The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [70]
At this time in Athens images of muscle-rippling Theseus would have been hard to avoid. The replication of this master-hero became deeply fashionable. As the democracy gets more of a sense of itself, a place where individual men have the capacity and the right to act like kings, like gods, the irony (of course) is that the adoration of individuals, of ‘the beautiful people’, becomes ever more intense. And so the great deeds of that über-hero Theseus are replicated on the red-figure vases – both cheap tat and the highest quality, by the artisans of the Kerameikos; every year a festival, the Synoikia, celebrates in the month Hekatombaion (May/June) Attic unity and the new system of demes, trittyes and tribes (there were thirty trittyes, divisions of the population, in Attica. Each tribe was composed of one trittys from the coast, one from the city and one from inland) – and Theseus is invoked on the streets as part of the ritual; his domineering presence in Athens is enthusiastically celebrated. Even Theseus’ ‘bones’ are rediscovered at Skyros and reburied in Athena’s own soil.
All this because, in the minds of the Athenians, Theseus is perfect … He is muscular, ambitious, powerful, brave. With the new democracy that has, in theory, banished the personally ambitious and those squashing, wonder-boy aristocrats, Theseus is now Athens’ ‘virtual’ role-model. This unambiguously macho warrior-hero – credited as the founder of the city – has a cocky aggression and drive to match Athens’ own. A perfect young man of Athens, he loved his body, his city and his gargantuan ambition for both.
So it is not just ‘wise’ Athena, but Theseus (‘steadfast in battle’, ‘brazen-breastplated’ and ‘protector of Athens’ youth’)12 who succours the city in which Socrates matures. The Athenians’ passionate belief in the value of their own mortal Theseuses – the belligerent, loyal, gorgeous young men of the city – will play out badly for Socrates. He comes to attract young, beautiful men around him as if he is their cult-leader; but Athens is jealous. As we shall see in the next chapter, Athena’s city, boy-mad, sponsors her own cult of the young – and Socrates’ Pied Piper-luring of the young men perturbs many in the juvenile, democratic city-state.
16
‘GOLDEN AGE’ ATHENS
The zones of Athens where young men are permitted, c.465–415 BC
CHREMES: Then we all saw a handsome young man rush into the tribune, he was all pink and white like young Nicias.
Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae, 427–91
WHETHER OR NOT YOU BELIEVE IN ‘golden ages’ per se, Golden Age Athens was so in actual terms. The hair of statues on the streets and public buildings of the city-state was, in Socrates’ lifetime, often highlighted in gilt and yellow paint. Bronze figurative statuary was so profuse that at one stage bronze humans must have appeared to clone themselves around the city streets. (Some argue that these bronzes were cast from life, explaining their hauntingly realistic appearance.2) Detailed aspects of the human form (nipples, lips, teeth) were picked out in copper and silver. Ivory carvings were gilded. Luminous, gleaming rays of the sun reflected from their rock-crystal eyes: with their chryselephantine skin, their linen wraps, treated in oil until they gleamed, the statues of Socrates’ day would have been lucent across the city.3 The stage-set of Athens was littered with these perfect, permanently beautiful extras, a reminder of what humans could and should be.
And Athenian society also demanded a gold standard of physical perfection.