Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 14. ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ ΨΥΧῌ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΣΩΜΑΤΙ

Venus of Brassempouy: mammoth ivory figurine, one of the oldest human face representations (23.000 BCE)

● Man: a Musical Being ● Nature, Music
and Language ● Singing Neanderthals ●
Baby Talk ● Talent ● Art of Soul vs. Art of
Beauty ● Ecstasy and Catharsis ● Ritual
Music and Dance ● Ethos of Music

Michales Loukovikas

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
the one most responsive to change”.
(Charles Darwin)

MAN IS BY NATURE A MUSICAL BEING; meaning that song, i.e. music and lyrics combined, together with movement, or dance, has always been a fundamental human characteristic, serving his various needs. Besides, music, speech, and dance, a “Holy Trinity” according to the poet Kostēs Palamās, show how close the relationship between sound, body and soul is.

Music, speech, dance: a “Holy Trinity” (Kōstēs Palamās)

Quite strange is that the ancients, even the primitives, felt the impact of musical sound onto their bodies much more intensely than modern humans. Obviously, Christianism and Occidental mentality are largely responsible for the enormous degradation of our senses. Thus experts of many disciplines are now required to work together in order to fully comprehend this subject in depth.

Hunting scenes in a Lascaux cave painting

Natural sounds played a key role in the genesis of music: the sounds of Nature constituted the raw “materials” that gradually began to take shape. According to Darwin, a primary stimulus was animal cries, especially during breeding season, when an orgasm of sounds and movements prevailed, so rich and varied that man inevitably imitated, responding to that exquisite call of Nature’s Choir. Yet, man, as a species of the animal kingdom, had congenitally his own “repertoire”, which he gradually enriched – initially by imitation, and later by inspiration.

The emergence of art was directly linked to elementary manifestations of magic, even before the latter was systematized as a form of religion. Cave paintings, of a much later period compared to music, are examples of utilitarian art: men tried to exorcise all the animals they depicted so as to have plenty of game, or propitiate their spirits, if they were awe-inspiring beasts, and gain their powers. That is why the cave paintings are usually found not in the “living rooms” of the caves, but deep inside, in the “sanctuaries”, where, according to Iégor Reznikoff, the areas are most resonant: it seems they were their “icons”…

Spirit propitiation had broader applications, especially to natural phenomena that seemed supernatural, or during work time to coordinate movements, or even to master the “spirit” of the stone or wood that man wished to turn into a tool. Music played a key role in such cases though it was lost in the mist of time. Today, millennia later, we can comfortably admire the cavemen’s performances in visual arts. But who has ever listened to their songs?

The question above is rather rhetoric. Still, there’s another one that is crucial to be answered:

What is music? What’s its origin?

MUSIC IS FOUND EVERYWHERE, in every culture or civilization, even the most isolated tribes: it is a feature of the human species – perhaps of other species, as well. Moreover, music is influenced by all aspects of a culture or civilization, including socio-economic organization, lifestyle, climate, technology… Emotions and ideas expressed through music, the circumstances in which it is played, the attitudes toward musicians and composers – all these vary according to space and time.

Indian Ghost Dance in eastern California: the figures form a circle dance.

As we have said, music had probably its origin in Nature’s sounds and rhythms. Men most likely imitated these phenomena using similar patterns with repetition and tonality. There are musicians who deliberately imitate natural sounds: folk fiddlers trill like birds, while Beethoven’s “Pastoral” 6th Symphony recreates the soundscape of a thunderstorm. Onomatopoeia is at times related to shamanistic beliefs or practices.⁽¹⁾ It also serves entertainment and edutainment, or practical purposes (such as lure of animals in hunt).

• ⁽¹⁾ A shaman is a person regarded as having access to the “world of spirits”, entering into a trance state (very different from normal waking consciousness), and acting as a diviner or healer.

● Hugo Riemann, a theorist and composer, in his Catechism of Musical Aesthetics (How do we listen to music?, 1890), [Katechismus der Musik-Ästhetik (Wie hören wir Musik?)], thinks that the song of birds approaches true music and cannot be treated separately from human song, since both are the expressions of a single sensibility; while Louis Lucas, in his New Acoustics (Acoustique Nouvelle, 1840), discusses (what he calls) excellence of the enharmonic genus, and says: “It makes its first appearance naturally, as an imitation of bird song, of animal calls, and of the endless range of sounds made by material things.” Manuel de Falla was greatly influenced by Lucas and his Acoustics in his mature compositions.

Magdalenian horse (15.000-10.000 BCE):
a game, long before it was tamed.

If the imitation of a bird song is considered music, then the bird song itself may also be regarded as music! Indeed, according to a study of zoomusicology,⁽²⁾ bird songs are based on musical principles: those of repetition and transformation. It’s not only birds: whales and dolphins have also exceptional vocal capabilities, while monkeys are unrivaled on drums and percussion as they beat hollow logs, most probably in order to demarcate their territories, creating rhythmic patterns in which some experts detect elements of “dialogue”, “call and response”.

• ⁽²⁾ Zoomusicology is the study of “music” made by non-human animals, or rather the musical aspects of sounds produced or received by them, as a means of their communication. It is described as the “aesthetic use of sound communication among animals.”

In any case, everything depends on our definition of music – that is, whether a “musician” has the intention to stir up the emotions through his sounds, which is probably linked to his ability to reflect about time (past and future). Men became “artists” 130 thousand years ago (though this timeframe is debatable) creating jewelry, other artifacts, and cave paintings, while they started burying their dead with rituals. It was a form of a “cultural revolution”. If we assume that all those new forms of behaviour suggested the emergence of consciousness, then music – as we know it – appeared in the same timeframe. Still, this is a rather narrow conception of music. As it usually happens in Africa until now, in prehistory too the concept of music was broader, including dance and worship. And not only: at that time it also served communication among the members of a group of people helping to coordinate action and strengthen their bonds. Thus its role was crucial to their survival.

Music evokes strong emotions and opens paths to other states of awareness. In general terms, strong emotions are associated with evolution (reproduction and survival). Darwin pointed out the importance of music to sexual selection.⁽³⁾ Both singing and dancing require large energy reserves. Thus a singer or dancer, like a peacock displaying its feathers, is more likely to attract a mate to date. There is a counterargument though: in most species using singing in the selection of mates, it is the female that chooses and the male that sings – as a rule alone. In the human species, nevertheless, music is mostly a team sport where everyone is involved. Man is the only mammal having mixed choirs (with men, women and children). Something similar is found only in certain species of Australian and African songbirds with males and females singing in chorus.

Charles Darwin, by George Richmond

• ⁽³⁾ “When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, – would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph, – and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions.” (Darwin, The Descent of Man)

The first musical “instrument” was obviously the voice of man who, even before he could master speech, had a vast range of expressive sounds: imitating natural sounds, plus singing, humming, whistling (a gamut of styles), shouting, crying, laughing, coughing, yawning, or producing various sounds through the mouth. (See Darwin’s The Origin of Species on music and speech). Add motion to all of these sounds: not only dance, but also grimaces, gestures and movements of individual body parts (head, arms and legs). In like manner, the first percussion “instruments” were hand claps, finger snaps, stones, wood and whatever could be used to accentuate rhythm. Man-made instruments would appear much later when humans started making tools.

By the way, let me make clear that talking about “humans”, I refer, in fact, to the Hominini. The oldest tools found in Tanzania were made 2.6 million years ago, i.e. before the emergence of the various human species (Homo). We suppose that the first tools were made by Australopithecus, who then transmitted this knowledge to Homo habilis. Our ancestors proceeded to the next phase of tool-making 1.7 million years ago with Homo erectus. (See the Chronicle 3, where this theory is disputed). I maintain, therefore, that sound preceded speech and that music, song, a capella (with no instrumental accompaniment), emerged together with voice as a characteristic of some Hominini, or even Hominids. Besides, we know for sure that music was not born with modern humans (Homo sapiens) – who, as they say, were musically not as talented as the Neanderthals!

The Singing Neanderthals, according to Steven Mithen.
In the beginning was the sound: music precedes speech.

The oldest musical instrument: the Divje Babe flute (Slovenia) possibly made by the Neanderthals

In his study The Singing Neanderthals / The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body, Steven Mithen, an archaeologist and professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England, expands mainly two ideas: a) the parallel development of what modern man calls music and language, and b) his original idea that the Neanderthals had a peculiar proto-music/language: it was holistic (not composed of segmented elements), manipulative (influencing emotions and hence behaviour of oneself and others), multimodal (using both sound and movement), musical (temporally controlled, rhythmic, and melodic), and mimetic (utilizing sound symbolism and gesture) – i.e. “a pre-linguistic musical mode of thought and action.” That is why, as Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca said, “many suppose that chanting is the earliest form of language”, or that song is older than speech. Prosody (“melos of speech”, according to Aristoxenus), was the “melody” produced during ancient Hellenic speech, which was musical, not dynamic as it is now (see Chronicle 6, footnote 6, and Chronicle 12, footnote 7).

Music as the Mother of Speech

● Music (singing) as the Mother of Speech (language) is an idea shared by Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Wilhelm von Humboldt.⁽⁴⁾ We get an idea when we examine the pronunciation in several languages. Closer to the original source are tonal languages, such as Chinese, where each syllable is uttered with a different note or pitch. Then it’s the pitch accent languages, such as ancient Hellenic, where only the stressed syllable is uttered at a higher note-pitch. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the interval between the accented and non-accented syllables reached to an anything but negligible fifth interval (e.g. E-B, see Chronicle 12). Additionally, there are dynamic languages such as modern Greek with the stress given through an increased volume of the voice, not a higher pitch. The difference with ancient Hellenic is obvious in poetry where the accents had no effect on the poetic metres, as they would if the stress were dynamic. The poetic rhythm was musical, prosodic (alternating long and short vowels), and not dynamic. Poetry was musical, having melos (the melody of pitch accent) and rhythm (with long and short movements).

• ⁽⁴⁾ Except Rousseau, Herder, Humboldt, Darwin, Falla and Lorca, many other authors have been led to suppose that word and song had once been the same thing – of course, after the word was germinated by the song.

An aggressive Neanderthal woman is rather misleading since, according to National Geographic, the genes linked to modern man’s aggressive behaviour were probably absent in the Neanderthal DNA. This may explain their disappearance…

In her review on this book, Ellen Dissanayake, of the University of Washington in Seattle, initially lists the vast ocean of knowledge such a study like Mithen’s requires: evolutionary theory; human evolution (social lifestyle, environment); palaeoarchaeology (linguistic and musical abilities and their development); anatomy (ear, vocal tract, brain and musical capacities); neurobiology (brain chemistry, musical cognition and emotion, neuroanatomy of music); origin and evolution of language (similarities and differences with music, semantics, syntax, prosody); music-like communication systems in some other animals (non-human primates, whales, birds, etc.) and their relevance to human communication; music psychology and linguistic behaviour in children; ethnomusicology; the art and practice of music; and the findings of music therapy and the psychology of musical emotion. I can also mention biomusicology or evolutionary musicology.

“Singing Neanderthals”, according to Mithen, had a vocal tract and respiratory control that could have enabled speech, but perhaps they lacked the neural network that was necessary for language. This means that in the beginning was the sound: music preceded speech. Moreover, pre-sapiens hominids, such as the Neanderthals, perhaps lacked metaphorical thought – the ability to have in mind at the same time information from several different cognitive domains. Symbolic artifacts have not yet been found in their dwelling sites, indicating absence of symbolic thought and hence symbolic utterance: spoken language. But the harsh realities and challenges faced in such a hostile environment during the Ice Age required complex emotional communication and cooperation. Therefore, they developed a “music-like communication system that was more complex and more sophisticated than that found in any of the previous species of Homo”. Mithen emphasizes the importance of “emotional intelligence” – the ability to express one’s feelings with face, voice, and body, and decode the emotional signals of others.

It’s impressive that singing was preferable to talking. Why were the symbols of spoken words less reliable than an emotional melody? What were the pros and cons of language?

What is language? What’s its origin?

Sleeping antelope, Sahara, southern Algeria

WE READ THE ABOVE QUESTIONS at the gate of a Congress Palace, the venue of a thought-provoking international symposium. Intrigued by this notice, we go inside and there we hear everyone disagreeing with everyone else! But still, there is a recurring theme of almost paramount consent – something that escaped even Darwin’s attention: a prerequisite, they say, for the emergence of language is that there must be trust within the tribe (what we now call “society”)! Meaning that some kind of social transformation generated unprecedented levels of public trust, liberating this way a potential for linguistic creativity, which was dormant until then. Under normal conditions, as the saying goes, “words are cheap”, “double-talk”, i.e. unreliable symbols on which the tribe could not count for survival; in other words, language was not trusted to become an evolutionarily stable strategy.

When a cat purrs, we mostly feel sure that the animal is content. We trust the signal because it just can’t fake that sound. Vocal calls of the primates may not be so trustworthy. Their social intelligence is characterized as “Machiavellian” – self-serving and without moral scruples. Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive one another, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against falling victim to deception themselves! Paradoxically, this very trait is theorized as blocking the evolution of a language-like communication among them! A verbal signal sounds like the cry “Wolves!” by a shepherd trying to fool the others in the well-known moralizing pedagogical story. Once proven false, nobody takes it for granted anymore or even cares. Therefore, socially reliable institutions are necessary, where every scoundrel, “monkey” or “shepherd”, is accountable. In a hunter-gatherer society, a basic mechanism inspiring trust is the collective ritual. (In our society, all the above adequately explain our crisis).

Baby talk and the embryo’s audio stimuli

No features on “Venus” of Willendorf (28.000-25.000 BCE), only reproductive: probably she was a Mother Goddess

Last but not least is what we call “baby talk” – not the talk of a baby still unable to speak, but the one used by adults (usually mothers) while addressing infants, touching and caressing them: a melodic and undulating language, combined with strong gestures, exaggerated facial expressions and rhythmical head and body movements. This is indeed a language because the baby understands the meaning of all these sounds and movements: that is, comprehends the mother’s intentions. In this sense, such a language is similar to music having two main functions: to strengthen the mother-child relationship, and help the infant to speak. In this way its chances of survival increase. Man’s ability to synchronize himself with an external pulse – which is probably unknown to other mammals, including primates – was derived from the primordial mother-infant interaction that in time transformed itself into a proto-music/language – à la Neanderthal!

“Baby talk” has a similar “lexicon” in all cultures. The way mothers and babies raise and lower their voices, change simultaneously expressions and move their hands, is equivalent everywhere, despite linguistic differences such as between musical and dynamic languages. The reasons may be genetic or environmental – in the sense that all embryos grow in a similar environment and can hear twenty weeks before birth, far longer than other animals, most of which cannot hear before birth. During these weeks, the human fetus can also perceive movement and orientation. In addition, it senses the emotional state of the mother via the internal sounds of her body (voice, heartbeat, footsteps, digestion, etc.) and in this way adjusts its postnatal demands (e.g. crying), improving the chances of its survival. The embryo’s capacity to learn and remember sound patterns seems to confirm the idea. In this case, the internal sounds of the human body, and their relationship with the emotional state, may be associated with the relationship between audio-rhythmic patterns in music and their strong emotional charge.

A maenad (bacchante) with a tympanum and a satyr with diaulos (double aulos)

“The human being is musical by man’s very nature”. (Iégor Reznikoff)

“MAN”, IÉGOR REZNIKOFF REMARKED,⁽⁵⁾ “is a speaking being. However, I am absolutely sure that he is also a musical, a singing being, like birds. We know that the various species of birds are also distinguished by the way they sing. The same happens with humans who are distinguished not only by their speech, but also by their singing.

• ⁽⁵⁾ Reznikoff’s remarks were recorded by Despoina Paisidou-Lazaridou in Delphi in 1986 for the radio program, Living and Learning (ERT3). It was the time I started “sailing” on the airwaves as a “chronicler”, presenter, and also music supervisor, during the first round of the program on the Chronicle of Music. Nevertheless, the making of a radio program was something that I learned watching the producer Katy Vlachou with her immense patience and also open mind: she let me present in a public mass medium what I was not allowed to do at the time in a… private one (the newspaper Thessaloniki).

The Education of Achilles by Chiron (fresco from Herculaneum,
a city more wealthy than neighbouring Pompeii)

“These features, I believe, are part of human nature. They are deeply connected with man’s organic nature – his ears and throat, that is, his vocal capacities. That’s how he is born and created since his conception. A child e.g. can hear even when it is in the womb of its mother as a fetus and remembers some elements of music and the voice of its mother or her song.⁽⁶⁾

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Voices and audio stimuli to which a fetus is exposed during pregnancy are not only perceived but also recorded in its memory”, a scientific team concluded in a study. “Thus, if as a fetus it listened to soft music of natural instruments, as an infant it immediately calms and quiets down under the same sounds, while another baby, who had no such experience when it was in the belly of its mother, keeps on screaming”…

Music activates the brain’s centres of communication

● Besides, except the “Singing Neanderthals”, there are also “Singing Embryos”! A research showed that fetuses react to sound stimuli and “sing”! Some researchers at Institut Marquès in Barcelona showed that a fetus can detect sounds and even react moving its mouth and tongue, proving that the ears of the embryo are fully developed by the 16th week of pregnancy. The leading researcher said that the fetuses responded to music moving their mouths as if they were trying to talk or to sing. Music activates the parts of the brain associated with communication, and when the embryos hear it, they react with movements similar to those of a cry, which is the first stage before speaking and singing.

“Music is deeply rooted in humans. Singing is a characteristic of the human species. It is not something recent in man’s social life. The mechanism of hearing and its relationship with speech is characterized by complexity and is located deep inside the brain. Thus it cannot be something recent. In short: the human being is a musical being by man’s very nature.”

Generally speaking, the different species are born as tabula rasa regarding those qualities to be acquired – i.e. that must be gained after birth, depending on the current conditions faced by each species for its survival. But they bear in their DNA all those inherited capacities and qualities that have emerged as acquired ones (upright position, articulation, etc.) and ensured the survival of the species during the millennia of its evolution. This is where all the wisdom of the past is stored – together, of course, with natural musical capacities.

Music Lesson (Herculaneum, early 1st century AD)

“Musical ear”: a characteristic of the majority or of a minority?

Despite all that, we know that talent, an innate musical inclination, or a “musical ear”, do not characterize all persons but rather a minority. How come that some of them can sing beautifully or at least correctly, while others, who equally love music, sing out of tune?

“There is innate musical disposition, musical talent, which is often hereditary: see the Bach family”, said professor Demetris Thémelis “But in general terms, everyone can learn music up to a point. Most people sing out of tune because they’ve had no proper musical education, except in some cases where they may have some physical problem e.g. hearing impairment. Or they may listen properly and have some feel for music, but face some problem in the larynx muscles. There are many cases of distinguished musicians, productive composers, who are ‘cacophonous’, i.e. they cannot sing well because of such problems.”

This may be so, but then how come that in the Third World and, moreover, in the countryside, anywhere far from metropolitan urban centres, i.e. wherever children are naturally brought up, almost everyone can sing and dance well? Here’s Ellen Dissanayake’s comment:

“It is not spoken language itself that overlays or stunts musical ability”, she said, “but the factors in modernized societies that have made music a specialty – individuality, competitiveness, compartmentalization, institutionalization – reinforced by the high degree of literate (not oral improvisatory) training required to read (and compose) musical scores as well as literary texts. In small-scale pre-modern societies (and in any large modern sub-Saharan African city, as well in children anywhere who are exposed customarily to frequent communal musical activity), everyone participates in music – regularly, spontaneously, and wholeheartedly – and benefits thereby from the many adaptive advantages” it offers.

Iégor Reznikoff

You can see, therefore, how crucial is the role of the mother, as well as that of the family, or social environment in general, for the development of a child’s innate musical inclination. This must be the explanation for the existence not only of musical families, but also of musical tribes among gypsies or blacks. Not everything is hereditary, in spite of the important role of heredity: the potential capacities must be cultivated; otherwise they remain dormant, inert, like some atrophic member.

