A Drop of History 126

Nero at the Olympics
Instances of incredible obsequiousness towards the mad emperor

We Greeks have written many pages of glory and grandeur, but, throughout the course of our long history, we have also done things for which we should not be proud at all. All Greeks? Of course not, and not so much the populace as our rulers (elected or appointed), who have done, over time, the best and the worst.

In the 1st century CE, Greece was under Roman rule. The democratic system of government had disappeared, but the Hellenic consciousness was strong and the cities flourished politically. The rulers, however, were completely sold out to the Roman overlords. In 65 CE, maniacal Emperor Nero, considering himself an artistic character and a philhellene, decided to take part in the Olympic Games, which were still held in Olympia. The news alone of the emperor’s coming to Greece roused the entire ruling class, leading to acts of flattery pathetic enough to constitute historical shame.

The 65 CE games were almost ready to start, but when the organisers learned that the emperor was delayed, they postponed the opening, until he would deign to come. The situation became ridiculous very quickly, as there were no less than twenty-six consecutive postponements of the opening of the games, which finally took place two whole years later, in 67 CE. During the whole of that time, the athletes, judges, and administrators were forced to stay in Olympia, just in case Nero arrived unexpectedly and did not find them in their place.

When he finally arrived, he was welcomed with honours that verged on grovelling, and he declared he intended to take part in the chariot race. During the race, the emperor fell off his chariot, but he was declared winner and crowned with a golden wreath. For some obscure reason, all the other athletes who had finished the race withdrew after the event, so Nero ended up as the only participating athlete, and naturally was proclaimed winner.

The organisers, after the victory in Olympia, took him to all the other games that had become famous since ancient times, and which were put on right there and then, in Nero’s presence: the Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean Games. Nero was declared undisputed winner in all those games. There were a few disputes, of course, but those were of no consequence, compared to the glory and grandeur of the imperial triumphs. A few dozen spectators, who laughed at the ridiculous spectacle of fat Nero posing as an athlete and winner, had to be murdered as well, but that was just a detail.

After the Olympic Games, Nero toured the sanctuary of Olympia and carried off all its statues to Rome. In Delphi, his visit was a hurricane. He entered the shrine, was received with honours and officially named equal to Heracles, wept with pious emotion in that exquisite place, and then snatched five hundred marble and bronze statues for his palace. After the looting, the emperor returned to Rome, happy.

He had hardly arrived when ambassadors from all the Greek cities arrived after him. They had gathered and decided that they had to go to the emperor and thank him with a gift for the honour he had done them by coming to Greece to ridicule and loot it. The gift was 888 golden wreaths!

But the pinnacle of obsequiousness and debasement that Latinophile Greek rulers reached was the following event: It is well known from history that Nero, in a burst of insanity, attired himself as a bride, had a freedman named Sporus attired as a groom, and married him in a formal ceremony. He even admitted the entire senate into his bedroom after the wedding and the couple had intercourse before all, with Sporus in the man’s role and the emperor in the woman’s. Well, the rulers of Greece raced to send congratulatory messages to the couple, including wishes for offspring. “Wishing for legitimate children to be born to them,” writes Dion Cassius, in reference to the wording of the cities’ edicts.

We Greeks are truly an incredible race…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 124

Prostitution (1)
When the state lived on brothel taxes

The first state brothels to be found in world history were established here in Greece, under the famous legislation of Solon the Athenian. In his legislative reformation, in the 6th century BCE, the father of democracy makes a distinction between hetairai (sophisticated courtesans) and common prostitutes, and forces the latter to ply their trade in houses under state regulation, which would provide the state with income through taxation.

Of course, prostitution itself, in all its forms, is much older; only nobody had thought of putting it under state regulation before. Serious scholars discredit the famous saying that considers prostitution the oldest profession. Elias Petropoulos, for instance, claims that theft and banditry are definitely older trades, since they originate in the first formation of human societies, while systematic prostitution appeared much later, at the time of permanent settlements and the establishment of the family as an institution. As long as humans were hunting nomads, sexual relationships were unrestricted and guilt-free.

The first form of prostitution was sacred. The union of a priestess with a man, in the presence of the faithful and in an environment of group spiritual elevation, was a symbolic act of fertility in Ishtar’s temples in Babylon. The even older tradition of a virgin’s defloration by a priest in the ancient Persian temples had the same meaning. In Ishtar’s temples, according to Herodotus, all the women of the country were required to prostitute themselves once in their life, as a sacrifice to the goddess. They would go to the temple, wait until a stranger dropped a silver coin at their feet, and have sex with him. According to the great Greek historian, beautiful and noble women were soon done with their obligation, but there were some unfortunate ones, ugly or disfigured, who waited in the temple for three or four years until someone would deign to choose them.

In ancient Egypt, female prisoners of war were sent to prostitute themselves in Ammon’s temples. The Old Testament, in the Book of Hosea, mentions that strangers in Canaan lodged in the houses of common women. In ancient Corinth, the brothels dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite were famous. In classical Athens and Rome, as well, prostitution was quite widespread. Wealthy Hellenes had their hetairai, women of superior education and sophistication, who included sexual satisfaction in their companionship, while affluent Romans had their respective refined meretrices. Additionally, in both states, slave women engaged in legitimate prostitution in their masters’ households. But for the poor, the strangers, the soldiers and sailors, there were houses of ill repute and common women.

