Date of publication : 6.1.21

Today it is January 6th.

The Christian world has named this day Epiphany, from the Greek, ἐπιφάνεια - meaning manifestation or appearance. In Christian tradition, the Epiphany refers to Jesus appearing to the gentiles.

But today, it signifies me appearing to you. As your teacher and your guide.

Here I am.

But where have you been! - you say - I have had no real lesson for WEEKS! You abandoned me!

No no. I did not abandon you. I introduced you to the practice of self-discovery and ancient forms of experiential learning. And then, I went on sabbatical. Also called - Christmas.

Like the hero Aeneas before me, I travelled into the underworld with a branch of mistletoe to commune with my loved ones¹ .

Last night was the twelfth and final night of my long journey and now I return to you.

How have you been getting on?

O dear.

Ominous silence.

Well.

I appreciate that you have missed me.

Perhaps you weren’t ready for solo study.
Perhaps you need my guidance once again.
Perhaps I must once more take you under my wing.

And so - the lesson begins.

GREECE CIRCA 325 BCE

Γεια σας μαθητές !
(Trans : Hail, Students)

Socrates (pictured above) was a great teacher like me. Sadly, he died in 399 BCE, which was 70 years before Alexander the Great returned from his Eastern Campaign, bringing with him the Indian kiss. By simple logic, we may conclude that Socrates never got to kiss anyone in his whole life and, by extension, nor did any of his students. The image above demonstrates how sad this made them all. Even though we now live in an age of confusion and agony, I imagine you are thanking your lucky stars that you weren’t a student in the time of Socrates.

Except.

Let’s interrogate this a bit further.

THE SOCRATIC METHOD APPLIED

(What follows is an example of your current knowledge and assumptions being interrogated by an expert questioner. If you want to bring the educational experience to life, you can try voicing the role of the pupil, and imagine me in the role of the questioner.)

PUPIL : I propose that, because the kiss only arrived in Greece in 327 BCE, with Alexander the Great, this means that Europeans were not kissing in the time of Socrates.

QUESTIONER : Are you sure that the kiss only arrived in Greece in 327 BCE?

PUPIL : Not really. It’s just what I’ve been told. You told me in our previous lessons.

QUESTIONER : Did I?

PUPIL : Not in so many words. I mean. I don’t remember.

QUESTIONER : I have just found out that Pericles, King of Athens, kissed Aspatia in 425 BCE, meaning that Europeans were kissing each other before the time of Socrates.

PUPIL : Ah, but if that is true, why do Socrates’ pupils look so sad?

QUESTIONER : Let me ask the questions.

PUPIL : Sorry.

QUESTIONER : Why do Socrates’ pupils look so sad?

PUPIL : Could it be because they’ve heard about Aspatia and Pericles kissing each other and they are jealous?

QUESTIONER : Perhaps. But what do we know about Pericles and Aspatia² ?

PUPIL : Plutarch tells us that Pericles would kiss Aspasia, his lover, each morning on the doorstep of their home, before going to work. He wasn’t allowed to marry her, because she was an immigrant, so he fell in love with her instead. We are told that this enraged everyone.

QUESTIONER : And what does this tell us about the kiss arriving in Europe with Alexander the Great in 327 BCE?

PUPIL : It’s a lie. You were wrong.

QUESTIONER : Possibly. Or possibly it is a half-truth.

PUPIL : A what?

QUESTIONER : Let us consider Heroditus. What does he say?

PUPIL : Heroditus says that kissing the hand was a Persian custom, which the Greeks called Proskynesis.

QUESTIONER : Excellent. Tell me more.

PUPIL : The Greek poet, Homer, placed a kiss in the Iliad, given by King Priam of Troy to the Greek soldier Achilles, in the tradition of Proskynesis. Achilles had killed Priam’s son, Hector, on the field of battle. Achilles then dragged Hector’s corpse behind his chariot, round and round and round the city walls until it was but rag and bone. All that was left to Priam after his raging, grovelling grief was the hope that he might give his son a proper burial : the lonely comfort for parents of the dead. So Priam disguised himself as a poor man and travelled alone to the Greek camp, to seek out his son’s murderer. Once he reached the great warrior Achilles, Priam revealed his true identity and threw himself on his knees and kissed the hand of the man who killed his son and begged -

Please let me take him home, it’s all I want.

