Beyond Socrates’ Dia-Logos. Luigi Giannachi
of the will of gods, I will be available to those who will wonder the properties of Eros to achieve the perfection of the soul. I will be Diotima of Mantinea or Aspasia of Mileto or even Pericles' concubine if he will love me, but I will always be a woman coming from barbaric Ionia. My only enjoy will perhaps be to let Theseusâ heirs this gift: the thread that one day Ariadne gave him to get out of the labyrinth wasnât just a thread, it was much more».
So she greeted me as we resumed the journey from Delos to Athens, without giving me the opportunity to exchange other words with her, while the veil I had given her back, in the constant attempt to keep her hair united, was fighting hard against the worst of Etesian winds.
«Bard! thou who art my guide,
Consider well, if virtue be in me Sufficient,
ere to this high enterprise thou trust me.
(Dante Alighieri, Inferno, II vv. 11-14)
«Thy soul is by vile fear assailâd,
which oft So overcasts a man,
that he recoils From noblest resolution,
like a beast At some false semblance in the twilight gloom»
(Dante Alighieri, Inferno, II vv.46-49)
3. The divine mind
I got back with my tail in the legs lost inside my head, because not only I didnât understand how philosophy was born just coming from Mileto, but I didnât even know a way to go to the truth, much less to democracy.
Hm, was there something wrong in the city where Aspasia was heading? Was perhaps the city of Athens incapable of welcoming her message? Or was Aspasia the first between the greatest Utopian in history? Perhaps the mind sometimes fails to understand all the knowledgeable? Or is the world in which we live too limited for the abilities of the human mind? But there was another alternative: maybe I wasn't able to understand and transmit such a deep message.
I was plagued by doubts, the fear of not being up made my body shiver to the backbone. I wouldnât know which of these hypotheses would be more likely, but the Poet urged me to move on, he insisted so that I didnât beat around the bush too much about my thoughts, because fear wasn't an excuse of my eventual failure, because fear weakens legs, because I didnât have anything to prove, neither to him nor to myself, and finally because the energy was stronger in me to move forward rather than giving up.
So I set out to continue the journey that I had taken in the light of that advice from the distant space-time, intended I would go back to consult my guide when the moment was closer to his time. Once I arrived at the port of Piraeus, my eyes opened to what Aspasia had tried to tell me. That wasnât just a port, that was Piraeus. The most important market in the world. Egyptian and Phoenician vessels were alternating with Greek ships without causing astonishment, there were even some ships coming from territories controlled by Persians, which until a few years ago thought that they could make Hellas a land of conquest, while now they gladly went to trade there.
Oil, wine, tableware and tissues were widely traded with other populations, among the first Ionian colonies, which made a great demand of it. Some potters had put their workshops near the harbour enticing leaving people to do the last purchases. Clay became ceramic in Keramikosâ workshops, the famous area in the north-west of Athens, where clay was in large quantities. What better place than Piraeus or Agora to sell pots? Imaging the city of Athens, I was impressed by how many things came there from the rest of the world: grain, copper, leathers and, not least, slaves. So much was the grain brought to the city that begs the question of how many people lived there and how much food they would consume on parties or simply for their nourishment. The slaves from Ionia were cheap, so the aristocrats gladly bartered their oil or their wine with a free labour force. The wives would have been happy to have more people for the housework without asking to their husbands.
As I walked along the piers of Piraeus, I heard the coins of Athens tinkle from one corner to the other of the small and large inns, where the owners were contending for the merchants to gladden their breaks after long journeys. Small and round, they didnât fear the comparison with other coins minted in that period: Athenaâs head on one side and the owl with olive branch on the other were so characteristic that they couldnât be confused. That coin was the symbol of a city built to honour the goddess of wisdom, who protected both art and science at the same time. A question began to form inside me, without a reply that could satisfy my curiosity: was the songs of the Muses or the intuition of philosophers to have more importance for this city and for what would have been the future of the world?
I was forgetting, wandering among my thoughts lost in the smells of merchandise for sale, to visit a friend of mine who tried to make both ends meet between Piraeus and Athens. The day for him never ended. He now unloaded the goods from the ships, and then obtained to pack the wool to be sold to the wealthy Etruscan traders, so he managed the mules and packhorses that were loaded with grain and leathers almost nearby the Acropolis. His name was Timofilo; he didnât have a family, but he hoped one day his energy and improvisation would have got on him in the world.
«Ghignos, finally you came, I thought you wouldnât find the right ship».
«You already know that my journey doesnât have a port of arrival decided before departure, I donât know if this is good or bad. Ever since I started my journey, I have left my ship with loose sails just being cautious to where the wind takes me, always looking around».
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