Diatribe on Democracy

It’s ‘International Day of Democracy’ (15 September). So I have just written my forthcoming review for History Today of Paul Cartledge’s outstanding new Democracy: A Life. A major argument underpinning his superb volume is that we don’t pay enough attention to the meaning of  the –cracy part of the word.

Image Honouring Athenian anti-tyranny law of 336 BCE

The ancient Athenian citizens, free men rich and poor—the demos—held the sovereign executive power—kratos. They wielded it directly. Their will was not distorted by power-hungry career politicians consistently failing to represent them conscientiously. 

That is one reason why the Athenian democracy did not deteriorate into an oligarchy but functioned effectively for close on two hundred years. The understandable frustration with inadequate representation lies beneath the loyalty of grass-roots UK Labour Party members towards Jeremy Corbyn (whatever you think of his un-coruscating performance as leader).

DAMOKRATIA (4TH CENTURY  BCE)

The Athenian democrats got annoyed when elitists tried to subvert their power: a memorable image (above) of a personified Demokratia crowning the Demos was created at one such time. I also like this elegantly coiffed Damokratia (in the local dialect) on a coin of the ancient Greek city of Metapontum in south Italy. 

But most personifications in history have been hideous harridans conceived by opponents of democratisation, as in post-French-revolution British cartoons. Other visualisations are just ludicrous; witness the colossal ‘Democracy Monument’ in

A 1798 anti-reform cartoon

Bangkok, Thailand, which is ruled by a military junta. 

Bangkok 'Democracy Monument'(1939)

Come to think of it, the ‘International Day of Democracy’ was invented in 2007 by a United Nations committee chaired by—wait for it—Qatar, which not only uses forced labour but is to all intents and purposes an absolute hereditary monarchy (not to mention the floggings, outlawing of atheism, trade unions, homosexuality etc.). This is despite a cosmetically enhanced consultative council and assembly. 

Like Paul Cartledge, I am both convinced that ''real' democracy--government of the people, by the people, for the people--is the way forward for human civilisation and that the word and ideal are all too frequently traduced. I don’t think we should take today's celebrations too seriously.

Gods Behaving Badly; or Revenge of the ParOlympian

Cambridgeshire hero Peacock

My jaw hit the ground watching local Cambridgeshire hero Jonnie Peacock yesterday win gold in Rio by running 100 metres in 10.9 seconds. I could not run it in 50 seconds and I have my original two legs.  His victory came as I prepare a paper for a conference in Patras on the only Greek god who was disabled (and the only one in full-time employment). But he had the last laugh on Olympus.

Hephaestus was born clubfooted and his callous mother Hera (the Queen of Heaven to whom peacocks happen to be sacred) threw him away. He was brought up by sympathetic nymphs in Lemnos and trained in metalwork

"Who's laughing now, mum?" says Hephaestus (left)

But he got his revenge on his mother by sending her a golden throne with a secret mechanism which entrapped her.  She was the one being mocked now. Only he had the know-how to release her.

The war-god Ares failed to get Hephaestus back to Olympus by force. Dionysus, who had also been snubbed by other gods, had more success by plying him with wine. Hephaestus, sometimes on a donkey, along with Dionysus and a retinue of revelling satyrs and bacchants, was at last welcomed on Olympus, club feet and all.

Club feet did not stop Hephaestus getting last laugh

On another occasion Hephaestus was mocked because his recent bride Aphrodite had an affair with Ares. Hephaestus devised a trap which caught them in flagrante in a net. Inextinguishable laughter arose amongst the gods. He got his status and pride back, plus an instant divorce with full financial compensation.  

Pin the Tail on the Donkey, anyone?

The Return of Hephaestus, a.k.a. ‘Gods Behaving Badly’, was a popular scene on Athenian wine jugs. It was reenacted by citizen pals every year on the booziest day of the religious calendar, the feast of the wine-jugs at the Anthesteria festival. I want to be there. 

A Useful Handle for Hanging refills on

The vase-paintings fascinate me for the variety of joyous things Hephaestus’ gang could do with wine jugs, as well as the phalluses and tails of satyrs and donkeys. Revenge of the ParOlympian indeed.

A Neglected Source for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore

The Most Shocking Tragedy?

You can still get a ticket for Lazarus’ Theatre’s flamboyant production of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity she’s a Whore, as adapted and directed by the inventive Ricky Dukes, at the central London Tristan Bates theatre. This play notoriously features brother-sister incest before its gory denouement.

On Wednesday I was on a panel at the theatre discussing plays that break taboos. I had to remind everyone that ancient Greeks dramatists were braver than any subsequently.  Euripides’ Aeolus was the most shocking tragedy in world history, beating every Jacobean gorefest. It makes ‘daring’ modern authors like Edward Bond and Sarah Kane feel like Alan Ayckbourn in comparison.

with Ricky Dukes, Sonia Massai, Timothy Sheader, Terri Paddock

In Ford’s play, Giovanni may get his sister Annabella pregnant. But she does not live to give birth. In Euripides’ Aeolus, the incestuous sister gave birth in the middle of the play, her screams shocking the Athenian audience.

