The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy: Part Seven
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 500 – 428 BC
Anaxagoras was born to a noble and wealthy
family and handed his inheritance over to his relations because he couldn’t be
bothered with it, rather like Heraclitus. His ideas were that the Sun was a
mass of red-hot metal and was larger than the Peloponnesus. He also declared
that there were hills and valleys and
dwellings on the Moon. He said that the whole universe was composed of
minute bodies and his moving principle was Mind. Well, that’s really not too bad!
In the beginning, the stars moved in the
sky as in a revolving dome, so that the celestial pole which is always visible
was vertical. But at some point, the pole took its inclined position. The Milky
Way was said by him to be a reflection of the light of stars which are not
shone upon by the Sun; comets were conjunctions of planets which then emitted
flames; meteorites were sparks thrown off by the air, thunder was clouds
banging together, lightning is their violent friction, and earthquakes were the
result of the sinking of air into the Earth, sort of like terrestrial burps.
He also predicted the weather based on
observation and was once asked if some hills would ever become sea and he
answered “yes, it only needs time.” He was right, of course.
Anaxagoras was said to be the first who
said that Homer was giving examples of virtue and justice in his epics, not
just telling wild tales for pure entertainment, which was a clever observation
and, as far as I can see, is well supported by modern analyses.[2]
Then there is the story that he predicted
that a meteoric stone would fall and it did. The date is a little iffy but most
of the experts agree that it was in 467 BCE at Aegospotami, in the Galipoli
Peninsula (in Eastern Thrace).[3] Anaxagoras described this comet as an “object of extraordinary
grandeur” and many years later, the Roman historian, Seneca, having original
sources that are now lost, described it as having been the size of a “great
beam”. That is when Anaxagoras declared that the whole of the heavens was made
of stones and that the rapidity of its rotation is the only thing that kept the
stones in place and if this were relaxed, it would fall. Not bad, eh?
But, oh boy! Did he ever get in big
trouble! Different accounts are given: 1) He was indicted by Cleon on a charge
of impiety because he declared the Sun to be a mass of red-hot metal; he was
defended and given a small fine. 2) He was charged by Thucydides with
treasonable correspondence with Persia as well as impiety and the sentence was
death. 3) He was ill, weak and wasted when he came into court and was acquitted
from sympathy. 4) He was defended mightily by Pericles and released, but then
committed suicide because of the indignity he had suffered.
That’s about it for Anaxagoras. I’ve only
given him this much space because of the charges brought against him after he declared that the heaven was not as
secure as it was claimed to be. That strikes me as a most peculiar thing. Especially
with so many philosophers all around during those times theorizing and claiming
this or that, and nobody thinks much about it at all until this guy pipes up
and says that stones can – and possibly will – fall from the sky. Of course,
his explanation as to why it would happen was silly, but that’s not the point.
It seems that there was, definitely, a conscious decision made by the ruling
powers of the time that nobody was to say anything at all about stones falling
from the sky, and if you want to be a philosopher, you best get with the party
line which says that nothing is going on up there at all; never has, and never
will. Obviously, the elite rulers were on top of things and didn’t want any of
that kind of talk stirring up the masses. So, let me paraphrase Queen Gertrude
in Hamlet: Methinks they did protest too
much!
Socrates 469 – 399 BC
Very little is known of his actual life and
teachings because everything is filtered to us through Plato, Xenophon and
Aristophanes, his students. Aristophanes depicts
him as a clown who taught his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt.
While this is often thought to be a parody, it is true that no one knows how
Socrates made his living since he devoted himself exclusively to discussing
philosophy. Aristophanes also portrays Socrates as a paid teacher who was
running a sophist school, but Plato and Xenophon explicitly deny that he ever
accepted payment for teaching. Later sources claim that he was a stone-mason.
Plato refers to his military service: in the Apology,
Socrates compares his military service to his legal troubles that led
ultimately to his death, portraying Socrates as saying that anyone on the jury
who thinks he ought to retreat from philosophy must also think soldiers should
retreat when it seems likely that they will be killed in battle.
