The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [66]
Death is one of two things. Either it is an annihilation and the dead have no consciousness, or, as we are told, it is a change, a migration of the soul from one place to another.4
Coming to the Ilissos must therefore have been a rich experience: typical of life in Athens, where a sensuous spirituality and a brisk belief in the sacred importance of the new democratic polis collided. Typical of Socrates’ life as it is unfolding, where deep thought and a vigorous engagement in day-to-day life sit happily side by side. Water eddied and gurgled here, collecting in rockpools, gushing down through pint-sized chasms. Of course Socrates knew this spot like the back of his hand; familiar territory, he would have passed it regularly on the 25–30-minute route in – from his old deme of Alopeke to Athens’ rammed city centre.
SOCRATES: By Hera, it is a charming resting place …
PHAEDRUS: You are an amazing and most remarkable person. For you really do seem exactly like a stranger who is being guided about, and not like a native.5
Often quoted as proof that Socrates had eyes only for urban matters and the city centre itself, this particular line in one of Plato’s Dialogues is surely a character insight; Socrates drinks in the delights of the banks of the Ilissos, this habitual place, as if it is new to him. The clear-sighted are noted for looking on the world every day as if with new eyes.
In Socrates’ day many gathered here at the side of Athens’ other river. Even though the water’s flow is now underground – the river was converted to a sewer in the 1950s – and the scrub is flanked by screaming arterial roads, young men still do so today. One wonders if these obliging individuals realise they are perpetuating a millennia-old tradition.
Lucky the lover who gets a workout when he arrives home
Sleeping all day with a beautiful boy.6
Socrates’ Ilissos
The banks of the Ilissos were indeed an area where some of the famous ‘pick-up’ points of classical Athens were situated – somewhere Socrates (always full-blooded in his enjoyment of the physical pleasures of being human) would have ‘exercised himself’. At present, the area shows scarcely any signs of Socrates’ city. The most obvious ‘classical’ stones are in the fifth century BC’s future: the dizzyingly high temple columns erected by Hadrian to honour a Roman Olympian Zeus and, of course, his imperial self. But if you know where to look, there are hints of a more organic and Hellenic classical past.
A careful exploration of the district short-circuits the investigator back to a landscape that Socrates himself inhabited. Muffle out the noise of the modern city, keep your eyes to the ground and it can seem possible to be in two times at once. To the east of the Ilissos plunges a chasm where honey-soaked cakes were once thrown. This was believed by Socrates’ peers to follow the route of the last waters of the Great Flood – sent by Zeus and braved by the Greek Noah, Deucalion. Underneath a rocky outcrop, still visible, are the foundation walls and the pebble floor of a court where innocent and guilty manslaughterers and adulterers were tried.7
Light industry was here too. In a busy city there are many vested interests. Free-flowing water and deep pools might equal rural idyll for some, but industrialists also saw their opportunity, and just above the Sanctuary of Herakles, as Socrates strolled here, tanners were moving in. Tanning is a disgusting business involving human urine and much scraping of dead flesh. Along with roughly cleaned skins, entire animal carcasses were imported to the Athenian