Civic Rites: Democracy and Religion in Ancient Athens

Epilogue: The City after Socrates

after the year 399 the Athenians experienced no more drama for a while, as Athenian democracy returned to its full function. The fourth century was a time of relative stability for the democratic institutions that had been put in place by Ephialtes and Pericles following the Persian Wars and then revived in 403. The Athenian demos during the fourth century could take full advantage of the sanctuaries built during the period of empire under Pericles: Athena’s monumental Acropolis and Demeter’s Eleusinian sanctuary. In the 330s Lycurgus added to Athens’ splendor by constructing a permanent stone theater in the urban sanctuary of Dionysus. That theater still stands today on the south slope of the Acropolis. In the 380s Athens attempted to re-create a naval empire, but the situation in Hellas had changed. Thebes and Argos grew powerful, and the strength of Macedon was on the rise. As the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander gradually consolidated a new Hellenic empire, Greeks experienced the end of the autonomous and sovereign polis as they knew it. But as long as the Athenians did live in their democratic polis, ta patria and ancestral nomoi were upheld by the demos; at the same time, these customs and laws supported the polis and ensured the well-being of the citizens. The Athenian state was built on a foundation of reciprocal relationships between democracy, law, and ancestral religious customs. Patrioi nomoi kept the reciprocal system in balance, and respect for the ancestral laws and customs 2 4 1 Epilogue The City after Socrates 2 4 2 e p i l o g u e ensured that the polis would remain in good working order. Athenians kept to their civic calendar of annual state-sponsored festivals. The Athenian year started off in July with the Panathenaea and festivals for Zeus and Athena. Autumn was the season of Demeter, with the women’s Thesmophoria and the celebration of the more egalitarian Eleusinian Mysteries, while autumn through spring was reserved for Dionysus—the Oschophoria and Anthesteria wine festivals in the late fall and spring, and the dramatic festivals (the Lenaea and the Rural and the City Dionysia) in winter and spring. At each of these festivals, Athenians worshipped their ancestral gods and experienced themselves as a complex political community that included male citizens, foreigners, women, and slaves. Politics and religion were interdependent in the classical polis. In this respect Athenian democracy is quite alien from its modern form. Plato’s teacher Socrates was executed by the state in 399. Several decades later, Plato’s student Aristotle stated that the human being is a political animal—a politikon zfon—a creature of the polis (Aristotle Politics 1.2). The Greek polis was an autonomous entity composed of politeis (citizens) and other residents of both sexes and of varying status—female, slave, free, foreign . While the polis was autonomous, the people who lived in it were not, or at least not completely so. The citizens and residents of Athens were all social beings who needed community to live fully. As Aristotle put it, they needed the polis. But human beings were also creatures—the zfon of Aristotle ’s “political animal”—and as such they also needed the natural world and its abundant resources to live full lives. Political life and religious life were fully integrated in fifth-century Athens. Traditional practices, nomoi, set up a complex set of interfaces that facilitated communication in three separate but related areas: between the individual and his or her ancestors, between the individual and the ongoing social and political world of the polis, and between the individual and the natural environment that every human being inhabited. Athenians did not worship the forces of nature or the agricultural produce that the land provided. They worshipped by means of that natural world. The fertility of the countryside generated the meat, olives, grains, grapes, and other products dedicated to the gods and consumed by humans at civic festivals. The yearly agricultural rhythms placed a predictable structure on the collective experience of those who lived in Attica and Athens. Festivals for Athena, Demeter, and Dionysus were occasions when the polis experienced itself as an integrated political and religious organization, and when the citizens and residents found their proper place in that organization. 2 4 3 t h e c i t y a f t e r s o c r at e s On the...