The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [71]
SOCRATES: [Imagining the Laws of Athens speaking to him] ‘But you preferred neither Lacedaemon nor Crete, which you are always saying are well-governed, nor any other of the Greek states or foreign ones, but you went away from this city less than the lame and the blind and the other cripples.’5
Athens: a city where the eyes have it. Visual references are stitched through the language – old women were called ‘gauna’, literally ‘hot milk-skin’; you spoke not of being good, but of appearing good; the most precious possession in the city were the well-born, pulchritudinous young men, the kalos k’agathos – the ‘noble in mind and appearance’. Not only was Socrates starting to develop a perturbingly robust internal life that belied his odd external appearance, but in that religious court, on that May morning of 399 BC, it will be the minds of this vital, peachy group that Socrates is accused of corrupting. The verb used is diaphtheirein, which can mean to destroy, corrupt, seduce or lead astray – politically as well as physically. An archaeological survey of Socrates’ Athens drives home how precious these beautiful young men were to the psyche of the citystate. Images of them were tenderly, proudly replicated in civic, religious and military spaces; think of the Parthenon Marbles; boys on the cusp of becoming men lead sacrificial victims, they bear arms, they turn their faces to the sea and imagine the riches that lie beyond. The charge that Socrates had corrupted these paragons would have caused genuine distress.
One can still find these ‘perfect Athenians’, these ‘beautiful young men’, in the museums of modern-day Athens. Fit, less scarred than their fathers, less exhausted than their mothers. Good teeth. Muscles rock-hard. It is impossible not to be moved by their beauty. In the Kerameikos we just have their bones and their billets-doux, lovesick notes scratched onto terracotta by the potters of the Kerameikos: ‘the boy is beautiful’. In Socrates’ day their names would also be daubed on notices in the centre of town and then cast in bronze. We are used to memorialising those who fall in battle; the Athenians commemorated their young men before they fought. Armies were levied from those over the age of eighteen. And these young hopefuls were then listed in public by their deme in massive age-group catalogues.6 Laws were passed to try to ensure that the young were protected from malign influence – physical or psychological.
The orator Aeschines makes reference to the city’s legislation on these matters:
First I will go over with you the laws laid down concerning the propriety of our Boys, then secondly those concerning Young Men, and thirdly, those concerning the other age-grades in turn.7
Being a young man in Athens brought with it an ecstatic belief that, if raised in an appropriately virile, legal, state-sanctioned way, you could bring security, wealth and great good to your polis.
Athens was alert to the possibilities of paedophilia, worried that beautiful boys might be preyed upon by older men. Middle-aged citizens (and, for the Athenians, ‘middle-aged’ meant in your twenties and thirties) had (by law) to train in the gymnasia with supervision. Trainers all had to be aged forty or above.8
CHORUS: I have not been seen frequenting the wrestling school intoxicated with success and trying to seduce young boys, but I took all my theatrical gear and returned straight home.9
And so Socrates would have matured in a culture that fetishised young men and their role in society, and then, as he grew older, chose actively to seek this group out as the favoured and favourite recipients