Voyage 6. THE CELEBRATED “TRICHORDON”

Voyage 6. THE CELEBRATED “TRICHORDON”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Περιήγηση 6η. TΟ ΠΕΡΙΩΝΥΜΟΝ ΤΡΙΧΟΡΔΟΝ

Persian setar (seh-tar = tri-chord = 3-string): Indian sitar’s probable origin; cithara-guitar and zither have the same etymology.

● Flamenco and Rebetiko, Guitar and Bouzouki ● Modal and Tempered Music ● Ross Daly ● Tanburs: Pandura, Saz, Bağlama, Cura and Bulgarí ● Ashiks: Alevi-Bektashi ● Iovan Tsaous and Foustalieris ● Entertainment and “Edutainment”

by Michales Loukovikas

 
FLAMENCO AND REBETIKO’s lead instruments have been the guitar and bouzouki respectively: their sound is the absolutely necessary condition – sine qua non, as they say – for the interpretation of the two genres. Yet, these instruments may be evaluated as rather unsuitable for such musical idioms.

In terms of melodic themes, both rebetiko and flamenco come under the category of modal music: that is, each song is based not on a simple musical scale but rather on a mode (“harmony” or “echos”) with its own character, mood and ethos, and with a variety of intervals that greatly outnumber the tempered-equal intervals of Western European music. In the accompaniment, however, both genres are dominated by the Occidental concept of chords and melodic phrases played on tempered instruments: the frets on the bouzouki and guitar’s necks are positioned according to these equal intervals, allowing the performance of just the notes of the piano. This contradiction, of course, creates various problems, imposes restrictions – but at the same time imparts a raw beauty to music when it’s been cultivated at the crossroads between distinct cultural areas. It’s as if the interpreters act like rope-dancers balancing themselves between two worlds.

In terms of melodic themes, rebetiko and flamenco come under the category of modal music. In the accompaniment, however, both genres are dominated by the Occidental concept of chords and melodic phrases played on tempered instruments.

Bouzouki

The guitar’s development during its final phase, from the Renaissance onwards (as we have seen in Voyage 4), ran parallel to the development of Occidental music, with polyphony, counterpoint and all its other special features. Therefore, the relationship between instrument and music has been harmonious. The bouzouki, on the contrary, as a newcomer in this field, has suffered from intense split personality. Even if it cannot be played with the classical guitar techniques that have crept into flamenco, it’s also gradually moved willy-nilly on the westernizing way of rebetiko.

Radical changes in the orientation of a musical genre are clearly reflected on its instruments. Although Music never shows her own face, the transformations of an instrument are clearly visible to the naked eye. Thus we have seen the bouzouki undergoing a mutation and turning from three-string (tri-chordon) into a four-string and also electric instrument, while at the same time its tuning has changed adopting that of the guitar to facilitate virtuosities. This four-double-string… “guitarized” bouzouki was introduced by the superstar Manoles Chiotes (originally a guitarist), although it was not his own invention. Note that these developments occurred while rebetiko was on its deathbed.

The bouzouki underwent two mutations before and after rebetiko:
it was at first “mandolinized”, and then “guitarized”, turned into
a four-string and electric instrument…

Lavta with movable frets

That was the instrument’s second mutation. The first one happened before rebetiko moved into the spotlight when the bouzouki, as a “prodigal son”, broke away from the tanbur family where it was raised, and became a… Franco-Levantine: then it lost both its tanbur-like appearance and its movable frets allowing fine tuning according to the intervals of the mode to be played. They were replaced by the far fewer fixed metal frets that enable the performance of only tempered intervals. This metamorphosis was accompanied by other structural changes also modeled on the mandolin. In short, the instrument was at first… “mandolinized”. It continued “speaking” Greek, one might say, but with a foreign “accent”…^(a)

• ^(a) Considering the fixed frets and their tempered intervals, the only way to approach the original sound of rebetiko, i.e. the sound of modal music, is to use several tunings called düzenia,^(*) depending on the mode. The only bouzouki player I’ve heard using such tunings “live” (not in some special event or during a musicological program) has been another… guitarist, Demetris Mystakides. Thus, while the rest of his program favoured vocal duets, the düzenia required ison (drone) – meaning that he moved away from Occidental-style “harmony” towards Oriental echos and ethos.
  ^(*) Düzen: tuning, harmony (in Turkish).

There is, however, a type of bouzouki still in use that has remained true to its origins and is proud to be a brother of the tanbur. It is the Arabic bouzouki, the buzuq or busoq, played in the area of ancient Phoenicia: in Lebanon and its surrounding area. The country of the cedars is where the greatest modern virtuoso of the instrument has emerged: the gypsy-born Matar Muhammad might turn even the “four-string” Chiotes… pale, despite the admiration he had won from the great Jimi Hendrix!^(b)

• ^(b) Note that Matar’s repertoire featured the Greek spongers’ song Dirlada. The song was included in The Fool’s Garden album (1969) by Dionyses Sabbopoulos – who was taken to court for its credits in 1973. Despite the testimony by the rebetiko composer Iannes Papaiohannou that he’d known the song for years as traditional, despite the fact that by 1970 it was already an international hit recorded by Dalida in French and Italian as Darla dirladada, the court ruled that next to the song title on The Fool’s Garden cover and disc a phrase should be written (in parenthesis): “Adapted by Sabbopoulos; composed by P. Gines or traditional”… You could take your pick! Dirlada was also recorded in Hebrew, Serbian, Finnish and other languages. Other interpreters in Greek included Domna Samiou, Nikos Xylouris, and Marinella.

It seems as a modern version of the age-old competition – but also emulation and exchange – between Phoenicians and Hellenes during the colonizing phase of the Mediterranean: the former on the southern coastline, the latter on the northern shores – without excluding reciprocal incursions. This very competition went on (and still goes on) with other protagonists: Romans and Punics, Byzantines and Arabs – until the Crusaders appeared in mare nostrum upsetting its status quo. You see how old the idea on “spheres of influence” is, where the concept of “Lebensraum” (vital, living space) recently emerged as a malignant tumour…^(c)

• ^(c) Pope Urban II made perhaps the most influential speech of the Middle Ages on November 27, 1095, giving rise to the Crusades by calling all Christians to war against Muslims. The chronicler Robert the Monk put this into the mouth of the Pope:
  “… this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population… and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators… Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves… Dieu li volt (It is God’s will)!”

How identical the papal words are to Adolf Hitler’s “We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources”, he shouted. Germany has “a tightly packed racial core”, and thus the Germans are entitled to “greater Lebensraum than in the case of other peoples.” As for Urban’s “wicked race”, the Nazis interpreted it as referring mainly to the Eastern European Slav population… There was, therefore, a long history of equivalent mentality between the Vatican and fascism; it wasn’t just a case of… love at first sight!
Adding to this historical irony, some of the Nazis’ victims, the Jews, under Zionist leadership, have embraced verbatim and wholeheartedly Urban’s call and Hitler’s Lebensraum theory and practice, encroaching on the lands of that old “wicked race”…

What was the common origin of these instruments? It was obviously located in Assyria, as Pollux has already said about the pandura (see Voyage 4). And how have these instruments – or rather: the two variants of the same instrument – developed in today’s Phoenicia and Hellas, without affecting the rest of the Arabs, nor the Turks that, in the meantime, found themselves in between? We can just speculate on that; especially since the word bouzouki, according to Nicolas Andriotes’ Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek, is believed to have been Turkish in origin (büzük). We can see in this case one of etymology’s so many oddities: an instrument’s godfather not to care much about it.^(d)

• ^(d) In fact, when the Turks say büzük they mean a kind of bağlama; and when they say bağlama they mean a kind of saz… Thus the Greek terms bouzouki and baglamás are loans from Turkish referring to different, though related, instruments of the tanbur family,^(*) which extends as far as India with the drone instrument tanpura. Note in addition that the term tambour also denotes some kinds of drums. In the same percussion category we have more derivative terms such as tambourine, tambora, tabor…
  ^(*) I know people who ordered “some little baglamá” from Constantinople… You can imagine, of course, their astonishment when they finally saw what they had bought!

