Sexual scandals in high places. Courtesans intriguing with politicians. Lavish banquets. A "punditocracy" of talking heads who dominate public discourse. Payments by foreign powers to politicians. Spying, wars, and intrigue.
The headlines from Washington, DC as we approach the millenium read like nothing so much as the shards and scraps of ancient Greece described by James Davidson in Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (St. Martin's Press, 1997).
Davidson wrote his book in response to what he saw as Foucault's misrepresentation of Athenian society, and his overemphasis on homosexual relations between penatrator and penatrated. What Foucault describes as a slave society driven by domination and and oppression, Davidson sees differently. To Davidson, the Athenians were in search of pleasure, not domination.
And this pleasure could be found in the everyday passions of eating, drinking, and sex. Athenians sought freedom, not domination, he argues, unlike the Macedonians, for example.
By failing to understand the pleasures of Greek life, including the pleasures of philosophy, theatre, and political debate, Foucault misunderstands the profoundly complex and human reality of Athenian civilization.
For example, one of Socrates' questions, with which Davidson begins his book, is, "for what kind of behavior is a man called an 'opsophagos'?"
To understand this question in context, readers must know a little about the everyday life of Athens, especially dining habits and the relevant rituals connected to the eating of meat, fish, and other foods. While meat was a sacrificial item, to be consumed with great solemnity in organized religious ceremonies, and certain portions reserved for the priests and the gods, fish was a more personal pleasure, to be consumed by individuals and purchased in the market place, or agora.
So, the 'opsophagos' is a "fish-lover" in Davidson's view, and the existence of this pleasure-seeking side of Athenian life becomes the lode star by which we are carried through fascinating descriptions of the Greek world, based on quotations from ancient Greek comedies and drama, philosophical texts, and surviving works of art, such as the mosaic in the Vatican Museum by Heraclitus, based on the "Unswept Hall" by Sosos of Pergamum.
The mosaic is a depiction of the floor of a Greek banqueting hall between the dining and drinking portions of the feast, right before it would have normally been swept. It is filled with shells, fish bones, and lobster claws.
By closely examining the items depicted in the mosaic, Davidson pieces together a portrait of ancient Greeks not as stern statues, but as lively and warm-blooded human beings.
He discusses their feasts, and the role of eating and drinking, as a prelude to describing sexual relations. Far from being a homosexual society, the Greeks would more appropriately be considered as pleasure-seekers. Davidson believes that the heterosexual lives of ancient Athens have been under-reported, and goes into great detail to describe the different levels of courtesans, prostitutes, and wives, including adulterous affairs and relations between masters and slaves, which make fascinating reading today.
The Greeks had a different attitude towards desire, recognizing that it existed, but looking down on those who were unable to sexually control themselves, comparing them to leaking amphora. This attitude applied equally to homosexual and heterosexual behavior, he argues.
From discussions of food and sex, he moves on to discuss the addictions of ancient times, the rumored drunkenness of Alexander the Great, Cleon and other figures, the sex-addictions of adulterers and and seducers such as Alcibiades, even accusations of cross-dressing against Demosthenes.
Of whom it was said by Aeschines relating one of the many jury trials that filled the Athenian media of the day -- shades of O.J. and Monica Lewinsky:"If someone were to unravel you from those lovely draperies of yours and the soft little chitons underneath...and let the jurors hold them in their hands, I think they would be quite unable to tell whether they had taken the clothing of a man or of a woman."
Likewise, the economy of ancient Athens was not so different from that of our time as we imagine. The ancients were active in business as well as agriculture, and he charts the changing fortunes of families over time. The Rockefellers of the day were the family of Callias at the end of the fifth century. In 420 he was the richest man in Greece, having inherited his wealth from his father Hipponicus. Forty years later he was penniless, having squandered it all through gambling, horse-breeding, women and dinner parties
The ability to handle money responsibly was very much respected. Like contemporary Americans, ancient Athenians judged people by their fortunes, "a rational reflections on the real problems of excessive eating, drinking and fornicating, but a measure of the degree of self control."
Just as in contemporary America, there were frequent public trials by citizen juries, and politicians hired ghost-writers, speechwriters, and orators the " television pundits" of the day.
The arrival of Gorgias to secure the help of Athens for Leontini in Sicily against Syracuse in 427 established the value of rhetoric. Soon foreign powers were hiring the best and the brightest of Athens to plead their cases in the public arena.
Gossip and scandal-mongering were an ordinary part of political discourse in the cradle of democracy. The sitcoms of the day were filled with political references.
For example, Aeschines writes that "when comedies were being played in Collytus...some people were said to be 'great big Timarchian whores'..."
And 'sykophants' were paid to denounce the pecadilloes of the opponents of their employers.
In ancient Athens, such gossip, ridicule, and public debate was a vital component of the democracy. Chastisement, not oppression, was the preferred means of social control of the citizenry (and Davidson argues that even Athenian slaves had the opportunity to become citizens).
He concludes: "The Greeks imposed few rules from outside, but felt a civic responsibility to manage all appetites, to train themselves to deal with them, without trying to conquer them absolutely. There is little sign in Greece of the metaphysical ascetic tradition we find in the cults of Christianity, Islam, Shiva, and Budda. The greeks never went so far as to renounce the world, by opening monasteries, espousing virginity, practicing yoga, or fasting for long periods of time in an attempt to gain psychic power. they were in fact rather suspicious of complete abstention, as the story of the Centaurs reveals."
It is this emphasis on self-control, on clashing interests in the agora,the importance of gossip and scandal and public trials, that lets us see the untidy side of democracy is what makes it work -- just as the "Unswept Floor" of the banquet hall reveals the delightful meal captured forever in the mosaic tile.
In other words, democracy is a messy business, and has been since the Athenians invented it. But in its very messiness lies its strength.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)