URSABLOG. A Change in Space and Time 5: A Trick of the Light

What is often forgotten about ancient Athenian democracy – particularly considering its influence on the Enlightenment, and the various revolutions that followed – is that it wasn’t for everyone. To be a part of it you had to be a citizen, which meant that you had to have been born there, of an Athenian citizen father and a free woman and later – after a Periclean reform – of parents who were both freeborn, and born Athenians.

You could not apply for citizenship, or have it granted to you, you had to be born into it, however rich you were, whatever service you had given. This restricted the number of men – no women allowed – who were entitled to be part of the various democratic institutions, assembling, deliberating, debating and disputing under the watchful grey eyes of Athina in her temple above them. It has been argued – more-or-less convincingly – that for democracy to work as it was set out then in Athens, it had to be restricted to those that really had skin in the game.

And their skins were in the game: it was their duty to participate in military activity, in religious and cultural rites, in the workings of government and justice, mostly at their own expense. Whilst it is true that in the later years of classical Athens, citizens were paid for attendance at trials, deliberations and debates, being citizens of Athens was both a birthright and a duty, something to be proud of, to be lauded, to be fought for and to be protected. A citizen of Athens could be ostracised – voted by the citizens into a temporary exile, for whatever reason – and made to live somewhere else for ten years. They were able to come back, suitably chastened, one hopes.

The current municipality of Athens is somewhat larger than the ancient one. I was reminded of this as I took a Chinese friend for a walk in the centre the other evening. We met in Syntagma Square, and walked through Plaka, and up through Anafiotika to a viewpoint tucked under the northeast face of the Acropolis.

I was in full teacher/guide mode, explaining the origin of the name of Anafiotika and the buildings built by their former inhabitants, and pointing out the limits of the ancient city amid the current urban sprawl. I also pointed out and named the mountains and hills in view, including the small one on which my new home is located. It was an impressive view: the sun was setting and a full moon was about to rise.

I was in full flow as we walked across the shoulders of the Acropolis, pointing out the ancient columns and stones from the remains of previous, even more ancient temples destroyed by the Persian invasion, recycled and embedded to buttress the construction of the pavement of the plateau above, where the finest architecture of its time – of any time, perhaps – remains on full show.

I showed my friend the agora below us, explaining that the real life of the city was lived there, where politics, philosophy and prestige rubbed shoulders with commerce, industry and intrigue. The Hephaisteion was glowing from the remnants of the sunset, its multifaceted perfection not just reflecting the gentle Attic light, but almost burning with its own internal fusion of classic beauty.

We walked past the Areopagus, too crowded with people waiting for the moon, or falling in love, or sparking up a joint to be pleasurable. Then down into Thiseio – passing the open air cinema where they were showing The Odyssey – and across the railway bridge to Kerameikos, and the old western city gate, where Pericles himself told the Athenians, and the world about what made an Athenian, and why it was a good thing. All the while we kept glancing back to the Acropolis, and to the Parthenon, and I had the feeling that the warlike and wise grey-eyed goddess was benevolently gazing down on us, enfolding us within her protective robes of light.

Due to a quirk in the byzantine procedures of modern Greek bureaucracy, I am officially a citizen of Athens – my name has been entered into a big ledger in the city hall – but until I complete my exams, and all the other hurdles I will have to leap over before I get hold of a Greek ID and passport, I will not be a Greek citizen. I appreciate that I will never be Greek, ethnically or culturally – too much other blood and water has flown under other, foreign bridges for that ever to be the case – but I take comfort, and some pride in being able to call myself an Athenian, even if only to myself.

The word citizen, in English at least, has as its root civitas, usually translated as city, not as a physical place, but the body of citizens, the community itself, derived from civis, the citizen. The city as a place in Latin is urbs, where we get urban. It is easy to see how citizenship could be expanded to a state, as a larger community of people, without necessarily needing to live in one city.

Greek is at once more simple and subtle, following a different logic, one that I find more appealing. Πολίτης derives from the word πόλις, the city. Greek political life and the achievements of classical Greece were, I believe, a product of the dynamic tension and interaction within and between the πόλεις. To be a πολίτης was therefore to belong to the πόλις, both as a place and a people, especially as ancient Athenians believed that they were autochthonous, their ancestors having literally sprung out of the ground beneath their city.

For us foreigners, it was different. If I had lived then, and lived here, I would have been a μέτοικος, a metic. Although metics were free, and often long-resident (and even second- or third-generation), there was no route to citizenship except by exceptional decree. As a μέτοικος, I would have served in the army and navy, and played and paid for my part in the religious liturgies, but I would not have been able to own land or a house in Attica without a specific grant of έγκτησις (no golden visa then), nor would I have been able to marry into a citizen family, or speak and vote in the assembly. I would not have been able to go to court on my own account; I would have needed a citizen sponsor, and failure to have one was itself an indictable offence that could end in enslavement. Whatever my complaints about Greek bureaucracy, life is a little easier for us ξένοι these days.

The number of these metics was substantial: around 10% of the free population in the fourth century, mostly concentrated in Piraeus – in banking, manufacture, shipping and trade – their status was an important factor in these sectors’ success. And these metics were by no means always background figures; Aristotle was a metic, which surely influenced his decision in 323 BCE to leave, when a charge of impiety was brought against him, rather than contest it. He knew where that could end, even for a citizen such as Socrates.