Ross Daly

Unfortunately, we do not know how exactly the tambourás was played in Greece in the 19th century. Its playing, however, should have been quite different from that of the bouzouki or (at least today’s) Anatolian saz, although there are people who try to convince us to the contrary, for they introduce themselves as “tambourás masters”, while the instrument they play is in reality the saz – i.e. a tanbur family instrument in the form it has acquired in Asia Minor. Ross Daly describes the efforts to resurrect the tambourás:

“In recent years there has been much talk in various music high schools, educational institutions, schools of music and so-called conservatoires about an instrument mentioned in Greek history, called tambourás. The instrument has not survived to this day. There’s been no ongoing tradition since ancient times that, as they say, the tambourás originates.^(e) We can find old Byzantine theoreticians’ descriptions, folkloric descriptions, or references in books, we know more or less how it was tuned, what its form was; but we have never listened to it live.

• ^(e) “Tríchordon: a three-string instrument of the lute family, also known as pandura, pandurís or pánduros. It was probably the only instrument with a neck used by the Hellenes. In Alexandrian times the term pandura was used to refer to a whole family of similar instruments played with a plectrum. Sachs says: ‘it had a long arm…, small body, frets, and three strings’. According to Pollux: ‘tríchordon, which the Assyrians called pandura; for it was their own invention’. We are told by Pythagoras that ‘the pandura was made by the Red Sea Troglodytae with white laurel that grows by the sea’. Nicomachus writes in his Manual that the monochord was called phánduros. Hesychius uses the word pandurís for the instrument and the term pánduros for the performer; pandúrion[, he claims, is] a diminutive of the word pandura. But Photius says: ‘pandúrion, namely a Lydian instrument played with the fingers without a plectrum’. In his Dictionary Zonaras notes: ‘pandúrion… a kind of guitar’.” (Solon Michaelides, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Music).

Muse playing a tríchordon-pandurís

“There is an instrument played in Turkey that is considered closely related to the tambourás: it’s the saz. Some say it is one and the same instrument. First of all, it is not – and this can be clearly shown by a simple comparison of the two instruments. Moreover, the style, the music an instrument plays, its construction – everything – are all in one. You cannot separate one thing from the other.

“What we have now as a result is a whole army of young people who have learned how to play the saz in recent years not through some kind of training or tradition, but completely self-taught and offhand. They present themselves as tambourás masters though it’s obvious they have not the slightest idea. People here know nothing about the saz, tambur, ney, not even the oud, although the Greeks have participated in the development of Anatolian culture. There have been numerous excellent Greek oud players; the best example may have been Yorgo Bacanós [Badjanós], the leading oud player in Istanbul in the mid-20th century: every Turkish oud player now drinks water to him. But, unfortunately, this tradition did not take root in Greece and there was no follow-up.

“After this tradition had died out for some decades, with the revival of rebetiko in the early 70s, and even more around the 80s when people became interested in the Smyrnaic style,^(f) every bouzouki player bought an oud, as well; and started tinkering with it as if playing a bouzouki. This is one thing; another thing is to be initiated in the living tradition of this instrument in Turkey or Arabia where the oud is played now.

• ^(f) Smyrnaic (from Smyrna) and Piraeotic (from Piraeus): the two main styles of rebetiko.

Oud

“I cannot consider all these bouzouki players that were suddenly interested in the oud as successors of the tradition carried by Bacanós, Agapios Tomboules, Lambros [Leontarides], the lyra player, or Lambros [Sabbaides], the qanun player. All these musicians carried a living tradition but, unfortunately, while they were alive, no one was interested in it; that’s why they left no successors.

“One could say, of course, that the tambourás survived in Crete through Stelios Foustalieris’ bulgarí. Yet, Foustalieris changed completely his instrument; and was seriously influenced mainly through his contact with rebetiko. Foustalieris’ playing may be helpful; but it’s not enough to revive an entire tradition. Let’s utilize whatever we have at our disposal; but without all that nationalist hot air specifically about this instrument that has become a symbol: ‘the tabourás of Makryiannes!’ Some persons use it like a gun”…

Crete’s exchange with Constantinople and Smyrna, as well as with the wider area of Anatolia and the Balkans, was continuous until the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922. That’s how several tunes, and also the bulgarí, an instrument closely resembling the cura (tzurá), arrived there. But which cura? Here, too, the terms are confusing. The tzurás for the Greeks is the middle-sized instrument of the three that make up the bouzouki triad, while the smallest of the family is the Lilliputian baglamás, a typical prison instrument: due to its size it can be easily hidden. However, the smallest of the Anatolian tanburs is not the bağlama but the cura! Quite a mess-up…

Different terms, it’s obvious, indicate differences not only in terms of dimensions, construction in general, but also as to the origin of either the instruments or their users. Settling in Anatolia, the Turks should have had instruments of the tanbur family, as we can presume based on the origin of these terms. But the peoples of Asia Minor had already been using similar instruments, such as the pandura, since time immemorial: at least since the time of the Hittites and the Assyrians. The tanburs, therefore, have been autochthonous there and their tradition has been Anatolian rather than Turkish (Central Asian)^(g).

Âşık Veysel

• ^(g) I claim that the ashik tradition has been Anatolian, not Turkish (Central Asian). During the international Musicological Symposium of Delphi in 1988 e.g. Reinhold Schlötterer analyzed the structure of Âşik Veysel’s song “Black Earth”. Speaking in Greek (as German was not included in the conference languages), he pointed out that this melody corresponds to the ancient Hellenic musical system. He hastened, however, to add that we should not draw arbitrary conclusions claiming that the Anatolian music was actually dependent on ancient Greek culture. Besides, he concluded, Hellenic music had received antecedent idioms from Asia Minor. As we can see, Schlötterer compared ancient Greek and Anatolian cultures. He didn’t even think of taking into account in his analysis some Central Asian culture!

We tend to forget this fact as we are under the impression that the erudite Constantinopolitan tradition’s origin, on the one hand, has been Arabo-Persian (and Byzantine, of course, but we also forget!) and, on the other hand, that the Anatolian folk music is “purely Turkish”… Would you expect anything else? It’s more than obvious that these advocates of “purity” – in sound and also race – are a global phenomenon. If in this case the “purists” are Turks, OK (so to speak). But what if they are foreigners?

“At the court of the Ottoman sultans”, said Alain Gheerbrant, who recorded and released songs by Âşık Veysel, “the official arts were so encumbered by flowery Arabo-Persian art poetry as to become less and less understandable to the common people. At the same time, the ashiks, often illiterate itinerant folk poets, maintained a tradition of poetry in song on Turkish soil. Since the 12th century, their poetry, worded in rigorous language and free of foreign influences, could be heard from the shores of the Mediterranean as far away as China.

“The Ottoman Empire disappeared; the popular tradition did not. Although there may no longer be any ashiks in Khorasan, they are still present in Anatolia. Âşık Veysel was not only the most brilliant of them all, he was also one of the greatest contemporary poets of the Turkish language. The tradition from which he drew his inspiration dates from the great semi-legendary figures of yesteryear, such as Yunus Emre (13th century) and Pir Sultan or Kaygusuz Abdal (16th century). His work shall remain, alongside that of his predecessors, in the collective memory of the rural peoples of Anatolia.

