[lit-ideas] The Eternal West

You bought Jowett and I recently bought _The Landmark Thucydides, a 
Comprehensive Guide to The Peloponnesian War_, ed by Strassler and introduced 
by Victor Davis Hanson, copyrighted 1996.  I used it this morning to check 
Thucydides account of the “affair of the Mysteries and mutilation of the 
Hermae.”  I did have this tangled up in my thoughts because why wouldn’t they 
arrest Alcibiades before he led the troops off to conquer Sicily?   Thucydides 
says that his enemies were using this affair in order to destroy a political 
competitor.  They put their own political ambitions above the success of the 
Athenian campaign against Syracuse.  

Victor Davis Hanson has oft said that no military force can defeat a Western 
military force in battle.  He defines that statement carefully and throws out 
some things like the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  He means a certain sort of 
fighting: armies or navies in full-fledged combat.  He traces the West from the 
Greeks up to modern times, but in reading about the Athenians in the 
Peloponnesian War and especially their war against Syracuse, I see other things 
we have in common with the Greeks, especially politicians who put their 
ambitions above success in the field.    

What can one say in defense of those who attacked Alcibiades, the best General 
going up against the Syracusans, for political reasons?  The only thing I can 
think of is that they didn’t take the Syracusans seriously, but they should 
have.  Once they ruined Alcibiades and caused him to flee for his life, that 
left the Athenians to be led by the timid, inept, unqualified, Nicias.    That 
sort of leadership was portrayed, incidentally, in the movie _Anzio_.  
Kesselring couldn’t believe his good fortune when the Allies decided to dig in 
on the beach at Anzio instead of charging on ahead.  The Germans were not 
prepared to counter the allies when they landed, but when they dug in instead 
of advancing, that gave the Germans time to prepare.  According to the movie (I 
don't remember the details of this battle and am too lazy to look it up -- and 
don't trust Edward Dmytryk to get matters pertaining to war correctly), once 
that was discovered by higher command, Major General Wesley was removed from 
leadership of the allied forces.  In the case of the Athenians, that was not 
possible.  Communications were poor and the only thing they knew back in Athens 
was what Nicias told them and they misunderstood him.  He kept asking for 
reinforcements, a strong indication according to Victor Davis Hanson, of inept 
leadership.    When the Syracusans and Spartans finally defeated the Athenians 
on Sicily, Nicias was executed.  As far as I know the politicians who ruined 
the career of Alcibiades were never punished.  

JL expanded my comments on the Syracusan War to include the larger 
Peloponnesian War, but it was Syracuse that I found most depressing.  Hanson on 
page 229 of _A War Like No Other_ wrote, The Athenians had set sail for Sicily 
in spring 415.  Then they were still at peace with Sparta and in the midst of 
an ongoing recovery from the ravages of the plague and war, as well as buoyed 
by the recent conquest of tiny Melos.  Two years later, between 40,000 and 
50,000 Athenians, allies, and slaves were dead, missing, or captured.  Some 216 
imperial triremes were lost.  The Athenian treasury was broke.  For the first 
time in the war, Athens could no longer afford to patrol the coast of the 
Peloponnese.  Its old strategy of proactively hitting the enemy to the rear was 
now over with.  Allies and tributary subjects were talking of revolt at 
precisely the time Athens needed their money, materials, and imperial crewmen 
to build an entirely new fleet.  After expending well over 3,000 talents in a 
failed enterprise, Athens earned only a renewed war with an ever-grown 
Peloponnesian alliance.  There was to be a permanent Spartan fort in sight of 
the walls of Athens, a newly envisioned alliance of Persia, Sparta, an 
Syracuse, and the specter of a Peloponnesian fleet far larger than its own now 
augmented with a few Syracusan triremes.”

Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto

 
From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx [mailto:jlsperanza@xxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 4:17 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Eternal Greece

I have a "The Spartan Code" which I submitted before my "Socrates Wounded" and 
which may be distributed at a later stage.

---

Helm wisely writes and wonders re: the wise Thucydides:

"the war [of the Peloponnese and notably the Syracuse operation field] was 
badly planned, badly led and ultimately a military disaster for Athens - one of 
the several major reasons Sparta was able to defeat Athens. . . I hope it 
wasn't Thucydides who invented the expression "war never solves anything." Not 
only did Athens lose the war, but Syracuse was so debilitated by the battle 
with Athens it was soon defeated, and Sparta's victory exhausted them."

Indeed. Incidentally, I just got yesterday BENJAMIN JOWETT's translation of 
Thucydides. The edition is so cheap it does not give any sort of cultural 
background as to why the wise Jowett thought of translating this, which was 
obviously a good thing -- but his claim to fame rests on his boring translation 
of Plato's anti-officialese little diatribes said to be masterpieces of 
civilisation, called "The Socratic Dialogues" -- which I always have, qua 
Swimming Pool Librarian, anxiety when I accomodate on the shelves, as I want 
them to be below, on the S, but I know they have to go under P -- an author who 
hardly speaks his voice. Immoral!

Anyway, my recent consideration re: the War of the Pelopponese, which this 
little Thucydides-Jowett book blurbs as being,

           "the stirring chronicle of the holocaust
            that destroyed Greece's golden age."

has a rubbish for a blurb.

It should read:

            "the stirring chronicle of a few battles
             that had proud prostituted Athens go
             'down a peg'"

             and

             "the thing that provided classicist with
             the idea that there is something eternal
             about Greece."