“We can say that African Americans have this divine gift”, said Reznikoff, referring to the innate inclination, the special talent. “Africans have a long tradition in music and singing. Furthermore, they have kept some primitive ways of expression and emotion, and thus they are probably closer to antiquity. The ancient Greeks also loved singing and dancing very much, as the Arabs do now.”

“Since we are human beings, with the senses of audition and vision, it happens that we have constants in art. These constants in music have to do with the natural laws of resonance and consonance: when a chord vibrates, it follows the laws that govern the sound, producing sounds and harmonics that delight our ears; so, our bodies respond.

“It is striking that an instrument like the cithara is found in all cultures. The behaviour of a string and our bodies is the same everywhere. Something similar happens with the auloi. Note that these instruments have been used in several ways in all cultures. But with few exceptions, and apart from modern Western civilization, we see everywhere the same musical laws to apply. It is a global concept of consonance precisely because we are dealing with a natural law.

“This concept, nevertheless, was lost since the early 19th century when the piano was introduced into music changing the natural tuning of the instruments; for the piano is tuned differently, with the equal intervals of the tempered scale. This tuning is wrong if we consider it from the point of view of natural resonance. It is due to the enormous development of music – but a kind of cultivated, sentimental, conceptual music which has abandoned its natural foundation that is rooted in our body and soul.

“Something equivalent has happened in painting: we have ancient art, or iconography, and then we have the art of beauty, even if it depicts saints, or Theotokos: Raphael’s Madonna is really beautiful, her movements are beautiful, and art lies in this beauty, not in the power exerted deep inside your soul by an icon. We have lost these deep roots related to our biological bodies – because we must not forget we are material beings obeying to natural laws. Nowadays art is too conceptual as e.g. abstract art, or even electronic music with computers.

“In antiquity people had delicate, fine ears catching all nuances. The lyre was a ‘soft’ instrument, just like those old traditional ones. When one listened to music on those instruments, he used his spirit even more: let us remember the long texts of old songs. Now, of course, we have all these huge pieces of machinery with the many decibels! All instruments are amplified and modified for that purpose. The violin is already a ‘hard’ instrument like the piano.

“I, personally, believe in a natural approach of antiquity – without imitating or copying it. We must go back to the delicate acoustics of antiquity, because finally man remains the same body and soul. These natural laws – so rich that they have created all those cultures – are like oxygen for us. In the big cities, of course, we may live in air pollution but we are not made for this: it is better for us to breathe fresh air…

“Music’s purpose in antiquity was not just fun. It mainly had to do with the invisible world. This is also true for the Pythagoreans, and later for the Platonic school, or even previously for the Orphic tradition, which influenced the Christian Church. For the Orphic tradition, music actually serves as a link to the invisible: for the preparation of the journey of the soul after death to eternity”…

The “labyrinth” of Reznikoff’s thought, or the contraposition between “soft” and “hard” instruments, may confuse us. The key to grasp its essence lies in that apt example from the art of painting. Sweet melodies and gentle voices, e.g. in most lullabies, are the equivalent to Raphael’s Madonna. Quite the contrary was what Plato suggested about children that cannot go promptly to sleep: “mothers do not offer them peace, but movement instead, always rocking them in their arms, not silently but with some melody, and in this artless way they make the kids fall asleep”. If you experiment, they say, you will see that the… Platonic technique is highly effective!

Catharsis: the mental and moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy.

Orpheus, by Marc Chagall

A SIMILAR MISUNDERSTANDING seems to obsess psychotherapists who choose music with soft sounds, having waters trickling and birds singing as… garnish in the background. But what the ancients were after during their psychotherapeutic rituals was exactly the opposite with their deliberately intense and monotonously repetitive music.

Using suitable melodies and rhythms, they made the mentally disturbed person to flush to such a degree that a reaction would follow bringing him back to his previous normal condition. Such methods of “sorcery” survived even in the so-called “civilized” world until the 60s. Certainly, now that we have become so very “cultured”, musical sounds can hardly excite us…

“Fire cleanses, while water purifies”, said Plutarch. Catharsis was the mental and also moral purification through Dionysian ecstasy in ancient Hellas. This is the original meaning of the term; not the one used in periods of political corruption in modern Greece. According to Aristotle, it was what the audience in a tragedy was subjected to through feelings of pity and fear caused by the suffering and tragic end of the heroes.

“There was a close link between the swamps (as sources of infections and fever), the subsequent neuromental disorders and their cure with music in the therapeutic rituals of the Corybantes and the Bacchantes”,⁽⁷⁾ wrote Denise Jourdan-Hemmerdinger in the synopsis of her paper on Music in the Therapeutic Rituals of the Corybantes and the Bacchantes, at the Musicological Symposium at Delphi in 1988.⁽⁸⁾ “These data allow a better reading of ancient texts. We can reconstruct them not anymore in an entirely irrational context with widespread mysticism, but in a reality with tragic experiences in the time line.

Cybele and Attis, three Corybantes, Aeon, Helios, Selene, Phosphorus, Hesperus, Poseidon, Thetis and Gaea,
on the Parabiago plate (2nd-4th century AD).

• ⁽⁷⁾ Corybantes: Cybele–Rhea’s priests in Phrygia, connected with Dionysus-Bacchus, performing orgiastic dances accompanied by cymbals, rattles, auloi, tympana (tambourines) [> corybantism (catharsis)]. We have already seen Dionysus’ followers, the Bacchantes, Bacchae or Maenads (< mania), as Orpheus’ slayers (in Chronicle 12, footnote 3).

• ⁽⁸⁾ With this… Sibyllic synopsis, Jourdan-Hemmerdinger tried to give some idea to the audience about her paper. Unfortunately, she had a formidable opponent: relentless time. Within a very short time – granted to each speaker – she had to expand on her vast thesis that could be the subject of a separate symposium. The… machine gun tempo she chose to say “everything” in time eventually proved to be a boomerang for her extremely interesting topic.

“So the biological and pathological cause of hallucinations reappears as an archetype of the mythological and dreamlike world of fantasy. Although the monotheistic religions expelled the ancient gods, who played a therapeutic role, they did not eliminate malaria – a scourge as old as the world but always present. This Thraco-Phrygian and Orphico-Pythagorean music therapy survived more or less in some folk, religious, pagan traditions.

“What did these specific kinds of music consist of? What body and soul level did they act upon? How and why were they effective? The texts give us an idea. Can we get even further? Obviously, if we work on this rich and diverse file with a fortunate conjuncture of data of the geographical and ethnological hematology, and medical anthropology – sciences already containing a wealth of information – adding the results of ethnomusicological research, without forgetting ancient and medieval musicology, either Oriental or Occidental.”

Bacchic Dance of Maenads in a Wood,
by Gustave Doré

Ethnological, musicological and medical research was eventually carried out in Asia (India, Indochina, Siberia), Africa (Ethiopia, Senegal), America (Haiti, Native American Indians and Eskimos), and Europe. Such phenomena were observed in Magna Graecia, especially around Taranto, with the renowned tarantella dance that was a key element of the musical exorcism to counteract the poison of the tarantula spider.

Part of the same tradition is a – mostly – Thracian fire ritual, called anastenária (nestinarstvo in Bulgarian Thrace). The oldest written information about such barefoot dances on smoldering embers is found in Euripides’ The Bacchae. Later Strabo wrote about Artemis’ priestesses in Asia Minor and Italy performing such dances at will. In Byzantium the dancers were called “psychária” or “asthenária” (hence anastenária or nestinari), while around 1800 such rituals were prevalent not only in the Balkans but also throughout Anatolia.

Music and dance contribute to an emotional release
and thus have a therapeutic effect on the participants.

Anastenária’s most striking feature is probably the “incombustibility”, “immunity from fire” – the (seeming, at least) negation of a natural law. This element of the ritual stirs our imagination so much that almost everyone forgets to mention the key role of music and dance which, according to many experts, contribute to an emotional release and, in this way, have a therapeutic effect on the participants. In a sense, therefore, this ceremony is a psychotherapeutic ritual system.

Levi-Strauss believes that these systems provide the patient with a gateway to express inexpressible conditions. During this therapeutic process, the participant receives from outside a social myth that has no conflicts and, therefore, does not correspond to his previous personal condition. In such a context, reality is compelled to identify with this social myth. Without music and dance, however, methexis is not possible:

“Monotonous music”, the psychiatrist Constantinos Constantinides wrote in his Notes on Fire Walking of Anastenária and a Possible Explanation of Incombustibility, “is a prerequisite to a change of mental mood, creating an equivalent emotional state, and triggering the subcortical (motor and emotional) centres, so as everything is easily and automatically executed, eliminating the inhibitory effect of the cortex.

“Generally motivated also by music, dance is known as a largely automatic event and as such a new prerequisite to the creation of the whole mental ecstatic state – even more so if it is religious. That is why all primitive religions are ‘danced’, all happy events are ‘danced’. While dancing, there is a peculiar emotional state, there is more automation and unconscious function, and there is more or less self-absorption and a break of contact with the environment. One could say that dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the phenomenon of ecstasy.”

“Dance is a certain step to ecstasy, opens the way to the
phenomenon of ecstasy.” (Constantinos Constantinides)

“Music particularly seems to coordinate a tendency to group unification”, commented another psychiatrist, Pantelés Kranidiotes, analyzing Anastenaria as a Psychosomatic Phenomenon. “Constantinos Romeos realized just that, commenting ‘music makes the human soul to feel such desolation that it desires to mingle with the other dancers seeking to let it go’. On the other hand, Polydoros Papachristodoulou underlines the impact of music on these people saying that music ‘exerts some particular influence on the nervous system of hysterical, naïve peasants’.

Davul

“But anyway, regardless of the quality of the receiver, everyone would perceive this fascinating power of music, if above all he experienced the crucially overwhelming davul in the ‘hangout’, where ‘all the spectators were agitated and rocked’ under its sounds.

“Emotional arousal is more secure when music is more familiar. This is obviously the purpose of conflating this religious ceremony with songs, which clearly translate the various deepest emotions of the people’s psyche and where above all is the dominion of heroic elements, which can only bring about an arousing, wild ecstasy.

“This combination seems much more effective to induce the required emotional orgy than the ecclesiastical chants and hymns, which are totally absent in this religious ceremony, as they produce a rather static ecstasy.

“The music of the fire dancers, familiar to them over the centuries, is a creation and property of their own emotional universe and that is why it can definitely stir it and indeed with an intensely arousing way.⁽⁹⁾ But here it seems that rhythm plays the main role in music and – as the musicologist Pantelés Kavakópoulos says – ‘what excites the fire dancers is the davul with its varying rhythms’.”

• ⁽⁹⁾ These psychiatrists, it’s obvious, look on the fire dancers “from on high”: they see “hysterical, naïve peasants” with “the people’s psyche”, immersed in “an arousing, wild ecstasy”, which is described as an “emotional orgy”, under the sounds of a music that is a “property of their own emotional universe”… They recognize, however, that the impact of this music and dance, in that particular environment, is equally catalytic “regardless of the quality of the receiver”, apparently having in mind that nowadays, among fire dancers, several “hysterical, naïve”… intellectuals and scientists are included!

First a fetus hears mother’s heartbeat. The pulse is recorded deep in
the brain; when excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized, and he is
in ecstasy, acting not as an individual but as a member of a group.

Relief of a maenad holding a tympanum

RHYTHM, INEXTRICABLY connected to dance, is the first musical element man experiences. The initial sound a fetus hears is the mother’s rhythmic heartbeat, long before it enjoys her singing – if she has a sweet voice. But even if she doesn’t, this primary pulse is recorded deep in its mind, in the subcortical centres of the brain; when they are excited, man’s inhibitions are neutralized and, as a result, he is overwhelmed with ecstasy, acting as a member of a group and not as an individual.⁽¹⁰⁾ That’s why melody, the second element of music, is intentionally monotonous and persistently repetitious, while the lyrics, if it’s a song, are just as rudimentary: precisely to prevent the re-activation of the cortex and achieve the culmination of ecstasy.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Music has been my first occupation, since I was 15, playing in the band of my father, Iannes Loukovikas. I remember that, also due to my music education, I wondered, and was annoyed, as well, whenever an audience glorified some drummer, or anyone playing percussion, in his solo, although his performance was not as difficult as the other musicians’ who, nevertheless, never received such an ovation. The answer to this childish question of mine is given here…

Such phenomena could not go unnoticed by ancient Greek philosophers, who have testified how crucial the role of rhythm is for the preservation, modification or loss of ethos in music. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and many others investigated the ethos in rhythm, melody, genera and harmonies or modes, not only because music was the foundation of education, but also because – quite rightly – they considered music as a form of language, capable of expressing almost as much as speech and exerting a catalytic effect on people, especially the youth.

Ethos of music (rhythm, melody, genera,
modes): exuberant, restrained, or serene.

Cybele with a tympanum, bronze statuette (2nd century CE)

“No act among people is performed without music”, Aristides Quintilianus used to say, while Plutarch stressed that “the formation and preparation [of young people] to be good [citizens is achieved] through music”, for the Orphean art is really beneficial “on everyone and every well-instructed act”, concluding: “Foul music and wicked songs lead to prodigal morals and unmanly lives, and men to indulgence and flabbiness and effeminacy”…

The ethos of music was generally distinguished as exuberant (the one causing agitation or excitement); restrained (the opposite); or serene (that calms down). Comprehensive philosophical studies were apparently based on observations on ancient folk rituals, such as musical therapeutic ceremonies. The philosophers found that every rhythmic or melodic movement resulted to certain emotional reactions, positive or negative – depending on the intended purpose. Thus they concluded that the sounds with the beneficial effects should be praised and the others to be condemned.

It was natural that the concept of ethos was also exploited for the condemnation of musical innovations by the conservatives, as we have already seen (Chronicle 12. “Do not maltreat our music!”). But in no way does this fact mean that musical ethos is worthless. Why else should the idea be adopted by Persians and Arabs and so many others?

“OK, if it’s not worthless, it is certainly completely unknown today”, the dissidents counter-argue. “Why should we care about the ethos of music (and not only) in an exceptionally unethical era in every respect? Isn’t it… an anachronism?”

Dear reader, my dearest fellow voyager, don’t you think that having come thus far, it means there is a deeper reason in earnest?

●

.

After the Mediterranean periplus, in search of Orpheus,
we set sail to Tartessos, in the Cassiterides archipelago…

Let’s follow the… tin!

• >> Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO!
• << Chronicle 13. PROFESSIONALS OR AMATEURS?

Next Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO! (Crossing the Atlantic / So Distant, So Near) ● Periplus – Luso-Hellenic Wanderings ● An Atlantic Odyssey

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Chronicle 4. ON DEMOCRACY

Chronicle 4. ON DEMOCRACY

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 4. ΠΕΡΙ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑΣ

● Authentic Democracy: Direct and in No Way “Representative” ●
Castoriadis and Chaos ● The Trial of Socrates ● Ecclesia and Heliaea
● French and Haitian Revolutions ● Plato’s Republic

The Parthenon: the symbol of Athenian democracy.

Michales Loukovikas

“ΟNE OF THE SEVERAL HISTORICAL PARADOXA” of antiquity, I underlined in Chronicle 2, “concerns the differences between the Aegean and the Orient in their political structures: the decentralized Grecian city-states”, on the one hand, and the “centralized empires” in the East, on the other. I tried to explain these differences as a result of objective conditions prevailing in the Orient vis-à-vis those in the Aegean, in order to speak about the birth of democracy –⁽¹⁾ the pure, direct and participatory, in contrast to today’s so-called “representative democracy” that was imposed on us. Here’s to you, my fellow voyagers: especially now, because of the crisis, it is good to make comparisons and have some reflections

OΝ DEMOCRACY

• ⁽¹⁾ Cornelius Castoriadis, nevertheless, attributed the birth of democracy to the realm of ideas. The Greeks, he said, differed from other societies due to their ideal of autonomy. The Cosmos, they imagined, stemmed from Chaos, while in contrast, the Hebrews believed it stemmed from the will of a rational entity, God, as described in Genesis. Thus the former developed a system of direct democracy, where the laws were ever changing according to the people’s will, while the latter a theocratic system, according to which man is in an eternal quest to understand and enforce the will of God. This radical idea of a “cosmos out of chaos”, as found in ancient Hellenic philosophy and cosmogony, means that the world was created out of nothing; therefore man can model it as he sees fit, without trying to conform on some “divine law”. Castoriadis rejected as well the term “city-state” used to describe ancient Greek cities, since the Hellenic poleis were autonomous. During colonization e.g., we observe for the first time in history that the Hellenes, instead of transferring the social system of the metropolis to the newly established colony, they legislated anew from the ground up. On the contrary, the Phoenicians, with a similar expansion then in the Mediterranean, were monarchical till the end, and their colonies paid tribute to the metropolis.

View of the Acropolis of Athens, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1841-1849)

LIFE IN ANCIENT HELLAS was generally not a “test for some happy afterlife” – an idea the common people of the “Asiatic mode of production” should necessarily entertain. The Greeks were shaped and inspired by Hellenic Nature. They philosophized and discussed public issues under her beneficial influence. She “dictated” the forms of their state and political organizations – regardless if they both fomented discord. Their model was the polis; democracy was their ideal; freedom their highest virtue – regardless if they lived in a slave and “male” society. It seems contradictory.

Additionally, their democracy was pure, direct, and authentic; today’s so-called “democracy” is the so-called “representative”, where power is not exercised by the people anymore but by their so-called “representatives”, contrary to the very definition of democracy.⁽²⁾ More and more oxymora and paradoxa… Let’s try to make them clear:

• ⁽²⁾ Democracy (δημοκρατία, “rule of the people”, from demos = people, and cratos = power) is a synonym to the Modern Greek λαοκρατία (“people in power”), and an antonym to ἀριστοκρατία (aristocracy, “rule of some elite”), and ὀλιγαρχία (oligarchy, from oligoi = few, and archō = to rule). Which one represents our so-called… “representative” system, even a little child can say!

● The “father of Athenian democracy” was Cleisthenes, and its symbol was the Parthenon. A hill of Athens, the Pnyx, was the meeting place of the Ecclesia, with the speaker’s platform or bema. It is where the political struggles of the “Golden Age” were fought; from this bema, the speeches of the great figures of the time were delivered – but also of many ordinary citizens, who raised their hands responding to the question: “Τίς ἀγορεύειν βούλεται;”, “Who wishes to speak?”

Pericles’ Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)

As much as the Ecclesia of Demos can be related to the Ecclesia
of Christ, so much the pure and direct democracy can be related to
the so-called “representative democracy” – which is an oligarchy.

A deficit in democracy is accompanied by similar deficits in politics and justice. An entire country, Greece, was devastated by the politicians with the judges’ consent – i.e. by persons who are absolutely useless and extremely dangerous to democracy. Democracy has no need of politicians: the citizens themselves, as “political animals”, according to Aristotle, are involved in politics; they are the ones who decide. Democracy has no need of judges: the citizens themselves administer justice. Democracy – if it is indeed a state of the people in power – does not delegate such powers to anyone, not even to a Pericles! The memoranda of austerity would have no chance in the Ecclesia of Demos (that of Christ, the Church, I’m sure, would bless them)! The court of Demos, Heliaea, would have never sentenced Kolokotronis,⁽³⁾ let alone to death! We have no democracy, let’s accept it! It’s the prerequisite for us to obtain it someday…

• ⁽³⁾ General Theodoros Kolokotronis, the pre-eminent leader of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans (1821–1829), was jailed (1825), sentenced to death and pardoned (1835).