QUESTIONER : I weep… It is not beyond me. To weep.

PUPIL : I too weep for Priam.

QUESTIONER : So this is the famous kiss of the Iliad? And what of Helen? Surely Paris kisses Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world?

PUPIL : No. There is no erotic kiss in the Iliad. Just this.

QUESTIONER : How strange. What conclusion can we draw?

PUPIL : I don’t know. But it seems to suggest that though there was kissing in Ancient Greece, it tended not to be associated with eroticism. Heterosexual erotic kissing seems particularly rare. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that when Aspatia kissed Pericles, it made everyone angry.

QUESTIONER : Angry? Who was angry?

PUPIL : O, the Athenians were incredibly angry. Aspasia was called many ugly names. The poet Cratinus, for example, calls her a ‘dog-eyed whore’, when we know Aspasia was in fact a teacher of rhetoric.

QUESTIONER : Ah! But one woman may be skilled in both the intellectual and the sexual arts?

PUPIL : Of course that is possible. But also, it is possible that Cratinus had the brain of a pea.

QUESTIONER : We will never really know.

PUPIL : No.

QUESTIONER : So what do you conclude?

PUPIL : I conclude that some kissing existed in Greece before the return of Alexander from India. But that heterosexual lip-to-lip kissing was considered exotic and rare. I conjecture that, if lip-kissing symbolised equality (an inheritance of the Persians) then it may have been improper for a man to elevate a woman to equal status by kissing her on her lips. We might remember the Indian man who was punished for kissing a slave-woman. So it may still be true that Socrates didn’t get to kiss a women on the lips and nor did any of his students.

QUESTIONER : Which is why they look so sad?

PUPIL : Exactly.

QUESTIONER : This makes total sense. But there is one last thing. What happened in history just before Alexander the Great?

PUPIL : The Athenian plague killed Pericles and a hundred thousand other people.

QUESTIONER : And this stopped Pericles from kissing Aspasia?

PUPIL : It stopped everyone kissing everyone and also it stopped all semblance of law and order and society collapsed and many of Socrates’ students must have suffered and died.

QUESTIONER : Once more I weep.

PUPIL : Yes

And here a silence descends.

PUPIL : And yet, there is a spark of light.

QUESTIONER : In all this darkness?

PUPIL : Yes. For I have worked out that people still loved each other.

QUESTIONER : Even in all this darkness?

PUPIL : Yes. I found out that during the plague, Hippocrates came along and he was a doctor which is an act of love. And I have worked out that love is the only thing that matters it’s the only thing.

QUESTIONER : So if the Persians -

PUPIL : Not now. Question me later if you like. I will listen. For now, let us sit quietly together.

QUESTIONER : Thank -

PUPIL : Shhhhh…

Silence.

Here endeth the lesson

Music : Elegia : Jacaszek

EXERCISE LESSON TEN

Sit still.

¹ In The Aeneid, Aeneus visits the Underworld (The Land of the Dead). He needs a branch of Mistletoe to get in. The Aeneid is a poem written in Latin, but it’s still good.

² Aspasia of Miletus was a Sophist and a teacher of Rhetoric, but little is known of her life, though she is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes and Xenophon, among others. She is regularly referred to as a courtesan and it is hard to work out how true this is, a bit like with courtesan/composer, Barbara Strozzi (see Lesson Three). Madeleine Henry states, "To ask questions about Aspasia's life is to ask questions about half of humanity."

NEXT LESSON : ANCIENT ROME PART I

Death and the Maiden : Pierre Puvis de Chavames 1872
The Death of Socrates : Jacques-Louis David 1787
Priam Asking Achilles for the Body of Hector : Théobald Chartran 1876
Hippocrates at work : Carving by unknown artist 5th Century BCE

Date of publication : 6.1.21 (Epiphany)