Hot Gates (A Confucian Perspective)

So, not only did the son of a bitch bring home a concubine with him from Troy, but he had killed with his own hands their beloved daughter Iphigenia.

Really, what else could she have done-- what else would any woman do-- but murder him that night when he was in the bathtub. 

The Chorus, though, was not convinced. I mean, despite whatever marital issues they may have had, wasn't Agememnon--son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus-- a great and virtuous King? Had he not led the Greeks in their stunning victory over Troy?  

How could she do it?

The chorus, demanded an answer.

And, so in a series of speeches, which would be the envy of any Washington speech writer, the queen lays out her case. Her husband-- the King-- has killed their beloved daughter. That he had brought a concubine home with him from Troy and that she and her lover were already happily ruling the Kingdom ensconced in the castle were reasons as well. But Clytemnestra-- make no doubt about it-- is clear about her reasons: he killed their daughter and for that he must die.

So, she sets him up.

In what is one of the most famous homecoming scenes in all history-- Clytemnestra gives her husband Agamemnon the "red carpet treatment."

Laying out the family's priceless textiles, she urges him:

"Walk across, my Lord."

He tells her he will not. For that is the kind of arrogance that Persian Kings show-- believing themselves to be as all-mighty as the gods.

"We are democrats," he responds.

And when she continues begging him to glide across the sea of blood-red tapestries, he retorts:

"These are heirlooms, how can we soil our family heirlooms?"

In the end, exhausted perhaps from the trip, he allows himself to be persuaded and across he walks-- to his death. For it was this final show of arrogance that will become the all-important piece of evidence that Clytemnestra will require to persuade the chorus of the need she had to get rid of him. For most Greeks would have agreed that an all-powerful monarch in the style seen in Persia was something to be avoided at all costs.

And, so we see that this theme developed by Herodotus was already to be found in Aeschylus-- just waiting for him and his retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. 

**

I am re-reading William Golding's famous essay on Thermopylae, "Hot Gates." It is such a wonderfully written essay, harkening back to better days in travel writing, better days in essay writing too (with some exceptions, of course, essay writing seems to have become an almost lost art). Truly and with thankfully not a trace of any personal journey of self-discovery anywhere in the essay, Golding sets out to walk the ancient battleground. What was at one time only a narrow sliver of land-- pressed up against the cliffs, the edge dropped straight down into the sea. Thermopylae. Between cliffs and the sea, it was here that Leonidas made his legendary last stand.

Μολών λαβέ (molon labe).

It is so famous, I hesitate to attempt to even describe the armies-- the myriad of tribes and peoples comprising the Persian army alone went on for pages and pages in Herodotus. Here is Golding:

No man had ever seen anything like this army before. It was patently unstoppable. It came along the neck of the hills on the banks of the Asopus, from the heights of the mountain and along the coastal track from Alope and Phalara. Lengthening rivers of men—Persians in fish-scale armor, turbaned Cissians, bronze-clad Assyrians, trousered Scythians, Indian bowmen, Caspians, Sarangians in bright cloth and high-heeled boots—came down and spread in a flood that filled the plain. Soon there was nothing to see but rising clouds of white dust, pierced and speckled with the flicker of steel. If each of the seven thousand Greeks should kill his ten men, there would be more than enough to press forward—and this was only the vanguard.

The numbers alone are exhilarating-- the Persian army being said to have been comprised of a million men! Impossible, of course, but Herodotus' famous anecdote about the great Spartan warrior Dienekes is unforgettable:

Although extraordinary valor was displayed by the entire corps of Spartans and Thespians, yet bravest of all was declared the Spartan Dienekes. It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, their arrows would block out the sun. Dienekes, however, undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, 'Good. Then we will fight in the shade'

Μολών λαβέ (molon labe).

Truly one of the most exhilerating moments in history, when the Persians try and persuade them to lay down their weapons, Leonidas responds, "Come and get them."  Not that he thought for a minute that his Spartans could overcome numbers like that. But, he knew, there were some things worth dying for.

Everytime I read it, it makes me breathless.

Golding's conclusion is rightly famous:

I came to myself in a great stillness, to find that I was standing by the little mound. This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of a violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood right in the line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.

What is worth fighting for?

Thermopylae-- this battle which the Greeks lost after all-- will always stand as something greatly symbolic. Indeed, it formed so many of our Western notions of bravery in the face of great obstacles-- of a few who gladly gave up their lives to take a stand for freedom and the law. And, maybe it is even to suggest that to not have something you would die for is perhaps one of the saddest fates a person can have (ie, Kierkegaard).

There is this great speech given by Leonidas to his men in Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire: 

"Listen to me brothers. The Persian king is not a king as Kelomenes was to us or as I am to you now. He does not take his place with shield and spear amid the manslaughter, but looks on,safe, from a distance, atop a hill, upon a golden throne." Murmured jeers rose from the men's throats as Leonides spoke this. "His comrades are not Peers and Equals, free to speak their minds before him without fear, but slaves and chattel. Each man is not deemed an equal before God, but the King's property, counted no more than a goat or pig and driven into battle not by love of nation or liberty but by the lash of otehr slaves' whips."

For two thousand years, the West has held up freedom as personal liberty as the ultimate value to be prioritized. Never mind that Leonidas' own culture was itself based on slaves--some say some 50% of the Greek population was comprised of enslaved people. And, we see even in this speech above, the conflating of Democracy and Freedom with personal liberty (and negative freedoms).

It has been-- since the time of Herodotus-- presented as a great "clash" of values. 

But what values were the Persians holding up as the Greatest Good? Well, the same values that we see being held up in many East Asian societies: Order, stability and collective Good. This is what the Persians were offering and their own ideas of freedom were inherently tied up with these values. I think we really can find this in Confucian philosophy-- this idea of "Freedom to" as opposed to "freedom from."

Melvyn Bragg had a great In Our Times show on Thermopylae in which he and his guests trace the rhetoric of Orientalism back to Herodotus' version of the battle. One of the guests describes ancient Greek culture as being unique in its holding up of dialogue and competition, and that it was this dialectical predeliction in Greek thought which would pave the way for theorizing and for philosophy. In her explanation, she describes two lawyers arguing or philosophers debating; Clytemnestra persuaing the chorus... and that out of this acceptance-- indeed it was a preference-- for the dialectical that true theory and true philosophy came into being.

The narrative surrounding Theropylae is also constructed in this dialectical framework. And, without a doubt I think we can see that it has laid the foundation for certain ideological constructs that continue to influence the way the West views other cultures. From Theropylae to the Ottoman Empire to China. This was what was so interesting about the great emotion surrounding Daniel Bell's work about China, for example. Nothing he said was so shocking from a Japanese point of view. That is because, perhaps, Japan, like China and maybe like the Persia under Xerxes prioritizes values differently. Freedom is certainly not defined in the same terms. Neither is "philosophy"... And so, like with so much else, everything comes down to translation and interpretation. And one's comfort zones; cf 須藤元気(Genki Sudo)のパフォーマンスユニット (arigato Sam)

And, this Battle, which has been re-told for generations upon generations in the West, hardly even showed up as a blip in Persian history. 

For more, see Travels with Caesar (Battle of Vienna) and the Road to Oxiana (Battle of Talas)

--For SCW