“His influence is also plain to see elsewhere, for the ‘Kemalist’ revolution has placed Turkey on the road to recovering its identity. A reconciliation was needed for that to take place: for the literate to abnegate their caste, set apart by jealousy, and recognize and hear the illiterate élites. Today’s Turkey has reached that understanding: one needs only to open a novel by Yaşar Kemal or view a few scenes from a Yilmaz Güney film to understand that Âşık Veysel, the aged, sightless bard, opened the eyes of all contemporary thinkers and artists, those who have carried the voice of their people beyond their nation’s borders eliminating the barrier of misunderstandings, preconceptions, and platitudes that impede all positive interaction between cultures.

“Veysel, like all the ashiks, was of the Alevi–Bektashi faith, and therefore voluntarily alien to the rigid code of the Sunni Muslims. His philosophy, a fusion of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks of Asia Minor and the generous warmth of his Central Asian ancestors, was one of tolerance and freedom. He preached unity, understanding, and equality between all men and women, based on a religion that was turned inwards towards the earth, rather than outwards towards the sky…”

Statue of Pir Sultan Abdal who was
martyred and hanged for his beliefs

What a “flowery” garden… Had we not known Turkey, we would have thought it’s a heavenly land of the angels! Was the French researcher really serious, or did he tell one white lie after the other winking meaningfully at us? After all, why should he mention two prominent Kurds, such as Yaşar Kemal and Yilmaz Güney, who were jailed by the “‘Kemalist’ revolution”? And they were not the only ones. The most important persons of arts and letters in Turkey have been treated collectively as subversive elements. Let alone how the Sunni state dealt with Alevis and Bektashis.^(h) What is the use of such texts, except perhaps to serve diplomacy and personal gain?

• ^(h) The Alevis, who live… persecuted in Turkey (indiscriminately and at all times: in the Ottoman, Kemalist or Islamist periods), should not be confused with the Syrian Alawites who form a ruling minority. Alevis are grouped together with Shias (Shiites), but their religion, a syncretism of Muslim, Buddhist, Shamanist and Christian beliefs, differs from both main branches of Islam. They usually have their ceremonies in houses rather than mosques, drinking wine, listening to music and dancing: an ashik plays bağlama and sings their didactic spirituals, while men and women dance whirling like Dervishes. Unlike Muslims, whose ceremonies are performed in Arabic, Alevis use primarily Turkish, or Kurdish, if they are Kurds. At least half the Alevis think they are not Muslims. Sunnis accuse them of “heresy, heterodoxy, rebellion, betrayal, immorality”. Alevis, on the other hand, preaching love and respect for all people, tolerance towards other religions and ethnic groups, equality between men and women, and respect for working people, consider Sunnis as “reactionary, bigoted, fanatic, anti-democratic”, and opposing free and independent thinking. Alevis now see themselves as a counterforce to Sunni fundamentalism. Note that 1/4 to 1/3 of the inhabitants of Turkey are Alevis. Native Alevis in Greek Western Thrace are thought to number 3000 people.

Bektashi hymns

Alevism is associated with Bektashism as both groups honour Haji Bektash Veli, who lived in the 13th century. Bektashis had a strong presence not only in Asia Minor but also in the Balkans, especially in Albania, Vardar Macedonia (FYRoM), Bulgaria, and Greece, primarily in Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace and Crete. It seems that only in Bosnia they failed to take root. Influenced by Sufi mysticism and accused of pantheism, they too share some ideas with Shias, and are not dogmatic. Sultan Mahmud II abolished various orders (Bektashi, Janissaries, etc) in 1826. A century later, in 1925, Mustafa Kemal banned all Dervish Sufi orders and shut down their lodges. Enver Hoxha acted accordingly outlawing religious practice in Albania. Kemal and Hoca acted on the basis of their ideas and interests. One would expect that the rest of the Balkan leaders, except of course those who are under Ankara’s aegis, would do the same taking advantage of the Sunni–Bektashi conflicts, given that the vast majority of the Balkan Muslims have been Bektashis. Yet, acting stupidly as bigots in power, they too turned against them, handing them over to the Turkish leaders. It’s what we describe as “politicians with foresight”!

One would expect that the Balkan leaders would take advantage of the Sunni-Bektashi conflicts, given that the vast majority of the Balkan Muslims have been Bektashis. Yet, acting stupidly, they too turned against them…

A Hittite with a small pandura

Let’s go back to the tríchordon-pandura and its long history in Asia Minor. There is ample evidence that instruments of the tanbur family have been played by Anatolians since very ancient times. Christian Poché says:

“Asia Minor was from earliest antiquity the favoured land of the long-necked lute, as shown by the Hittite archaeological finds… Long before Arabic Spain, this geographical area served as a link between Orient and Occident, and as such transmitted through the ages these types of long-necked lutes that in classical Europe gave birth to the pandura, colascione, mandora…

“In Turkey, these lutes take on different names according to their dimensions, the populations who use them and the way they use them. The Turkmen term Baglama or Baglamaq, literally ‘tying’ (of strings around an instrument) is the one found most often, as opposed to the other widespread term, Saz, a Persian word which designates the music, the act of playing it on any instrument, especially the long-necked lute. A third term, of probable Indo-Iranian origin, also serves in support of the musical vocabulary: tambura.⁽ⁱ⁾ Like the preceding ones, it designates a fretted instrument of six strings in pairs, whose terminology finds more favour among the Kurdish populations.”

• ⁽ⁱ⁾ Personally I think that the term tambura probably originates from the Assyrian pandura or a similar Hittite word. Therefore, it must be Mesopotamian-Anatolian and not Indo-Iranian.

With the exception of the Kurds, by the way, the term tanbur is avoided in Turkey in relation to this long-necked lute because a related but very different instrument, called tambur, is used in the erudite Arabo-Persian music of Constantinople. There are two variants of this instrument: plucked (the older version) or bowed (yayli tambur), depending on the way it is played – with a plectrum or a bow. In Greece, of course, the term baglama in relation to the same long-necked lute is also avoided for the same reason, so as not to be confused with that well-known homonymous small instrument, the bouzouki’s little brother.

Unfortunately, the etymology of the terms relating to the several variants of the tanbur does not explain what the origin of the word bulgarí may be. If we exclude the possibility of a Bulgarian origin,^(j) there must be only one alternative: the word vulgar, referring to the common people, the “lower” classes – something “debased”. This possibility, together with the characterization of the Greek demotic as “vulgar”, shows how class, racist, or sexist language may sometimes be – well, not language but man, the one who uses it…

A Greek islander with a tambourás (18th century)

• ^(j) Words are boats and their etymology is a map of their voyages together with the peoples using them. On second… searches for the bulgarí’s genealogy, our first guess proves to be in a way correct: after all, there is a “Bulgar connection”! The instrument may not originate from Bulgaria but from Anatolia among the Turkomans or Oguzes around the Taurus; it may not be directly linked with similar Balkan lutes, such as the tambura, tamburica or bugarija; but its name derives from the Bulgars, the proto-Bulgarian tribes of the Volga Bulgaria region, with whom the Turkomans-Turkmens had contacts. These Bulgars, on the contrary, had no contacts with the (European, Slavic-speaking) Bulgarians for more than a millennium.
  The bulgarí spread across the Mediterranean, especially to Crete and Egypt. Guillaume André Villoteau, a French musicologist, mentioned in 1807 a tanbour boulghari or guitare de Bulgarie among other instruments of the tanbur family he saw in Cairo: bağlama, sharki, and bozuk (replaced later by the buzuq). The bulgarí was either brought to Crete by Anatolian refugees in the 1920s or, most probably, was already in use at least since the 19th century among both Christian and Muslim populations. Stelios Foustalieris e.g. bought his first bulgarí in 1924 having seen the instrument being played by older musicians. It is still in use mainly as a lead instrument and nor for accompaniment, a role that was gradually taken over by the laouto.
  The confusion about the names of tanbur-like instruments extended even to their makers: a Cretan luthier of the 20th century e.g., Manoles Malliotis, designated under the names of bulgarí or bağlama a tambourás-type instrument. The bulgarí has 16-22 movable frets, but some musicians such as Foustalieris replaced them with fixed frets. It is the main instrument of the tabachaniotika, a style close to rebetiko, supposedly developed by the so-called Muslim-Cretans. Tabachaniotika are urban folk songs influenced by Anatolian, Syrian, or Maghrebian–Andalusian music. Ross Daly and Pericles Papapetrópoulos are now the bulgarí’s most accomplished performers.

