walkways that enabled a direct, participatory democracy to thrive. Socrates grew up inhabiting a purpose-built democratic landscape – the first of its kind in history. On his journey through the Agora and into the law-court, Socrates and those who had come to judge him were shadowed by dramatic, physical reminders of the brave democratic idea.
These buildings are still being excavated today. Twenty feet below street-level next to the cheap and cheerful tavernas at the bottom of Adrianou Street in central Athens, the massive Doric columns (so far the internal Ionic columns are squashed under a family business that refuses to budge) of the Stoa Poikile – the Painted Stoa – are rising back up out of the earth. At least 140 × 40 feet, this grand covered walkway would have been decorated with outsize painted wooden boards – each scene representing the defeat of Athens’ enemies by honest-to-god Athenians. The Persians are thwarted at Marathon, Amazons are hacked down. Here ordinary citizens of Athens, just at the edge of the main political zone in the city, in the balm of the shade, were encouraged to walk and talk, to buttress the business of living in this radical democracy, with a cool packed-earth floor beneath them.
But there was a problem. Emphasis on the power of speech in this new democracy where every male citizen had, in theory at least, a voice also engendered a cult of personality and mass jealousy towards high-flyers. The democratic reformers, Solon, Kleisthenes and then later Ephialtes and Pericles, might have papered over the cracks in society, but the divisions between aristocrats and hoi polloi, between rich and poor, between the talented and the unexceptional, the ‘few’ and ‘the many’, had not been filled. Socrates’ polis seemed robust, but was in truth a chimera, a morphing thing. As Socrates grew up, from babe-in-arms to toddler and then child, democracy too was finding its feet. Towards the end of the philosopher’s life the democratic experiment would prove as divisive as it had originally been cohesive. Socrates lived through fragile, politically jumpy times.24
And there was one polis, 150 miles deep into the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, which despised Athens’ democratic revolution with a particularly fierce and bitter loathing. This city-state spotted the internal divisions within Athena’s great city and chose to play them to her own advantage. Socrates was in fact fascinated by this polity and her extreme ideas, but in truth she was a polis that would prove to be both the philosopher’s and Athens’ nemesis. Her name was Sparta.
Sparta
Socrates’ story is a tale of two cities, of Sparta and Athens.
Three days’ brisk walk south of Athens, a three-hour drive today, sat the polis of Sparta – in the region of Lakonia. Sparta was Athens’ sometime ally and oft-time enemy.
During Socrates’ lifetime the city-state of Sparta had legendary status. Protected by five mountain ranges and a shroud of secrecy, this was a place where another social revolution had taken place, but with rather different results. By the time of Socrates’ birth, Sparta had become