The Parthenon Enigma (5 page)

               
I will honor the religion of my fathers.

               
I call to witness the gods…

               
The borders of my fatherland
,

               
The wheat, the barley, the vines
,

               
And the trees of the olive and the fig.
¹⁸

Attica was also a land bedecked with flowers. We can picture hyacinths, crocuses, anemones, narcissi, cyclamen, asphodels, irises, roses, lilies, hellebore, larkspur, and a multitude of other species beautifying streets, gardens, and open spaces.
¹⁹
A kind of greenbelt flourished along the edges of Athens, inside and outside the city walls (
this page
). Groves and gardens were planted close to natural water sources. And many of these came to be regarded as hallowed, associated with local shrines and divinities. At the northwest of the city, a twenty-minute walk beyond its walls and not far from the Kephisos River, grew twelve trees consecrated to
Athena in an area called Akademos. The place took its name from the Arkadian hero who showed
Kastor and
Polydeukes where
Theseus had hidden their sister Helen, having stolen her away to Athens. This is the same leafy setting where
Plato established his school in 387
B.C.
, called the Academy after the eponymous place-name.
²⁰
The Academy grove was believed to have developed from offshoots of the original sacred
olive tree planted by Athena on the Acropolis. A curse hung over anyone who dared cut down the Academy olives, a crime punishable by
death or banishment. Oil from the olives of these trees filled the prize amphorae given to winning athletes at the Panathenaic Games. By the 470s
B.C.
, when Athens was recovering from the
Persian Wars and enjoying the growth of its young democracy, the aristocratic statesman and general
Kimon, as part of his enormously generous public works program (aimed at consolidating political support), built a wall around the Academy and diverted the waters of the Kephisos to irrigate it. He constructed an
aqueduct 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) long to bring even more water from the northwest corner of the Agora out to Academy groves, where he planted many more olive and plane trees. Set outside the city walls and in the valley of the Kephisos, the natural setting of the Academy, with its gardens, walkways, and trees, offered Plato and his pupils the perfect place for contemplation and discussion. By the time
Plutarch wrote of it in the second century
A.D.
, the Academy was the most wooded spot in all of Athens.
²¹

Philosophers similarly gravitated to a tree-filled retreat at the northeast of Athens known as the
Lykeion (
this page
), presumably after a sanctuary of
Apollo Lykaios (“Wolf God”) located somewhere nearby.
²²
Groves sacred to Apollo are found at his sanctuaries throughout the Greek world, and the trees of the Lykeion may well have originated as
a wood connected with Apollo’s worship.
²³
A gymnasium for sporting activities was already established here in the sixth century. We know from
Plato that the Lykeion was a favorite haunt of
Sokrates’s (the Platonic dialogue
Euthydemos
is set here, and, in the
Lysis
, Sokrates is en route from the Academy to the Lykeion when he gets distracted, ending up at a new palaistra). Aristotle would establish his own philosophical school at the Lykeion in 335
B.C.
, upon returning from
Macedonia, where he taught the young
Alexander the Great. It was around this time that the leader and visionary
Lykourgos, scion of one of the oldest and noblest Athenian families, the Eteoboutadai, came to power as steward of the financial administration. He allocated funds for the planting of many more trees at the Lykeion.
²⁴
Aristotle’s custom of strolling and talking with his pupils under the shade of the Lykeion’s covered walkways and colonnades (
peripatoi
) led to their being called the
Peripatetics. Upon Aristotle’s exile from Athens in 322, his successor,
Theophrastos, took up, among other things, the study and organization of botany while working in the Lykeion’s leafy setting.
²⁵