Anyway, that “vulgar” bulgarí played by Foustalieris, together with the instruments used by Iannes Eidjirides (or Etseirides), the famous Iovan Tsaous, have been the only kinds of tambourás that Greek discography managed to record. But what a pity! These instruments seem to have little in common with those played by fighters of the Greek War of Independence: the bulgarí is a Cretan peculiarity, while Iovan Tsaous’ instruments have been Anatolian – hence unsuitable in the attempt to restore the Greek tambourás and its sound.

Iovan Tsaous

Iovan Tsaous, i.e. Sergeant John, was born in Pontus and worked with famous musicians and singers, playing even in the Sultan’s Court, as they say. On the contrary, when he fled to Greece after the catastrophe of ’22, “he never played on stage because he seemed to disagree with the way the musicians functioned: he remained an ‘edutainer’ of his friends.”^(k) At least this is what Panaiotes Kounades says; which means that he did not like at all the role of an entertainer, as he was used to a different situation in Asia Minor where musicians functioned otherwise:

• ^(k) Edutainment (edu-cation + enter-tainment) is so weak and pale compared to Hellenic ψυχαγωγία (αγωγή ψυχής = soul leading or training, education of the soul) – but what can I do?

“Arabo-Perso-Turkish music,” the qanun player Nikos Stephanides said, “was performed in earlier times by musicians playing saz, bouzouki and tambourines in folk songs; while serious music was performed by an ensemble called ince saz (fine instruments) consisting of the following: tambur (pandura), psalterium [psaltery] – qanun in Greek, Arabic and Turkish – violin, oud, ney (reed flute). The ensembles had singers called hanendes. They had fine voices and played tabors – tambourines – keeping the various rhythms of the melodies being performed.

“When the ensemble played and the hanende sang, everyone was silent in the venue. Even the waiters did not move from their positions. Only during the breaks when the ensemble stopped playing, the public discussed or ordered the waiters whatever they wished for. If they wanted the ensemble to play a song, they put a card with the order and a corresponding tip inside an envelope, and the waiter carried it to the artists so as to perform the piece he wanted. Such was the order inside the venues, which in those old times were equipped neither with loudspeakers nor with amplifiers and, although the musicians played with a natural sound, the audience were able to listen even in the large venues where they oftentimes numbered more than 500-1000 persons because they were completely silent”…

Panaiotes Tountas

When you are accustomed to such an environment – playing high standards music with such partners and in front of such audience – how is it possible to restrict yourself to the role of an entertainer? Iovan Tsaous, therefore, chose to open a… tailor’s shop, which he later turned into an ouzo tavern, playing for his pleasure and not for the entertainment of the patrons of an establishment. Luckily, he met Panaiotes Tountas, the greatest composer of the Smyrnaic style, and artistic director of phonographic companies; so he recorded a number of his own songs and some other compositions, mainly by Tountas. These few recordings (about twenty all in all) took place in just two years, 1935-36, because when the Metaxas dictatorship imposed censorship on lyrics and music (and music!), Iovan Tsaous abandoned the idea to continue, as some others did, as well, such as Vangelis Papázoglou, Giorgos Batis, and Anestis (Artemis) Deliás.

But anyway, less is more: these moments in the studio – however few – reflect the virtuosity of the musician who became a teacher of the Piraeotic rebetiko protagonists: Batis, Deliás, Markos Bambakares, Stratos Paioumtzés – the “Famous Quartet of Piraeus”. They learned from him the names and techniques of the musical “routes” (modes), the art of improvisation (taqsim), and also the several tunings, the düzenia. All the above, combined with his unusual personal style and “eccentric” instruments that were difficult to play (at least for the bouzouki players of rebetiko), created a myth around the name of Iovan Tsaous.

Canción Malagueña, by George Apperley (1931)

In modern Greece, unfortunately, the musicians have had no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment circuit (clubs, festivals, etc). That is, there has been no parallel “edutainment” circuit on a professional basis. In Andalusia, on the contrary, at least until the 60s, there was such a circuit for flamenco artists. Up to the latest development of the genre into concert and theatrical flamenco,^(l) these artists were divided into two major categories: on the one hand, the commercial entertainers worked mainly in tablaos, and on the other, the authentic “edutainers” were employed in juergas, the revelries organized by flamenco aficionados.

• ^(l) … having as protagonists the guitarists and dancers respectively: yesteryear’s leading artists according to flamenco’s hierarchy, the singers, seem to have been sidelined…

There’s been no way out from the stranglehold of the entertainment circuit: there is no parallel circuit…

Stelios Foustalieris

The other traditional tambourás master, Stelios Foustalieris or Foustalierakis, together with his regular partner, the excellent singer Iannes Bernidakis or Baxevanis, belonged to the large batch of musicians and singers who appeared in Rethymno during the interwar period. At that time, the instruments accompanying the lyra were the bulgarí and mandolin, according to Lambros Liavas. They were later replaced by the laouto. Foustalieris, however, managed to turn bulgarí into a solo instrument and worked with two Anatolian musicians playing the oud and santur. They were among those who sought refuge in the island after the catastrophe of ’22. So they should have imparted to him music elements from the instrument’s original cradle. Unfortunately, there are no recordings from this collaboration.

Later he came into direct contact with the sound of the Piraeotic rebetiko. It was during the period of 1933-37 when he lived in Piraeus and also met Batis, Markos, Stratos and other musicians of rebetiko, as well as Tountas, with whom, of course, he collaborated in discography. But here too the output was meagre: just 24 discs.

We certainly wonder if the two tambourás masters, Iovan Tsaous and Foustalieris, finally met; if there was some exchange of knowledge and experience. Having so many acquaintances in common, one would expect that this meeting did happen. However, there’s no available information about it.

Iovan Tsaous died 49 years old, in 1942, during the German occupation that “wiped out” the majority of the élite of Greek musicians and singers: the Anatolian refugees. Apparently they failed to go through a second calvary so soon. On the contrary, Foustalieris passed away fifty years later, in 1992, when he was 81. Being… “the last of the Mohicans” among the very few traditional masters of tambourás, we assume that he attracted the attention of the authorities. This would have happened in almost any other country; not in Greece…

While Foustalieris was still alive, in 1987, I had a discussion on the radio with Sakis Papademetriou and Ross Daly – who concluded the conversation as follows:

“Crete, compared perhaps with other parts of Greece, somehow maintains its tradition in a better shape, in the sense that it is renewed. But because there have been neither significant studies on music nor recordings, each passing decade brings terrible losses. In the few years that I’m there, I’ve met old musicians who in the meantime have died and with them many archives have been lost. There are very few now left.

Stelios Foustalieris, Giorges Gogas, Kostas Mountakis and Ross Daly.