The one thing that was unthinkable in classical times, both in Greece and Rome, is what we take for granted today: the fact that a man marries in order to be sexually satisfied by his wife. For the poor, that was the case de facto, since with marriage they had a woman for free, but for the upper classes such a notion was borderline immoral. Marriage was a legal bond that provided heirs to the family property, and married women had the obligation to bear children and manage the household where those children would be raised. The exclusion of married women from society and the restrictions imposed on their lives had to do primarily with ensuring the legitimacy of their children and only secondarily with morals.

For sexual satisfaction, Romans would turn to prostitutes, not their wives. The words of Cato the Elder, who was an extreme conservative Roman, opposing any change and reformation and supporting extreme adherence to ancestral tradition, are famous. He is credited with saying to a friend whom he met coming out of a brothel, “Well done, young man. This is where a man should satisfy his urges, not soliciting married women.”

However, during the times of Rome’s absolute dominion, the situation grew out of all control and several emperors started establishing laws to restrict the phenomenon. Domitian prohibited the buying and selling of young boys, while later Constantine and Theodosius imposed crushing taxes on brothels, in an effort to limit them. Justinian too was a dedicated enemy of prostitution and persecuted procurers relentlessly. It is not known what opinion was held on the subject by his wife Theodora, who, before becoming empress, had been one of the most notorious common prostitutes in the empire.

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved

A Drop of History 81

The will of Attalus III
The king who bequeathed his state to the Romans

When people die, they bequeath whatever goods and land they own to their children, their families, the state, the church, or to anyone else they please. But the concept of personal property changes from one historical period to another. For example, apart from the Hellenic city-state republics of the classical age and the first, republican period of Rome, throughout antiquity, all kings who ruled by divine right regarded their entire realms as their personal property.

What happened in 133 BCE in the kingdom of Pergamon may well seem incredible today, gone down as one of the paradoxes of world history, but at the time it was almost natural. King Attalus III, son of Eumenes II, died and, when his will was read, it was revealed that he had bequeathed his entire property to the state and the people of Rome. And since the king considered his whole kingdom to be his property, he left it all, lands, people, and treasures, to be inherited by a foreign state; the Romans. And when we mention lands and treasures, we are not talking about trifling figures. The kingdom of Pergamon at the time included almost the whole of Asia Minor and a part of the European side of the Hellespont. Imagine something the size of modern Turkey.

It was a large and rich state, which had risen out of the disputes of the heirs of Alexander the Great. A large part of the treasure of the great general was stored in Pergamon. Philetaerus was appointed in charge of guarding the treasure; he rebelled in the second decade of the third century BCE and used that wealth to establish the kingdom of Pergamon. The Attalids, who ruled for a century and a half, managed that wealth prudently, so, in conjunction with the region’s financial flourishing, the treasure grew. The city was adorned with splendid monuments and its library, second only to that of Alexandria, was famous all over the world.

And then Attalus III came to power. Historical sources portray him as an eccentric, solitary man of strange habits. Instead of statecraft, he preferred to tend his garden, where he grew not only harmless vegetables, but also strange medicinal plants, like henbane, hellebore, hemlock and such. Attalus experimented with them and created poisons of his own invention, which he used to “take care of” enemies, or even friends. But he was also an ardent lover of art, like his ancestors, with a special passion for sculpture. He died of sunstroke, after insisting on spending long hours outdoors, overseeing the creation of a huge statue to the memory of his mother. Attalus had no issue, and when his will was read, his advisors and subjects learned that they belonged to Rome.

The most amazing thing about the whole case is that Rome was not yet a great empire; it had not even expanded into Asia. Attalus’ bequest gave Rome an official foothold in Asia, allowing her to expand from there, further eastwards as well as southwards. The Roman state did not even have a common border with the kingdom of Pergamon, nor had it aided Attalus personally in any way, so such an act could not be a gesture of gratitude. In fact, Attalus had bequeathed his kingdom to a distant and foreign state, which makes the case even more mysterious.

When the Romans were informed that some king had given them his kingdom, they were flabbergasted. They thought that Attalus was mad, or that it was a practical joke – or a trap. Besides, the Romans had not yet adopted the imperial way of thinking. Even when they were convinced that it was not a joke, they were not particularly eager, at first, to accept the inheritance. When Pergamon formally sent Eudemus as messenger, to inform the Romans that the kingdom belonged to them, the Senate did not admit him. However, he was offered the hospitality of mayor Tiberius Gracchus, who thought of taking the gold of Pergamon, since it belonged to Rome, to fund his agricultural reform with it. The Senate, which was comprised of conservative nobles, was against agricultural reform, so it opposed Gracchus’ acceptance of the inheritance. Attalus III, without knowing anyone or being known by anyone, had caused a political crisis in Rome.

The Senate accepted the bequest only when a rebellion of the people, stirred up by the conservatives, led to Tiberius Gracchus’ murder. A delegation was dispatched, followed by troops, who entered Pergamon after crushing Aristonicus, an insignificant rebel who disputed the will. The gold that had been gathered for a century and a half in the kingdom’s coffers, instead of supporting the people of Pergamon, was taken to Rome, where it was squandered by a few rich Roman generals and noble intrigants.

And all this was due to a monarch’s incomprehensible whim and the age’s conviction that states, together with their peoples and their treasures, were the indisputable property of whimsical monarchs…

© Dimitris Kambourakis 2003, All Rights Reserved
Translation from the Greek © M.A.K. 2008, All Rights Reserved