Trial of Socrates

● But if Socrates was sentenced to death, why should Kolokotronis fare better? First of all, let’s make clear that Socrates was tried by democracy, while Kolokotronis by oligarchy. The people’s sense of justice was for Kolokotronis, but against Socrates. Why? Let’s have a look at the trial of Socrates, which took place in 399 BCE, after the defeat of the Athenian democracy by the Spartan oligarchy in the Peloponnesian War. It was a political trial in disguise because of the amnesty given to the oligarchs after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants, who were puppets of the Spartans. That’s why the charges against him were: asebeia (impiety) to gods, and corruption of the youth of the polis of Athens. Note that what we know about Socrates’ trial and verdict is mainly derived from the Apology of Socrates, by Plato, and the Apology of Socrates to the Jury, by Xenophon – both students of Socrates, hence anything but impartial sources.

Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, by Jean-Baptiste Regnault (1791)

In Socrates’ face, democracy prosecuted its demons: specifically two other of his dear friends and students, Alcibiades and Critias.⁽⁴⁾ Alcibiades was the main proponent of the absolutely disastrous Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BCE) during the Peloponnesian War, where almost all Athenians participating, more than 50,000 men, were killed or captured and enslaved. After being summoned to trial, Alcibiades defected to Sparta, then to Persia, returning with false promises to Athens, where he was driven out after another defeat by the Spartans, who finally killed him in Phrygia in 404 BCE.

• ⁽⁴⁾ The close relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades is clearly reflected in paintings such as: Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure (Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1791). Other painters (Jean Léon Gérôme, Francesco Hayez, etc.) show Socrates Seeking Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia… Discovering Him in Women’s Quarters… in a Hetaera’s House… or in a Brothel… and Reprimanding Him. The two of them are also depicted in The School of Athens, by Raphael, in company with Aeschines and Antisthenes (or Xenophon).

Critias, who appears in Socratic dialogues by Plato, one in his name, was the blood-thirsty leader of the Thirty Tyrants, who were installed by the Spartan occupation army as an oligarchic regime in 404 BCE, after Athens’ defeat in the war. Not only Critias, but also several other tyrants were students of Socrates, as well. They were in power for only eight months, but in this short period, they managed to kill 5% of the Athenians, exile a lot of others, and seize the property of the dead and exiled. Many wealthy citizens were executed or murdered by the oligarchs just to confiscate their property and share it among themselves, giving a portion to their followers. It was a terror regime, led by Critias, who became notorious for his cruelty and inhumanity, as he was determined to put an end to democracy – regardless of human cost. The uprising that overthrew the tyrants in 403 was organized by a group of exiles led by Thrasybulus. Critias was killed in the initial combats. Xenophon may have played an important part in this regime, as one of the two commanders of the cavalry, which were the Thirty’s militia.

Socrates

Many prominent Athenians, who were opposed to the regime of terror, left the city. Socrates, however, chose to remain and his attitude was interpreted as acceptance of the tyrants – indirectly but clearly. The philosopher espoused anti-democratic ideas, such as the view that it’s not majority opinion that yields correct policy but rather genuine knowledge and professional competence, which only a few experts possess. He often praised the laws of oligarchic Sparta. Plato reinforced these anti-democratic ideas in the Republic, advocating rule by an élite of so-called enlightened “Philosopher Kings”. This might have also been Socrates’ idea of himself, going as far as claiming in his apology he had been a “gods’ gift” to the Athenians… There’s a view that “Socrates’ real crime [was] preaching a philosophy that produced Alcibiades and Critias… but of course, under the amnesty, he couldn’t be prosecuted for that”. This is a rather favourable view about Socrates. Because there are some other views, as well, that the Republic of both, Socrates and Plato, may have been… implemented by the Thirty Tyrants, and that this “Philosopher King” was finally none other than Critias himself!

This crisis would be unthinkable in ancient Athens: the Ecclesia of
Demos would have never accepted what the creditors dictated.

UNDER THE SO-CALLED “REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRATIC” SYSTEM, the people, who supposedly “rule”, are in fact powerless and unable to rule out all those dire consequences of the crisis we are experiencing now. In ancient Athens, on the contrary, as in any other democratic Hellenic city-state, such a crisis would be unthinkable: the Ecclesia would have never accepted what the creditors dictated. The decision would not be taken by some president or prime minister, government or House of Representatives, court or even banker, but by the citizens themselves.

Of course, there were officials, but for limited periods of time, alternating and revocable at any time. Their powers were precisely defined and their capacity for initiative limited. They just administered rather than governed. They could not decide “for the people”, but simply acted on decisions already taken by the people’s Ecclesia. Before taking over, and after leaving office, the citizens were subject to scrutinies, reviewing their abilities beforehand (δοκιμασία = trial), and their performance afterwards (εὐθύναι = responsibilities).

The Ecclesia and Heliaea are the pillars of democracy.
Without one, democracy is lame; losing both, it’s dead.

Cleisthenes: the “father of Athenian democracy”

There were no judges, just jurors, numbering hundreds, even thousands in the most serious cases. The Ecclesia-Assembly, with a quorum of 6000 (around 10-20% of the citizens), and the people’s courts, the Heliaea (6000 jurors) were the pillars of democracy. Without one, democracy would be lame; losing both (as in our so-called “representative” system), there would be no trace of democracy left… The 400-member Boule’s work was more or less bureaucratic overseeing and coordinating the state institutions, while some older ones, e.g. the Archons and Areopagus, were gradually stripped of real powers.⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ The Areopagus (from Areios Pagos, i.e. “Ares’ Rock”) is a rocky hill, NW of the Acropolis, where the court met. In pre-democratic Athens, it was the elders’ council, similar to the Roman Senate. Its membership was then generally restricted to former archons. There were three archons at a time: archon basileus (king ruler, a relic of monarchy), archon eponymous (chief magistrate) and polemarch (war ruler).

● One of the “privileges” left to the Areopagites was to enjoy the beauty of… Phryne, the famous hetaera, stripped in front of them, when she was accused of impiety. The orator Hypereides, one of her lovers defending her, used his best “argument” to save her from death: he removed her robe before the judges to… “arouse their pity”! Her beauty (not his rhetoric) was so “convincing” that she was acquitted! The episode inspired Jean Léon Gérôme in his painting Phryne Before the Areopagus (1861).

Phryne Before the Areopagus, by Jean Léon Gérôme (1861)

What’s been left from ancient democracy in today’s political
system is the least democratic procedure: election…

Athenian democracy was participatory: the citizens selected for office served collectively. The selection was done mostly by lot, not election, because the latter usually favoured (and still favours) the rich, noble, educated, eloquent and famous. Each citizen could serve (in the real sense of the word) only once, in some cases twice, in such positions. Allotment was considered as the most democratic means to prevent the corrupt purchase of votes and give citizens a unique form of political equality. In this way, more and more Athenians were engaged in politics, “ruling and being ruled in turn”, as Aristotle wrote. It is not a surprise that what’s been left from ancient democracy in today’s political system is the least democratic procedure, that is, election – which has become almost a synonym for “democracy”…

Elected rather than chosen by lot (therefore, coming from the higher classes) were the ten generals, the strategoi, due to their necessary expertise in matters of politics and war, and also those who were obliged to handle large sums of money: any money embezzled could be recovered from their estates. Elected officials, too, were subject to review before holding office and scrutiny after that. And they, too, could be removed from office at any time. Citizens held to be acting against the interests of the polis, the demos, e.g. in cases of abuse of power or embezzlement, faced penalties that could be very severe, such as death, huge unplayable fines, confiscation of property, permanent exile and loss of citizens’ rights through atimia (disgrace), a form of disenfranchisement.

The Pnyx with the speaker’s platform, the bema

“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.” (Pericles)

A good example of the contempt the first democrats felt for those who did not participate in politics can be found in the modern word “idiot”, from the ancient Grecian term ἰδιώτης, meaning a private person, someone who is not actively participating in politics. Pericles, according to Thucydides, declared: “We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.”

The intelligentsia of the time was mostly aristocratic. Hence, among the ancient Greek critics of democracy we can find Socrates (the most well-known victim of democracy), Plato, and Aristotle – i.e. the “heavy artillery” of Hellenic philosophy was anti-democratic – dramatists, such as Aeschylus and Aristophanes; and also historians, such as Thucydides, Xenophon, or even Polybius, who firmly believed that every democracy eventually decays into “a government of violence and the strong hand,” leading to “tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments.” (So: Down with democracy! Long live aristocracy! The aristocrats, the oligarchs, have a “mutual understanding”, a modus vivendi, without resorting to “excesses”!)

The victory against the Persians, the birth of drama, the great acme
of Hellenic civilization, would be unthinkable without democracy.

Epidauros theatre: the best… loudspeaker ever!

All the above “forgot” that the victory against the Persians, the birth of drama, and even the great acme of Hellenic civilization, would have been unthinkable without democracy. However, despite all precautions, we now know there was no check on the dangers of demagogy: that was democracy’s Achilles’ heel. Two notorious Athenian demagogues (from demos and the verb agō = manipulate, thus “people’s manipulators”) during the Peloponnesian War were Alcibiades and Cleon.⁽⁶⁾

• ⁽⁶⁾ This Chronicle’s aim was not a critical evaluation of direct democracy. I just wanted to show its colossal differences from the so-called “representative democracy”. I presented in broad terms how it worked to assess the feasibility of its implementation today if it’s appropriately adapted. Among its victims were not only anti-democrats, like Socrates, but democrats, as well, such as Pericles, or his tutor and friend, the philosopher Anaxagoras. They were both accused by Cleon, the demagogue – the former for maladministration of funds (he was soon reinstated), and the latter for “impiety”. Pericles was obliged to send Anaxagoras, for his own safety, to Lampsacus, where he lived the rest of his life.

● On the relation between democracy and art, see the conclusion of Chronicle 12.

Imaginary depiction of the Agora of ancient Athens at the time of Pericles

The ancient Grecian polis died out together with Athenian democracy: it was the end of an era for this form of government that ceased to be a model, because no one really cared or was interested to counter the negative accounts of the ancient writers. The classical model that inspired revolutionaries and radicals in Europe and America was Rome, not Athens – although Res publica Romana was no democracy. Thus, the Founding Fathers of the USA in 1787 set up a Senate, not an Ecclesia, which eventually met on the Capitol… But times changed and Athenian democracy was gradually appreciated for the high level of cultivation that her citizens enjoyed. Since the middle of the 20th century, every politician declares he is a “democrat”, every country claims it is a “democracy”, regardless of the actual makeup of its government.⁽⁷⁾

• ⁽⁷⁾ The failure of democracy, as well as of the last two centuries’ revolutions that were described as “socialist”, aiming at communism, was, in essence, a failure homo “sapiens”, or a failure of man as a “political animal”. His inability to create democratic, or even classless societies, is ultimately blamed on his own inability to rise to the occasion.

Revolutions in France (1789) and Haiti (1791)

The last victorious Battle of Vertières (1803) in the Haitian Revolution.

NEVERTHELESS, THERE are still many “sensitive souls” who lament on the “impurity” of Athenian democracy because it excluded women, slaves and foreigners, exercising “imperialist” policies – as if patriarchy, slavery, racism and imperialism were all born out of democracy! Patriarchy is still going strong; the same applies to racism and imperialism. Slavery was abolished quite “recently”, though I’m afraid it is also going strong under disguise… But where or when did you see slaves voting?(!) As for universal suffrage, Finland was the first nation to give all adult citizens (men and women) the right to vote and run for office in 1906. Greek women voted for the first time in 1953. Note that the First French Republic, after the French Revolution (1789), was the first nation that adopted universal male suffrage in 1792, i.e. excluding women – let alone the slaves.

Apropos, have our “sensitive souls” ever heard of the great Haitian Revolution (1791), the only successful slave insurrection in history? It broke out two years after the equally great French Revolution and with precisely the same slogans: “liberté, égalité, fraternité”; but the Haitian aspirations for Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood, were denied by the great French revolutionaries on the basis of their… armed forces – sending even mercenaries (e.g. Poles) to Haiti to suppress the insurrection: such privileges were meant exclusively for the “noble, white Frenchmen”, not for negro Haitian helots!⁽⁸⁾

• ⁽⁸⁾ What was their reward? The country where the only victorious slave revolution ever took place is now probably the poorest all around the world. The so-called “international community” never forgave them for their heroism and punished them severely because they raised their heads in their desire to live free.

Plato’s Republic: a Dictatorial Monarchy!

● Plato’s Republic, the first recorded utopian proposal,⁽⁹⁾ is one of the most influential works on philosophy and political theory. The “citizens” are categorized into a rigid class structure of golden, silver, bronze and iron socio-economic classes with limited social mobility (reminding us of the Indian caste system). Golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, philosopher kings.⁽¹⁰⁾ The wisdom of these hereditary rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources. Yet, true knowledge is reserved for the élite, while the lower classes are expected to fulfill their functions to the state loyally until the end of their lives. Censorship is common, to prevent impiety and immorality from corrupting the youth. The Platonic Republic has few laws, practices a form of eugenics to weed out the disabled, and deliberately hires mercenaries to conduct wars in the hope that the more warlike populations of nearby countries will be eliminated (what the Punics did until finally Carthage was razed to the ground). Indeed, who would like to live in such a harsh, unfree utopia, if his/her metal were not noble? In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper singled out Plato’s Republic as a “totalitarian dystopia”, with a distinct hereditary governing ruling class, while the lower working class is given no role in decision making, and treated as “human cattle”. Undoubtedly, the greatest utopia is to expect solutions from such “philosopher kings”, even if they are world-famous and have influenced generations upon generations of thinkers.

A group of philosophers from the Academy in Athens,
mosaic found in Pompeii (1st century CE)

• ⁽⁹⁾ Utopia: an imagined community or society with highly desirable or nearly perfect conditions for all its citizens. Utopian ideals place emphasis on egalitarian principles, with the method of implementation varying according to the ideology of each proposal. The term utopia was coined by Thomas More for his book Utopia (1516), describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic. The word comes from the Hellenic οὐ (not) and τόπος (place) and means no place. Eutopia, from the Greek εὖ (good) and τόπος, meaning good place, is the correct term to describe a positive utopia. Utopia and eutopia in English are homophonous; so they became synonymous, as well. The opposite of eutopia is dystopia, from the Hellenic δυσ- (bad) and τόπος, i.e. cacotopia or anti-utopia.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Finally, the Platonic Republic is in fact a monarchy, or a dictatorship, since the “philosopher king” resembles another equally imaginary being: a “benevolent dictator”…

● The Republic was written around 380 BCE, more than twenty years after its implementation in practice by the Thirty Tyrants, in 404-403. Therefore, we conclude that Plato was an unrepentant anti-democrat all his life… He even attempted to spread his ideas to Syracuse, even though he was disgusted with the “sensual” life in Sicily. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Plato initially went to Syracuse while it was under the rule of Dionysius. The latter’s brother-in-law, Dion, became one of Plato’s disciples, but the tyrant himself turned against him. Plato almost faced death, and was sold into slavery. Anniceris, a Cyrenaic philosopher, subsequently bought his freedom and sent him home.⁽¹¹⁾ After the tyrant’s death, according to Plato’s Seventh Letter, Dion requested him to return to Syracuse to tutor and guide Dionysius II to become a “philosopher king”! Dionysius seemed to accept Plato’s teachings, but he became suspicious of his uncle and exiled him. Dion would finally return to overthrow Dionysius and rule Syracuse for a short time before being in turn… overthrown and assassinated by a fellow disciple of Plato, Calippus, who had traveled with Dion to Sicily to capture Syracuse! Calippus also ruled briefly before being ousted from power himself. Afterwards he commanded a band of mercenaries, who later killed him with the same sword that he used to kill Dion! That was the end-result of the second attempt to implement the Republic!… Plato reminded me of Pythagoras who also tried to combine his philosophy with the politics of Crotone, in Magna Graecia. The consequences would be disastrous for himself and his disciples. I wonder. How would Aristotle rate the two of them as “political animals”?

• ⁽¹¹⁾ What a disgrace for Plato! He was saved by Anniceris, a representative of a philosophic school he despised, as the Cyrenaics were famous for their sensual hedonism!

• >> Chronicle 5. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY
• << Chronicle 3. A CHRONICLE OF THE HUMANS

Next Chronicle 5. IBERIA’S ODYSSEY ● Hellenes in Portugal ● Fado and Fate ● Odysseus and Calypso in Lisbon; Their Son in Santarém ● Creto-Iberian Ties: Bull Worship and Bullfight

Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO!

ii) INTERLUDE

Crossing the Atlantic

 

Chronicle 15. SAILING TO RIO DE JANEIRO!

● Periplus: (Luso-Hellenic Wanderings) ● An Atlantic Odyssey

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ ΠΛΩΡΗ ΓΙΑ RIO DE JANEIRO!
/PORTUGUÊS/ NAVEGANDO PARA O RIO DE JANEIRO!

Afro-Brazilian Museum

ΙΙΙ Festival

SO DISTANT
SO NEAR

Music and Poetry in the
Portuguese Language

Federal University of
Rio de Janeiro, May 2013

Tão Longe Tão Perto Organized in collaboration with the ensemble Música Surda: Andréia Pedroso, Antônio Jardim, Artur Gouvêa and Eduardo Gatto.

Michales Loukovikas

WHEN AMÉLIA MUGE AND I BEGAN researching and exchanging recorded material from our traditions, the Lusitanic–Portuguese and the Hellenic–Greek, several people raised ironically their brows:

“Oh, they are loucos”, they thought – some even said. “Portugal and Greece are so far apart. Impossible to find common ground”…⁽¹⁾

• ⁽¹⁾ Imagine what people with “raised brows”, just like them, will say now that we are talking about a triangle (not that of… Bermuda): Portugal, Brazil and Greece. Well, Portugal and Brazil, OK, the relation is too obvious: former metropolis and colony; but what about Greece?(!)

● This text was presented during the festival Tão longe, tão perto, in Rio de Janeiro.

I confess that our collaborative results astonished even us! Or even me, I should add, that I have been researching this field for years, arriving to the conclusion that civilization, culture, is the result of give and take, of exchange. I have also shown during my radio program (Mediterranean periplus, 9.58 fm, ERT3) that lands located so far apart, like, say, India and Iberia, have been interconnected for thousands of years, since ancient times…⁽²⁾

• ⁽²⁾ “Ancient” for the Hellenes means BCE (before the Common Era), or BC (before Christ), if you like.

Flamenco (by Hyatt Moore): an exciting art
interconnecting Iberia and India

All these ideas were further reinforced when Amélia and I started working on Periplus.⁽³⁾ For sure, there are some “dark spots” still now; questions that remain unanswered. A big question for me e.g. is: how can Amélia, a Portuguese born in Mozambique, compose in an ancient style? You see, all three themes of ancient Grecian music and poetry we have in Periplus (Seikilos’ Epitaph, the First Delphic Hymn to Apollo, probably by Athenaeus, and Mesomedes’ Hymn to Nemesis) were included after certain compositions of hers reminded me of these ancient Hellenic songs. It’s very strange, indeed.

• ⁽³⁾ It’s not so obvious but there is something like a “periplus” in different human endeavours, too. Music was born together with speech. In an advanced stage, in ancient Hellas, music was either instrumental or song. Poetry was inconceivable without music in classical Greece. The two arts got… divorce later, in the 4th century BCE. However, either before or after, a “periplus” was (and still is) needed to combine sounds with words, and express the meaning of the words through sounds. Something similar happens in a translation: then the “periplus” concerns two tongues. It is the voyage of a text, of its meaning and style, content and form, while it is adapted in order to start breathing in another language environment.

Andalusian ivory cylindrical pyxis,
i.e. a box to keep precious cosmetics
or jewelery (10th century)

However, apart from these “dark spots”, which will always challenge us to come up with some satisfactory answers, we were soon able to assemble the rest of the puzzle rather easily. And when our Periplus was released, I could say:

“You know, the links are there, waiting for us to bring them to light. One only needs to search, of course, methodically, with a proper compass – a bússula, as we say in Greek, or bússola, as you say in Portuguese”.⁽⁴⁾

• ⁽⁴⁾ We have the same word coming from Greek (pyxos > pyxis-pyxida > buxis-buxida > box, boîte, and bussola), with the plant pyxos (> boxwood) as a starting point; this hard, compact, durable wood has been used since ancient times to construct vessels, such as pyxides, and also musical (string and wind) instruments. Note that its seeds are kept in a capsule also called pyxis. Indeed, who among the non-specialists would ever imagine that the English box is of a Greek origin?