The area where I used to live – Kynosargous – although outside the ancient city walls, was part of classical Athenian life. It was the site of a gymnasium where the νόθοι – those with only one Athenian parent, excluded from full citizenship – trained: a suitable place for a difficult bastard to set up home. The area where my new place is, however, was of no significance at all back then; it was not only firmly outside the city walls, but of no use to anyone except a few shepherds. It is a lot different now.

It feels like what I think a city should really be: noisy, interactive, multifaceted, people on their way here or there, busy doing something, or busy not doing something, having loud or secretive conversations on the corners of streets, in cafés, bars or μεζεδοπωλεία, always watching, always listening, always observing. The intensity of life varies from street to street, at different times of the day – and night – and all the while the people that do live here, or who live elsewhere, or work here, or elsewhere, come and go in a churn of cosmopolitanism that is neither exclusive nor inclusive, neither overly friendly nor aggressively intimidating. It’s a place where many different lives, activities, ideas and backgrounds collide, interact and intertwine. It’s not for everyone, but I love it.

But as I descend – whether on foot or by Vespa – from my home into the city, in whatever direction, my love of the city grows. Moving house has reignited my love affair with Athens, not just of my new neighbourhood, but with the city as a whole.

I find myself pausing at street corners, or traffic lights to gaze on a new perspective, observe a building I had not noticed before, eavesdrop on conversations, and then – nudged into action by a light turning green, or an impatient beep behind me – I am compelled to move on. I am constantly being jolted out of complacency by tableaux of spontaneous beauty.

I feel as though I am waking up after being asleep for an age, or finally getting stronger after a long period of convalescence. I am still groggy, unsure of my steps, a little unsteady. I’m not reborn, nor do I suddenly have huge reservoirs of unused energy at my disposal. But I am being gently inspired to reconsider life and my place in it. And the city, I am sure, is the catalyst for this renewal, regeneration, or whatever it turns out to be.

And as my eyes become more accustomed to being open, I am becoming more aware of the light. Not just the light of the ever-present sun, or of transformational dawns and sunsets, but something else altogether. I see things that I didn’t see before – physically, philosophically, emotionally – and I see them in a different light. This does not mean I see them more clearly, or definitively, in fact the opposite is probably the case. Nothing is completely black and white or displayed in stark relief. Nothing is as obvious as it seemed to be before, and the things I took as definitive now appear in nuanced subtlety, changing colour and shape as I walk around them, or simply sit and observe.

The Parthenon was one of the wonders of the classical world, and it remains one today. The architecture and construction were innovative: the slightly swelling columns, making them seem stronger and more alive, and the stone itself – marble from Mount Penteli to the north of Athens – of a durability and brightness that has stood the test of time.

The base of the temple curves gently upwards to the centre on all sides, creating an imposing effect on those looking up from the Areopagus and the Pnyx below, and from much, much further away.

All the exterior columns of the peristyle – the colonnade that runs around the exterior of the building – lean inwards, slightly, towards the centre. The columns on the four corners – slightly more substantial – lean in diagonally. None of these features are obvious; you have to look for them.

But one fact astounds me: if you were to draw a line upwards from every single column in the peristyle and extend them skywards, these lines would all meet at a single point about 2,400 metres above. The design of the building is so sublime – mathematically, mechanically, aesthetically – that it creates beauty even in the empty sky above, that the eye feels, but cannot see.

I have long had a theory about what I call the Acropolis Syndrome: if you ask most people who live here how many times they have been up to the top of the Acropolis, they will usually tell you two or three times, once with school, and the rest with visitors and special occasions. I used to ask, especially when I was first here, with an incredulity that was both passionate and patronising, how could they not go as often as they could?

Now I know different. It’s always there, it’s been there for so long, and it’s always going to be there, so what’s the rush? And the Acropolis Syndrome seeps into other areas of Athenian life, as we promise to catch up for meetings, coffees, drinks or dinners at some indefinite point in the future which never arrives. It’s a completely different story if someone is visiting us from abroad, or there is some important business matter to explore or resolve.

The Acropolis, and particularly the Parthenon, is always there. I catch glimpses of it, or parts of it, as I move around the city. It never ceases to impress me. But what exactly am I impressed by? Its omnipresent beauty? The mathematical and aesthetic genius behind it? Its longevity?

The city of Athens built the Parthenon, and the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, the Theatre of Dionysos and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, at different times, under different regimes. And it’s the same for every other building here, ancient or modern, beautiful or ugly, domineering or diminutive, freshly constructed or falling into sad ruin, from the OAKA stadium down to the most unassuming polykatoikia. People built them, not just the geniuses, the architects, the visionaries, but also the labourers, the craftsmen, the lawyers, the suppliers, the bankers, the traders, and the cooks and shopkeepers, and everyone else that kept the city moving and living in the meantime. Not just those from Athens, or wider Greece, but all those who came and stayed on, bringing their own lives, stories, experiences and ideas with them. And also those who left, taking their lives, stories, experiences and ideas with them to somewhere else.

It is a long, strange and sometimes contradictory and confusing story as to how, and why, I ended up in Athens, and how I stayed here. I have struggled at times with an identity crisis of sorts, trying to understand why I want to consider myself an Athenian, even when all the evidence points in a completely different direction. Do I really belong here? It’s a question that has many answers, depending on who I ask, and who they are, and what I mean to them. How many of us really belong anywhere? And for how long?

Nothing is set in stone forever, and I am not made of stone. There are so many things I would like to be true, and real, and permanent, that could mean something, and be respected and admired. They have turned out to be ephemeral and fleeting: just a trick of the light.

Simon Ward