The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [49]
When the young Socrates ambled through this district he would have found plenty of whores available to josh with: the Kerameikos supported scores of prostitutes, operating in what were often described in the Greek as ‘factories’ or ‘fuck-factories’. Walking through the excavations today, you can still see their stalls. Tussock-grass and wild lupins grow here and all is open to the sky. But the squashed footprint of the buildings forces the imagination: rows of women, weaving clothes their day-job, busier still at night. A chunky silver medallion found in the corner of one of the rooms bears a plump ‘laughter-loving’ Aphrodite riding on a goat through a star-studded night sky, and is an honest indicator of the bawdy nature of the place 2,500 years ago.14
One fourth-century source describing Athens’ red-light district tells us that ‘women sunbathe with bare breasts, stripped for action in semi-circular ranks; and from among these women you can select whichever one you like: thin, fat, round, tall, short, young, old, middle-aged or past it’.15 Females of all hues too: many prostitutes were enslaved during military campaigns in Thrace, Syria and Asia Minor. These captives (not allowed into Athens itself) became an exotic fringe to the city. Women plucked and singed off their pubic hair to be ready to suit any sexual tastes. Men rocked up for a quick session ‘in the sack’; or, as the Athenians would have put it, ‘middle-of-the-day marriages’. Male flesh was, of course, available. Aeschines describes boys lined up, ‘sitting in stalls’.16 In years to come, it would be one of these stall-boys – a fallen aristocrat from Elis called Phaedo – who allowed Socrates to stroke his soft hair while the philosopher waited for death. Some prostitutes in the Kerameikos were brought so low even slaves could afford them: one obol a shag.
Love, sex, death, it was all here. From the twelfth century BC onward this had been a burial ground, and in Socrates’ day the main thoroughfare was still lined as far as the eye could see with dressed stone graves – simple affairs, not the showy painted tombs that smelt of aristocratic power, but something more democratic. The dead were listed in tribal groups. A discrete ‘political’ cemetery housed public burials. But still the fallen of all degrees were honoured; orators celebrated the virtues of brave soldiers. Specially organised athletic games sent the dead off to Hades.
It is this noisy, pleasure-death-ground that Socrates, we are told, frequented as a young man. The Kerameikos is a key clue to his story and to the story of Athens’ Golden Age. These visceral, vacillating lanes, nooks and crannies were his ethical nursery. This is a zone where man’s basic needs, as well as his more elevated tastes, were catered for. Socrates makes it clear that his philosophy comes from observing, and living in, the good, bad and ugly place we humans call home. Despite what the world throws at us, his simple, infuriating, inspiring message is that however mongrel and challenging our surroundings, we should identify and embrace the good, the pleasant in life.
Tell me: do you agree that there is a kind of good which we would choose to possess, not from desire for its after-effects, but welcoming it for its own sake? As, for example, joy and such pleasures are harmless and nothing results from them afterwards save to have and to hold enjoyment.17
He used to praise leisure as the most valuable of possessions, as Xenophon tells us in his Symposium.18
Interestingly, as a young man, Socrates’ enquiries seem