Anticythera Mechanism

The Mediterranean and the Oecumene beyond

THE GREEK PENINSULA AND ARCHIPELAGO was not a beginning in world history. The Hellenes received much wisdom from the Orient (Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Egypt) and turned it into science;⁽⁵⁾ it was a great feat! What they left behind was a marvelous literature – uma literatura maravilhosa, indeed! Thus the Hellenic civilization became the foundation of the Occidental cultures.

• ⁽⁵⁾ There can be no great civilization without equivalent technology. A marvel in this domain is the Anticythera mechanism, the earliest analogue computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. Dated to c. 100 BCE, it was recovered in 1901 from a wreck between the Peloponnese and Crete, but its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later. Devices of a comparable level would reappear in the 14th century CE in Europe, with the construction of astronomical clocks. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University, who led a 2006 study of the mechanism, said:

“This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, and the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa.”

Victoria, the sole ship of Magellan’s fleet to complete the world’s periplus (detail from a map of Ortelius, 1590)

The extant peripli took place on the Mediterranean, the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans. Herodotus wrote about a periplus of Africa by Phoenicians on behalf of an Egyptian pharaoh. Some Greek from Alexandria, Egypt, described the Indian Ocean coasts of eastern Africa and India. Pytheas, from the Hellenic colony of Massalia (modern Marseille, France), voyaged north to the British Isles and also Scandinavia, and concluded a periplus of Europe sailing via European rivers from the Baltic to the Black Sea and back to the Mediterranean. There are people who believe that the Minoan Cretans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians and Punics, and other ancient peoples, such as the Chinese, sailed to the Americas long before the Vikings, Columbus – or, of course, Magellan, who attempted a periplus of the Earth but was not fortunate enough to conclude it.

Hence these voyages started long before recorded history, in the Bronze Age. There are historical clues that the Minoans, in the time of their Thalassocracy, travelled as far as Cornwall, Britain, in search of tin – or else, they obtained this important metal at harbours in southern Gaul. Tin is a necessary component of bronze (±90% copper plus ±10% tin). There were vast quantities of copper in the Mediterranean. Cyprus e.g. was full of copper and the name Cyprus comes from copper (and vice versa). But tin? There were very few places with tin in the Mediterranean and in limited quantities.

The Minoans, and later the Greeks and Phoenicians, sailed initially to Iberia that was rich in these minerals. The Andalusians probably led the Cretans to Galicia, Brittany and Cornwall: they knew the way… These places, especially Cornwall, had massive tin deposits. There, close to Galicia, or even Cornwall, were the so-called Cassiterides Nēsoe, the Tin Isles (tin is cassíteros in Greek). Herodotus and other historians wrote also about the links of the Hellenes and Phoenicians with Tartessos, at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and several people now correlate the legendary Andalusian city with the elusive Atlantis.

Tartessos – identified here with Sanlúcar de Barrameda (?) – and Gadeira-Gadir-Gades-Cádiz, on three islets with Greek names (Erytheia, Kotinoussa and Antipolis), outside the Pillars of Heracles,
the Strait of Gibraltar, in the Sea of Darkness, the Atlantic

Critical questions as the starting point of the research

MY RESEARCH, in the first part we have already voyaged, aimed at that complacent Greek highbrow “hot air”, summed up in the phrase “our own Orient” (see Chronicle 6, footnote 1). So, I raised that vast “Indo-Iberian arc” to demarcate the Mediterranean historical and cultural space. The starting point in the second part was these simple questions that had to be answered:

● Where did the Bronze Age Mediterranean find tin to produce bronze?

● Who were the established maritime traders of the time to bring this most crucial metal to the Mediterranean, as tin was rare around the basin?

I attempt to give some answers in the 2nd part, Cassiterides Archipelago: sailing to Tartessos, following the 1st part, Mediterranean Periplus: in Search of Orpheus. (Hellenic) music is my focus in the 1st part; (Mediterranean) history in the 2nd.

One of the Riace Bronzes, two Greek full-size nude warriors (ca 460–450 BCE), recovered in 1972, considered as a symbol of Calabria.

Α. Mediterranean Periplus, in Search of Orpheus

Prologue. Before Sailing Off
1. The Universal Mediterranean
2. It All Started Here…
3. A Chronicle of the Humans
4. On Democracy
5. Iberia’s Odyssey
6. Indo-Iberian Arc (Jondo)
7. Indo-Iberian Arc (Duende)
8. A Hybrid’s Hybris…
9. The Celebrated Tríchordon
10. The… “Sun Language”
11. “Music Is Thracian and Asian”
12. “Do Not Maltreat Our Music!”
13. Professionals or Amateurs?
14. Music Made of Body and Soul

Β. Cassiterides Archipelago, Sailing to Tartessos

15. Sailing to Rio de Janeiro!
16. Mediterranean Periplus-Paraplus
17. Minoan Cretan Thalassocracy
18. Aegean: Knossos, Mycenae, Troy
19. Phoenicia’s Stroke of Fortune
20. The Enigmatic Sea Peoples
21. Iberian “El Dorado”
22. Iberian Periplus Revival
23. The Genocide of the Hellenes
24. The Triumph of Cretinism
25. “Carthago Delenda Est!”
26. Iberian Cross-Check
27. An Archaeologist’s Waterloo

Appendix: 28. The Making of the Mediterranean Periplus | 29. Biblio – Disco – Graphy | 30. Michales Loukovikas – bio.

A general conclusion is that certain needs motivated humans to live together, to communicate, to exchange. That’s how society was born, the cities were created, the classes and division of labour emerged, and writing was invented. People’s coordinated interaction concerned material needs but transformed at the same time all those who worked together, exchanging ideas or ideals; it was a process that led to the birth of culture, of civilization.

Homer’s Odyssey periplus

HOMER’S ODYSSEY IS A POETIC PERIPLUS. According to the Lusitanians, Odysseus’ wanderings were Luso-Hellenic, as well: he founded Lisbon and had a child with the princess of Iberia, Calypso. Homer described Odysseus’ descent into the Hades, the underworld, which was outside the Pillars of Heracles, that is, the Strait of Gibraltar. The Hellenes located in the same area the Garden of the Hesperides or the Makarōn Nēsoe, i.e. the Fortunate Isles, the Islands of the Blessed, or Elysium, what today is thought to be Macaronesia (the Azores and Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde).

Strabo and Solinus said that Odysseus, after the fall of Troy, navigated westward to Lusitania, founded Lisbon, and then desired to try his fortune on the Atlantic – where he disappeared, with no trace left behind. This is a version of Odysseus’ story mentioned also by Pere Antoni Beuter, a Valencian historian, who referred to Dante Alighieri, saying he shared this view. Indeed, in his Inferno, the Italian poet described Odysseus’ descent into the underworld with no return. The king of Ithaca, he wrote, went out of the Pillars of Hercules, sailed south, crossed the Equator, and then continued voyaging for months, until he reached a bay with a big mountain. Then, a tornado sank his boat; everybody drowned there.

I really don’t know why, but I feel this bay with the big mountain is… the River of January: Rio de Janeiro! I would really love to confirm that…

The siege of Lisbon, by Roque Gameiro (1917)

Appendix: An Atlantic Odyssey

● A modern Greek Homerist, Iohannis Kakridís, argues that the Odyssey is a work of poetry and not a travel log (i.e. a navigator’s periplus). According to W. B. Stanford, Cape Maleas and the nearby island of Cythera, where Odysseus met storms (see the Odyssey, book 9), are “the last clearly identifiable places in his wanderings. After this he leaves the sphere of Geography and enters Wonderland” – a wander in wonders!

Nevertheless, due to the great impact of the Homeric epics, the attempt to work out “a Geography of the Odyssey” started as early as Hesiod, a Homer’s contemporary most probably, and by the Hellenistic period, the literature on the subject had really thrived. There were even passionate debates among the scholars whether Odysseus’ wanderings were confined within the Mediterranean, or if they indeed expanded into the Atlantic – indicating that for them the ocean was not a “terra” (mare) incogita.

Sappho and Alcaeus, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Despite that, other scholars, turned against this euhemerism –⁽⁶⁾ or even against the great rhapsode. The mythographer-grammarian Apollodorus of Athens (2nd century BCE) wrote that Homer imagined the wanderings as having taken place in a kind of fairyland in the Atlantic. Strabo (1st centuries BCE-CE) thought that at least Ogygia and Scheria, the islands of Calypso and Nausicaa respectively, were “imagined in fantasy” as being in the Atlantic – so, they both mentioned the Atlantic! In addition, he insisted that any hypothesis at all, no matter how outrageous, is more plausible than saying “I do not know”… Yet, Eratosthenes (3rd – 2nd centuries BCE) remarked rather sarcastically: “You will find the scene of the wanderings of Odysseus when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the winds.”

• ⁽⁶⁾ Euhemerism: from the mythographer of Sacred History, Euhemerus: a view that the gods have been deified humans and that the myths have a historical basis.

Plutarch (1st – 2nd centuries CE) was sure Ogygia was in the Atlantic, and specifically west of Britain. Additionally, he repeated what Plato had described as a continent on the other side of the Atlantic, claiming that from this continent Ogygia was about 900 kilometres distant. The German astronomer Kepler (1571 – 1630) estimated that this “great continent” was America and attempted to locate Calypso’s island.

Map of Rio de Janeiro (Dutch Atlas 1600)

● In her research entitled The Wine Dark Sea (1964), the American Henriette Mertz argued that Circe’s island was Madeira, Calypso’s island one of the Azores, while the intervening voyages recorded a discovery of North America: Scylla and Charybdis were in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada, while Scheria, the Phaeacians’ land, was in the Caribbean, in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly in Florida. Such travels were done with the help of sea currents she studied. It was them, mainly the (Mexican) Gulf Stream, which took Odysseus to the Sirens (Haiti or Cuba, and to the Island of the Sun, of Helios (Nova Scotia or Newfoundland).

Enrico Mattievich, an Italian-Peruvian retired Professor of Physics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (where our festival took place), “brought” Odysseus to South America, proposing that his journey to the Underworld actually took place there. The river Acheron is the Amazon, he argued in his Journey to the Mythological Inferno (1992). After a long voyage upstream, Odysseus met the spirits of the dead at the confluence of the rivers Marañon and Ucayali – i.e. at the starting point of the Amazon.

Another study connected to that of Mertz’s is Siegfried Petrides’ Odyssey – a Naval Epic of the Greeks in America (1994). Grecian literature is full of references about the geographical and astronomical knowledge of the Hellenes, which allowed them to use the constellations for directions. Petrides’ long experience as a sailor allowed him to confirm, or even clarify, Mertz’s conclusions, providing extra details on the wind directions, sea routes, islands, etc. A clarification is that ancient Greek sailors did not rely on mere chance to reach America but had fast and versatile vessels that could easily cross the Atlantic. They also knew perfectly well how to combine and take advantage of both the sails and the rows, thus covering very long distances.

Demetris Michalópoulos, of the Institute of Hellenic Maritime History, described a Peripeteia [Adventure] in the Atlantic: Ulysses’ voyages between Europe and America – referring also to Petrides. His anything but controversial starting point is the coast of Libya, the land of the Lotophagi. His next stop, the land of the Cyclopes, seems to be nearby: Sicily or somewhere in Magna Graecia, according to the prevailing opinion in late antiquity. All the same, there is no mention to Italy in the Homeric text. The only information given by Homer is that, in the past, the Cyclopes were neighbours of the Phaeacians in the “immense Hyperia”. Yet, the latter were compelled to migrate to Scheria, because the Cyclopes were anything but friendly… But where was Hyperia located? If we now accept what we have just rejected, i.e. the prevailing opinion in late antiquity, the Cyclopes lived in the Mediterranean near the Laestrygonians. In the Homeric text, there are some indications about the Laestrygonians’ land: “the outgoings of the nights and of the days are close together”… Michalópoulos supposes that the Laestrygonians lived in a region where, in summer, the days are very long and the nights very short, that is, in Scandinavia. He also refers to Tacitus, who wrote that Odysseus reached at least Germany. Hence Hyperia was somewhere there. Yet, there is a “little problem”: between the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians, Odysseus voyaged to Aeolia that, although “floating”, is identified most possibly with Mallorca. But a return trip between Scandinavia and the Balearics is… a little too much!

Then we set sail to America. Circe’s Aeaea, the Underworld, the Hesperides and the Gorgons were all in the “remote West”, according to Hesiod. Ogygia, wrote Plutarch, was five days away from Britain. Arriving there, one must navigate through “a heavy sea, muddy and agitated by currents”. Such a place can be the Sargasso Sea, in the North Atlantic Ocean, where Bermuda may be the location of the isle of Calypso. The nymph instructed Odysseus to sail with the Ursa Major constellation on his left. After eighteen days, he reached Scheria, possibly in Iberia. Ithaca’s king and other Trojan War heroes had made their presence felt in the peninsula. According to Strabo, even a town therein was named after Odysseus. There is a tradition, as well, adopted by Camões, that the etymon of Lisbon is Ulysses, i.e. the Latin form of the name of our hero. Hence the “Homeric” river of the Phaeacians is the Tagus, whose bed was so rich in precious metals that it was described as “equivalent to the Pactolus”, the well-known gold river of Asia Minor (Silius Italicus).

Odysseus may not have been the first Greek (or European) to step on American soil: according to Mertz, some time before the Trojan War and the Odyssey, circa 1300 (or 1225) BCE,⁽⁷⁾ the Argonauts travelled across the Atlantic Ocean, thanks to the Gulf Stream, crossed the Sargasso Sea (Apollonius of Rhodes’ “floating islands”) and then touched at Puerto Rico. They sailed southwards by South America, past the mouth of the Amazon and Rio de Janeiro until the Río de la Plata of Argentina, and, following it upstream, reached the altiplano of Bolivia arriving at Colchis, or Tiwanaku, where the Golden Fleece was kept. Centuries later Tiwanaku became the cultural, religious, cosmological and commercial centre of a pre-Columbian Empire extending around Lake Titicaca in present-day western Bolivia, southern Peru and northern Chile from 300 to 1150 CE. But this area must have been inhabited as early as 1500 BCE.⁽⁸⁾

• ⁽⁷⁾ Michalópoulos (The Argonauts in the Black Sea) moves the expedition to a distant past in the first half of the 19th century BCE. In very ancient times, he says, “voyages were longer and more venturesome than those in late antiquity”, while “the Euxine had been a center of international trade”. The Argonauts were Minyans, the most prominent tribe of the Pelasgians. The latter are presented as ancestors of the Hellenes, colonizers of the Black Sea, and also of Italy, inventors of the alphabet – a civilizing people.

• ⁽⁸⁾ Both the expedition of the Argonauts and the Trojan War that followed aimed at the control of the Black Sea by the Hellenes. The legend of the Golden Fleece was based on a practice of the local tribes: they would place a lamb’s fleece at the bottom of a stream to entrap gold dust that was washed down from upstream. In some regions this practice is still now in use. The capital of Colchis, Aea (Kutaisi), is said to have been one of many cities that were founded in Eurasia by Egyptians. This account is combined with one by Herodotus, citing Egyptian priests. Their story was about the legendary pharaoh Sesostris, who once led an army north through the Levant and Asia Minor, all the way to Colchis. He settled colonists there, at the river Phasis (modern Rioni), and then he turned westward across southern Russia, and south through Romania and Bulgaria, until he reached eastern Hellas, from where he returned home. Herodotus cautioned that much of this account came second hand via Egyptian priests, but also noted that the Colchians were commonly known to be Egyptian colonists. According to Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, Sesostris conquered the whole world, from Ethiopia in the South, to Scythia in the North – or, who knows, even South America in the West!

● Some writers interpret the Homeric epics as “British ballads” or “Viking sagas”, and in this way pass off their North-to-South cultural-transmission theory. Such pseudo-theories are centuries older than German nationalism, and definitely inspire all the Northerners – who may figure out they are descendants of the “Hyper-Northerners”, the Hyperboreans!⁽⁹⁾ The idea that the inspiration for Plato’s Atlantis can be found in the Baltic was the… “grandfather” of all these books. In the “heroic” 17th century of Sweden, the foremost champion was the all-round Renaissance scholar (astronomer, physician, “archaeo-historian”, and even more) Olaus or Olof Rudbeck, who caused consternation with his mammoth, 2,500-page work, Atland eller Manheim, translated into Latin for scholarly use as Atlantica. He claimed there, among other things, that the oldest district of his home town, Uppsala, was the centre of “lost Atlantis”; thus – by the extravagant logic of cultural diffusion – Sweden was the cradle of western civilization going back to Adam and Eve! Despite ridicule from his local university colleagues (who also accused him of forgery), he was turned into a national icon – and not only: he was admired at the court of Louis “l’état c’est moi!”, proposed as a member of the Royal Society in London, celebrated in cafés, salons, and academies across the cosmopolitan “Respublica literaria”, and read avidly by Montesquieu and Leibniz, while Isaac Newton wrote to request… a personal copy of Atlantica! After his death, Swedish monarchs would be crowned over his grave! He had fanatic followers and became the subject of a satiric illustration, captioned: “The archaeologist Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) reveals his ‘Predecessors’ – Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Apollodorus, Tacitus, Odysseus, Ptolemy, Plutarch and Orpheus – the ‘Truth’ about Atlantis”…

• ⁽⁹⁾ Along with Thule, the Hyperborean land was among several terrae incognitae to the ancients. The Hyperboreans were a race of giants, three metres high, enjoying lives of sheer happiness and living to the age of one thousand! The sun was supposed to rise and set there only once a year – hence living a thousand days would be the same as living a thousand years! This also, to modern ears, suggests a possible location within the Arctic Circle. They were the most blessed of peoples, living in a perfect land, located “beyond Boreas”, the North Wind. The coldness of the northern countries was due to the cold breath of this wind. Thus the land “beyond Boreas” was a warm and sunny land! Besides, the only one among the Olympians, who was venerated there, was Apollo: the Hellenes thought he spent his winter there. The giants reciprocated by sending their delegation and offerings to his sacred Aegean island, Delos! Pindar sang of “the marvellous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans: Never the Muse is absent | from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry | everywhere maiden choruses whirling. | Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed | in their sacred blood; far from labour and battle they live.”

Arctic continent on the Gerardus Mercator map (1595)

● “Northerners and Hyper-Northerners”: I started with wordplay, but we ended up filled up with swastikas! Northerners, mainly Scandinavians, wishing to counter the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean culture, identified themselves with the Hyperboreans. This trend was very strong in the 17th century in Sweden, when it was a great power, where the champions of the ideology of Gothicism declared Scandinavia to be both the Hyperborean land and lost Atlantis! After all, the Arctic Circle is their land… Generally, European culture self-identified as Hyperborean. Inevitably, adaptations followed by the ethnologist Karl Penka (Origins of the Aryans, 1883), John Bennett (The Hyperborean Origin of the Indo-European Culture, 1963), and several others. According to some esotericists, the Hyperboreans were part of the Golden Race (where, of course, all these “thinkers” belong, for sure), and their land was the Golden Age polar centre of civilization and spirituality. Mankind, they claim, does not rise from the ape, but devolves progressively into an ape-like condition, as it strays physically and spiritually from its mystical otherworldly homeland in the Far North, succumbing to the South Pole’s daemonic energies… Some outright charlatans, like Robert Charroux, the alter ego of Erich von Däniken, relate the Hyperboreans to an ancient astronaut race of “very large, very white people”, who arrived here and selected “the least warm area on the earth because it corresponded more closely to their own climate on the planet from which they originated”…

● Except perhaps the last ones, who profit out of their… charlatanism, all the rest are racists and fascists. The Nazis e.g. considered Hyperborea as the cradle of the “Aryan race”, while their party was hatched within the “Thule Society”. Let’s remind them (pulling their legs) that Hyperborea, as a terra incognita, was located by ancient writers in the far North, of course, but all across Eurasia, from NW Europe to NE Asia. So, some “Chinks” claimed that the Hyperboreans were Chinese – a view that would be strongly disputed especially in Japan, but also in Mongolia and Siberia!