Diogenes reports that Socrates was alleged
to have been a student of Anaxagoras and when the latter was condemned to death
for impiety, he became a pupil of Archelaus, the physicist. It strikes me as
extraordinary that Anaxagoras and Socrates, two in a row, should be condemned
to death. But Socrates did live during the time of the Peloponnesian War and
the Thirty Tyrants, so I should give you, the reader, a quick run-down on that
situation. (Believe me, I do not like
writing about wars, so this is going to be the Peloponnesian War reduced to
just a couple of pages!)
The Thirty Tyrants
The Athenians were, basically, at the head
of an empire that was mainly naval. Sparta, in the other corner of the ring,
was at the head of a number of independent states that included the land powers
(strong army) plus the smaller sea power of Corinth. The Athenians were richer
because they collected tribute from the members of their empire.
It all began when Athens violated a treaty that had been made back in 445 BCE. The
Spartans accused Athens of aggression and threatened war. Pericles, who we met allegedly
defending Anaxagoras, was the most influential leader and he advised Athens to not back down. Diplomacy failed, and the
Spartan ally, Thebes, attacked an Athenian ally, Plataea, and after that it was
a free-for-all.
After just two years of fighting back and
forth, the cosmos apparently made a comment on the behavior of the peoples: The
Plague came in 430 BCE. The epidemic killed about a third of the population on
its first round, (some say one fourth) and that percentage could also probably
be applied to the loss to the army/navy as well. It is believed to have entered
Athens through Piraeus, the city’s port and sole source of food and supplies
coming from Africa (according to Thucydides). Sparta, and much of the Eastern
Mediterranean, was also struck by the disease. Thucydides himself contracted
the illness, and survived. He was therefore able to accurately describe the
symptoms of the disease along with his history of the war.
As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath.
These symptoms were followed by sneezing and hoarseness, after which the pain soon reached the chest, and produced a hard cough. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued, accompanied by very great distress. In most cases also an ineffectual retching followed, producing violent spasms, which in some cases ceased soon after, in others much later.
Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor pale in its appearance, but reddish, livid, and breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But internally it burned so that the patient could not bear to have on him clothing or linen even of the very lightest description; or indeed to be otherwise than stark naked. What they would have liked best would have been to throw themselves into cold water; as indeed was done by some of the neglected sick, who plunged into the rain-tanks in their agonies of unquenchable thirst; though it made no difference whether they drank little or much.
Besides this, the miserable feeling of not being able to rest or sleep never ceased to torment them. The body meanwhile did not waste away so long as the distemper was at its height, but held out to a marvel against its ravages; so that when they succumbed, as in most cases, on the seventh or eighth day to the internal inflammation, they had still some strength in them. But if they passed this stage, and the disease descended further into the bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there accompanied by severe diarrhea, this brought on a weakness which was generally fatal.
For the disorder first settled in the head, ran its course from thence through the whole of the body, and even where it did not prove mortal, it still left its mark on the extremities; for it settled in the privy parts, the fingers and the toes, and many escaped with the loss of these, some too with that of their eyes. Others again were seized with an entire loss of memory on their first recovery, and did not know either themselves or their friends.[4]
Titus Lucretius Carus (99-55 BC) gives a second historical description that must have been based on another account since, while his account matches the description of Thucydides closely, he identifies a further symptom of the disease, which, he states, accompanies the ulceration, setting in around the eighth or ninth day.
