--
This article, a continuation of a
debate about law, society, and
homosexuality in ancient Athens,
takes the position that
male homosexuality was an acceptable aspect
of Athenian culture.
Their great tyrannicides,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton,
were remembered by later
writers as much for their personal
relationship as their contributions to
Athenian democracy.
Using specific
information from classical writers
such as
Plato, Aristotle,
Aeschines, and Lysias,
the author argues that a
recent interpretation of homosexual
acts as committing hubris are incorrect.
The only case on record where
homoerotic behavior was
involved in a charge of hubris is found
in
Aeschines' Against Timarchus.
Hindley believes the statement
that Timarchus "committed
hubris against his own body " was describing
his acts of
- prostitution -
a shameful act in homosexual relationships.
When Timarchus began
accepting all-comers to his bed and accepting
money for his favors, his
homosexuality became shameful.
Homosexuality itself was Not The Source Of Shame.
Hindley, with his
exhaustive, detailed, and extremely
informative footnotes, supports his
opinion that
Homosexuality between consenting,
Free Athenian Men
was Neither Shameful Nor Hubristic.
----
The following passages are excerpts from
"Harmodius And Aristogeiton"
historical account: The Pelopennesian Wars (Thucydides)
The way that most men deal
with traditions, even traditions of their
own country, is to receive them all alike as
they are delivered, without applying any
critical test
whatever.
The general Athenian public fancy
that Hipparchus was tyrant when he fell by
the hands
of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
Not knowing that
Hippias, the eldest of the sons of Pisistratus,
was really supreme,
and that Hipparchus and Thessalus
were his brothers;
and that Harmodius and
Aristogeiton suspecting,
on the very day,
nay at
the very moment fixed on for the deed,
that
information had been conveyed to Hippias by their
accomplices, concluded that he had been
warned,
and did not attack him, yet, not liking to
be apprehended and risk their lives for nothing, fell
upon Hipparchus near the temple of the daughters
of Leos,
and slew him as he was arranging the
Panathenaic procession.
There are many other unfounded ideas current
among the rest of the Hellenes, even on matters of
contemporary history, which have not been
obscured by time.
Fornara, C.W., "The Cult of Aristogeiton and Harmodius", Philologus 114, (1970)
----
Fictional stories concerning the accepted
homosexual culture in
Greek Athenian History
are exemplified in
"The Persian Boy"
by
Mary Renault
Some descriptions of artifacts mention
Harmodius And Aristogeiton Vases:
Please use "EDIT - FIND" - "Harmodius"
to read about
an antique vase at Tufts Educational Site
a password might be required to do so!
The festival
was really
in honour of
Artemis and Enyalios;
the
presence of Apollo is complimentary.
Although scenes of daily life on
vases are innumerable,
scenes from legend
or `history' are very few in number.
Arkesilas of Cyrene appears, weighing his
silphium;
Croesus upon his funeral
pyre;
Harmodius and Aristogeiton slaying Hipparchus;
Sappho, with Eros, or the
Muses, and once with Alcaeus;
the Persians,
on the Darius vase.
To appear on a
vase-painting was equivalent to a sort of
pagan canonization.
----
The Kiss Between Harmodius And Aristogeiton
The Monument Redefined Exhibition
Circa 1982, Brooklyn, New York
--
The Kiss Between Harmodius And Aristogeiton -- And Why Tava
Left It Unpainted:
--
Following the brief next section
is a story about how Tava and I finished
Another Last Minute Art Piece:
Tava & I believed that
Harmodius and Aristogeiton
were considered the defenders of democracy,
because they demanded that young Greek men
should be Free To Choose
Their Male Counterparts
(Lovers)
and
Not Be Forced
to be with men chosen for them
by those in power:
Tyrants!
The basic story is that the very beautiful
Harmodius
loved and was loved by the middle aged
Aristogeiton.
The king
Hippias
made advances toward
Harmodius
and later insulted his honor.
To defend their
Rights As Free Greek Citizens,
The lovers rebeled against the tyrannical ruler
and secured
(defended) democracy for All Citizens
with
Harmodius's Death.
----
The First Place Mural
of
The Tomb Of Harmodius
I helped Tava paint in November 1982,
was chosen over great artists like
Cristo and his wife
but almost never got painted!
A blank wall of blocks seldom wins first place,
and the tomb of Harmodius with His Guardians
was just that -- till the last days!
The Tomb of Harmodius And Aristogeiton
is surrounded by rows of "Guardians"
[Roman Soldiers] on each
side of the mausoleum center piece,
where the image of Harmodius & Aristogeiton
are supposed to be painted "kissing."
Tava and I
drove out to the Brooklyn dump (the exhibit's site)
screaming and fighting with each other.
I was angry because
The deadline was coming very close and
the rows and rows of guardians (24 in all)
we needed to paint on the wall of concrete blocks
wasn't even begun, and again Tava told me it was behind
schedule at the last minute, as usual.
I remember Tava was working on the second soldier
with a flimsy tissue paper tracing of
the guardian blowing around in the wind,
and a pencil that wouldn't mark the blocks,
two days before the opening.