None of Rudbeck’s descendants ever achieved such a Triumph. Most unlucky was a Belgian lawyer, named Théophile Cailleux (Pays atlantiques décrits par Homère: Ibérie, Gaule, Bretagne, Archipels, Amériques; Théorie nouvelle. Atlantic lands described by Homer: Iberia, Gaul, Britain, Archipelagos, the Americas; New Theory. 1878). Troy, he claimed, was situated in East Anglia, on the heights outside Cambridge, known as the Gog Magog Hills (rather far from the sea); while Ithaca, he believed, should be sought in southern Andalusia, between Jerez and Cádiz, in the Delta of the Guadalete (where a Trojan War hero, Menestheus, allegedly settled: see Chronicle 22). Yet, some time after Cailleux’s book was published, Heinrich Schliemann triumphantly proved that Troy and Mycenae existed as powerful cities, at the right time and in the right place to have fought a Trojan War such as the epics describe. As a result, there was no thirst for geohistorical speculation then in the market…

Homère, L’Odyssée; lithographies by Marc Chagall

More than a century later, the Dutch Iman Wilkens presented the same idea again. His book, Where Troy Once Stood (1990), takes us to the same hills that Cailleux pinpointed, but with a scenario somewhat modified: the Trojan War was fought c. 1200 BCE between groups of Celts. Those living in Cambridgeshire were attacked by fellow Celts from the Continent to win access to the profitable tin mines in Cornwall. Wilkens further suggests that the Sea Peoples (see Chronicles 18, 19, 20) were Celts who settled in Greece and the Aegean as Achaeans and Pelasgians, bringing with them the oral poems that were translated and written down in Hellenic around 750 BCE, forming the basis of the Homeric epics. He locates Scylla and Charybdis at present day St. Michael’s Mount, at the tip of the Cornish peninsula, moves a bit Ithaca from the Guadalete to Cádiz, while the topography of the Laestrygonian capital, Telepylos (“Far-off port”), looks to him similar to that of Havana, Cuba. But he’s got an Achilles’ heel; he (too) is a nationalist:

“It appears that Homer’s Greek contains a large number of loan words from western European languages, more often from Dutch rather than English, French or German”, he thoughtlessly wrote, speaking of tongues that have not existed until at least 1000 years after Homer!⁽¹⁰⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ If one takes Cailleux and Wilkens for granted, the Trojans left Britain after the war to settle in Italy. Anyway, three generations later they returned to found the “British nation”. Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain), written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, begins with the Trojan Aeneas who, according to Roman legend, settled in Italy after the war. But his great-grandson Brutus was banished, started wandering and was finally directed by the goddess Diana (Artemis) to settle in the western ocean, on the island of Albion, which he named Britain after himself. He then defeated the giants who were the only inhabitants there, and on the banks of the Thames he established his capital, Troia Nova, renamed later as London.

A variation of this North-to-South cultural transmission is that early Grecian sailors might have come for long-distance trade in tin etc. and also took this wonderful epic tale back with them, transforming it into an “ethnic” epic when it was written down in verse. The northern peoples preferred not to write out their compositions, relying on prodigious feats of memory (as Caesar said of the Celtic bards). However, over time the original northern version could have been lost in wars and migrations. Another North-to-South cultural-transmission theory is that the northern tribes were the Sea Peoples who swept south to attack also Hellas, around 1200 BCE. The Greeks that survived assimilated the northerners’ campfire tales and made them their own when they flourished again, also thanks to these tales, after their Dark Ages.

Atlantis, Poseidonis: the last remnant of the lost continent (imaginary reconstruction)

This “theory” was foreshadowed in several books by Jurgen Spanuth (1907-1998), a German pastor, classical scholar, and amateur archaeologist. He maintained that all these events survive in distorted version not just in Homer but also in Plato’s Atlantis parable. Spanuth compared Homer’s and Plato’s descriptions on a point-for-point basis, and suggested both derived from a common origin. This was the rise and fall of a mighty Bronze Age seafaring nation living in the Jutland area, which fell when an “Atlantean” North Sea flood drove them southward into the Mediterranean; they were the Sea Peoples that the Egyptians defeated in the Nile Delta. Their tale of how their vast empire collapsed in a flood was recorded by the Egyptians, and then Plato picked it up through Solon, who was briefed by priests when he visited Egypt (Das Entratselte Atlantis; Atlantis – The Mystery Unraveled; 1953, all through Die Atlanter; Atlantis of the North; 1976). German nationalism was all too clear in these inflated claims – in effect assuming credit for another people’s cultural foundations – and the reception of the books was rather cold in the reviews. Rebuffed by the mainstream, the pastor turned to some right-wing German magazines, which marginalized him further. If he succeeded in something indirectly is that he rekindled interest for new excavations in sunken North Sea ports, e.g. Rungholt, where ceramics were recovered evidencing trade between Frisia and Minoan Crete dating back to 1600-1400 BCE!

The other variant of the North-to-South cultural-transmission “theory”, with a largely Scandinavian setting, has a certain peculiarity: the storyteller is an Italian, the nuclear engineer Felice Vinci – probably the only Mediterranean accepting that his ancestors received the “lights of civilization” from the North. The reception was dismissive, as usual, and the Finns were quick to label it “an interesting joke”! The book is entitled Omero nel Baltico (Homer in the Baltic, 1998), or The Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales: The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Migration of Myth. The Achaeans were a Baltic people at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, coming to Greece around the 16th century (after the Trojan War that took place in the 18th century), bringing their traditional oral sagas to the Aegean. Odysseus himself, claims Vinci, was Dutch(!); the islands of his kingdom, Ithaca, Dulichium, Cephallenia, and Zacynthus, correspond to islands in the Danish archipelago of South Funen, and Troy to Toija in SW Finland; the Hellespont could not be identified with the Dardanelles, but the Gulf of Finland; Mycenae stood in the same place as modern Copenhagen; and Odysseus’ voyage would have taken place along the coasts of Norway: Ogygia could be identified with one of the Faeroe Islands (among Britain, Scandinavia and Iceland); the Phaeacian land, Scheria, with Bergen’s environs; Circe’s island, and the places she describes (the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis) may be placed in the Lofoten archipelago of northern Norway; and Aeolus’ island in the Shetland archipelago, NE of Scotland. The same region is the setting of other Hellenic mythological tales such as the Argonauts, adds Vinci. Referring to Plato’s dialogue Critias, he claims that Athens rose formerly on a flat fertile zone in the Baltic, perhaps near Karlskrona in southern Sweden.

Il Ritorno di Ulisse (Odysseus’ Return), by Giorgio De Chirico (1968)

● Regarding Homeric epics’ background, the Flemish Karel Jozef de Graeve, in his République des Champs Elysées (Republic of the Elysian Fields, 1806), pointed out the area around the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta.

Finally, the French Gilbert Pillot, in Le Code Secret de l’Odyssée (The Secret Code of the Odyssey, 1969), “saw” Odysseus crossing the Pillars of Heracles and voyaging on the Atlantic, initially to Morocco, the Canaries and Madeira, and then heading north to Ireland, Scotland and Iceland. He most probably thought – quite rightly – that “secret codes” are… sold out, and claimed he discovered “a secret message in the Odyssey”, with a “hidden” itinerary over the Atlantic, from the Canaries to Iceland through the British Isles. The verse epic, he argued, was a Hellenic syndicate’s way of concealing navigation data inside an “entertainment” – acting as an elaborate mnemonic. The Greek mariners could thus remember, yet protect, the key details (sailing directions, times, dangers) of their all-important northern trade route, leading to the sought-after sources of tin: the Cassiterides, or Tin Isles – a terra incognita, as Herodotus complained, impossible to locate, but a key to prosperity mainly in the Bronze Age.

Eternally mapping Homer’s Odyssey

MAPPING HOMER’S ODYSSEY, Armin Wolf concluded that Scheria-Phaeacia should have been in Calabria, Italy, as it is located between two seas: the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian Seas. The capital of the Phaeacians stood at the Tiriolo and Marcellinara region, in the Catanzaro province, he claimed. Additionally, he referred to the dozens (or hundreds?) of attempts to map the Odyssey; several of them we have already presented; but he added some more:

In 1898, an anonymous author with the pseudonym Eumaeus claimed that Odysseus had completed a periplus of Africa (centuries before the Phoenicians, mentioned by Herodotus), and had even discovered America. Pseudo-Eumaeus (the real one was Odysseus’ swineherd and friend) was the first to use the ocean currents to trace the route of the king of Ithaca. In 1925, even the distinguished archaeologist Wilhelm Dörpfeld drew a map of Homer’s world in which, apart from the “established” stops of the Odyssey, he pinpointed the southernmost tip of Africa, and there he located Telepylus of the Laestrygonians and also – like “Eumaeus” – Aeaea, Circe’s island.

After World War II, several maps placed the Odyssey on the Atlantic and North Sea: British Isles, Iceland, Norway. The Swiss F. J. Wil, in 1950, added Faeroes in the list, while the German Otto Zeller, in 1959, expanded the map from Gibraltar and the Azores to Norway and Heligoland. Karl Bartholomäus, professor of archaeogeodesy, in 1977, tried to prove by astronomical calculations that the track from Calypso to Nausicaa leads from the Azores to Heligoland. The German judge Hans Steuerwald, in 1978, “sent” Odysseus to Cornwall and Scotland. The wine produced on Circe’s isle (identified with one of the Hebrides), he added, was in fact Scotch whisky…

Incan Golden Solar disc, used as a star map.
It was lost during the Conquista.

A multitude of writers have created fantastic routes on the oceans of the earth. This mania of inventing “theories” probably reached its climax in 1983, with the Austrian ethnologist Christine Pellech, who argued that Odysseus had sailed right around the earth – before Magellan! She saw no difficulty in the great hero taking just seven days to row from the Mediterranean to Norway, and then in a single day the whole way from Norway to Canada! It goes without saying, of course, that he discovered the Strait of Magellan and Australia…

● More extreme views about the geography of the Homeric epics keep on surfacing, either centered on the Atlantic, or extending all over the globe. Some others turned their eyes to the sky arguing that the Homeric geography is to be found there, and that the Iliad and Odyssey can be decoded as a star map. What we will hear next, I suppose, is that the Trojan War was actually a… Star War!

LABYRINTH OF MAPS

● TROY. NW Asia Minor, Turkey: Hisarlık || E England: Cambridgeshire || SW Finland: Toija.
● LOTUS EATERS (LOTOPHAGI). Libya: a headland in the Gindanes area | Gulf of Sidra || Tunisia: Djerba (Meninx) island.
● CYCLOPES. Italy: SE Sicily, near Etna and Lentini (Leontini) | Marsala, W Sicily | Gulf of Naples || Spain: Balearics archipelago || Scandinavia.
● AEOLIA. Italy, N Sicily: Aeolian Islands (Lipari [Meligounis], or Stromboli [Strongule], or Ustica) || Spain: Balearics archipelago (Mallorca) || Scotland: Shetland archipelago.
● LAESTRYGONIANS. Italy: SE Sicily | N Sardinia || France: S Corsica || Scandinavia || Cuba: Havana || S African tip.
● CIRCE’S AEAEA. Italy: Monte Circeo, Lazio-Latium (< Latinus, Circe’s son) | Ischia, Gulf of Naples || Portugal: Madeira || Norway: Lofoten archipelago || S African tip || Scotland: Hebrides archipelago.
● HADES, UNDERWORLD. NW Hellas: Acheron river || Italy: lake Avernus (< Greek Aornos = with no birds), near Cumae, Campania, where Aeneas also found it || Peru: Amazon River.
● SIRENS. Italy: Cape Faro, by the Strait of Messina | Sirenuse archipelago, or a headland between the Gulfs of Naples and Salerno | Naples itself | Lucanian coast || Haiti or Cuba || Norway: Lofoten archipelago.
● SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS. Italy: Strait of Messina || Canada, Nova Scotia: Bay of Fundy || SW England: St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall’s tip || Norway: Lofoten archipelago.
● THE SUN (HELIOS) ISLAND. Italy: Sicily || Canada: Nova Scotia or Newfoundland.
● CALYPSO’S OGYGIA. Maltese archipelago: Gaudos, modern Gozo || Morocco-Spain: Pillars of Heracles (Ceuta) || Portugal: Azores || Bermuda || Denmark: Faeroes.
● NAUSICAA & PHAEACIANS’ SCHERIA. NW Hellas: Corcyra (Corfu) || Cyprus || Carribean-Gulf of Mexico-Florida, USA || Portugal: Lisbon || Norway: Bergen || Germany: Heligoland || Italy: Calabria.
● ITHACA. W Hellas: Ithaca, or Cephallenia, or Leucas || Andalusia, Spain: Guadalete Delta or Cádiz || Denmark: S Funen.

Celestial map by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit (17th century)

Homer’s mystery: the epimyth of a myth

ANY HYPOTHESIS AT ALL, NO MATTER HOW OUTRAGEOUS, is more plausible than saying “I do not know”… After all, what do these stories show, even those that are crazy and nuts? What else but the greatness of Odysseus and Homer, the creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey; two wonderful epics that the classicists initially treated as written poetry and also the rhapsode as a writer. Until Milman Parry (1902–1935) appeared in the 1920s, and indicated it was oral musical-poetic tradition. His research on the process of oral poetry improvisation through “stock epithets” and “reiteration” (words, phrases, stanzas) established that these formulae were artifacts easily applied to the hexametric lines of oral tradition. A two-word stock epithet (e.g. “the resourceful Odysseus”) is reiterated, permitting the rhapsode to improvise and complete the verse. This research by Parry and his assistant, Albert Lord, was conducted in Yugoslavia.

Homer (a Hellenic name in Aeolis) was born in Smyrna (Ionia’s northern limit), or on the island of Chios, and died on the Cycladic island of Ios. His name means hostage, follower, or blind (ὁ μὴ ὁρῶν: “he who does not see”). Like Thamyris or Hesiod, Homer was a wandering minstrel, who hanged around with ordinary people – fishermen, sailors, potters, shoemakers, or elderly men – at harbours.⁽¹¹⁾ This image, of course, is far from that of a court musician-poet. Rapidity-ease of movement and plainness of expression-thought do not distinguish the great epic poets Virgil, Dante, or Milton. They rather distinguish the humbler epico-lyrical school. But Homer does not belong to that school, neither his poetry is in any sense ballad poetry. This is apparent through the higher artistic structure and value of his poems. It is his noble and powerful style that eventually separates Homer from all forms of ballad poetry and popular epic. His art is distinguished from the works of Virgil, Dante, and Milton, due to the comparative absence of underlying motives or sentiments. In Virgil’s poetry, a sense of the greatness of Rome is the leading motive of a passionate rhetoric, veiled by the considered delicacy of his language. Dante and Milton are still more faithful exponents of the religion and politics of their time. French epics display sentiments of fear or hatred of the Saracens. In Homer’s work, the interest is purely dramatic. There is no antipathy of race or religion. He is principally interested in human feeling or emotion, and also drama. Indeed, his poems are often referred to as dramas.

Above all, we need to remember that Homer recited his epics; Virgil, Dante, and all the rest wrote them down…

• ⁽¹¹⁾ An elderly Homer, it is said, was going around Ios, the last stop of his life’s voyage, together with children, singing the carols of the day.

● Influences from the mythology and literature of Near East have been seen in the Odyssey. Martin West has noted some parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey. Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh travel to the ends of the earth, and even to the underworld. Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Calypso, or Circe, a daughter of the sun-god Helios. Their islands are located at the edges of the world. Gilgamesh also gets directions from the goddess Siduri, who also dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth. Others correlate Homer with Hittite epics. It seems that the great epic poet was equally “resourceful” with his protagonist, Odysseus.

THE “CLASSICAL” MEDITERRANEAN ODYSSEY

● [1] TROY. Setting sail, Odysseus and his men were greeted by friendly and calm waters. He had not committed hubris yet…
● [2] ISMARUS, LAND OF THE CICONES. Odysseus and his men looted the city and robbed it of all its goods. The crew refused to leave quickly and fell asleep on the beach. The next morning the Cicones returned with their fierce kinsmen from the mountains. Odysseus escaped but lost many men. On leaving, his twelve ships were driven off course by fierce storms.
● [3] THE LOTUS EATERS’ ISLAND. Odysseus’ scouting party ate lotus fruit with the natives. This caused them to fall asleep and stop caring about ever going home.
● [4] THE CYCLOPES’ ISLAND. The giant one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus devoured two of Odysseus’ men each day. Odysseus gave Polyphemus intoxicating wine and then blinded him with a wooden stake. As a result, Odysseus was haunted by the wrath of Poseidon, the Cyclops’ father, who cursed Odysseus to wander the sea for years.
● [5] AEOLIA, LAND OF AEOLUS, GOD OF THE WINDS. Aeolus gave Odysseus hospitality for a month and then a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, so as to return safely home. However, the crew foolishly opened the bag while Odysseus slept, just as Ithaca came into sight, thinking that it contained gold. The resulting storm drove the ships back to Aeolia, but Aeolus refused to provide any further help.
● [6] TELEPYLOS, IN THE LAND OF THE LAESTRYGONIANS. These man-eating giants attacked the fleet with boulders, sinking all the ships but one and killing hundreds.
● [7] AEAEA, CIRCE’S ISLAND. Circe turned all of Odysseus’ men into pigs after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes gave Odysseus a drug called moly in order to resist Circe’s magic. She agreed to change Odysseus’ men back to their human form in exchange for his love. They remained on the island for one year feasting and drinking.
● [8] HADES, THE UNDERWORLD. Guided by Circe’s instructions, Odysseus crossed the ocean and reached a harbour at the western edge of the world where he sacrificed to the dead and summoned the spirit of the prophet Tiresias to advise him.
● [9] SIRENS. Odysseus escaped by having all his men plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast. When he heard their beautiful song he begged the men to untie him but they ignored him.
● [10] SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS. Circe advised Odysseus to sail closer to the six-headed monster Scylla, for the whirlpool Charybdis could drown the ship. However, Scylla devoured six of his men.
● [11] THRINACIA, HELIOS’ SACRED ISLAND. Though Odysseus warned his men not to kill any of Helios’ sacred cattle, they disobeyed. Helios’ daughters told their father and he destroyed the ship and all men save Odysseus.
● [12] OGYGIA, CALYPSO’S ISLAND. The nymph made him her lover for seven years. On behalf of Athena, Zeus sent Hermes to tell Calypso to let Odysseus go.
● [13] SCHERIA, THE PHAEACIANS’ ISLAND. Washed up on the shore, Odysseus was found by Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinous, who entertained him and escorted him to Ithaca.
● [14] ITHACA. On the twentieth day of sailing Odysseus finally arrived home.

• >> Chronicle 16. MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS-PARAPLUS
• << Chronicle 14. MUSIC MADE OF BODY AND SOUL

Next Chronicle 16. MEDITERRANEAN PERIPLUS-PARAPLUS ● Periplus: Circumnavigation or Log ● Navigators and Intellectuals ● The Peloponnesian War and Euripides ● Nomos (Law Song)

Chronicle 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

Chronicle 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 25. “CARTHAGO DELENDA EST!”