Somewhere beneath the Acropolis, in the direction of the
Ilissos River, a grove of two hundred olive trees grew within the shrine of
Kodros,
Neleos, and
Basile.
²⁶
Kodros belonged to the period called the
Dark Ages (ca. 1100–750
B.C.)
when kings ruled Athens; he was the last of them, and Neleos was his son.
²⁷
An inscription of Roman date, found to the southeast of the Acropolis, claims to be the epitaph for Kodros’s grave monument.
²⁸
It tells us that the body of the king (who valiantly gave his life to save the people from an advancing Dorian army) was embalmed by the Athenians and buried at the foot of the Acropolis.
²⁹
The Delphic oracle had foretold that the Dorian invaders would prevail only if they avoided killing the Athenian king. When Kodros heard of the prophecy, he disguised himself as a peasant and wandered out beyond the city walls, pretending to gather wood. Coming upon the enemy camp near the Ilissos River, the king intentionally provoked an argument with two guards, whereupon a fight ensued, with Kodros killing one of the soldiers and the other killing Kodros in turn. Realizing what had happened, the Athenians asked the invaders to return to them the body of their king. When the
Dorians, too, figured out that they had killed the king of Athens, they retreated, certain that their siege could now only fail.

By the fifth century
B.C.
the days of Kodros and the Athenian monarchy
(“rule by one”) were long gone. Indeed, the great kingships of
Mycenaean Greece (ca. 1600–1100
B.C.)
did not survive the collapse of
Bronze Age civilization, and when monarchies emerged in the period that followed, local kings (
basileis
) seem to have been considerably weaker than their Mycenaean predecessors. During the eighth and seventh centuries these kings would have ruled with the consent and support of aristocratic families, most likely buttressed by marriage alliances. The transition away from kingship seems to have been a gradual one, with local aristocracies (“rule by the best”) and
oligarchies (“rule of the few”) eventually taking over.
³⁰
At Athens, a few eminent old families had become enormously wealthy off the bounty of their landholdings. Known as the
Eupatrids (“Good-Fathered” or “Wellborn”), these clans were fiercely competitive with one another, establishing rivalries that endured for generations. In the course of the eighth century they gained control of the powerful civic offices of polemarch (magistrate of war) and eponymous archon (chief magistrate). In 712
B.C.
, the aristocracy’s authority was further increased when the office of
archon basileus (king magistrate) was opened to them as well, giving the Eupatrids power within all branches of city administration, including the law courts. The Athenians seem to have had an innate resistance to the idea of any one individual dominating governance. Originally, the three
archonships were held for a ten-year term, but in 684/683 they were reduced to one year, limiting the power of any one man. Under the reforms of
Solon, who served as eponymous archon in 594
B.C.
, there was a brief period during which the number of archons rose to ten, but it was later reduced to nine when the office of polemarch was moved to the body of
strategoi (“army leaders” or “generals”). The movement toward fuller inclusion in participatory government began under Solon and culminated at the end of the sixth century with the “democratic revolution” led by
Kleisthenes in 508/507
B.C.

By the time
Antiphon served as eponymous archon in 418/417, Athens had thus enjoyed ninety years of democracy, and its nine annual archons were now chosen by lot from a short list of eligible candidates. An inscribed decree published during the archonship of Antiphon lays out terms for the lease of the sacred precinct of Kodros.
³¹
There is debate over the exact location of this sanctuary. Some scholars place it within the city walls to the southeast of the Acropolis, and others locate it outside the walls on the banks of the Ilissos.
³²
In any case, the inscription
prescribes that the lessee enclose the temenos with a wall, paid for at his own expense. He is also required to plant no fewer than two hundred young olives within the sanctuary, more if he likes. In return, the lessee will have control over “the ditch and all the rain
water that flows between the shrine of
Dionysos and the gates through which the
mystai
[initiates in the
Eleusinian Mysteries] make their way to the sea,” that is, to the Bay of
Phaleron. He shall also have control of all the water that flows “between the public house and the gates that lead to the
baths of Isthmonikos.”

