Part 18 (1/2)
[*]Given in ”Readings in Ancient History,” Vol. I, p. 117, and in many other volumes.
Before the evening is over various games will be ordered in, especially the ”cottabus,” which is in great vogue. On the top of a high stand, something like a candelabrum, is balanced rather delicately a little saucer of bra.s.s. The players stand at a considerable distance with cups of wine. The game is to toss a small quant.i.ty of wine into the balanced saucer so smartly as to make the bra.s.s give out a clear ringing sound, and to tilt upon its side.[+] Much shouting, merriment, and a little wagering ensues. While most of the company prefer the cottabus, two, who profess to be experts, call for a gaming board and soon are deep in the ”game of towns”--very like to latter-day ”checkers,” played with a board divided into numerous squares. Each contestant has thirty colored stones, and the effort is to surround your opponent's stones and capture them.
Some of the company, however, regard this as too profound, and after trying their skill at the cottabus betake themselves to the never failing chances of dice. Yet these games are never suffered (in refined dinner parties) to banish the conversation. That after all is the center, although it is not good form to talk over learnedly of statecraft, military tactics, or philosophy. If such are discussed, it must be with playful abandon, and a disclaimer of being serious; and even very grave and gray men remember Anacreon's preference for the praise of ”the glorious gifts of the Muses and of Aphrodite” rather than solid discussions of ”conquest and war.”
[+]This was the simplest form of the COTTABUS game; there were numerous elaborations, but our accounts of them are by no means clear.
168. Going Home from the Feast: Midnight Revellers.--At length the oil lamps have begun to burn dim. The tired slaves are yawning.
Their masters, despite Prodicus's intentions of having a very proper symposium, have all drunk enough to get unstable and silly.
Eunapius gives the signal. All rise, and join in the final libation to Hermes. ”Shoes and himation, boy,” each says to his slave, and with thanks to their host they all fare homeward.
Such will be the ending to an extremely decorous feast. With gay young bloods present, however, it might have degenerated into an orgy; the flute girl (or several of them) would have contributed over much to the ”freedom”; and when the last deep crater had been emptied, the whole company would have rushed madly into the street, and gone whirling away through the darkness,--harps and flutes sounding, boisterous songs pealing, red torches tossing. Revellers in this mood would be ready for anything. Perhaps they would end in some low tavern at the Peiraeus to sleep off their liquor; perhaps their leader would find some other Symposium in progress, and after loud knockings, force his way into the house, even as did the mad Alcibiades, who (once more to recall Plato) thrust his way into Agathon's feast, staggering, leaning on a flute girl, and shouting, ”Where's Agathon!” Such an inroad would be of course the signal for more and ever more hard drinking. The wild invaders might make themselves completely at home, and dictate all the proceedings: the end would be even as at Agathon's banquet, where everybody but Socrates became completely drunken, and lay p.r.o.ne on the couches or the floor. One hopes that the honest Prodicus has no such climax to his symposium.
...At length the streets grow quiet. Citizens sober or drunken are now asleep: only the vigilant Scythian archers patrol the ways till the c.o.c.ks proclaim the first gray of dawn.
Chapter XIX. Country Life Around Athens
169. Importance of his Farm to an Athenian.--We have followed the doings of a typical Athenian during his ordinary activities around the city, but for the average gentleman an excursion outside the town is indispensable at least every two or three days, and perhaps every day. He must visit his farm; for his wealth and income are probably tied up there, rather than in any unaristocratic commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Homer's ”royal” heroes are not ashamed to be skilful at following the plow[*]: and no Athenian feels that he is contaminating himself by ”trade” when he supervises the breeding of sheep or the raising of onions. We will therefore follow in the tracks of certain well-to-do citizens, when we turn toward the Itonian gate sometime during the morning, while the Agora is still in a busy hum, even if thus we are curtailing our hypothetical visits to the Peiraeus or to the bankers.
[*]See Odysseus's boasts, ”Odyssey,” XVIII. 360 et pa.s.sim.The gentility of farming is emphasized by a hundred precepts from Hesiod.
170. The Country by the Ilissus: the Greeks and Natural Beauty.--Our companions are on horseback (a token of tolerable wealth in Athens), but the beasts amble along not too rapidly for nimble grooms to run behind, each ready to aid his respective master. Once outside the gate the regular road swings down to the south towards Phalerum; we, however, are in no great haste and desire to see as much as possible. The farms we are seeking lie well north of the city, but we can make a delightful circuit by skirting the city walls with the eastern shadow of the Acropolis behind us, and going at first northeast, along the groves and leafy avenues which line the thin stream of the Ilissus,[*] the second ”river” of Athens.