Aeolus, god of the winds, had several sons and daughters by the same mother. In the tragedy, one son, Macareus, had got his sister Canace pregnant. He gave a famous speech in which he defended the principle of moral relativism: there is no absolute right and wrong, he claimed. It is only human thought that determines what is right or wrong. Socrates stood up in the audience and exploded with moral outrage.

Baby already disappeared. Macareus in BIG trouble with their dad.

Aeolus then ran a lottery deciding who his children would marry. Macareus did not get allotted Canace. She went into labour. Canace killed herself with a sword sent by her father;  her brother probably followed suit on discovering her corpse. 

One of my favourite Greek vase-paintings gives pride of place to Canace, lying on a couch, holding the suicide weapon, her hair and clothing loosened (often a sign of recent labour), dishevelled and drooping in death. There is no sign of the baby, who may have been discovered by her father and exposed by the time of Canace’s death. Aeolus stands behind Canace, hurling insults across her limp body at Macareus; also present is Canace’s nurse, who had helped her; her grey head is covered and she has been arrested.

Euripides’ Aeolus did not survive to be read except in fragments today. But it was well known to Roman authors and inspired some including Ovid in his Heroines’ Letters no 11 to retell the story. The theatre-mad emperor Nero liked acting the leading role in Canace Parturiens (Canace in Labour). Ovid inspired Renaissance Italian playwright Speroni to write an influential tragedy Canace; it is a major source of Ford’s tragedy, although he gave the characters modern Italian names.

I am not remotely defending sibling incest. But when we discuss Giovanni’s taboo-breaking speech defending his right to enjoy love with his sister, let us remember who got there first. I am not sure a sister would be allowed to give birth to her brother’s child even today in a TV drama, although please correct me if I’m wrong. 

DOGHEADED MEN ANCIENT & MODERN

Detail of Sculpture, Sofia National Archaeological Museum

A Bulgarian field trip for a book on theatre around the ancient Black Sea revealed the delightful Dogheads of Sofia (then Serdica). A relief sculpture illustrates the 4th-century-AD entertainments in the amphitheatre, including a show about Dogheaded Men (Cynocephali) performed by actors cavorting on a stage wearing dog masks. At first I thought they were ape-heads (Pithecocephali) until colleagues in Facebook group Classics International put me right and I magnified the picture to be certain.

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that real Dogheads lived in the Russian steppes, Libya, Ethiopia and India. Dogheads are said by ancient authors to be the most righteous of all hominids since they neither engage in commerce nor hurt anyone. They understand human languages and communicate back by barking. They live off hunting. They are amazingly swift of foot in the chase. They shred and roast the animals they catch not over a fire but in the sun (which may explain what happened to the hapless boar in the amphitheatre entertainment).

Righteous Renaissance Doghead

I was amazed to discover devout Dogheads playing star roles in Christianity, especially in connection with Africa and with pondering the definition of homo sapiens. St Augustine of Hippo in Algeria wondered whether Dogheads were admissible to his City of God (16.8), and decided that they were, being rational, mortal and Descended From Adam. Please correct me if I am wrong, but surely this must mean that Augustine imagined that at some point a Descendant of Adam had mated with a dog and produced the hybrid species?

Christ with Doghead Soldiers

Saints Stephen & Christopher

Some Eastern Orthodox icons show St Christopher as a dogheaded Christian convert, originally captured in Libya during Diocletian’s reign. (Such icons were banned in Russia in the 18th century as too disturbing). Dogheads are sometimes encountered by the apostles and converted, or serve in the armies of warrior saints: the famous medieval Psalter of Kiev portrays Jesus in the company of several Dogheads.

St.Christopher Cynocephalus

You can still spot some today if you live in Scotland, since an Old Welsh poem reports the battle of the Dogheads (Cynvyn) with Arthurian warriors at Edinburgh. Alternatively, move to Wexford County, Michigan, where a seven-foot Dogman with blue eyes was first recorded in 1794 by a French fur trader and reappears every ten years. Michigan Dogman regularly makes lists of the Top Ten Mysterious Creatures in the USA.

But you may want to be careful about getting too close too soon: Ctesias says that amongst the Indian ones, ‘while the women have a bath once a month, the men do not have a bath at all.’ It may be more pleasant to move in with one of the squeaky clean competitors who like living as dogs in the Mr Puppy Europe society, which, as the Father of My Children and his dog point out to me, convenes in Antwerp every year.

Head of our dog, Finlay Poynder

Olympian (not Olympic) Cycling

von Drais's Non-BIKE 

Daft diversion this week has been wondering what bikes the Olympian gods would have ridden if the ancient Greeks had invented the velocipede. I have been moving house to Cambridgeshire with no functioning TV or internet, yet somehow have still been deafened by the national media’s obsession with ‘British supremacy’ at cycling in response to the feats of Bradley Wiggins, Laura Trott etc. 

