Plato's Caves by Rebecca LeMoine

Author:Rebecca LeMoine
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Socrates’ Myths of Athens through Aspasia’s Voice

The oration commences with the myth of Athenians as autochthonous, or born of the earth. According to the myth, “the birth of their ancestors was not in a foreign land (οὐκ ἔπηλυς), and thus the descendants they produced did not migrate (μετοικοῦντας) to this country with their own having come from another place (ἄλλοθεν), but were autochthonous (αὐτόχθονας), living and dwelling in their true fatherland, nurtured not by a stepmother as others are, but by a mother, the country in which they lived” (237b–c).28 For a metic to boast of Athenian autochthony is ironic, as Aspasia cannot share in the kinship the myth generates. Such myths apply only to Athenians, not foreign transplants like herself. The separation of author from speech calls attention to the dismembering such myths perform. Autochthony myths generate unity by delineating “us” and “them,” a tension Aspasia’s authorship amplifies. Heard through her voice, the myth’s repeated use of the negative—Athenians were not born in a foreign land, did not migrate, and were not raised by a stepmother—becomes more antagonistic. Indeed, a core function of these myths was to distinguish Athens from cities whose foundation stories involved immigration.29 Aspasia’s voice reminds of the multitude of myths celebrating her native Miletus’ foreign founding and its history of peaceful interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks.30 Accentuating the oppositional nature of Athenian autochthony myths, Aspasia’s authorship invites listeners to inquire whether unity is compatible with a rhetoric of hostility toward those with whom one shares the land. Through this, Socrates shows how engaging foreign voices can illuminate the tensions in one’s thinking—here, the tension in Socrates’ belief that telling citizens the noble lie that they are born from the earth will only generate unity (Republic 414b–e).

Aspasia’s authorship also highlights the discrepancy between Athenian speech and deed, showing that Athenians do not practice the complete separation from foreigners that their myths of autochthony preach. Amid all the talk of mothers and stepmothers, Aspasia’s own motherhood points to the evidence that undermines the Athenians’ claim to autochthony. Although her son with Pericles, Pericles the Younger, was disqualified from citizenship under the citizenship law of 451/50 bc for having a non-Athenian mother, he was later, around 430/429 bc, granted citizenship.31 Only thus was he qualified to serve as one of the generals tried en masse and executed after the battle of Arginusae.32 At least one Athenian citizen, then—a prominent one at that—descended from a non-Athenian. Ancient reports of other illegitimate sons being granted citizenship and of the bestowing of citizenship on large groups of foreigners during the Peloponnesian War, combined with the fact that Pericles’ citizenship law likely did not apply retroactively, suggest Pericles the Younger was not the only Athenian citizen of mixed blood.33 Aspasia’s voice thus serves as a bold reminder that Athenians often favored the inclusion of foreigners, despite attempting through autochthony myths to make metics perpetual immigrants.34 If myths of pure lineage not only spur conflict between those “born of the earth” and everyone

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