● Phoenicians and Punics ● Colonization ● Impact of Persian Expansion
● Tartessos: the Apple of Discord ● Battle of Alalia ● Tartessos and
Carthage Ruined ● Macedonia and Rome

Michales Loukovikas

Back to the ancient Mediterranean troubled waters

Prow of a ship on a Punic coin (replica)

IF PLUTARCH’S PARALLEL LIVES PORTRAYED peoples in pairs, one could very well parallel the Minoans to the Canaanite Phoenicians, and the Mycenaeans to the Carthaginian Punics:⁽¹⁾ the latter expanded not only founding colonies, but also through conquests. Crete and Phoenicia, by contrast, with their limited territories, could not become springboards for war expeditions. Expansion was only possible through trade and colonization, thanks to their navigators.

• ⁽¹⁾ Especially in this Chronicle, a clear differentiation is needed between the Canaanite Phoenicians and the Carthaginian Punics, so as to avoid confusion: the term Canaanite refers to Phoenicia, Canaan; the term Punic to Carthage; while the term Phoenician covers both, the entire family in the Mediterranean.

Attican hydria (vessel to carry water; 6th century BCΕ)

The restrictions the Greeks faced, as soon as they awoke from their “Dark Ages”, in order to expand anew to the West, were the “faits accomplis” the Phoenicians had set up in the meantime. The Hellenes had no problem to cross the Aegean as it was a Greek sea. With Troy burned down, no one could block their entrance to the Black Sea – only Nature. That’s why they euphemistically called it Euxine Pontus, “hospitable sea”, trying to appease Poseidon, and dominate there. But they knew that in the Mediterranean competition was fierce. The Phoenicians, who avoided “cruises” in the Aegean and the Black Seas,⁽²⁾ were “omnipresent” anywhere else, having created their commercial network while they voyaged on the seas almost alone. They were motivated by profit through exchange. Part of the profit, though, had to be paid as tribute to the metropolises, or the empires, which took turns in the role of the master of Phoenicia.

• ⁽²⁾ I do not mean to say that the Canaanites did not sail in the Aegean; Hellenic ships voyaged to Canaan, as well. The Graeco-Phoenician relations were age-old, and their exchange was done on equal terms. What I mean is that the Aegean could never become Tartessos: a Canaanite trader voyaging to Hellas was just a trader; the same person in Iberia acted like a monopolist.

Generally speaking, an ancient colony differed from a contemporary one in that the former was a polis (not a country) founded by another polis, the metropolis. In addition, a Hellenic colony was usually sovereign from its inception. However, in the Phoenician world, a colony, although autonomous, had to pay tribute to the metropolis: Carthage e.g. was a dependency of Tyre. This was out of need: the Phoenicians lacked the population to found large self-sustaining colonies and most of them had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, with Carthage being one of the few exceptions.

Magna Graecia, Carthage and Etruria

The Greeks had other problems or incentives: hunger, wars, or various disputes, drove many to other lands. Population growth and cramped spaces in Hellas, in combination with a desire to expand the sphere of economical influence, had motivated them to settle in Italy c. 800 BCE. It was the next place to colonize and Hellenize after the shores of Asia Minor or the Black Sea. In the next 150 years, several poleis founded their colonies along the coast of southern Italy and Sicily, controlling trade routes and dominating the Strait of Messina. This zone came to be known as Magna Graecia. The Phoenicians generally avoided any military confrontations with the Hellenes, unless a land of strategic importance was at stake, e.g. Sicily. To the north, the Greeks faced another adversary, the Etruscans, who had risen to the status of a regional power in Italy, and also expanded in the western Mediterranean, due to the mining and trade of metals. The Hellenic presence was undermining their interests, especially since the Phocaeans began founding colonies on the coasts of Corsica, Gaul, and Iberia. This obliged the Etruscans to ally themselves with the Punics, whose interests also collided with those of the Greeks.

A navigator at Zákantha (Sagunto)

The situation began to change dramatically sometime after 640 BCΕ, when the first Hellene trader dropped anchor at Tartessos. It was possibly the first arrival of a Greek at Iberia in historical times, after the voyages of the Mycenaeans and their legendary heroes (e.g. Heracles) to the peninsula. This sailor was Colaeus (Κωλαῖος), a Samian silver explorer and trader, who arrived at Tartessos c. 640 BCΕ, according to Herodotus. In an era when merchants were anonymous, the “father of history” thought that Colaeus was important enough to note. Since no other Greek merchant had previously sailed to Tartessos, Colaeus was able to obtain a cargo of metal (150 kg of silver) and take it back safely to Samos, thus realizing one of the greatest trade profits at the time. The Massalian Phocaeans followed Colaeus’ route many years later and also dropped anchor at Tartessos. Herodotus wrote that the Phocaeans were the first Hellenes to make long sea-voyages, having discovered and explored the coasts of the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia, and Tartessos. He added that Arganthonios, the famous Tartessian king, welcomed the Greeks and urged them in vain to settle there. But why “in vain”? After all they did settle there. And why was the king so anxious to have them in his land? The answer to this question is given by the historical developments.

Phocaean warrior (500-480 BCE)

Hearing that the Persians were becoming a dominant power in the area of their metropolis, Phocaea, the king gave them 1500 kg of silver to build a defensive wall about their city. Despite this wall, however, Phocaea was conquered in 546 BCΕ. Rather than submit to Persian rule, most Phocaeans abandoned their city. Some of them fled to Chios, others to their colonies in Corsica and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, they founded Elea c. 540 BCΕ, and some eventually returned to Phocaea. It is the period when Persia captured the Hellenic cities on the Asia Minor coast. Ironically, the Greeks were not alone in this tragedy; the Canaanites suffered even more: the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Tyre in 572 BCΕ; then, in 539, the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Canaan; Phoenicia declined further and was obliged to pass the baton to Carthage; the Canaanites moved to their colonies, even to the new rising metropolis. The consolidation of the great Empire of the Achaemenids would re-arrange the map of the entire Mediterranean, not only in the Orient but also in the Occident. The 6th century BCE proved to be a major turning point.

The consolidation of the Achaemenids rearranged the map of the
entire Mediterranean, East and West. It was a major turning point.

Phoenician ship, marble mosaic

PHOENICIAN COLONIES were founded on both routes to Iberia and its mineral wealth: a) along the North African coast, and b) on the northern island route (Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearics).⁽³⁾ As we mentioned before, they paid tribute to either Tyre or Sidon, but neither had actual control on them. This rule changed c. 650 BCΕ, when Carthage gained independence from Tyre, establishing hegemony over other Phoenician colonies in the West. While some of them willingly submitted, giving up their foreign policy, and paying tribute to the Punics, others in Iberia and Sardinia resisted. Carthage sent troops there and appointed magistrates, retaining direct control over them. It was a policy rigidly enforced during the Punic Wars, when Carthage would become the undisputed leader of all Phoenicians, and resulted in a number of Iberian towns siding with the Romans. If that was the treatment reserved for their kindred, their brothers, one can easily imagine what would happen to all the rest.

• ⁽³⁾ What was the purpose of the Phoenician colonies on the second route to Iberia? The first one was the natural route linking Phoenicia with Iberia sailing by the North African coast; while the second one was the natural route linking Greece with Iberia voyaging from island to island. So, this was not a trade route for the Phoenicians. Its exclusive purpose was to block the Hellenes to sail west: it was of strategic importance.

Dido building Carthage (The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire), by J. M. W. Turner (1815)

The founder of Carthage, according to Greek historians, was Elissa, renamed as Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid. The city was built on a promontory, making it master of maritime trade in mare nostrum. All ships crossing the sea had to sail between Tunisia and Sicily, affording the city great power and influence. Founded in 814 BCΕ, it was one of the largest cities in Hellenistic times (by some estimates, only Alexandria was larger). The Punics, unlike other Phoenicians, had a landowning aristocracy, who controlled trans-Saharan trade routes and ruled the hinterland of North Africa. Besides, unlike the Romans, and despite the lack of manpower, Punic citizenship was exclusive, and the goal of the state was more focused on protecting commerce. Exempt from taxation, the citizens were primarily involved in this domain as traders or workers. As a result, Carthage could not afford to wage long wars, because commercial activities slowed down.⁽⁴⁾

Dido and the walled city of Carthage, medal (ca 1550 CE)

• ⁽⁴⁾ This contradiction is the superpowers’ Achilles’ heel. Carthage, as a commercial empire, would prefer peace; but as a commercial empire, had to conduct wars continuously – and this is in fact what happened: first against the Hellenes, and then against the Romans. In addition, the Punics’ refusal to grant their neighbours privileges, in order to integrate them into their society, turned them into a small, privileged, but vulnerable minority until the end, and obliged them to rely more and more on mercenaries during the wars. This would prove fatal for Carthage…

The war machine, however, was very efficient. Its navy was one of the largest in the Mediterranean, using serial production to maintain high numbers at a low cost, while the army included the now extinct North African elephants trained for war. Carthage turned west and became the “middleman” between mineral resource-rich Iberia and the Orient. The eastward expansion along the African coast was blocked by the Greek colony of Cyrene, founded in 630 BCΕ. The wars against Hellenes were due to the vulnerability of the Punic economy to Greek competition, since products “Made in Carthage” were inferior to Hellenic goods. The Greek colonists posed a twofold threat: a) undercutting the Phoenicians by offering better products; and b) taking over the distribution network.

Wars against Hellenes due to the vulnerability of Punic economy to
Greek competition: Punic products were inferior to Hellenic goods.
The Greeks posed a twofold threat to: a) undercut the Phoenicians by
offering better products, and b) take over the distribution network.

Punic gold coin with a horse

The empire depended heavily on its trade with Tartessos and Iberia in general, from which it obtained vast quantities of silver, lead, copper, and cassiterite that was essential for the manufacture of bronze. Carthage’s trade relations with the Iberians and the naval might that enforced its monopoly on this trade and with tin-rich Britain allowed it to be the sole significant tin broker and bronze maker. This monopoly, one of the major sources of power and prosperity for Carthage, should be maintained at any cost; a Punic sea merchant would rather crash his ship upon the rocky shores of Britain than reveal to any antagonist how it could be safely approached. In addition to being the sole significant distributor of tin, its central location in mare nostrum and control of the waters between Sicily and Tunisia (those “Pillars of Heracles” within the Mediterranean) allowed it to check the Orient’s supply of tin, as well. Carthage was also the largest producer of silver, mined in Iberia or North Africa, and, after the tin monopoly, this was one of its most profitable trades. The purple dye was also one of the most highly valued commodities, being worth 15-20 times its weight in gold. Ancient sources agree that Carthage via its trade had become perhaps the wealthiest city in the world. However, without the monopoly on trade with Tartessos and Iberia at large, the Punic Empire was inconceivable. Its leaders should have been aware of this fact when they replaced the Canaanites as overlords of Iberia c. 575 BCΕ. Sometime afterwards the Massaliote Phocaeans turned up at Tartessos. King Arganthonios’ friendship with the Hellenes must have greatly annoyed Carthage that felt its monopoly was at stake. It was urgent to take action against the “intruders”, in order to establish itself as the greatest economic and military power in the West of the Mediterranean.

The Punic Empire was inconceivable without Iberia.
The Battle of Alalia: a Grecian “Cadmean victory”…

Trireme, a mosaic from Carthage

This “action” took place in the Tyrrhenian Sea c. 537 BCΕ: it was the historic naval Battle of Alalia. When the metropolis Phocaea fell to Persia, most citizens chose to move to Alalia (or Aléria in Roman times), their colony in Corsica. But this led to a decline of Punic and Etruscan trade in the island and to an alliance between Carthage and Etruria. Their joint fleet of 120 ships, disguised as a pirate force, was defeated by just 60 Phocaean ships carrying people to Alalia. It would have been a great tactical victory of the Greeks, who wiped out an enemy force twice as large; but they lost almost two-thirds of their own fleet. Herodotus said it was a Cadmean victory – what would later be described as a Pyrrhic victory.⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Cadmean is a victory involving one’s own ruin; from Cadmus, legendary founder of Thebes, who required water from a spring guarded by a water-dragon and all his companions perished. Herodotus could not know the subsequent similar phrase, Pyrrhic victory, achieved at such a devastating cost that it is a prelude to defeat. It is named after Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans twice in 280-279 BCΕ during the Pyrrhic War. The Romans suffered even greater casualties but had a much larger supply of men. Pyrrhus is reported as saying: “Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone”…

King Pyrrhus of Epirus

Realizing that they could not withstand another attack, the Hellenes evacuated Corsica, and sought refuge in Rhegion. According to a legend, Greek prisoners were stoned to death by the Etruscans, while the (more practical) Punics sold them into slavery. Etruria got hold of Corsica, and Carthage kept Sardinia. The Punics would fight two more major naval battles with Massalia, losing both, but still managing to safeguard Iberia and close the Pillars of Heracles, the Strait of Gibraltar, to Hellenic shipping, thus containing Grecian expansion in Iberia until 480 BCΕ. The Massaliotes made no gains and just kept control of their Iberian colonies. It seemed as if the Iberian status quo remained in place; but in fact, a great tragedy was unfolding in Andalusia with the collapse and demise of the Tartessian polity and civilization.

Tartessos… delenda est!

SOME AUTHORS CONSIDER that this Phocaean victory/defeat in Alalia and the absence of Greek traders in Tartessos led to the collapse… Here we go again! During all those centuries of development, these authors saw only Phoenicians trading there. But, all of a sudden, the Hellenic presence became so vital for the Tartessians’ survival that they died out when the Punics cut their “oxygen” off! Other scholars offer the alternative of an “armed conflict”, but in general terms, and avoid being precise as to who was fighting whom. There are also versions of the Tartessian tragedy that specify both the perpetrators and time: “The Punics brought about the collapse by 530 BC”. Carthage should have put Tartessos in “quarantine”, sometime after the death of Arganthonios c. 550 BCΕ. This was the reason why ten years later, with the Punics and Etruscans allied against the Hellenes, the Tartessians did not remain “prudently neutral”; so, they stood by the Greeks and paid dearly. The situation did not allow “luxuries” such as neutralities…

The island of Gadir > Gades > Cádiz

Emboldened by the outcome of the Battle of Alalia, the Punics unleashed such a “reign of terror” that even their kindred in Gadir turned against them. The Punics besieged promptly the fraternal Canaanite colony and captured it. The Gaditans suffered so much and for so long that in 206 BCΕ, during the second Punic War, they rebelled against Carthage; and when Gadir fell to the Romans, they hailed the victors. Certainly, the new overlords were no better: just one year later, the Roman presence was shaken by a mutiny and an Iberian uprising against them. There was at least one aspect where the Canaanites proved to be superior to the Punics: just after the fall of Gadir, the Persian king Cambyses became master of Egypt in 525 BCΕ. Carthage was then spared a trial of arms against the Persian Empire, since the Canaanites refused to lend ships to the Persians for an African expedition against their own brothers. It seems that at least for the Canaanites, unlike the Punics, blood ties were still important. But even without losing a war, the Punic Empire may have paid tribute irregularly to the Great King of Kings.

The Punics were spared a trial of arms against the Persians, because the
Canaanites did not lend ships for a Persian expedition against Carthage.

Bronce Carriazo: a Tartessian bronze plaque found near Seville representing a local goddess of the marshes and assimilated to Astarte and Hathor

Carthage proceeded to destroy Tartessos and drive Greeks away from southern Iberia, defending its trade monopoly in the western Mediterranean, with attacks even on the merchant ships of its rivals. Historical reports indicate that Tartessos had little military defense, as its success was always based on trade and friendly relations with its neighbours. This is hard to believe, however, for the kingdom was so wealthy that many Iberian tribes would covet it. There should have been defensive walls and/or deterrent land and sea forces, i.e. army and navy. As for the year of the catastrophe, in several historical texts we can find one that sets the date as 533 BCΕ, i.e. it is consistent with what was cited before (“by 530 BC”), and another one sometime later, around 500 BCΕ. We cannot be sure if the two dates refer to the same event, or if there was an “armed conflict” between Punics and Tartessians that lasted about thirty years. “It is reported”, we can read in one of those texts, “that around 500 BC, Tartessos was attacked by the Carthaginians, who destroyed the capital and left it without protection from the sea.” It makes sense if we remember those accounts that Tartessos had a sophisticated system to regulate the river flow of its tidal river, and also its supposed similarity to Atlantis.

“Tartessos was attacked by the Punics, who destroyed
the capital and left it without protection from the sea.”

Auletris (woman playing aulos), Iberian high-relief from Osuna (Seville province, end of 3rd or beginning of 2nd century BCE)

The abrupt disappearance, and the fact that its capital has never been found, led to a lot of speculation: how could such an important civilization disappear with no traces left behind? If the capital eludes us, there are Tartessian cities that can “speak” the truth. Balsa–Tavira in the Algarve was violently destroyed in the end of the 6th century, probably together with the capital and other sites, when the Punics proceeded to impose their “iron will” (see Chronicle 21, footnote 11). Maenaca (Mainakē), the Hellenic colony founded close to Málaga under the aegis of Tartessos, is claimed it was also destroyed c. 500 BCE. We additionally know that many Canaanite colonies were deserted at the same time. We cannot be sure if this was connected with Phoenicia’s decline, or Carthage’s “ethnic cleansing” operations, or some local rebellions. Despite the numerous excavations, it has not been possible to locate with certainty either Maenaca, or Acra Leucá at Alicante, or the city of Tartessos. Whatever the result of all these continuous efforts, the ancient texts that mention these cities cannot be ignored; otherwise, the story of Tartessos and its demise should be treated as fiction, as well…

There is a tendency to present the Canaanites as “peaceful colonists”, while the Punics as “warlike colonialists”. However, we have seen the Phoenicians acting in a manner anything but peaceful whenever they could “manage” the adversary.⁽⁶⁾ In a text on the History of old Onuba (Huelva), except numerous open questions and hypotheses, we have some interesting data presented. Tartessos, it seems, began gradually sinking into crisis and decline in the 8th century BCΕ, at a time when there was a co-existence of Phoenician and Grecian colonies such as Gadir and Portus Menesthei, which was identified as a Phocaean site.⁽⁷⁾ The author was impressed by the closeness of the Greek site to the Tartessian capital and noted what the archaeologists in Huelva had observed, i.e. a decrease in Phoenician pottery, in parallel with an increase in Hellenic ceramics of far better quality.⁽⁸⁾

Hellenic helmet, Asta Regia (Jerez de la Frontera), close
to Portus Menesthei

• ⁽⁶⁾ We can’t say that this mentality has been a Phoenician peculiarity; it’s a human characteristic: virtually everyone acts likewise. The Hellenes e.g. very often acted as the “bullies” of antiquity (though this feature sometimes saved them, as it happened during the Persian Wars). Regarding the Canaanites, let’s go back to Chronicle 20. The Enigmatic Sea Peoples: one of them

“the Tjeker, moving to Canaan, captured the city-state of Dor and turned it into a large, well-fortified capital of their kingdom. Dor was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCΕ by the expanding Phoenicians, who were checked by the Philistines, and then by the Hebrews.”

And, of course, except these minor local powers that blocked Phoenician expansion, there were superpowers, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. Conclusion: there was absolutely no room for Phoenician expansion in the Levant.

• ⁽⁷⁾ Amid all this speculation and conjecture, the author claims that the 8th century was “a time when Phoenician and Greek colonies, such as Gadir and Portus Menesthei, coexisted”. When did this coexistence actually occur? Was it in the 8th or in the 6th century? In Chronicle 22, both versions were presented:

Tartessian King Arganthonios

“The Hellenic cities on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia probably appeared on the ‘map’ after the foundation of Massalia, c. 600 BCΕ”. However, “the Hellenes of the Homeric era (at least their goods) arrived at Iberian ports… in the 9th or 8th century BCΕ. Those who transported the Greek ware… might very well have been the Phoenicians… What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc.”

• ⁽⁸⁾ The author seems to be obsessed with the Greeks, presenting them as a destabilizing factor, allegedly terrorizing the countryside and promoting their goods by force! He accepts, however, that these goods were better in quality! In such cases, the ones who resort to violence are the monopolists with less attractive products, so as to avoid free competition. Anyway, he admits that all his hypotheses are not based on archaeological finds.