If any then had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet
Him there awaited in the after days
A wasting and a death from ulcers vile
And black discharges of the belly, or else
Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along
Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head.[5]
Thucydides’ account of the plague
graphically details the complete disappearance of social morals during the
epidemic. He said that people ceased fearing the law since they felt they were
already living under a death sentence. They also started spending their money
like crazy since they figured they wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy the
fruits of investing. It is also recorded that people stopped behaving decently
because most did not expect to live long enough to enjoy a good reputation for
it.[6] [7] Athenian women were temporarily liberated from the strict bounds of
social custom and Athens was forced to appoint a magistrate called gynaikonomos to control them.[8]
Of most interest to us here is the
religious turmoil that was caused at the time. Since the disease struck without
regard to a person’s piety, the people felt abandoned by the gods and there
seemed to be no benefit to worshiping them. The Athenians – probably wiser than
their leaders – pointed to the plague as evidence that the gods favored Sparta
and this was supported by an oracle that said that Apollo himself (the god of
plague) would fight for Sparta if they fought with all their might. An earlier
oracle had stated that “War with the Dorians [Spartans] comes and at the same
time death.”[9]
The plague returned twice more, in 429 BCE and in the winter of 427/6 BCE. Pericles was killed by the disease in 429 BC and, according to Thucydides, Athens was afterward led by a succession of incompetent or weak leaders. That knocked them back for a bit, but they came back for another round. Thucydides said that it was not until 415 BC that the Athenian population had recovered sufficiently to embark on their disastrous Sicilian expedition. (You’d think they would have figured out that the Cosmos wants people to play nicely together!) At one point, Sparta seemed to be losing until other Athenian subject states decided to revolt as well. This led to a Spartan victory and a temporary peace that lasted 6 years. Then, Athens launched the above mentioned massive attack against Sicily (part of the Athenian empire that revolted) and they were off for another 11 years. In the end, the Athenians were utterly destroyed militarily.
The Naval Battle Of Aegospotami Hellespont 405 Bc
So, now it is 411 BCE, Athens is in turmoil, democracy has been overthrown by an oligarchical party which was then overthrown by what was said to be a more moderate regime, and by the end of the year the rebuilt navy helped to restore democracy. However, the peace offers from Sparta were refused and they all sent their little boats out to have at it again! The final end came in 405 BCE when the Athenian fleet was destroyed at – you’ll be surprised – Aegospotami.
Indeed. The very place where, in 467, our
dear departed Anaxagoras supposedly predicted and witnessed a meteoric rock to fall and
made a theory about it for which he may have been condemned to death. It really
makes you just stop and wonder what the heck is really going on here.
Anaxagoras supposedly died in 428 BCE - almost 40 years after the alleged meteorite impact at Aegospotami - as a result of his claims about the
meteorite and his death was just a couple of years after the start of this war nonsense. And there was a plague? And
more warring? Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that Bailey, Clube and
Napier posit occurs during times of increased comet flux with attendant
fireballs and meteorites? Why the concocted story in the sources about some
possible “treasonable correspondence” with the Persians i.e. 467 BCE.[10] Why are the dates of the meteorite – or whatever it really was – so
uncertain? The sources suggest 470, 467 and 442, with the choice falling on 467
BC. Let’s take a quick look at our catalogue.[11]
470 BC, China: a broom star comet was seen. (Ho, 12)
467 BC, China, Greece: A broom star comet was seen. This event is often but incorrectly, attributed to comet Halley. This is the comet that Plutarch noted appearing prior to the falling of the meteorite at Aegospotami, Greece. (Ho, 13), (Barrett, 4)
433 BC, China: a broom star comet was observed. (Ho, 14)
426 BC, Winter, Greece: a comet appeared in the north around the time of the winter solstice. (Barrett, 4)
I
would say, based on the date of the death of Anaxagoras, if it really was due
to his impiety in talking about rocks falling from heaven, it would certainly have to have been closer in time to the 467 BCE event, OR, there was a later "rocks falling from the sky" event that was closer in time to his death in 428 BCE. Was there another fall of a meteorite, or simply a dramatic comet near the time of Anaxagoras' death? It couldn’t have
been the 426 sighting, but could have been the 433 event possibly associated
with the falling rock(s).. And if that is the case (as is the case in many other instances throughout history), the plague of Athens, coming a few years later, may very well have been a comet borne ‘expression of the gods’ wrath.’
Well, just another sample of the perils of
history. You go along and think things are settled, but then you keep your eyes
open, ask a few questions, bring in a little science, especially about comets
and such, and everything just falls apart. Meanwhile, back to the Thirty
Tyrants.