“Foustalieris, the last bulgarí player, is still alive. He’s around 75, but no one has gone there with a tape recorder to tell him: ‘Play – and stop when you get tired!’ However, no private individual can do such a thing because Foustalieris will be afraid he’ll be exploited. In such cases, an official agency can easily surpass any problems and Foustalieris, as a man with an old mentality, will warmly respond. At least something like that, now that there is still time”…

● Time’s passed, Foustalieris has died, the rest of the masters follow, but there have been no recordings – an undertaking of minimal expense. “Hellas, the eternal”…

● On second dispassionate thought, I wonder whether – as a daydreamer – I ask “too much” from a country that has not given a damn about the essence of Makryiannis’ Memoirs. Why then should they care about the way he used to play his tambourás? Let alone about Foustalieris and his bulgarí…

● Thus, our only hope is to see the fulfillment of a verse, albeit paraphrased, of a most beautiful old song, Staphidianós, played superbly by Foustalieris on his bulgarí, having beside him an amazing Baxevanis:

“The good old Foustalieris song, will never fade away”…
• >> Voyage 7. THE… “SUN-LANGUAGE”
• << Voyage 5. A HYBRID’S HYBRIS…

Ross Daly playing tarhu

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Chronicle 7. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

Chronicle 7. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 7. ΑΝΑΒΙΩΣΗ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΙΒΗΡΙΑΣ

● Tartessos ● Colonies in Iberia, Maurusia and Provence ● Tin and Silver Routes Through Gaul and Iberia ● Abdera, Democritus, Plato ● Hellenic Awakening from the Lethargic “Dark Ages”

by Michales Loukovikas

 
THE PHOENICIANS started building their trading monopoly in the 11th century BCE, after the Sea Peoples‘ raids and the Bronze Age collapse, enjoying a free hand while their antagonists were passing through a “Dark Age”. Arriving at the other side of the Mediterranean, they became trading ‘partners’ with the ‘silver’ Tartessians. Profiting from the wealth of the region and also from the hospitality of the locals, a few Phoenicians settled in their cities. This was implied by Strabo when he wrote that “the best cities of Tartessos were inhabited by the Phoenicians”.

Phoenician gold ring with two dolphins, one of the symbols of Gadir

Later they obtained a harbour of their own nearby. It was Gadir, the ‘walled city’, called Gadeira by the Greeks and Gades by the Romans (modern Cádiz).^(a) Its founding is dated traditionally to 1104 BCE although no archaeological strata there can be dated earlier than the 9th century. Thus we assume that in its earliest days it was merely a small seasonal trading post. According to Hellenic legend, the city was founded by Heracles on Erytheia, Geryon‘s island, after killing him. One of its notable features in antiquity was the temple dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart, associated with Heracles by the Greeks. It was still standing during the 1st century, and some historians, based in part on this information, believe that the columns of this temple were the origin of the myth of the Pillars of Heracles.

• ^(a) Gadir means wall, fort, and this in turn means that the walls were the distinctive feature of the city in an area and era when cities were probably not walled. It also implies that the Phoenicians felt the need of such protective walls. Consequently, their relations with the locals were based on anything but in good faith since the beginning.

Soon the entire coastline around this strategic area on both seas, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as well as on both continents, Europe and Africa, was full of Phoenician settlements. However, they were more densely concentrated there in the south than further up the coast. Thus the Hellenes, when they finally re-appeared on the scene, were able to establish their own trading emporia along the northeastern coast before venturing into the Phoenician zone. Encouraged by the Tartessians, who probably desired to end the Phoenician economic monopoly, the Greeks founded Mainake (or Maenaca), very close to the Phoenician Malaca, on the coast of Málaga. The Massaliote Periplus, which gives an account of a sea voyage in the 6th century BCE, places Mainake under the aegis and in the dominion of Tartessos: Iberia was far too important for anyone to ignore…

Tartessos, with Phoenician and Greek colonies: its core area is shown in green, with its sphere of influence spreading in the entire southern Iberia.

Regarding the uncertainty on the whereabouts of Mainake, Strabo in his Geographica pointed out that its ruins, close to Malaca, could still be seen in his time (64 BCE – 24 CE); and collated the regular Greek urban plan versus the haphazard Semitic layout of the Phoenician site, whose location suggests it was a more dense and irregular urban cluster than neighbouring Mainake.^(b) However, even if we are still puzzled about the latter’s exact site and life span, the Hellenic cities on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia probably appeared on the map after the foundation of Massalia (modern Marseille) ca 600 BCE by Phocaeans from Ionia in Asia Minor – something that the Punics had tried but failed to prevent. Massalia became a thriving trading centre and a major rival of Carthage for the Iberian markets and especially the tin trade through Gaul.

• ^(b) The ‘father’ of urban planning was Hippodamus (Ἱππόδαμος, 498-408 BCE), an urban planner, architect, mathematician, physician, meteorologist and philosopher from Miletus, hence the Hippodamian plan of city layouts. What is most impressive in his plan is a wide central area that was kept unsettled and in time evolved to the ‘agora’, the centre of both the city and the citizens.

The Greek Colony of Marseille, by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1869)

The Phocaeans then founded Alalia in Corsica ca 566 BCE, and later moved towards Iberia. There are certain popular theories that at least one of their settlements, Rhode (today’s Roses) at the northeastern tip of Iberia, goes back to the 8th century BCE, and that the colonists were from the Aegean island of Rhodes; but it seems more probable that it was founded in the 5th century BCE by Massaliotes, perhaps with an admixture of colonists from nearby Emporion (modern Empúries). Maybe, as in the case of the Phoenician settlement in Gadir, Rhode was nothing more than a small seasonal trading post in the 8th century; or perhaps the colonists that settled there three centuries later were mainly Rhodians serving in the Massaliote army, along with Cretans, in a special force charged with surveying the Carthaginian movements in southern Iberia.

Hellenic colonies in Provence and Corsica

Popular theories should not be discredited without serious thought and research just because they are ‘popular’; those about Rhode certainly were not born without a reason. Sailing towards Provence, we learn that traders from Rhodes were visiting the coast in the 7th century BCE. Rhodian pottery from that century has been found in the area of Marseille, near Istres and Martigues, and at Évenos, near Toulon. The Rhône (Greek Rhodanós), the main river of Provence, and the ancient town of Rhodanousia were named after the island of Rhodes. There is still a problem of a time gap of one century with the supposed Iberian settlement of Rhode; but at any rate the Rhodian traces in Provence precede those of the Phocaeans, the founders of Massalia. Hellenes from other cities of Ionia also traded in the western Mediterranean as far as Iberia, but very little remains from that period. It is obvious that the Phocaeans had arrived there not just to trade but also to settle. A foundation myth reported by Aristotle in the 4th century BCE as well as by Latin authors symbolizes the intermarriage between Hellenes and locals, recounting how a Phocaean named Protis (or Euxenus) married a local princess called Gyptis (or Petta), thus giving him the right to receive a piece of land where he could found a city. Contacts developed undisputedly from 600 BCE onwards between Celts, Ligures and Greeks in Massalia and other colonies such as Agde, Nice, Antibes, Monaco, Emporion and Rhode.

The Vix Krater, an imported Greek wine-mixing metal vessel, the largest known from antiquity (1.63 m in height), found in the famous grave of the Celt “Lady of Vix”;
ca 500 BCE

According to Charles Ebel writing in the 1960s, “Massalia was not an isolated Greek city, but had developed an Empire of its own along the coast of southern Gaul by the 4th century”. This idea of a Massalian Empire, nevertheless, is no longer accepted by several skeptical scholars in the light of recent archaeological evidence, which shows that Massalia’s chora (agricultural territory under its direct control) was never large enough. The same skeptics also dispute the idea of a Hellenization of southern France due to Massalia. However, its influence was felt all through France to Brittany because of the Massaliotes’ trade relations with the Celts, especially for the transport of tin from Brittany and even Cornwall. It seems that a Tin Route, indispensable for the manufacture of bronze, was established at that time from Cornwall, through the Channel, along the Seine valley, Burgundy and the Rhône-Saône valleys to Massalia. During his conquest of Gaul, Caesar reported that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in Hellenic, and all Gaulish coins used the Greek script until about 50 BCE. By that time the Massaliote coinage circulated freely in Gaul, influencing coinage as far afield as Britain. Hellenic Marseille eventually became a centre of culture which drew several Roman parents to send their children there to be educated.