This text underscores the great premium on water in ancient Athens and use of open spaces as water traps for capturing this precious resource. The lessee gets a fair deal: in exchange for building the enclosure wall and planting the grove, he claims the freshwater collected here. In the process, he honors the gods and forefathers by beautifying the shrine of one of the noblest and most selfless of Athenian mythic ancestors. Indeed, upon
Kodros’s
death (by tradition, around 1068
B.C.)
it was decided no one would deserve the title of king again. His son
Medon (whose name means “Ruler”) thus became the first
archon, or “commander.”
³³

THE MARKETPLACE OF ANCIENT ATHENS
, known as the Agora, occupied a low, flat area to the northwest of the Acropolis (
this page
). This space was filled with flowers and greenery. We are told that the general
Kimon, responsible for the Academy grove, also planted
plane trees in the Agora in an effort to beautify the city following its destruction by the Persians.
³⁴
The sack of the Acropolis in 480
B.C.
destroyed the temple (still under construction) that immediately preceded the Parthenon, a building known as the Older Parthenon. But the wrath of the Persians spilled down from the Acropolis cliffs as well and consumed the city. The
relandscaping of the Agora went a long way toward reestablishing normalcy. A grove of laurel and olive trees surrounded the
Altar of the Twelve Gods in its northwest corner; excavations have revealed pits, measuring roughly a meter in diameter, for planting these trees.
³⁵
The grove was watered by a channel directing runoff from two fountain houses at the higher ground to the south.

Plutarch tells the story of a plane tree that stood in the very center of the Agora, just beside the bronze statue of the orator Demosthenes.
³⁶
When a soldier accused of wrongdoing was summoned before his chief officer, he stopped first at this statue, placing in the entwined fingers of Demosthenes the only gold he had. Leaves from the plane tree blew down and covered the gold within Demosthenes’s clasped hands. When the soldier returned from his ordeal, he found his treasure intact. This was taken as proof of the
incorruptibility of Demosthenes.

THE TREES, GARDENS, WOODS
, and wetlands of Athens were inhabited by a robust wildlife. We can imagine rock doves, jackdaws, swifts, nightingales, swallows, cuckoos, crows, eagles, falcons, and other raptors flying overhead.
³⁷
Of course, the little owl, or
glaux
, took pride of place as the symbol of Athens and its patron goddess. Aristophanes’s
Birds
, first performed in 414
B.C.
, reads like an ornithological handbook for the city. A sampling of Aristophanes’s fowl includes the hoopoe, nightingale, magpie, turtledove, swallow, buzzard, pigeon, falcon, ring-door, cuckoo, red-foot, red-cap, purple-cap, kestrel, diver, ouzel, osprey, wood thrush, quail, goose, pelican, spoonbill, redbreast, peacock, grouse, horned owl, teal, swan, bittern, heron, stormy petrel, fig-picker, vulture, sea eagle, titmouse, redbird, finch, gull, coot, chick, and wren. If even a fraction of this list was truly resident in Attica, the avian population of the city-state could be regarded as exceptionally wide-ranging and diverse.
³⁸

We must not underestimate the aural presence of native wildlife to the experience of ancient Athens. In the days before the urban noise-scape of automobiles, sirens, trains, planes, and factories, it was the song, cry, and croak of the wild that accompanied life’s moments through the day. For those listening, these sounds signaled the passage of time as well as making it possible to echolocate oneself within the city. Natural acoustics are easily forgotten in our era of headphones and earbuds. But the sounds of the Greek countryside—from the tune of songbirds in the morning, to the screech of cicadas in the peak heat of the day, to the croaking of frogs at dusk and the hooting of the owl in the evening—were to ancient listeners like the chiming of a clock. It is no wonder that Aristophanes seized upon the resident avian and reptilian populations for his dramatis personae in the
Birds
and the
Frogs
. Anyone who has spent long Mediterranean days with seagulls overhead, or evenings sleeping beside wetlands thick with frogs, knows that cacophony that
so resembles crowds of humans rapt in conversation. To reconstruct in our mind’s ear the music and mayhem of Mother Nature is essential to appreciating the ancient ambience.