So the famous Lysander whipped the
Athenians (with help from Persia), and the city was put under
siege and starved into submission. The most culturally advanced Greek
city-state just acted all the way through as though they had fallen out of the
stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. Their arrogance and greed led
to their downfall and clearly they weren’t reading Heraclitus! Too bad
modern-day governments and nations don’t learn from history.
The Athenians of the time referred to them
simply as ‘the oligarchy’ or ‘the Thirty’ and it was only later historians who
referred to them as the ‘Thirty Tyrants’.
The teleological‘historical’ perspective on this event was that the Thirty
severely reduced the rights of Athenians, including imposing a limit on the
number of citizens allowed to vote. This is seen as an act of the wealthy elite
who objected to being subject to the votes of the ‘rabble’ in a broad-based
democracy where all free adult males could vote. Participation in legal
functions – which had previously been open to all Athenians – was restricted by
the Thirty to a select group of 500 persons.
But let’s get some perspective here. It
seems to me that it was the people in charge to begin with who got Athens and
everybody else into the whole mess of almost 30 years of war and those people
who had been in charge, who one must assume were the ‘wealthy elite’, were
imprisoned by Lysander. Further, one of the leading members of the Thirty was Critias,
the great-uncle of Plato and a close
associate of Socrates. As one of the new rulers, he personally black-listed
many Athenians who were then executed and their
wealth confiscated. In short, it looks like the wealthy had been the tail
wagging the democratic dog for some time and these were measures designed to
deal with that problem. What they did may look like a gang of evil, wealthy
elites having their way, but there is, certainly, another way to look at it.
The next thing the Thirty did was to begin
a purge of important leaders of the popular party during the Peloponnesian War.
Keep in mind that these people had brought on the war and continued it, leading
to the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens, all to protect
their greed, their empire. So what we see are hundreds of wealthy elite former
rulers being condemned to execution by drinking hemlock, while thousands more
were exiled from Athens. One of the most famous men who escaped from Athens
during this reign of terror was the wealthy
Lysias, who was mentioned in Plato’s Republic.
So it was, indeed, the wealthy who were the target of the new Oligarchy.
But no group of thirty men can be placed in
power without there being a few bad apples in the barrel. The difficulty is
trying to see what was really going on through the mist of a couple of
millennia. Many consider Socrates the wisest of the Greeks, and he fought on
the side of Athens against Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, so his possible
involvement with the Spartan-backed Thirty Tyrants is surprising.
Unfortunately, he didn’t write, so historians are left with only what Plato had
to say about the matter.
In Plato’s Apology,
which could have been written for personal propagandistic reasons (to make
peace with the regime he lived under, i.e. boot-licking), Socrates recounts an
incident in which the Thirty once ordered him (and four other men) to bring
before them Leon of Salamis, a man known for his justice and upright character,
for execution. While the other four men obeyed, Socrates refused, not wanting
to partake in the guilt of the executioners. By disobeying, Socrates knew he
was placing his own life in jeopardy, and claimed it was only the disbanding of
the oligarchy soon afterward that saved his life.[12] That sounds like a bit of after-the-fact damage control because, in
point of fact, it was the regime that came to power after the Thirty that condemned Socrates to death! Again, something
is really wrong with the picture we are given by standard interpretations.
The Thirty appointed a Council of 500 to
serve the judicial functions formerly belonging to all the citizens. (In
democratic Athens, juries might be composed of hundreds or thousands of
citizens without a presiding judge, which sounds like justice by mob rule, not an
orderly democracy.) They appointed a police force and granted only 3,000
citizens a right to trial and to bear arms.