A Tin Route, indispensable for the manufacture of bronze, was established from Cornwall through the Channel, along the Seine valley, Burgundy and the Rhône-Saône valleys to Massalia.

In memory of the Zákantha citizens who determined to die rather than fall into Punic hands in 218-19 BCE, by Agustín Querol

In our Massaliote Periplus revival, we set sail from Massalia, leaving Rhode and Emporion behind, and drop anchor between Barcinón and Callípolis. Legends say that Barcinón, modern Barcelona, was founded either by Heracles in the middle of the 12th century BCE,^(c) or Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, in the second half of the 3rd century BCE. At the same time, the Laietani, a Thracian–Iberian people, settled in the area where since the 6th century there had already been the small Greek colony of Callípolis, referred to by Avienus in his Ora maritima, and sometimes identified with Barcinón. However, Callípolis should have been at some distance off, between Tàrraco (Tarragona) and the Hellenic port of Salauris (Salou), in the Costa Daurada (Golden Coast) of Catalonia.

Sailing on while keeping a steady southwestward course, we arrive at Zákantha or Arse, founded by Greeks from the island of Zákynthos in the 7th century BCE. It was captured and destroyed by Hannibal in 219 BCE during the Second Punic War after eight months of heroic resistance related by Livy, and was rebuilt by the Romans who transcribed it as Saguntum, hence its current name of Sagunto.

The Argonauts’ route according to Apollonius: they never got close to Iberia…

• ^(c) The legend about Heracles founding Barcelona is not linked to his colonizing effort in Andalusia that followed two of his labours there (the 10th and 11th: Geryon and the Hesperides). His passage from Catalonia is linked to a different version of the myth of the Argonauts in which Jason’s expedition involved not only the Argo but nine ships in all. One of them was lost during a storm off the Catalan coast, and Heracles eventually found it wrecked by a small hill, but with the crew saved. These Argonauts were so taken by the beauty of the place that they founded the city of Barca Nona (“Ninth Boat”). Well, it is not only that the city’s name resembles that of Barcelona only in Latin; one also needs to remember that Heracles deserted the Argonauts (or else… they deserted him) while he was searching for his companion, Hylas, in the beginning of the expedition, when the Argo was still in the Sea of Marmara. Others say that Heracles went as far as Colchis with the Argonauts, got the Girdle of the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and then slew the Stymphalian Birds (his 9th and 6th labours, respectively, organized not in a chronological order). Whatever the case, he could not build Barcelona because he was not among the Argonauts when they fled from Colchis wandering afterwards in the Mediterranean.^(*)

• ^(*) There have been several versions of the Argonaut’s expedition – about their route, even the crew. There is unanimity on the way they voyaged to Colchis; but colossal differences about their way back. Pindar (c. 522 – c. 443 BCE) e.g., the celebrated lyric poet, wrote in his 4th Pythian ode that Jason went eastwards (not westwards) and, through the Phasis and Cyrus rivers (Rioni and Kura), sailed out to the Caspian Sea and, based on the geographic knowledge of the time, to the Oceanus River encircling the earth. Then he turned south and west, voyaging as far as the Red Sea and thus returning to the Mediterranean. Herodorus of Heraclea (between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE) adopted a more realistic approach that the Argonauts used the same route back home. The historian Timaeus of Tauromenium (modern Taormina in Sicily, c. 345 – c. 250 BCE), maybe inspired by the great European periplus of his contemporary Pytheas of Massalia (c. 350 – c. 285 BCE, see Chronicle 1. Sailing Around / Periplus), gave a wider scope to the Argonautic nostos. Through the Maeotis lake and Tanais river (Azov and Don), he claimed, Jason found his way up to the Baltic Sea and then, sailing by Europe, he returned to Iolcus. The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BCE), the only surviving Hellenistic epic, is far more detailed and adventurous (see the map above), but never goes beyond Italy. Finally, the Argonautica Orphica, written several centuries later (5th–6th centuries CE) but in the name of Orpheus who was one of the Argonauts (ca 1300 BCE), borrows from all the above, but emphasizes the role of the Thracian musician, poet, and prophet. The narration is more mythological, probably because of the unknown author’s everyday life in a hostile Christian environment, after the old gods were violently thrown out (see our next additional Chronicle). In the beginning he adopts the Pindaric version, but as soon as he finds himself in the Caspian waters, he follows in Timaeus’ steps and turns north, not south: the river now is not Don but the even longer Volga, and the result, of course, is another periplus of Europe.
  

The secret of the Orphic song was not loudness: just one male voice against so many Sirens could never prevail. The secret was its quality, a kind of music they had never listened before,
that drowned out their song and eventually the Sirens themselves.

Back from the European to our Iberian periplus. After Valentia (Valencia), our course turns to the Southeast due to a land projection along the coast of Iberia. Sailing past this peninsula formed by Montgó Massif, we visit the first port marked on the map of Tartessos, Hēmeroskopeion, located in modern Dénia, in the Valencian province of Alicante. Its name means Watchtower in Hellenic and it reflects the first use of the lofty promontory as such. According to Strabo, the town was also called Artemisium, from the cape where it was situated, together with a temple of Artemis. It was another colony of the Massaliote Greeks along with two more small settlements in the area, the names of which have not survived. The Romans called it Dianium, whence the modern name, from Diana, as Artemis was called in Latin. Apart from its strategic location, the city was equally important for some iron mines nearby. Next stop is Akra Leuké, also founded by the Massaliotes ca 325 BCE on a White Promontory or Acropolis as its name indicates. The city passed to the Carthaginians who used it as a military base and trade post. Its Punic name is not known, but the Romans called it Castrum Album, which means almost the same. Most archaeologists agree that the Roman Lucentum (Luminous city) is Akra Leuké and also the modern city of Alicante.

Lady of Elche

Helice, modern Elche (Elx in Valencian), was founded around 600 BCE near Akra Leuké to the South. The Achaean settlers named it after their native city.^(d) Destroyed by Hannibal, it was rebuilt by the Romans as Ilici. A small walled coastal settlement, the Roman Portus Ilicitanus, or Harbour of Elche, cited by Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography, is today’s Santa Pola. It was constructed with a regular layout in the Greek tradition near the Vinalopó River in the 4th century BCE, and served as an emporion oriented to Greek-Iberian exchange. But it had a brief life (around 80 years), which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Massaliote colony Alonai or Alonis was there. So, despite Ptolemy’s mention that creates more confusion, attention was recently turned to the nearby town of La Vila Joiosa as a possible location of this colony. Anyway, the increasing amount of archaeological evidence for a Greek presence in Santa Pola, combined with the Graeco-Iberian script used in Alicante and Murcia, confirm the long direct contact between Greeks and Iberians in the region. The celebrated Lady of Elche, a once polychrome stone bust of a woman, is the most important find. It is considered as an example of Iberian sculpture with strong Hellenic influences.

