αἰσχρὸν δὲ καὶ τὸ διὰ τὴν ἀμέλειαν γηρᾶναι, πρὶν ἰδεῖν ἑαυτὸν ποῖος ἂν κάλλιστος καὶ κράτιστος τῷ σώματι γένοιτο.

it is shameful to age through carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by bodily strength and beauty.

Xenophon Memorabilia 3.12

Ah Xenophon. How many authors have suffered such relegation? For the price of a few pints I acquired ample amounts of old student readers – defaced, but never despised – from a better, more civilised, age. The kind of texts seldom known and never really read anymore: The Cyropaedia, the Memorabilia, books on hunting… I hesitate before hitting the shift and the a, typing out Anabasis, because I am not entirely confident that old rite of passage which signals the end of beginner’s Greek is well and truly dead. I cannot fully image the Anabasis is unread even in these times.[1]

The above quotation is from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, a collection of Socratic dialogues.[2] . I first came across the quotation as part of unseen. I suspect this is the case for many. More than one textbook must use this as a practice passage. Do not let its memification fool you, this is the culmination of a thoughtful discussion on the complementary nature of physical and mental exertion. This idea of both physical and mental cultivation seems to be genuinely Socratic. At the very least it appears in Plato as well.[3]

This should not be surprising. Socrates was a mason by trade and had fought ably when younger. We too often think of Socrates as an old man or, more truthfully, a paradigm of philosophical virtue and not enough as a flesh and blood personage. D’Angour’s biography, poorly reviewed here, is a good corrective to this.

Discussing excerpts is frustrating – in some real sense excerpts do violence to the whole text not just because context is lost, but because any subsequent reading – should it ever occur – is now indelibly compromised. Go and read at least the entirety of Xen Mem 3.12, it is an interesting discussion. Anyway, this is a clumsy segue, an excuse, to speak briefly about the context of these and other passages. Neither Plato nor Xenophon were anything like our fetid influencers. This is not the “make your bed” of the day.[4] They, like most early philosophers, where very much concerned with the makeup of the polis.

There are many, many, ways to define the polis. I wait with bated breath for John Ma’s new book. There are few more canny historians and his work is central to how I think about that institution (along with Hansen and – oddly!  – Millar). But before we consider political institutions or even mention terms like “hinterland”, one way the Greeks could be said to have thought about the polis is as a collection of citizen [males]. A cheeky but functional shorthand. Is it so surprising, then, that Socrates and co would be concerned with physical training? The anecdote about the Spartans not needing walls and instead trusting to their men differs only from the Athenian conception in extremis, not in kind.[5]

ἄλλου δὲ ἐπιζητοῦντος διὰ τί ἀτείχιστος ἡ Σπάρτη, ἐπιδείξας τοὺς πολίτας ἐξωπλισμένους ‘ταῦτά ἐστιν’ εἶπε ‘τὰ Λακεδαιμονίων τείχη.’

When someone wished to know why Sparta was unwalled, he [Agesilaus] pointed to the armoured citizens and said “here are the walls of Sparta”.

Plutarch Saying of the Spartans 2.29[6]

There is nothing revolutionary in this. I offer no novel reading, no new synthesis of passages. I suspect most of the recent publications on abstracts (“Greek beauty”, “aesthetics” ktl) and concretes (“the body”) make mention of the twin import of brawn and brain, but to what degree is that actually taken into account, as opposed to merely noted? How much are scholars really aware of how anathema would be the kind of noodle armed thinking apotheosised in that infamous Guppy post?

Ironically (but not unexpectedly) the best study on this phenomenon comes from outside of academia. I think I might have recommended this before, William Giraldi’s The Hero’s Body. Giraldi is not the kind of person one would prima facie associate with body building (ha, so much for stereotypes). A journalist, clearly left-wing, a homosexual. None of this screams bro. But the book draws broadly from the Classics. It has been years since I read it, but I can recall elements from the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses. Clearly G is well read and well trained.

Look. I am not one of those moronic statue avvies constantly advocating for an unlearned and uncritical emulation of the ancients, but I do think the link between physicality and learning really important. I cannot stress enough how much experience of things such as  e.g wrestling and horse-riding have informed my reading.[7]

All the more so since I am currently dealing with a loss of physicality.

I shan’t go into too much detail here. Neither the specific sports in which I grew up competing (let us say generic combat sports) nor the injuries (one upper, one lower lol lmao). Rehabilitation is good. It is slow, it is boring, but it is effective. I admit I have worsened things, by throwing out any semblance of portion control, commitment to cardio, or restraint (I must have re-injured myself twice lololol). The initial quotation from this piece often comes to mind. I would not be accounted old by the Greeks. Not yet. Ought I then not feel more shame? Oh, I do, I do. Hold on there’s a big fucking wasp. Christ look at that thing. Absolute GMO motherfucker.

I am finding it harder than I would care to admit that I am not going to compete again. Intellectually I have known this for a while, not least because leaving off was originally a deliberate decision as I entered the adult world. I am not a citizen landowner. The balance between otium and negotium is nihil. I knew it in my brain at least but not my balls, as Socrates would say.[8] Ageing is a difficult thing.

Whatever Xenophon may have said, memories of youth do not keep shame away from age. Learn your grammar, read your texts, but also lift that barbell.

Coda

My friends, I have meandered. I am sorry for wasting your time. I still mourn the half finished drafts not yet recovered from the husk of my former puter and felt that odd urge to just write something. I had originally planned to write out my full programme and various rehab cues but in doing so even I became bored. I’ll be back with something meatier soon.

[1] Just kidding! I know from twitter/e-mails that the done thing now is to do 2 years of pointlessly drawn out instruction followed by a career of pretending to know Greek. n

[2] Have you read Waterfield’s Plato of Athens? A recent biography of the other great Socratic. I can’t help but wish more of the genre had survived. By far the most interesting bit of that book is the chapter dealing with the rest of the circle.

[3] E.g Republic 3 410e-412a. Is it too much to think juvenal was parodying this?

[4] There’s a joke to be made about M. Aurelius here…

[5] The military ethos of Tyrtaeus, the sporting exultation of Iliad 23 are not a million miles away. Even in the Xenophon passage the use of  ἰδιωτικῶς ἔχειν earlier on makes this clear. What sort of person is an idiotes, hm?

[6] Why don’t we call these memorabilia in English? Huh? Huh!? Das rite!

[7] That’s right bitch, I stipulated horses to stop your puerile rejoinder.

[8] Socrates is my greengrocer down in Kipseli.

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