Kirkpatrick MacMillan

I don’t often pull my northern ancestry card, but it needs pointing out that all three claimants to the title of ‘inventor of the bicycle’ were actually Scotsmen: Kirkpatrick MacMillan, Gavin Dalzell and Thomas McCall. (I do not count Baron Karl von Drais’s silly Laufmaschine, which was not a machine at all, but a pedal-less glorified scooter). MacMillan was a blacksmith from Dumfriesshire who worked, appropriately enough, at the Vulcan Foundry in Glasgow.  His 1839 two-wheeled vehicle really did transmit power from human feet via crankshafts to rotating hubs.

Hephaestus' magic wheelchair

Given that the ancient Greeks, especially Vulcan/Hephaestus, were brilliant at mechanical engineering, I have always been puzzled that they did not invent the bike. Hephaestus, who was club-footed, made himself this elaborate chariot, but still ended up on most vases riding a humble donkey.

ZEUS and HERA

So while we unpacked the endless boxes and worried that the cat might head off back to the Cotswolds, I mentally suited pictures of historical bikes to some of the Olympians. Any suggestions for those still missing—Athena, Apollo, Hermes etc.—gratefully received.

Artemis

Aphrodite

DIONYSUS

POSEIDON

Demeter and Persephone

Women v. Rape in Ancient Amphissa

A trip several miles upcountry to Amphissa, mountainous administrative centre of the low-tourist patch of Greece where I am hiding, allowed me to visit at last the scene of an unusual ancient narrative.

In the fourth century BCE, tyrants had taken over Amphissa and installed an army. A band of Thyiads (a special group of Bacchanalian women from Athens and Delphi) had been worshipping Dionysus on the nearby summits. But they got lost (they did this a lot; on another occasion they were snowed in and had to be rescued by mountain rangers). This time they passed out in Amphissa’s marketplace.

Square of Amphissa, Sleepy Town in Phokis, today

The more sedate local wives were concerned that the occupying soldiers would 'take advantage' of their insensible visitors. The women of Amphissa bravely stood all night encircling the Thyiads to guard their sleep. In the morning they fed them and (after demurely securing permission from their husbands) escorted them in safety to the borders.

Lawrence Alma Tadema, 'Women of Amphissa', Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Eliot brought this story into popular circulation. The hero of her Daniel Deronda (1876) is reminded of the version in Plutarch’s On the Virtues of Women when he rescues the vulnerable foreigner Mirah Lapidoth. An updated maenad (professional opera singer), she had been threatened with prostitution by the men who should have protected her. Daniel takes her to stay with respectable female friends in Chelsea, the less than obvious Victorian equivalent of Amphissa.

Black-Figure Bacchant on Plate in Amphissa Museum

And it was Eliot’s novel which in turn inspired Alma Tadema’s portentous 1887 painting of the same episode.  I like his sleepy Thyiads, but am relieved to be able to report that the native matrons of Amphissa look a good deal more cheerful these days as well as remaining (although I didn’t test it) stalwart in the defence of female honour. I know this because I spent the morning in Amphissa police station (my kind hostess needed to renew her Greek passport to secure her own safe conduct over borders) being impressed by the easy professionalism of a female officer, a modern Woman of Amphissa.

Ladies of Amphissa Looking Very Serious Indeed

Glorious Sprinters Ancient and Modern

I am right now in the sea 30 minutes from here

On the eve of the Olympics I find myself at last on holiday for a week, swimming below Delphi. In antiquity the sanctuary here had its own athletics competitions, the Pythian games. My favourite ancient Victory Ode is Pindar's Pythian 10 in honour of a boy called Hippocleas who won the Delphic junior sprint in 498 BCE.

Perseus, Patron of Sprinters

Pindar foresees that, with the garland of victory, Hippocleas will win huge admiration ‘from boys his age and from his elders, and will make the girls notice him.’ Pindar slyly alludes to the next Olympics, hoping that Hippocleas will triumph there, too: he compares the young athlete to Perseus, who could fly through the air on his winged sandals.

August 3 is the eightieth anniversary of the most important sprint of all time, Jesse Owens' 100-metre dash in 10.3 seconds at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Over the succeeding days he added gold medals in the long jump, the 200 metres, and the 4x100 relay.

Owens' bravura performances cast the Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy into disarray. He was filmed by Leni von Riefensthal for her documentary, Olympia, but there were rumours that Hitler refused to acknowledge Owens’ victories: Owens himself at different times both confirmed and denied this. Aryanists produced the absurd defensive argument that people of African descent were 'inevitably' physically stronger since they were less far removed from a ‘jungle’ existence than the ‘higher’ races.

When criticising Nazi racism, we must remember what faced Owens back home: ‘When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either’.

Owens was a conflicted character, who endured misery as well as glory: a supreme athlete, he chain-smoked and died of lung cancer; a member of the Republican Party, he suffered from the sharpest end of free-market capitalism and was bankrupted; acutely aware of racism, he initially objected to the black power salute after the sprint at the 1968 Olympics.

But surely he would have approved of Pindar’s image of Perseus as sprinters’ hero: when asked what mindset had allowed him to win such extraordinary races, Owens simply said, ‘I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up.’  Owens could do poetry in prose as well as motion.