Bronze coin with the patron Poseidon and the inscription ELIK(e), and a trident flanked by dolphins on the reverse

• ^(d) Helice or Helike (Ἑλίκη) was an ancient Greek city in Achaea, in the north of the Peloponnese, which disappeared a winter night in 373 BCE. It was thought to be a legend like Tartessos until 2001, when it was rediscovered in the Helice delta. The catastrophe is attributed to an earthquake and accompanying tsunami, causing the area to sink into the earth and be covered by the sea. All the inhabitants perished without a trace, despite a search and rescue effort involving 2000 men. The only thing that was left there were a few building tops projecting from the sea. Around 174 CE Pausanias reported that the walls of the ancient city were still visible under the water. Others said that Roman ‘tourists’ frequently sailed over the site, admiring the city’s statuary. As time passed the site silted over and the location sank into oblivion. Modern scholars argue that the submergence of Helice might have inspired Plato to write his story about Atlantis.

Mastia > Qart Hadasht > Cartago Nova > Cartagena

The trading contacts of southeastern Iberia with Tartessos, Hellas, Magna Graecia and Phoenicia, with the influences absorbed, gave rise to an Iberian culture called the Contestani by Pliny and Strabo. Cartagena, originally named Mastia or Massia, was in this territory. Mastia (or Massia) was also the name of an Iberian tribe allied to the Tartessian confederation. The first description of the city of Mastia with high walls appears in the Massaliote Periplus and then in Avienus’ Ora maritima. There is also a reference to Mastia in a treaty between Rome and Carthage in 348 BCE, marking the boundary between them in Iberia. Its mineral wealth, fisheries, agriculture, and harbour, one of the best in the Western Mediterranean, attracted the Punics who re-founded it in 228 BCE as Qart Hadasht (‘New City’), identically named to its metropolis. The Romans renamed it as Carthago Nova in order to distinguish it from the mother city. The importance the Punics attached to this “new city” to serve as their Iberian capital and a springboard for the conquest of the peninsula proves that Gadir could not serve this purpose, also because of their antagonism with the Phoenician Gaditanian aristocracy that would explode later in open hostility.

Serapis or Asclepius, Hellenistic sculpture found in a temple of Emporion.

Entering the Punic sphere, we come to realize the way the Phoenician colonial network was created: through infiltration of already existing settlements that soon passed under their full control – without excluding the use of violence in case the locals resisted. By contrast, the Hellenes, especially the Ionians such as the Phocaeans and the Massaliotes, contrary to the tactics of the Dorians, had a quite different approach. Referring to the foundation of Emporion, Strabo wrote:

“The Emporians lived before on an islet off the coast that now is called Palaiápolis [old city], for they live now on the mainland. Emporion is a double city, being divided by a wall, having before, as neighbours, some Indigetes [an indigenous tribe]… For they became united after some time in a single state, consisting of barbarian and Hellenic laws, as it also happened in many other cities.”

Therefore, there were three phases of colonization: a) a separate settlement; b) peaceful coexistence as neighbours after a spirit of mutual trust had been established through cooperation; c) a commonwealth.

The Greeks and the natives “became united after some time in a single state, consisting of barbarian and Hellenic laws, as it also happened in many other cities.” (Strabo)

The Contestani’s neighbours to the Southwest were the Bastetani or Bastuli. Their main towns, Baria, Abdera, Sexi, Malaca, Carteia, and Bailo, are mostly mentioned as Phoenician colonies. Baria, the present-day fishing village of Villaricos, is said to have financed Hannibal’s campaigns from the local silver mines. As for Abdera (today’s Adra), it was a seaport town used by the Carthaginians as an emporium. Very few present it as a former Greek colony.^(e) Ex or Sexi is modern Almuñécar; some of its inhabitants still call themselves sexitanos. The Phoenician colony was planted there in about 800 BCE.

Diomedes Devoured by His Horses, by Gustave Moreau

• ^(e) It is not the first time that places allegedly connected with Phoenicians or Punics are known by Hellenic names. We can see that in the case of Abdera in either Thrace or Andalusia. According to myth, both cities were founded by Heracles in memory of his companion, Abderus, who was devoured by either Diomedes’ mares or Geryon’s cattle during the 8th or 10th Heraclean labours respectively. Historically, Abdera (Ἄβδηρα), a city-state on the coast of Thrace, 17 km northeast of the mouth of the Nestos River and almost opposite Thasos, in the present-day region of Xanthe, was founded as a colony of Clazomenae in 654 BCE. Its prosperity, however, dates from 544 BCE, when most of the people of Teos (including the poet Anacreon) migrated to Abdera to escape the Persian yoke. Clazomenae and Teos were Ionian cities in Asia Minor in the Smyrna area. Abdera became a wealthy city, the second richest among the allies of Athens, due to its status as a prime port for trade with the interior of Thrace. A valuable prize, the city was repeatedly sacked by Thracians, Macedonians (of different areas: Macedon, Thrace, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor) and Romans. The result was a decline after the middle of the 4th century BCE. The air of Abdera, Cicero wrote, was proverbial in Athens as causing stupidity. However, among its citizens we find philosophers such as Democritus, Protagoras, Anaxarchus, and Hecataeus of Abdera, who was also a historian. Anacreon stayed there for some time and yet showed no signs of idiocy…

Democritus, the “father of modern science”, was ignored in Athens; Plato, though he never mentioned him, is said to have disliked Democritus so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books!

Democritus on an old Greek banknote of 100 drachmas

• Democritus (Δημόκριτος, “chosen of the people”, ca 460-ca 370 BCE), the “father of modern science”, was ignored in Athens; Plato, though he never mentioned him (on the contrary, he devoted a dialogue on Protagoras), is said to have disliked Democritus so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books! They proved to be effective: we know just citations of his works, since most of them did not survive the Dark Middle Ages.⁽*⁾ Democritus and his master, Leucippus, from Miletus or from Abdera, were those that formulated an atomic theory of the universe – the idea that everything is composed of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. He travelled extensively spending the money his rich father left him. He praised the Egyptian mathematicians and became acquainted with the Chaldean magi. He was cheerful, and always ready to see the comical side of life, which later writers took to mean that he laughed at the foolishness of men. The popularly known terms the laughing philosopher, Abderitan (i.e. incessant) laughter, and Abderite, meaning a scoffer, or mocker, are derived from him. Even the Athenian stupidity about the Abderitan air must have jumped from Plato’s mind into Cicero’s writings because of Democritus.
  The scientist philosopher was a determinist and materialist, believing everything to be the result of natural laws. Unlike Aristotle or Plato, he tried to explain the world without reasoning to a purpose, or final cause. The idealists became pre-occupied for centuries with the teleological question that hindered progress. Democritus, together with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms. Therefore, their theories appear to be more aligned with those of modern science than any other theories of antiquity. However, the so-called “exile of atomism”, after its rejection by authorities such as Aristotle and Plato, lasted too long, until the 17th century when it was resurrected by Gassendi and Descartes. In the meantime, all the writings by Leucippus and Democritus, and most of Epicurus, were “lost”. The loss is irreplaceable if we take into account the vast scope of the Democritean work dealing with ethics, natural science, nature, mathematics, technical works, literature, and commentaries. Suffice it to say that among the works of this traveller scientist philosopher there was one entitled Periplus of the Ocean… Other titles we will never read: Pythagoras, The Horn of Amalthea, On the Planets, On Nature, On the Mind, Planispheres, On the Rhythms and Harmony, On Poetry, On Homer, On Song, On Painting, On History, On the Sacred Writings of Babylon, Chaldaean Account, Phrygian Account…

Book burning: the favourite “sport” of the Christian Church…

• ⁽*⁾ No wonder that Plato, who rejected Athenian democracy as prone to anarchy, is included among the leading advocates of anti-democratic thought, along with: Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher who discarded “the democratic movement [as] Christianity’s heir”), Charles Maurras (French writer, monarchist and fascist, who went so far as to ask for the assassination of his opponents – so, Democritus was rather lucky!), Hubert Lagardelle (French syndicalist who moved from Proudhon to fascism), Robert Michels (German-Italian sociologist who also passed from socialism and revolutionary syndicalism to fascism), Oswald Spengler (German historian, critical supporter of Hitler, although he considered him vulgar), Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger (German Nazi philosophers), Elazar Shach (Israeli fundamentalist Rabbi, who championed Judaic law and condemned democracy). Within this framework and “company”, what is the real meaning and worth of the Platonic Republic?