The worsening of the situation in the next century is manifested by the almost total disappearance of open settlements, with the walling of cities. During the 6th century, we notice the outbreak of another crisis evidenced by the decrease of mineral exports. Its tragic climax is attested with the destruction of Tartessos by the Punics, because it was an ally of the Greeks. The conquerors, nota bene, had no intention to eliminate just the resistance of the conquered, indicating how merciless this confrontation had been, equivalent to what we now describe as “genocide”. The descendant culture of the Turdetani in southern Andalusia marks a return to the socio-economic features of the late Atlantic Bronze Age within the Iron Age conditions of the 5th century BCΕ, which is translated as a regression of at least two or three centuries.

The Battle of Salamis, by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1868)

The Phoenicians’ double crushing defeat in Sicily and Salamis

AFTER IMPOSING “PAX PUNICA” in southern Iberia, Carthage turned its attention to another land of strategic importance mostly controlled by the Hellenes: Sicily. The Punics planned the largest overseas expedition thus far: after three years of preparations, they sailed for Sicily. It was the first Sicilian War,⁽⁹⁾ which coincided with Xerxes’ expedition against Greece in 480 BCΕ, prompting speculation about a possible alliance between Carthage and Persia. But even with no official pact, Carthage should have timed its expedition with that of the Achaemenids to exclude the possibility of any aid sent from Hellas to Sicily. The outcome of both expeditions was disastrous for the invaders. For the Phoenicians it was a double defeat: not only of the Punics in Sicily, but also of the Canaanites fighting in the naval Battle of Salamis under Persian orders. The repercussions brought sweeping changes in Carthage: an oligarchic Republic was then established, and also an isolationist policy was followed for the next 70 years when Carthage took no action against the Hellenes, nor even aided any of their rivals. Economically, sea trade with the Orient was cut off by the Greeks in Hellas, while the cities of Magna Graecia boycotted Punic merchants. This led to the development of trade with the West and caravan-borne trade with the East. Focus was shifted on the exploration and expansion in Africa and Europe. This isolationism explains why the two great maritime empires in the 5th century BCΕ, Carthage and Athens, were not engaged in war. Athens began massive exports of pottery in this period to Iberia, especially in the southeast. But again, as in the previous Canaanite era of Iberia, the archaeologists do not know yet if the ships that transported the ware were Punic or Athenian.

The ancient theatre of Tauromenium (Taormina) in Sicily

• ⁽⁹⁾ Essentially, the seven Sicilian Wars or, more properly, the Greek-Punic Wars, were a lamentable continuation of the relentless “tradition” of civil war among the Hellenes, with Carthage being always involved, changing sides, and finally winning, as a rule, the lion’s share. These wars, the longest lasting conflicts of classical antiquity (600–265 BCΕ), would culminate in the Punic Wars (264–146 BCE) against the Romans, and end with Carthage being razed to the ground.

While Carthage was engaged in another Sicilian War, the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great saw the defeat of the city-states in Greece and the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. All the Phoenician cities in Canaan submitted except Tyre that was besieged and sacked in 332 BCΕ. The thriving Greeks in the Hellenistic period gradually ousted the last remnants of the formerly dominant Phoenicians over trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean, while their culture disappeared entirely in Canaan. So, the Punics were the last of the Phoenicians. And they were spared another perilous ordeal when Alexander died in Babylon, in 323 BCΕ, while raising a fleet in Cilicia to invade Carthage, Italy, and Iberia…

The Punics were spared another ordeal when Alexander died,
while raising a fleet to invade Carthage, Italy, and Iberia…

Alexander with Heracles’ lion sculp,
cast stone plaque (1st-4th century CE)

Battles of the Diadochi with the three-way struggle among Antigonid Macedon, Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria were also good news for Carthage avoiding unnecessary conflicts with the successors. Trade relations were reinstated with Egypt, together with sea-borne access to the eastern markets for the first time since 480 BCΕ. It seemed as if Carthage had also inherited the Phoenicians’ good fortune, since two superpowers, the Persian and Macedonian, could not realize their plans to campaign against its domain. But the confrontation with Rome would prove inevitable. The Punic Wars were a series of three conflicts lasting from 264 to 146 BCΕ. The first one was fought for the control of Sicily. Carthage, finally, evacuated it and paid heavy war indemnities. The end of the war found Rome with a large navy able to prevent sea-borne invasion of Italy, control sea trade routes, and invade foreign shores. Sardinia and Corsica were also seized, while Carthage had plunged into another war with its mercenaries. At last, the most powerful state that emerged in the western Mediterranean was Rome.

Hannibal in Italy: his feat in crossing the Alps with elephants, though many did not survive,
passed into European legend: detail of a fresco by Jacopo Ripanda (ca 1510)

Carthage spent the years after the war improving its finances and expanding its empire in Hispania (Iberia), preparing for the next war that is most remembered for Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with elephants. He resoundingly defeated the Romans in several battles, but was unable to cause a break between Rome and its allies. Equally important, despite his many pleas, he never received sufficient reinforcements, because Carthage opted to send extra forces only to its source of wealth, Iberia. Thus Hannibal was not able to achieve his goal of ultimately conquering Rome and winning the war. This gave the Romans self-confidence, while they were fighting simultaneously in Italy, Sicily, Iberia, and also against Carthage’s ally, Macedonia. Finally, the war was taken to Africa, where Carthage was defeated and its control reduced to only the city itself.

“Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est!” (Cato)

Punic tetradrachm with Elissa-Dido and a lion

The resurgence of hostilities fifty years later, when Carthage recovered its wealth and power, was linked with anti-Roman agitations in Iberia and Hellas. Cato the Elder gave the “motto” for the annihilation of Carthage, ending all his speeches, no matter what the topic, saying: “Carthago delenda est!”, “Carthage must be destroyed!”.⁽¹⁰⁾

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ Cato (234–149 BCE) was a reactionary statesman, the first to write a Roman history in Latin, and prominent for his anti-Greek views, since he saw Hellenism as a threat to Roman culture.

Rome presented a series of unacceptable demands, claiming that Carthage must be demolished and rebuilt away from the coast, deep into Africa. In 146 BCΕ, after a three-year siege, it was systematically sacked and burned to the ground, with the fields salted to make the ground completely infertile and useless for future generations.⁽¹¹⁾ No Punic war records exist, since the books of the Library of Carthage were distributed among African tribes and none remain on Punic history.

In the end, Elissa-Dido was deprived of her immortal fame – by Aeneas…

• ⁽¹¹⁾Ares Alexandrou, Ascent (conclusion):

(…) remain there and look on to the end
look at them, those with keys and others with handcuffs
who’ll be demolishing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . as allies
roofs bridges wells
look at them
while they’ll be leveling down the town you’ve built
and sowing it with salt.

Elissa-Dido was finally deprived of her immortal fame – by Aeneas…

• >> Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS-CHECK
• << Chronicle 24. THE TRIUMPH OF CRETINISM

Next Chronicle 26. IBERIAN CROSS(-CHECK) ● Naucratis ● Adolf Schulten and Dan Stanislawski ● The Trojan War Odysseys ● Metal Attraction ● Cassiterides ● Balearics ● Arganthonios ● Graeco-Tartessian Friendship Against Phoenicians and Punics

Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

Chronicle 22. AN IBERIAN PERIPLUS REVIVAL

/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 22. ΑΝΑΒΙΩΣΗ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΙΒΗΡΙΑΣ

● Tartessos (B) ● Colonies in Provence, Iberia, Maurusia ●
Tin Route ● Democritus and Plato ● Topography Beyond
the Pillars of Heracles

Michales Loukovikas

AFTER THE SEA PEOPLES’ RAIDS and the following Bronze Age collapse in the 12th century BCE, the Phoenicians started setting up their sea-trade monopoly. Carrying out their “master plan”, and enjoying a free hand, as their antagonists were passing through a long “Dark Age”, “they headed straight for the gold, silver, and tin of Iberia”, and became “partners” with the Tartessians. At last, they were masters of the Mediterranean! A lot of Phoenicians chose to settle in local towns, profiting from their hospitality. That’s what Strabo implied writing that “the best cities of Tartessos were inhabited by the Phoenicians”.

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

Phoenician gold ring with two dolphins, a symbol of Gadir

• ⁽¹⁾ Gadir means wall, fort, and this in turn means 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.

● The Phoenician settlement was built on one of three neighbouring islets in the Gulf of Cádiz, known as Erytheia, Cotinussa, and Antípolis, which are all Greek toponyms.

Soon the entire coastline around this strategic area, on both seas and continents – the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Europe and Africa – was full of Phoenician settlements. However, they were more densely concentrated there, in the south, than further up the coast. So, 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 strongly desired an end to the Phoenician economic monopoly, the Greeks stepped on Andalusian soil and founded Maenaca (Mainakē), very close to the Phoenician Malaca, on the coast of Málaga, possibly at modern Vélez-Málaga. The Massaliote Periplus, which gave an account of a sea voyage round Iberia in the 6th century BCE, placed Maenaca in the dominion and under the aegis of Tartessos: the peninsula was a magnet for everyone due to its great wealth and strategic importance.

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 Maenaca, Strabo pointed out in his Geographica that its ruins, close to Malaca, could still be seen in his time (64 BCE – 24 CE); he additionally 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 Maenaca.⁽²⁾ But 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), c. 600 BCE, by Phocaeans from Ionia in Asia Minor – something that the Punics had tried but failed to prevent. This city gradually became a thriving trading centre and a major rival of Carthage for the Iberian markets, and especially the tin trade through Gaul-France.

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

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

Later on the Phocaeans founded Alalia in Corsica c. 566 BCE and moved towards Iberia. Some popular theories claim that at least one of their settlements, Rhode (modern Roses), at the northeastern tip of Iberia, dates back to the 8th century, as a colony of the Aegean island of Rhodes; but in fact, it seems it was founded in the 6th century BCE by Massaliotes, perhaps with some admixture of colonists from nearby Emporion (today’s Empúries). Still, as in the case of the Phoenician settlement in Gadir, Rhode might have been nothing more than a small seasonal trading post of Rhodes in the 8th century; or perhaps, the colonists that settled there, two centuries later, were mainly Rhodians serving in the Massaliote army, along with Cretans, in a special force charged with surveying vigilantly the Punic movements in southern Iberia.

Nevertheless, popular theories should not be discredited and discarded without serious thought or research, just because they are “popular”; those concerning Rhode, for sure, were not born out of nothing. Sailing towards Provence, we can see that traders from Rhodes were visiting this coast since 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 traces left by Rhodians in Provence (and elsewhere) precede those of the Phocaeans, the founders of Massalia.

Hellenic colonies in Provence and Corsica

Hellenes from other cities of Ionia also traded in the western Mediterranean, as far as Iberia, but very little remains from that period. As regards the Phocaeans, it is obvious they went there not just to trade, but also to settle. A foundation myth reported by Aristotle in the 4th century BCE, and by Latin authors later on, 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 (Agathē Tychē), Nice (Nicaea), Antibes (Antípolis), Monaco (Mónoecos), et al. An Olbia (modern Hyères) was founded here in Provence, and another one in Sardinia.

A Tin Route linked Cornwall to Massalia through the Channel,
the Seine valley, Burgundy and the Rhône-Saône valleys.

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

“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”, claimed Charles Ebel in the 1960s. Nevertheless, this idea of a Massaliote Empire 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 Gaul to Brittany, because of the trade relations of the Massaliotes with the Celts, especially for the transport of tin from Brittany, or 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. Caesar reported (during his conquest of Gaul) that the Helvetii were in possession of documents in Greek, and all Gaulish coins used the Hellenic script until about 50 BCE. The Massaliote coinage by that time circulated freely in Gaul, influencing coinage as far afield as Britain. Hellenic Marseille eventually became a centre of culture, and that is why several Roman parents sent their children there to be educated.

The Massaliote Periplus Revival

ΟUR MASSALIOTE PERIPLUS REVIVAL SETS SAIL from Massalia’s harbour. Leaving both Rhode and Emporion behind us, we drop anchor between Barcinōn and Callípolis. Legends say that Barcinōn, modern Barcelona, was founded either by Heracles, in the middle of 12th century BCE, or Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, in the second half of 3rd century BCE. At that time, the Laietani, defined as a Thracian–Iberian people, settled in this area. Some scholars identify Barcinōn with Callípolis, a small Greek colony, which was founded in the 6th century by the Llobregat river. It is described by Avienus in his Ora Maritima (Sea Coast), based on the Massaliote Periplus. But Callípolis should have been at some distance off Barcelona, between Tàrraco (Tarragona) and another Hellenic port, that of Sálauris (Salou), on the Costa Daurada (or Golden Coast) of what is now Catalonia.

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

● The legend about Heracles as a founder of Barcelona is unrelated to his colonizing effort in Andalusia following two of his labours there (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; we also need to remember that Heracles deserted the Argonauts (or… they deserted him) while he was searching for his companion, Hylas, in the outset of the expedition, when the Argo was still in the Sea of Marmara. Others, however, say that Heracles went as far as Colchis with the Argonauts, got the Girdle of the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, and 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. But do we know how they fled?

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.

● There have been several versions of the Argonauts’ expedition – about their route, even crew (see Chronicle 15, footnotes 7 and 8). There is unanimity on the way they voyaged to Colchis; but differences appear about their way back. Pindar (6th–5th centuries BCE), the celebrated lyric poet, sang in his Fourth Pythian Ode that Jason moved eastwards (not westwards) and, through the Phasis and Cyrus (Rioni and Kura) rivers, sailed out to the Caspian Sea. Then, based on the geographic knowledge of the time, he found himself in the Oceanus River encircling the earth, turned south and west, voyaging as far as the Red Sea, and in this way he returned to the Mediterranean. Herodorus of Heraclea (between 6th and 4th centuries BCE) adopted a more realistic approach that the Argonauts used the same route to go 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 (see Chronicle 16, Peripli of the Classical and Hellenistic eras), gave a wider scope to the Argonauts’ nostos. Through the Maeotis (Azov) lake and the Tanais (Don) river, he maintained, Jason found his way up to the Baltic Sea and, sailing by round Europe, he returned home to Iolcus. The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BCE), the only surviving Hellenistic epic, is far more detailed and adventurous, but never sails beyond Italy. Finally, the Argonautica Orphica, written much later (5th–6th centuries CE) but in the name of Orpheus, who was one of the Argonauts, borrows from all the above, emphasizing the role of the Thracian musician, poet, and prophet. The narration is more mythological, probably because of the anonymous author’s everyday life in a hostile Christian environment, after the old gods were violently thrown out (see our additional Chronicles 23-24: The Genocide of the Hellenes, and The Triumph of Cretinism). In the beginning, he adopts the Pindaric version, but as soon as he finds himself on the Caspian waters, he follows in Timaeus’ steps and turns north, not south: the river now is not the Don but the even longer Volga, and the result, of course, is another periplus of Europe.

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

BACK TO OUR IBERIAN PERIPLUS. Sailing on while keeping a steady course to the southwest, we arrive at Zácantha or Arse, founded by Greeks from the island of Zácynthus in the 7th century BCE. Captured and destroyed by Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War (219 BCE), after eight months of the citizens’ heroic resistance related by Livy, it was rebuilt by the Romans who transcribed it as Saguntum, hence its current name of Sagunto.

After Valentia (Valencia), our course turns southeast due to a headland jutting out on the coast of Iberia. Sailing past this area formed by Montgó Massif, we stop at the first port marked on the map of Tartessos, Hēmeroskopeion, located at modern Dénia, in the Valencian province of Alicante. It 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, because there was a temple of Artemis on the cape where it was situated. Hēmeroscopeion 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 its modern name, from Diana, i.e. Artemis in Latin. Apart from its strategic location, the city was equally important for some iron mines nearby.

Lady of Elche

Althaea (today’s Altea) was located further down the road, and then Acra Leucá, also built by the Massaliotes on a White Promontory, or Acropolis, as the name indicates, c. 325 BCE. The city passed to the Punics who used it as a military base and trade post. Its Carthaginian name did not survive, but the Romans called it Castrum Album, meaning almost the same. Most archaeologists agree that the Roman town Lucentum, or Lucentia (Luminous city), is Acra Leucá – what is now the modern city of Alicante.

Helice, modern Elche (Elx in Valencian), was founded around 600 BCE near Acra Leucá to the South. The Achaean settlers named it after their native city.⁽³⁾ Here, too, Hannibal was a fateful man. It was rebuilt by the Romans as Ilici. There was also a small walled coastal settlement, the Roman Portus Ilicitanus, Harbour of Helice, mentioned by Claudius Ptolemy in his Geography; it’s today’s Santa Pola. Built with a regular layout in the Grecian tradition near the Vinalopó river in the 4th century BCE, it served as an emporium oriented to Greek-Iberian exchange. But its life span was brief (c. 80 years), which is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the Massaliote colony Alonís, or Alonae, was there. So, despite Ptolemy’s mention that created more confusion, attention was recently turned to a nearby town, La Vila Joiosa, as a possible location of this colony. The increasing amount of archaeological evidence for Greek presence in Santa Pola, combined with the Graeco-Iberian script used in Alicante and Murcia, confirm the long-term direct contact between Hellenes and Iberians in this area. The celebrated Lady of Elche (Dama de Elche, or Dama d’Elx in Valencian), a once polychrome stone bust of a woman, is the most important find there. It’s considered as an excellent example of Iberian sculpture with strong Hellenic influence. It is claimed (Encyclopaedia of Religion) that the Lady is “directly” linked to the Punic goddess Tanit. If so, then perhaps, in the absence of Phoenician sculptural standards, the Grecian model was unchallenged.

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

• ⁽³⁾ Helice (Ἑλίκη) was an ancient Hellenic 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 by, 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 (Massia) > Qart Hadasht > Cartago Nova > Cartagena

The trading contacts of southeastern Iberia with Tartessos, Hellas, Phoenicia and Magna Graecia, together with the absorbed influences, gave rise to an Iberian culture that Pliny and Strabo called the Contestani. Cartagena, originally named Mastia, or Massia, is located here. Mastia (or Massia) was also the name of an Iberian tribe allied with the Tartessian confederacy. The first description of this city with high walls appears in the Massaliote Periplus, and then in Avienus’ Ora maritima. Mastia is also mentioned in a treaty between Carthage and Rome in 348, marking the boundary between them in Iberia. Its mineral wealth, fisheries, agriculture, and harbour, one of the best in the western Mediterranean, made the Punics re-found it in 228 BCE as Qart Hadasht (“New City”), honouring it with a name identical to the metropolis. The Romans renamed it as Carthago Nova in order to distinguish it from the mother city. The importance the Punics attached to their “New City”, so as to serve as their local capital and springboard for the conquest of Iberia, shows that Gadir could not serve this purpose, among other things, due to antagonisms with the Gaditan Phoenicians, which would explode – even before the Punic Wars – in open hostilities.

Greeks and natives “became united in a single state,
consisting of barbarian and Hellenic laws.” (Strabo)

Serapis or Asclepius, Hellenistic sculpture 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 now live on the mainland. Emporion is a double city (a dipolis), divided by a wall, having before, as neighbours, some [indigenous] Indigetes… Because 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 after a spirit of mutual trust had been established through cooperation; and c) a commonwealth.