--- I do have a book, silly one, but so big and nice that I have on top of the 
Greek side to the S. P. Library. It's called "Eternal Greece" -- hardback in a 
light blue cover that suits the ambience. We do have zillions on "Eterna Roma", 
Roma the Eternal City, but having been there, I would rather call it the 
Eternal Ruins. It's so dirty, polluted, and artificial! I only found peace 
there following the thread of the Tiber. The only bit of nature worth 
examining, and which the Romans did not totally destroyed, like paved or 
something. It has one bridge too many, but I'm glad they never considered Isola 
Tiberina an obstacle for their commercial things and the thing still stands 
there. Nothing eternal about Roma except their cloacae (drains).

But Greek is different, and by eternal, I mean what Boardman calls 'high 
classical' basically Perikles time, and basically as it applies to Athens, 
since the man was his major. Imagine having to read in a History of Gotham, 
"The Time of Giuliani" -- with contributions by E. Yost, "The decrease of rate 
crime and the hellenistic influence: or how to build a Greek ghetto if you find 
the right parking lot."

---- The Greeks and classicists NEEDED an idea of the eternal. By which I mean 
a 'historical' Golden Age. Not the golden age of the myth, but the Golden Age 
of History, and for some reason everybody has decided it's that period, the 
hundred years before the Pelopponese war.

This particularly apply to my current field, sculpture. Everything AFTER that 
is said to be corrupted, cheap, disproportionate, ugly, silly, unnecessary.

Ditto for Philosophy. Having had to pass a few philosophy courses -- after all 
I do have my PhD in Philosophy -- I remember EVERY tutor dismissing 
"Hellenistic philosophy" as if we were dealing with the Gypsies. Only one 
tutor, who was specialized, as we say, in that period, and that period alone -- 
which made him a bore to talk to -- had us read Loeb, Outlines of Phyrronism, 
in which essay I quoted and quoted Grice. Since Sextus Empiricus is concerned 
with things like,

             "the thing is sweet"
             "the thing tastes sweet"
             "the thing seems sweet"

-- etc. Enough to give you a headache.

So if it were not for the Spartans defeating the proud Athenians, we would have 
a 'golden age' (because they were 'oh so wise and talented -- look at the 
architecture!' kind of middle brow audiences who still make it to the Akropolis 
and know sh*t about things) lasting for we don't know how much longer.

I think a hundred years (cfr. Garcia Marquez, "A hundred years of solitude") is 
pretty enough a long time for me. Actually, when the Marquez book got the 
Nobel, Borges was said to opine to the question of what he thought about the 
book, "50 years too long", he said.

I particularly do find the "Golden Age" of "high classical" style boring and 
pretentious, but must admit that POLYKLEITUS (and his earlier MYRON) were 
geniuses. In particular DORYPHOROS by Polykleitus gave us the right KANON on 
which later sculptures could work.

He noted that men (he didn't do women) had

     1. One only forehead
     2. Two eyes, one to the left, one to the right. He measured the distance, 
and found that the nose comes pretty
         much in the middle.
     3. He then extended his athlete (who he was stupidly too reticent to name 
by Greek name, and called him,
         Spear-Bearer instead) and noted that the head of the ephebe (it's good 
he was not a paidophile, but perhaps
         a ephebophile, because the proportions would have been different) was

                      1/7

        of the rest of the body. (Eros, being younger, in most representations 
look like a veritable midget, as most
        children do before 'initiation' -- or before they become 'men'.
     4. He noted that the arms and the legs -- four in total, where symmetrical.
     5. He wasn't concerned with details on genitalia ("too difficult to mould" 
-- he worked on bronze), or more
         importantly, 'hair'. His doruphoros really looks like he would need a 
better hair do.
     6. He then made it in bronze, spoiling the fact that human skin is better 
than bronze, but at least he did not
         mould it, had he been an Asian, with boiled rice.
     
The canon is maintained today. Lusippos changed the size of the head, so his 
variation of the canon has 1/8 for the head. Which makes them look too brawny 
and little brainy for my taste. 

Vitruvius wrote about this years before, and he got everything fine. The only 
bit I disagree is when he notes that the center of the male body is the navel. 
Not being religious, I think the ARTICULATORY point is the annus, rather.

Cheers,
   JL 
    The Glyptotheca at the Swimming Pool

APPENDIX: Vitruvius (Loeb)

“Symmetry and proportion (Gk. “analogia”) consists in taking a fixed module in 
each case both for the part and for the whole. Without symmetry and proportion 
nothing can have a plan; it must have an exact proportion worked out like the 
fashion of the members of a finely-shaped male body.  For Nature has so planned 
the male body that the face from the chin to the top of the forehead is 1/10. 
The palm of the hand from the wrist to the top of the middle finger is 1/0. The 
head from the chin to the crown,1/8; from the top of the breast with the bottom 
of the neck to the roots of the hair,1/6. From the middle of the breast to the 
crown,1/4; 1/3 of the height of the face is from the bottom of the chin to the 
bottom of the nostrils; the nose from the bottom of the nostrils to the line 
between the brows, ditto; from that line to the roots of the hair, the forehead 
is given as 1/3. The foot is 1/6 of the height of the body; the cubit 1/4, the 
breast also 1/4. The other members also have their own proportionate 
measurements. And by using these statue-makers have attained great and 
unbounded distinction. The navel is naturally the exact centre of the body. If 
a man lies on his back with hands and feet outspread, the centre of a circle is 
placed on his navel, his figure and toes will be touched by the circumference. 
Also a square will be described within the figure. If we measure from  the foot 
to the top of the head, and apply the measure to the outstretched hands, the 
breadth will be found equal to the height, just like sites which are squared by 
rule. Nature has planned the male body so that the members correspond in their 
proportions to its complete configuration. By using these, statue makers have 
attained great and unbounded distinction.”



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