At that rate it would be
Impossible To Finish The
Mural!
I was Pissed!
It wasn't even my project!
I didn't want to be in that dump another minute!
Why couldn't Tava plan his art projects better?
I watched him struggling,
and realized he epitomized the true definition of
An Artist!
All he had was the concept
He had no idea how he was going to execute it
But Execute He would
Against All Odds.
And afterall,
Hadn't I Signed On With Him To Help
when i became his lover!
I jumped into the truck's driver's seat
and left.
I'm sure he felt abandoned
until he saw me coming back a little later.
At a local hardware store I purchased
Cardboard, Hammer, Masonry
Chalk, And Masonry Nails.
While he screamed at me --
("I thought you had left me here! What do you think you're doing?
Why are you tracing that? I'm not going to use that.")
-- I traced the guardian onto the cardboard
Nailed my cardboard tracing
To The Block Wall,
(Instead Of Nailing Tava To The Wall - like I really wanted to do),
[see Tava's Print 41]
put the chalk
into his hands and
told him to
Please, Trace The Damn Guardians.
Notr sure if I said please at this point - unlikely!
He never had to tell me
how grateful he was
when he won.
I could see it in his eyes,
as he explained why the entire outside mural
only depicted the guardians
and ommitted
Harmodius's And Aristogeiton's Kiss
on the center of the tomb.
"The Kiss"
was included in the indoor gallery,
but not on the actual outside mural work.
Modern "Fine Art" Critics
would never accept a painting of
Two Men Kissing
as "Fine Art" in those days.
Not sure if they would now either!
More than one concept was made in the mural!
The Obvious,
Great Lovers In History Theme,
and
Tava's Subtle Stab At The Art World's
Snub Toward Homosexuality!
----
The Peloponnesian Wars -
Harmodius And Aristogeiton -
The Disgrace Of Alcibiades
--
The following passages are
excerpts from
One Of The "Harmodius Epics":
Harmodius And Aristogeiton -- The Disgrace
Of Alcibiades
The History of the Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides
Written ca. 431 B.C.
Translated by
Richard Crawley
The Sixth Book - Chapter XIX
Seventeenth Year of the War -
Parties at Syracuse
Story of Harmodius and Aristogeiton -
Disgrace of Alcibiades
Meanwhile at Syracuse news came in
from many quarters of the expedition, but for a
long while met with no credence whatever.
Indeed, an assembly was held in which
speeches, as will be seen,
were delivered by different orators, believing or
contradicting the report of the
Athenian expedition . . .
They found the Salaminia come from
Athens for Alcibiades,
with orders for him
to sail home to answer the
charges which the state brought against him,
and for certain
others of the soldiers who with him
were accused of sacrilege in the matter of the
mysteries and of the Hermae.
For the Athenians, after the departure of the
expedition,
had continued as active as ever in
investigating the facts of the
mysteries and of the
Hermae, and, instead of testing the
informers, in their suspicious temper welcomed all
indifferently, arresting and
imprisoning the best citizens upon the
evidence of rascals,
and preferring to sift the
matter to the bottom sooner than to let
an accused person of
good character pass unquestioned,
owing to the rascality of the informer.
The commons had heard how oppressive the
tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons had
become before it ended, and
further that that had been put down at last,
not by
themselves and Harmodius, but by the
Lacedaemonians,
and so were always in fear
and took everything suspiciously.
Indeed, the daring action of
Aristogeiton and Harmodius
was undertaken in consequence of a love affair,
which I shall relate at some length,
to show that the
Athenians are not more accurate than the
rest of the world in their accounts of their
own tyrants and of the facts of their own
history.
Pisistratus dying at an advanced age
in possession of the tyranny, was
succeeded by his eldest son,
Hippias,and not
Hipparchus,
as is vulgarly believed
Harmodius
was then in
the
flower of youthful
beauty,
and
Aristogeiton,
a
citizen in the middle rank of life,
was his
Lover And Possessed Him.
Solicited without
success by Hipparchus,
son of Pisistratus,
Harmodius
told Aristogeiton,
and the enraged lover,
afraid that the powerful Hipparchus might take
Harmodius by force,
immediately formed a design,
such as his
condition in life
permitted,
for overthrowing the tyranny.
In the meantime Hipparchus,
after a second
solicitation of Harmodius,
attended
with no better success, unwilling to use violence,
arranged to insult him in some covert way.
Indeed, generally their government was not
grievous to the multitude . . .
. . . these tyrants cultivated
wisdom and virtue as much as any, and
without exacting from the Athenians more than
a twentieth of their income,
splendidly adorned their city, and
carried on their wars,
and provided sacrifices for the temples . . .
. . . That Hippias was the eldest son and
succeeded to the government, is what I positively
assert as a fact . . .
. . . It was the sad
fate which made Hipparchus famous that got him
also the credit with posterity of
having been tyrant.
