Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea by Thomas Cahill

Author:Thomas Cahill [Cahill, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780307755124
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-04-20T14:00:00+00:00

There are, most surely, significant differences between the Socratic and the Christian presentations. But the fathers of the early church were blown away by the similarities, especially given what they knew (all too well) of the fucker-fuckee aspect of Greek life. How unlikely it was that the competitive Athenians, striving for excellence and always pushing one another out of the way, should have—on their own and without the assistance of revelation—adduced such a “doctrine.” The fathers, therefore, came up with an odd formulation to explain how this could have happened: homo naturaliter Christianus, the naturally Christian man, who in his attraction to goodness is given sufficient grace to lead a moral life without the support of biblical revelation. Not only did this explanation make Socrates the first Greco-Roman secular saint of the Judeo-Christian tradition; it opened up even to simple believers of the early Christian centuries the possibility that there was goodness and morality to be found among those who had never come in contact with the authority of sacred scripture or the divine grace that flooded from the sacraments. Even though Socrates was an unusual specimen, the undeniable existence of someone who had thought such thoughts showed that grace and wisdom could sometimes be found even in pagan literature. This line of reasoning enabled Christians, who later came to monopolize power in Europe, to cherish pagan texts, some more than others and none more than Plato—which is why we still possess his entire oeuvre.3

If there was one text of Plato’s that the church fathers, meaning to remain faithful to the Judaic repugnance toward homosexuality, might have been tempted to toss to the Mediterranean winds, it was the Symposium, Plato’s account of an unusually sober drinking party at which the main subject was homosexual love. The guests gather in the andron of Agathon’s house, where they arrange themselves comfortably on his banqueting couches and prepare to tackle their dinner, which they finish off in grumpy semi-silence, Socrates, who cares little for food, arriving late. After they have performed the necessary libations and hymns, they are supposedly ready for the serious drinking to commence, but it soon turns out that, except for Socrates, they are all terribly hung over from last night’s festivities—in celebration of Agathon, who has just taken first prize at the Lenaia for his very first tragic trilogy. “In no state to carry on,” they agree to a proposal that no president be elected and that each one be allowed to drink as little as he pleases. Normally, the president would determine the exact mixture of wine and water and how often the guests’ goblets would be refilled. In such a regimen, each drinker was expected to hold up his end and keep pace—an impossible goal for this group.

Next, they decide to dismiss the naked flute girl, who was enlisted as Act I in the evening’s entertainment and who would usually end up sharing a couch or two before the night was through. So they are too wasted

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