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By Root 1779 0

symbol of light that was extinguished and then returned again. Walking together, in orange light and then pitch-dark, initiates were encouraged to confront their fears. This is a story where terrible things happen: a girl is raped, a mother loses her child, the pain of brutality spurs the goddess to dreadful vengeance – parching the earth of water, draining it of food, bleaching out life until all is barren and dying. But then Kore is found. The climax of the Mysteries was heady, joyful. At the point of reunion on the ritual ‘stage’ men and women in the ‘audience’ perhaps engaged in the sexual act. The rituals inspired collective terror and then collective relief.

The popularity of the cult in the fifth and fourth centuries BC shows that this was an epoch when ordinary, mortal men were questioning the ordin-ariness of their lives. If individuals could have potency in the political arena, if they could vote when warships were launched and against whom, then row these very warships themselves, if their lives were that valuable, might the value not extend beyond the grave? Socrates lived through a time when life itself meant more, when man’s potential on earth was being explored, when an afterlife became something that was not to be feared, but desirable.6

The rites at Eleusis speak volumes about the subtle play of power, old and new, in Athens.7 Despite the new democratic, equable structure of the state, there were those who wanted to keep things ‘a little bit special’, to find ways of distinguishing the haves from the have-nots.

Socrates ate and drank with aristocrats, he slept with them, and yet he was not automatically welcomed into their ranks. He walked for days on end with the ordinary people of Athens through the Agora and streets, he fought alongside them, and yet he would not always just join them in their popular expression of communal spirituality. Socrates, like the Eleusinians, looked to the possibility of a life after this one, but unlike them, his was a personal, internal experience. This delight in privacy made many in Athens suspicious of the remotely clever philosopher. It certainly helped to bring about the demand for his death.

TIME LINE

Year: 470/469

Life of Socrates: Birth of Socrates

Year: c.470

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Repairs of Opisthodomos? Construction of the north citadel wall of the Acropolis

Year: 470-460

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the Peisianaktios (later known as Stoa Poikile)

Year: 465-60-455/50

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Bronze Athena (Promakhos) by Pheidias

Year: 467

Culture: Aeschylus, Laius, Oedipus, Seven against Thebes, Sphinx

Year: 466

History: Hellenic victory over Persia at Eurymedon River

Year: 465

History: Athens blockades Thasos. Artaxerxes 1 reigns 465-425 BC

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the Tholos

Year: 463/2

Life of Pericles: Pericles participates in unsuccessful prosecution of Kimon

Culture: Aeschylus, Suppliants, Aigyptioi, Danaids, Amymone

Year: 462/1

Life of Pericles: Pericles joins Ephialtes in the attack on the Areopagus

History: Radical democracy established at Athens. Athens abandons alliance with Sparta against Persia. Reduction of the Areopagus. Kimon ostracised

Year: 461

Life of Pericles: Pericles rises to power in Athens

Year: 460

History: First Peloponnesian War

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Construction of the wall of Kimon. Construction of the south citadel wall of the Acropolis, pre-Erechtheion. Reconstructed Klepsydra Fountain (north-west slope of Acropolis) constructed

Year: 460-450

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Mourning Athena relief

Year: 459/8

History: Athens’ expedition to Egypt

Year: 458

History: Cincinnatus appointed dictator of Rome and defeats the Aequi

Culture: Aeschylus, Oresteia, Agamemnon, Libation-bearers, Proteus, Eumenides

Constructions, sculptures and statues: Building of Long Walls connecting port of Piraeus to Athens begins. Erection of the statue of Athena Promachos.