A year later, a group of exiles led by the
wealthy elite general Thrasybulus, overthrew the Thirty in a coup that killed
Critias. The wealthy elitist Lysias was with the exiles who returned. Lysias is
considered to be one of the Ten Attic Orators; in short, he was good at making
speeches and rabble-rousing, which is really what Athenian democracy seems to
have been all about. After his return, he wrote Against
Eratosthenes as an indictment against Eratosthenes, one of
the Thirty, for the murder of his (Lysias’s) brother, Polemarchus. This speech
is still considered to be one of the world’s most famous orations and is
identified by some historians as Lysias’s personal best. And it was most likely
little more than emotion driven propaganda.
Let us make note of Anytus, for example. He
was from a nouveau riche family and
became a powerful, wealthy, elite politician in Athens. He had served as a
general in the P-War during which he lost Pylos to the Spartans and was charged
with treason. He was acquitted by bribing the jury, according to Aristotle. He
was a leading supporter of the democratic movement in opposition to the
Oligarchy. What else did he do? He was one of the prosecutors of Socrates.
The return of ‘democracy’ to Athens only
seems to have made things worse. The changes that could have been made by the
Thirty will never be known because Athens resumed its downward slide that led to
its takeover by Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander.
It never ceases to amaze me that, with
death and destruction everywhere, comets in the skies, probably fireballs and
meteorites, probably crazy weather, and certainly pestilence, the wealthy elite
never stop their drive to stay in power and destroy the social body they have
infected like a virus, only, in the end, to be tossed in the garbage-pit of
history with said body, and burned. They never seem to get it.
Well, that’s cheerful! I think it is time
to return to our philosophers now that we have a little better idea of the
world they were living in. I just want to point out that we did the whole
Peloponnesian War in just a few pages so I’m sure that’s some kind of record!
[1] Confederation formed at the end of the Meliac War in the mid-7th
century BC comprising twelve Ionian cities located in today’s Western Turkey.
[2] See Louden (2011) Homer’s
Odyssey and the Near East.
[3] North East Greece.
[4] Translation by M.I. Finley in
The Viking Portable Greek Historians, pp. 274-275.
[5] Bailey (1947) Prolegomena, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.
[6] Thucydides. II.53.
[7] The same breakdown of social controls was reported during the Black
Death in the Middle Ages.
[8] That certainly reminds us of the ‘plague of witches’ hunted down by
the Inquisition following the Black Death of the Middle Ages!
[9] Thucydides, II.53; Thucydides, II.54.
[10] The Persians aided Sparta further on in the war.
[11] Most comet references from Yeomans (1991) Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore.
[12] Apology, 32c-d. See also: https://www.factinate.com/people/42-mysterious-facts-socrates-father-philosophy/
To be continued
Cathy O'Brien - MK-Ultra Mind Control
"Unnatural Law
Coming back to those anti-superstitious academics. Personally, I think their intuition—that evil implies something we might call supernatural or metaphysical in nature—is essentially correct. Unfortunately, their philosophical materialism just left them to grab the wrong end of the stick. Evil is real; because it is real, it must have a metaphysical component; metaphysical evil is real."
There is an anecdote that Xanthippe, his wife, screamed and yelled at him, ridiculing his profession and way of life in a particularly viteolic diatribe. Socrates famously didn't like to lose or show his temper or argue with her saying that “an angry man was more of a beast than a human being.” In frustration, she then dumped a tub of water (or in some versions, the contents of a chamber pot) over his head. To this he replied that after thunder comes rain.
In this story, it literally means, after the “thunder” of his wife's angry tirade would come the rain of water over his head.
But he used the phrase in other cases to mean different things.
He used it in to teach there is a logical progression to most things, meaning that you can predict what is going to happen. He was saying that the thunder is an obvious sign of what is to come. An observant person will note these signs an not be surprised by the rain."
P.S.5. (A.J. 05-08-23) Global Warming Brings Near Record Cold to the Tropical Pacific
Thank you! I did steal that "better philosophy without coffee" to save. I am a heavy coffee drinker, hmmm.
ReplyDeletePS: When you paste text, use "Ctrl-Shift-V" instead of just "Ctrl-V" which pastes text without formatting, instead of with formatting as it does by default with only Ctrl-V. Helpful? Not Helpful? Dunno. Good luck!