To return to
Harmodius;
Hipparchus having
been repulsed in his solicitations insulted
him as he had resolved, by first
inviting a sister of his, a young girl,
to come and bear a
basket in a certain procession, and
then rejecting her, on the plea that she had never
been invited at all owing to her
unworthiness.
If Harmodius was indignant at this,
Aristogeiton for his
sake now became
more exasperated than ever,
and having arranged
everything with those who were to join
them in the enterprise, they only waited for the
great feast of the Panathenaea,
the sole day upon which the citizens
forming part of the
procession could meet together in
arms without suspicion.
Aristogeiton and Harmodius
were to begin, but were to be
supported immediately by their accomplices against the
bodyguard.
The conspirators were not
many, for better security, besides which they
hoped that those not in the plot
would be carried away by the example of a few daring
spirits, and use the arms in their
hands to recover their liberty.
At last the festival arrived; and
Hippias with his bodyguard was outside the
city in the
Ceramicus, arranging how the
different parts of the procession were to proceed.
Harmodius and Aristogeiton
had
already their daggers and were getting ready to act,
when seeing one of their accomplices
talking familiarly with Hippias, who was easy of
access to every one,
[Sort Of Like Vinny?]
they took fright,
and concluded that they were discovered and on
the point of being taken;
and eager if
possible to be revenged first upon the man who
had wronged them
and for whom they had
undertaken all this risk, they rushed, as they
were, within the gates, and meeting
with Hipparchus by the Leocorium recklessly fell
upon him at once,
infuriated,
Aristogeiton by love,
and
Harmodius by insult,
and smote
him and slew him.
Aristogeiton
escaped the guards at the moment,
through the crowd
running up, but was afterwards
taken and dispatched in no merciful way:
Harmodius was killed on the spot.
. . . When the news was brought to Hippias
in the Ceramicus, he at once proceeded not to
the scene of action, but to the
armed men in the procession, before they, being some
distance away, knew anything of the
matter, and composing his features for the
occasion, so as not to betray himself,
pointed to a certain spot, and bade them repair
thither without their arms. They
withdrew accordingly, fancying he had something to
say; upon which he told the mercenaries
to remove the arms, and there and then
picked out the men he thought
guilty and all found with daggers, the shield and spear
being the usual weapons for a procession.
In this way
offended love first led
Harmodius and Aristogeiton to conspire,
and
the alarm of the moment to commit the
rash action recounted.
. . . With these events in their minds, and
recalling everything they knew by hearsay on the
subject, the Athenian people grow
difficult of humour and suspicious of the persons
charged in the affair of the mysteries,
and persuaded that all that had taken place was
part of an oligarchical and
monarchical conspiracy. . . .
. . .(it was) not clear whether the
sufferers had been punished unjustly, while in any
case the rest of the city received
immediate and manifest relief.
To return to
Alcibiades:public
feeling was very hostile to him, being
worked on by the
same enemies who had attacked him
before he went out; and now that the Athenians
fancied that they had got at the truth
of the matter of the Hermae, they believed more
firmly than ever that the affair of the
mysteries also, in which he was implicated, had
been contrived by him in the same
intention and was connected with the plot against
the democracy.
Meanwhile it so happened that, just at the
time of this agitation, a small
force of Lacedaemonians had advanced as
far as the Isthmus, in pursuance of some
scheme with the Boeotians. It was now
thought that this had come by appointment, at
his instigation, and not on
account of the Boeotians, and that, if the
citizens had not
acted on the information received, and
forestalled them by arresting the prisoners, the
city would have been betrayed. The
citizens went so far as to sleep one night armed in
the temple of Theseus within the walls.
The friends also of
Alcibiades at Argos were
just at this time suspected of a
design to attack the commons; and the
Argive hostages
deposited in the islands were given up
by the Athenians to the Argive people to be put
to death upon that account: in short,
everywhere something was found to create
suspicion against Alcibiades.
It was
therefore decided to bring him to trial and execute
him, and the Salaminia was sent
to Sicily for him and the others named in the
information, with instructions to
order him to come and answer the charges against
him, but not to arrest him,
because they wished to avoid causing
any agitation in the
army or among the enemy in Sicily,
and above all to retain the services of the
Mantineans and Argives, who, it was thought,
had been induced to join by his
influence.
Alcibiades,
with his own
ship and his fellow accused, accordingly sailed off
with the Salaminia from Sicily, as
though to return to Athens, and went with her as far
as Thurii, and there they left the
ship and disappeared, being afraid to go
home for trial
with such a prejudice existing against
them. The crew of the Salaminia stayed some
time looking for
Alcibiades and his companions,
and at length, as they were nowhere
to be found, set sail and departed.
Alcibiades, now an outlaw, crossed in a boat not
long after from Thurii to Peloponnese; and
the Athenians passed sentence of death by
default upon him and those in his company.
----
It's Easy to See Why Tava Saw
Harmodius And Aristogeiton
As
Great Lovers -- Heroes Against Tyranny And Control
That Can Exist In Any Community At Any Time!
As Modern Gays We Are Still Not Immune To Tyranny.