• See the next additional Chronicle We Don’t Need No Thought [or Speech] Control on the crucial fight for Freedom of Thought and Speech.

The Rock of Gibraltar at sunset

The Bay of Gibraltar: Algeciras (W), Calpe (E)
and Carteia (in the middle?)

Sailing past the Greek Mainake and the Phoenician Malaca, we arrive at the Bay of Gibraltar. Carteia was established at the most northerly point of the bay, about halfway between the modern cities of Algeciras and Gibraltar, overlooking the sea on elevated ground at the confluence of two rivers. According to Strabo, the colony was founded ca 940 BCE as the trading settlement of K’rt, meaning ‘City’ in Phoenician (compare Qart Hadasht, that is, Carthage, ‘New City’). The area had much to offer a trader; the hinterland behind Carteia was rich in wood, agricultural products, lead, iron, copper, and silver. Dyes were another much sought-after commodity, especially those from the murex shellfish, used to make the prized Tyrian purple. Due to its strategic location, the city played a significant role in the Punic Wars. In the Battle of Carteia in 206 BCE, the Punic fleet was defeated by the Romans, who captured the colony ca 190.

Gulf of Gadir > Gades > Cádiz; all three ancient islets bear Greek (not Phoenician) names: Erytheia, Kotinoussa, Antípolis

Sailing through the Straits into the Atlantic, we are surprised to hear that the town of Bailo was none other than Gadir. The report, however, cannot be verified, and the closest to the name ‘Bailo’ one can find is Baelo, near the present-day village of Bolonia, in the area of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, which is rather far from Gadir. The town served as a trade link with northern Africa (Strabo: “hence the crossings to Tingis of Maurusia”), but was finally abandoned because of earthquakes.

Then we realize we are sailing in an area colonized by Heracles: not only Abdera (or Abderos) and Carteia (Carpeia, Carpaea or Carthaea), but also Bailo-Baelo or Belón seems to be linked to Heracles and, therefore, to the Mycenaeans. Carteia, says Strabo citing Timosthenes of Rhodes, was previously called Heraclea, after its founder. Some identify it with Algeciras, Paco de Lucía’s hometown, on the west side of the bay, others say on the contrary it was located on the east side, on Calpe, that is, the Rock of Gibraltar, while some connect it to Tartessos, noting that once the latter disappeared, many confused it with Carteia. Other settlements associated with the Herculean colonizing “labours” were Mellaria or Melouria (modern Tarifa) and, as we have seen, Gadir, while sometimes even Tartessos is included in the list.

The Strait of Gibraltar with the Pillars of Heracles

As for the Pillars of Heracles, the northern one on European soil is Calpe or Alybe (Gibraltar), small in size but rising sharply to a great height and looking like an island from afar, while the southern one, Abyle (Ceuta), is rather low. Their peculiarity is that nowadays their sovereignty is exercised by foreign powers: Gibraltar, on Spanish territory, is controlled by Britain, while Ceuta, on Moroccan soil, by Spain. The Phoenician Abyla, founded there in the 7th century BCE, passed under the control of the Phocaeans who renamed it as Hepta Adelphoi (‘Seven Brothers’). As usual, the Romans transcribed the Greek toponym into Latin as Septa, hence the current name, and used Ceuta almost exclusively as a military post. The strategic importance of the Straits was obvious to everyone.

Outside the Pillars there is another settlement, presented as a Punic colony of the early 5th century BCE, possibly with a prior Phoenician presence, called Tingis (or Tingenis, today’s Tangier). Taking advantage of Carthage’s crashing defeat in Sicily in 480 BCE, the Phocaeans should have taken control of this city, as well, dominating entirely in this area of strategic importance during the Punics’ long isolationist period after their defeat, before they recovered and imposed a blockade on the Straits. Like so many other settlements, Tingis was neither Phoenician, nor Greek, but, in this particular case, Berber. According to a Graeco-Roman mythological tradition, cited by Plutarch, Tingis was the wife of the giant Antaeus, king of Libya and son of Poseidon and Gaea, who was killed by Heracles. In Berber mythology, the founder of the city was Syfax, son of Tingis and Heracles. The tomb of Antaeus with his giant skeleton was discovered in Tangiers by the Roman Quintus Sertorius in the 1st century BCE, while the “cave of Heracles”, where the hero supposedly slept before he stole the apples of the Hesperides, is located 14 kilometers far from the city to the west.

Main Hellenic colonies before Punic conquests (c. 300 BCE): Rhode, Emporion,
Callípolis, Salauris, Hēmeroskopeion, Alonis, Akra Leuké, La Picola (Portus Ilicitanus),
Abdera (presented as a former Greek colony), Mainake, Portus Menesthei, and Kalathousa.

Proto-Aeolic or Proto-Ionic capital with oriental influences from the Santuary of Baal Hamón in Gadir (7th century BCE)

The colonizing activity apparently continued even after the Trojan War, since we are informed that, despite the many reports to the contrary, there were Hellenic (later Roman) settlements even beyond the Pillars of Heracles. One of them was between Gadir and the city of Tartessos, at the mouth of the Río Guadalete: it was Portus Menesthei (ὁ Μενεσθέως Λιμήν) and is probably the present-day Puerto de Santa María.^(f) According to Strabo, even the Phoenician Gaditans offered sacrifices in the oracle of Menestheus, one of the suitors of Helen who fought in the Trojan War. Afterwards, according to Homer’s Odyssey, he was expelled from Athens by Theseus’ descendants and found refuge with his entourage in Iberia. Another settlement was next to Huelva to the West: it was Kalathousa, today’s Aljaraque.

• ^(f) The word “port” is preserved in the toponym throughout its history: in 711 CE the Arabs (Moors) invaded Iberia and renamed the port to Alcante or Alcanatif, meaning Port of Salt, due to the local salt production since the time of the Phoenicians. Finally in 1260, the Castilians, who occupied the city, renamed it to Santa María del Puerto.

Portus Menesthei, in “historical terms”, may not be that old, because the Greeks of the Homeric era – or their products at least – arrived at Iberian ports in the 8th century BCE. Those that transported the Hellenic ware and other goods might very well have been the Phoenicians and the reason was their artistic quality that the Canaanites were unable to achieve. One such excellent ceramic, an Attic kylix, a type of wine-drinking vessel, was found in Medellin of Badajoz, in Spanish Extremadura. The presence of this beautiful cup so far from the coastline is explained by the so-called Silver Route that most probably crossed western Iberia from north to south to facilitate the transport of the mineral wealth from Galicia to Tartessian harbours.

The Lioness of Baena (Córdoba) with Greek and oriental influences (6th century BCE)

What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, architectural models, burial habits, and so on. Taking into account that the Minoans were probably not Greeks, it seems that the first period Iberia received Hellenic influences was during the time of the Mycenaeans. This, however, is half-true and therefore (at least) half a lie, given that the Mycenaeans were civilized thanks to the Minoans. Thus the Minoan and the Mycenaean influences on Iberian cultures were very similar, if not identical. At that time, of course, there was no Tartessos. The Minoans and the Mycenaeans inseminated the local cultures they found there and the Tartessian civilization germinated some time later, when there were no Greeks around anymore. It took them at least half a millennium to wake up from their lethargic “Dark Ages” and reappear in the peninsula. The rich rewards were in the meantime reaped by the Phoenicians…

What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, architectural models, burial habits, and so on…

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Phoenician bireme