The Contestani’s neighbours to the southwest were the Bastetani or Bastuli, and their towns, Baria, Ábdera, Sexi, Malaca, Carteia, Bailo, are mostly mentioned as Phoenician colonies. Baria (present-day Vera, or the fishing village of Villaricos), is said to have financed Hannibal’s campaigns from the local silver mines. There follow Ábdera (today’s Adra), and Sexi (Ex), modern Almuñécar, whose residents sometimes still call themselves sexitanos; a Phoenician settlement was “planted” there in about 800 BCE. As for the seaport town of Ábdera, it was used by the Punics as an emporium. Very few make clear it was a former Grecian colony…

Break: Ábdera, Democritus and Plato

Diomedes Devoured by His (man-eating) Horses,
by Gustave Moreau

● 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 Ábdera in either Thrace or Andalusia. According to myth, both cities were founded by Heracles in memory of his companion, Ábderus, who was devoured by either Diomedes’ mares or Geryon’s cattle, during the 8th or 10th Heraclean labour respectively. Historically, Ἄβδηρα, a city-state on the coast of Thrace, 17 km northeast of the mouth of the Nestos River and almost opposite Thasos, in today’s prefecture of Xanthe (where I was born), was a colony of Clazomenae, founded in 654 BCE. Its prosperity, however, dates from 544 BCE, when most residents of Teos (including the poet Anacreon) migrated to Ábdera to escape the Persian yoke. Clazomenae and Teos were Ionian cities of Asia Minor in the Smyrna area. Ábdera became a wealthy city, the second richest among the allies of Athens, as it was a prime port for trade with the interior of Thrace. As a valuable prize, it was sacked repeatedly by Thracians, Macedonians (from several areas, such as Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt) and Romans. The result was a decline in the second half of the 4th century BCE – which was attributed to other reasons, as well: the air of Ábdera, claimed Cicero, was proverbial in Athens as causing stupidity. Yet, it was the place of birth of several philosophers, such as Democritus, Protagoras, Anaxarchus, or Hecataeus of Ábdera, who was also a historian. In addition, Anacreon lived there for some time, but showed no signs of idiocy…

Democritus on an old Greek coin of 10 drachmas

● Democritus (Δημόκριτος, “chosen of the people”, c. 460 – c. 370 or c. 357 BCE), the “father of modern science”, was ignored in Athens. Plato, though he never mentioned him (but, on the contrary, he devoted a dialogue on Protagoras), disliked Democritus so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books!⁽⁴⁾ They proved to be very effective: we now know just citations of his works, since all of them disappeared in the Dark Middle Ages. Democritus and his master, Leucippus, from Miletus, or from Ábdera, were those that formulated an atomic theory of the universe – the idea that everything is composed of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. Democritus travelled a lot 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 – but was intentionally misunderstood: they claimed that he laughed at the foolishness of men. That’s why they described him as the laughing philosopher, with Abderitan (incessant) laughter, and also an Abderite, meaning a scoffer, or mocker. The Athenian stupidity about the Abderitan air must have jumped from Plato’s mouth into Cicero’s writings because of Democritus…

Democritus was ignored in Athens. Plato, though he never mentioned him, disliked him so much that he asked from his pupils to burn all his books!

• ⁽⁴⁾ No wonder that Plato, who rejected the Athenian democracy as prone to anarchy, is included in a list of major advocates of anti-democratic thought (see Chronicle 4. On Democracy), together with: Friedrich Nietzsche (German philosopher, who discarded the so-called “democracy” of his time as “Christianity’s heir”); Charles Maurras (French writer, monarchist and fascist, who asked for the assassination of his opponents); Hubert Lagardelle (French syndicalist, a Proudhonist who later degenerated into a fascist); Robert Michels (German-Italian sociologist, who passed from socialism and revolutionary syndicalism also to fascism); Oswald Spengler (German historian, a “critical” supporter of Hitler, although he considered him vulgar); Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt (German Nazi philosophers); Elazar Shach (Israeli fundamentalist rabbi, a champion of Judaic law and an enemy of democracy). Within this framework, with this “company” (except, of course, Nietzsche), what is the real meaning and worth of the Platonic Republic?

● See the next two additional Chronicles 23-24, on the incessant struggle between the defenders and the opponents of Freedom of Thought and Speech.

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 so pre-occupied for centuries with the teleological question that hindered progress. Democritus, 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. Yet, the so-called “exile of atomism”, after its rejection by authorities such as Aristotle, Plato, and the Christian Church, as well, lasted too long, until the 17th century, when it was resurrected by Gassendi and Descartes. In the meantime, all 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 regarding ethics, natural science, mathematics, cosmology, music, art and literature, etc. Suffice it to say that among the works of this traveller-scientist-philosopher, there was one entitled Ocean Periplus… Other titles we’ll never read: Pythagoras, The Horn of Amalthea, On the Planets, On Nature, On the Mind, On Rhythms and Harmony, On Homer, On Poetry, On Song, On History, On Painting, On the Sacred Writings of Babylon, Planispheres, Chaldaean Account, Phrygian Account…

Democritus on an old Hellenic banknote of 100 drachmas

● Book burning, suggested by Plato, was included among the favourite “sports” of the Christian Church. But it wasn’t the only one. Another method of censorship was copying classical works in the medieval monasteries. Behold the grim, dismal picture Catherine Nixey has painted in her thorough research, The Darkening Age / The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (see also our next two Chronicles):⁽⁵⁾

• ⁽⁵⁾ Catherine Nixey – how ironic! – is the daughter of a nun and a monk. However, her parents were anything but dogmatic (a rare exception); thus she was not indoctrinated (brainwashed).

Medieval scribe copying manuscripts
(19th-century illustration)

“In the silent copying-houses of the monks… gestures were used to request certain books: pagan books were requested by making a gagging gesture.⁽⁶⁾ Unsurprisingly, the works of despised authors suffered. At a time in which parchment was scarce, many ancient writers were simply erased, scrubbed away so that their pages could be reused for more elevated themes. Palimpsests – manuscripts in which a text has been scraped (psao [ψάω]) again (palin [πάλιν]) – provide glimpses of the moments at which these ancient works vanished… The work of Democritus, one of the greatest Greek philosophers and the father of atomic theory, was entirely lost.”

• ⁽⁶⁾ “Books approved by the Church would be stamped or marked by the word ‘Imprimatur’ – ‘Let it be printed’.” (C. Nixey). Centuries later, Mayakovsky would suffer due to similar stamps or marks.

“This theory – an Epicurean one [in Roman times] – offered an alternative view to the idea of a ‘Creation myth’, and stated that everything in the world was made not by any divine being but by the collision and combination of atoms… These particles were invisible to the naked eye but had their own structure and could not be cut (temno [τέμνω > ἄ-τομον, a-tom]) into any smaller particles… Everything that you see or feel, these materialists argued, is made up of two things: atoms and space… The distinct species of animals were explained by a form of proto-Darwinism… ‘No thing is ever by divine power produced from nothing’, wrote Lucretius in his great poem, On the Nature of Things, and ‘no single thing returns to nothing’. Atomic theory thus neatly did away with the need for and possibility of Creation,⁽⁷⁾ Resurrection, the Last Judgement, Hell, Heaven and the Creator God himself.

• ⁽⁷⁾ “Creation happened, as a Christian theologian infamously stated, on 23 October, 4004 BC”. (C.N.)

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

“In the ensuing centuries, texts that contained such dangerous ideas paid a heavy price for their ‘heresy’… Some of the greatest figures in the early Church rounded on the atomists. Augustine disliked atomism for precisely the same reason the atomists liked it: it weakened mankind’s terror of divine punishment and Hell.

“Democritus had perhaps done more than anyone to popularize this theory – though not only this one. Democritus was an astonishing polymath who had written works on a breathless array of other topics. A far from complete list of his titles includes: On History; On Nature; The Science of Medicine; On the Tangents of the Circle and the Sphere; On Irrational Lines and Solids; On the Causes of Celestial Phenomena; On the Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena; on Reflected Images… The list goes on. Today Democritus’s most famous theory is his atomism. What did the other theories state? We have no idea: every single one of his works was lost in the ensuing centuries. As the eminent physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote, after citing an even longer list of the philosopher’s titles: ‘the loss of the works of Democritus in their entirety is the greatest intellectual tragedy to ensue from the collapse of the old classical civilisation’. (See the Appendix on Democritus at the end of this Chronicle).

“Democritus’s atomic theory did, however, come down to us – but on a very slender thread: it was contained in one single volume of Lucretius’s great poem, that was held in one single German library, that one single intrepid book hunter would eventually find and save from extinction. That single volume would have an astonishing afterlife: it became a literary sensation; returned atomism to European thought; created what… was called ‘an explosion of interest in pagan antiquity’, and influenced Newton, Galileo and later Einstein.”

The Rock of Gibraltar at sunset

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

SAILING PAST MAENACA AND MALACA, after this highly instructive break, we finally drop anchor at the Bay of Gibraltar. Carteia was built at its most northerly point, about halfway between the modern cities of Algeciras and Gibraltar, on elevated ground, at the confluence of two rivers, overlooking the sea. According to Strabo, it was founded circa 940 BCE, as the emporium of K’rt, meaning “City” in Phoenician (compare Qart Hadasht, i.e. Carthage, “New City”). The area had much to offer a merchant; 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.⁽⁸⁾ Due to its strategic location, the city played a significant role in the Punic Wars. In the Battle of Carteia in 206, the Punic fleet was defeated by the Romans, who captured the colony circa 190 BCE.

• ⁽⁸⁾ The “Tyrian” purple was, in fact, Minoan: see Chronicle 19, footnote 6.

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

Passing through the Strait and into the Atlantic, we are surprised to hear that Bailo was none other than Gadir. The information, however, cannot be verified, and the closest to the name “Bailo” we can find is Baelo, near the present-day village of Bolonia, around Tarifa, at the southernmost point of Europe – but rather far from Gadir. The town served as a trade link with northern Africa (Strabo: “hence the crossings to Tingis of Maurusia”);⁽⁹⁾ nevertheless, it was abandoned because of earthquakes. Eventually, we realize we’re sailing in an area colonized by Heracles – or, in other words, by the Mycenaeans: not only Ábdera (or Ábderos), but also Carteia (Carpeia, Carpaea or Carthaea), and Bailo-Baelo or Belōn, appear to have links to the great hero. Carteia, wrote 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, i.e. the Rock of Gibraltar; there are those also who connect it to Tartessos claiming that once the latter disappeared, many confused it with Carteia (e.g. Pausanias: “Tartessos, some people say, used to be the old name of Carpeia”). Other settlements of the Heraclean colonizing labour were Mellaria (Menlaria, or Melouria, modern Tarifa), and also Gadir; sometimes even Tartessos is included in the list. Some, very few, on the other hand, identify the legendary city with modern Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Wishful thinking, most probably, on either side…

• ⁽⁹⁾ Strabo’s “Maurusia”: Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, and northern Algeria.

Gulf of Gadir and the three islets with Greek names:
Erytheia, Kotinoussa, Antípolis

As for the Pillars of Heracles, the northern one on European soil is called Calpe, or Alybē (Gibraltar), “small in size but rising sharply to a great height and looking like an island from afar” (Strabo), while the southern one, Abylē or Abyla (Ceuta), is rather low. Their peculiarity is that their sovereignty is exercised nowadays by foreign powers: Gibraltar, on Spanish territory, is controlled by Britain; Ceuta, on Moroccan soil, by Spain. The Phoenician Abyla, founded in the 7th century BCE, passed under the control of the Phocaeans who renamed it as Heptá Adelphoí (Seven Brothers). The Romans, as usual, transcribed the Grecian toponym into Latin as Septem Fratres, or simply Septem (hence perhaps its current name), and used Ceuta almost exclusively as a military post. The strategic importance of the Strait was obvious to everyone.

There is another settlement, beyond the Pillars and on African soil, presented as a Punic colony of the early 5th century, possibly with prior Phoenician presence, called Tingis (today’s Tangier). Taking advantage of Carthage’s crushing defeat in Sicily in 480 BCE, the Phocaeans should have taken control of this town, too, dominating – at least for a while – in that area of strategic importance, during the Punics’ isolationist period after their defeat. Like so many other towns, Tingis in fact was neither Phoenician, nor Greek, but, in this case, Berber. According to a Graeco-Roman mythological tradition, cited by Plutarch, Tingis was the wife of the giant Antaeus, king of Libya (Maghreb) 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 found in Tangier by the Roman rebel 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 from the city to the west.

The Strait of Gibraltar with the Pillars of Heracles

The colonizing activity apparently continued after the Trojan War, since we are told that, despite the reports to the contrary, there were Hellenic (later Roman) settlements beyond the Pillars of Heracles. One of them was located between Gadir and the city of Tartessos, at the mouth of the Río Guadalete: it was Portus Menesthei (Μενεσθέως Λιμήν), probably the present-day El Puerto de Santa María, locally known simply as El Puerto.⁽¹⁰⁾ Even the Gaditan Phoenicians, wrote Strabo, offered sacrifices in Menestheus’ oracle. As one of Helen’s suitors, he fought in the Trojan War. But afterwards, according to some writers, he was expelled from Athens by the descendants of Theseus, and found refuge with his entourage in Iberia. (See Chronicle 26, Odysseys in the Aftermath of the Trojan War: Colonization of Iberia). Lastly, there was another Hellenic settlement located next to Huelva to the West: it was Calathussa, today’s Aljaraque.

• ⁽¹⁰⁾ The word “Port” is preserved in the toponym throughout its history: the Arabs (Moors) invaded Iberia in 711 CE and renamed the port to Alcante or Alcanatif, meaning Port of Salt, due to the production of salt since the time of the Phoenicians. Finally in 1260, the Castilians, who occupied the city, renamed it to Santa María del Puerto.

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

Portus Menesthei, in “historical terms”, might not be that old, since the Hellenes of the Homeric era (at least their goods) arrived at Iberian ports later, in the 9th – 8th centuries BCE. Those who transported the Greek ware and other products might very well have been the Phoenicians, due to their artistic quality, which the Canaanites were unable to achieve. Such an excellent ceramic, an Attic cylix, a wine-drinking vessel, was found in Medellin of Badajoz, in Extremadura. The presence of such a beautiful cup so far from the coastline is explained by the so-called Silver Route that probably crossed western Iberia from north to south to facilitate transport of mineral wealth from Galicia to Tartessian harbours.

Hellenic culture, art, ideas, habits, etc. could not be transported on
Phoenician ships, making the Greek presence in Iberia necessary…

What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, models, architecture, burial habits, etc. Taking into account that perhaps the Minoans were not Greeks, it seems that Iberia was found under Hellenic influence for the first time during the Mycenaean period. But this is half-true and, therefore, half a lie (at least), given that the Mycenaeans were civilized thanks to the Minoans. Consequently, Minoan and Mycenaean influences on Iberian cultures were very similar, if not identical. At that time, there was perhaps no Tartessos. Minoans and Mycenaeans inseminated the local cultures they found in Iberia, 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 re-appear in the peninsula. In the meantime, the rich rewards were reaped by the Phoenicians and Punics…

Major Hellenic colonies in Iberia before the Punic conquests (c. 300 BCE): Rhode, Emporion, Callípolis, Sálauris, Zácantha, Hēmeroscopeion-Artemisium, Acra Leucá, Alonís, Helice, Ábdera, Maenaca, Portus Menesthei, Calathussa: they are all located in Spain. So, the Iberian periplus
I’ve tried to revive in this Chronicle ended up as just a circumnavigation of Spain.

Appendix on Democritus

“Aristoxenus, in his Historical Notes, affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect, but Amyclas and Cleinias, the Pythagoreans, prevented him, as it would be of no use, for the books were already widely circulated… Plato, though he mentions almost all the early philosophers, never once alludes to Democritus, not even where it would be necessary to controvert him, obviously because he knew he would have to match himself against the greatest of philosophers”… (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laërtius)

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius

Avoiding the encounter, Plato passed the torch to Aristotle who wrote a monograph on Democritus, praising him for arguing from sound considerations appropriate to natural philosophy, and regarding him as an outstanding rival. This may be the reason why this monograph, albeit Aristotelian, was “lost”; only a few passages quoted in other sources have survived. The predominance of Platonic philosophy in the 4th century BCE, and the spread of Platonic schools must be the reason why Democritean thought and work was brushed aside and vanished. What survived could not pass through the “Symplegades” of Christian “zealots”; and what has been brought down to us includes many fragments, most of which, however, are on ethics and not physics.

Democritus on a Greek stamp

● The world is born when many atoms of various shapes gather and produce a whirl, separating the fine bodies, while bringing together the heavier bodies at the centre in a first sphere (earth). As long as the atoms are infinite, and the void is also infinite, our world is anything but a unique phenomenon. Thus, the atomists are the first thinkers to have clearly put forward the idea that there are infinite worlds. In their system there are three eternally existing elements: the atoms, the void, and motion-change (kinesis). Proposing that motion-change is eternal, Democritus was aware that in this way he removed all anthropomorphic elements from the natural world.

Portrait of a philosopher,
probably Democritus

The mechanisms of nature function without being regulated by any higher power. Can it be that everything in nature happens without order, or by chance? Judging by Plato and Aristotle, many after Democritus have interpreted the atomist theory in this way. Plato launches a harsh attack in his Laws against Democritus (without mentioning his name), and the “wicked, disrespectful” philosophers, who claim that the greatest and finest things came to be with no intervention of some intellect or god, and are works of nature and chance. These philosophers, claims Plato, are wrong in underestimating the role of the soul, to which they attribute a material substance, but also of the “intelligent purposefulness” governing the universe. The controversy with Democritus must be the motive for the late Plato to write Timaeus, in an attempt to construct a teleological cosmology in contrast to the supposedly “mechanistic” Democritean universe. Once more, Plato does not mention his rival directly, not even when he adopts a peculiar system of mathematical atomism, in which the atoms of Democritus are replaced by elementary triangles.

Hylas and the Nymphs, by John William Waterhouse (1896)

Diogenes details the Democritean opera

On Ethics: Pythagoras | On the Disposition of the Wise Man | On Those in Hades | Tritogeneia (so called because three things, on which all mortal life depends, come from her) | On Manly Excellence or On Virtue | Amalthea’s Horn (the Horn of Plenty) | On Tranquillity | Ethical Commentaries | Well-Being (not to be found) [was already “lost” in the 3rd century CE, the time of Diogenes].

On Nature: The Great Diacosmos (the Major World System; the school of Theophrastus attribute it to Leucippus) | The Lesser Diacosmos (the Minor World System) | Cosmography, Description of the World | On the Planets | On Nature (I) | On the Nature of Man or On Flesh (II) | On the Soul: On Reason | On the Senses | On Flavours | On Colours | On the Different Shapes (of Atoms) | On Changes of Shape | Confirmations (summaries of the aforesaid works) | On Images or On Foreknowledge of the Future | On Logic or Criterion of Thought (I, II, III) | Problems.

Miscellaneous: Causes of Celestial Phenomena | Causes of Phenomena in the Air | Causes on the Earth’s Surface | Causes Concerning Fire and Things in Fire | Causes Concerning Sounds | Causes Concerning Seeds, Plants and Fruits | Causes Concerning Animals (I, II, III) | Miscellaneous Causes | Concerning the Magnet.

On Mathematics: On a Difference in an Angle or On Contact with the Circle or the Sphere | On Geometry | Geometrics | Numbers | On Irrational Lines and Solids (I, II) | Extensions (Projections) | The Great Year or Astronomy, Calendar | Contention of the Water-Clock (and Heaven) | Description of the Heaven | Geography | Description of the Pole | Description of Rays of Light.

On Music: On Rhythms and Harmony | On Poetry | On the Beauty of Verses | On Euphonious and Cacophonous Letters | Concerning Homer or On Correct Epic Diction and Glosses (Tongues) | On Song | On Words | A Vocabulary.

On the Arts: Prognostication | On Diet or Dietetics | Medical Regimen | Causes Concerning Things Seasonable and Unseasonable | On Agriculture or Geometrics, Concerning Land Measurements | On Painting | Treatise on Tactics | On Fighting in Armour.

Supplementary (Some include as separate items in the list the following works taken from his notes): On the Sacred Writings of Babylon | On Those in Meroë | Ocean Periplus, A Voyage Round the Ocean | On History | A Chaldaean Treatise | A Phrygian Treatise | Concerning Fever and Those Whose Malady Makes Them Cough | Legal Causes and Effects | Problems Wrought by Hand.

The other works which some attribute to Democritus are either compilations from his writings or admittedly not genuine, adds Diogenes.

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