[*]The Ilissus, unlike its st.u.r.dier rival, the Cephisus, ran dry during the summer heats; but there was enough water along its bed to create a dense vegetation.
Before us through the trees came tantalizing glimpses of the open country running away towards s.h.a.ggy gray Hymettus. Left to itself the land would be mostly arid and seared brown by the summer sun; but everywhere the friendly work of man is visible. One can count the little green oblong patches, stretching even up the mountain side, marked with gleaming white farm buildings or sometimes with little temples and chapels sacred to the rural G.o.ds. Once or twice also we notice a plot of land which seems one tangled waste of trees and shrubbery. This is a sacred ”temenos,” an inviolate grove, set apart to some G.o.d; and within the fences of the compound no mortal dare set foot under pain of direful sacrilege and pollution.
Following a kind of bridle path, however, we are soon amid the groves of olive and other trees, while the horses plod their slow way beside the brook. Not a few citizens going or coming from Athens meet us, for this is really one of the parks and breathing s.p.a.ces of the closely built city. The Athenians and Greeks in general live in a land of such natural beauty that they take this loveliness as a matter of course. Very seldom do their poets indulge in deliberate descriptions of ”beautiful landscapes”; but none the less the fair things of nature have penetrated deeply into their souls. The constant allusions in Homer and the other masters of song to the great storm waves, the deep shades of the forest, the crystal books, the pleasant rest for wanderers under the shade trees, the plains bright with spring flowers, the ivy twining above a grave, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, tell their own story; men seldom describe at length what is become warp and woof of their inmost lives. The mere fact that the Greeks dwell CONSTANTLY in such a beautiful land, and have learned to love it so intensely, makes frequent and set descriptions thereto seem trivial.
171. Plato's Description of the Walk by the Ilissus.--Nevertheless occasionally this inborn love of the glorious outer world must find its expression, and it is of these very groves along he Ilissus that we have one of the few ”nature pieces” in Athenian literature.
As the plodding steeds take their way let us recall our Plato--his ”Ph?drus,” written probably not many years before this our visit.
Socrates is walking with Phaedrus outside the walls, and urges the latter: ”Let us go to the Ilissus and sit down in some quiet spot.”
”I am fortunate,” answers Phaedrus, ”in not having my sandals on, and, as you never have any, we may go along the brook and cool our feet. This is the easiest way, and at midday is anything but unpleasant.” He adds that they will go on to the tallest plane tree in the distance, ”where are shade and gentle breezes, and gra.s.s whereon we may either sit or lie.... The little stream is delightfully clear and bright. I can fancy there might well be maidens playing near [according to the local myth of Boreas's rape of Orithyia].” And so at last they come to the place, when Socrates says: ”Yes indeed, a fair and shady resting place it is, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane tree, and the agnus castus, high and cl.u.s.tering in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance, and the stream which flows beneath the plane tree is deliciously cool to the feet. Judging by the ornaments and images [set] about, this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs; moreover there is a sweet breeze and the gra.s.shoppers are chirruping; and the greatest charm of all is the gra.s.s like a pillow, gently sloping to the head.”[*]
[*]Jewett, translator; slightly altered.
172. The Athenian Love of Country Life.--So the two friends had sat them down to delve in delightful profundities; but following the bridle path, the little brook and its groves end for us all too soon. We are in the open country around Athens, and the fierce rays of Helios beat strongly on our heads. We are outside the city, but by no means far from human life. Farm succeeds farm, for the land around Athens has a goodly population to maintain, and there is a round price for vegetables in the Agora. Truth to tell, the average Athenian, though he pretends to love the market, the Pnyx, the Dicasteries, and the Gymnasia, has a shrewd hankering for the soil, and does not care to spend more time in Athens then necessary.
Aristophanes is full of the contrasts between ”country life” and ”city life” and almost always with the advantage given the former.
Says his Strepsiades (in ”The Clouds”), ”A country life for me--dirty, untrimmed, lolling around at ease, and just abounding in bees and sheep and oil cake.” His Diceaepolis (”Acharnians”) voices clearly the independence of the farmer: ”How I long for peace.[*] I'm disgusted with the city; and yearn for my own farm which never bawled out [as in the markets] 'buy my coals' or 'buy my vinegar'
or 'oil,' or KNEW the word 'buy,' but just of itself produced everything.” And his Trygaeus (in ”The Peace”) states the case better yet: ”Ah! how eager I am to get back into the fields, and break up my little farm with the mattock again...[for I remember]