Discipline remains the enemy of my ambition. How long since I wrote anything? Counting it in months, that's scary.
Ah, well. The trick is to not let the guilt over not being productive, prevent me from being productive. So I haven't been writing, but I have been busily researching. So. Much. Research. It's my true love, really; I love to write, but even more than that I love to read. I like that my mind is still a sponge for those things that intrigue me, and I can still get drawn into the rabbit-hole of Wikipedia just as I did with World Books thirty years ago.
Anyway, when you're trying to understand an ancient culture it's important to really understand those things their lives revolved around. In looking to the life of aristocratic women in ancient Greece, the first impression is that by modern standards, they lived sheltered, reclusive, oppressed lives, having little contact with anyone outside their immediate family.
This is true to an extent, but it ignores the sphere where women held tremendous power and influence: the state religion. There was no specifically priestly class, but the aristocratic families all held the most important roles and led the rituals around which the civic calendar revolved. The role of women was key in these festivals, and in some cases, men were not permitted to attend or even view their ceremonies.
This line of thought led me to the Thesmophoria, a ritual devoted to Demeter during the threshing period. Threshing is a word I associate with processing wheat, but that's all I know about it, and here we go down the rabbit hole of how wheat is harvested. I'm familiar with the scythe, the sickle, the term "separate the wheat from the chaff," but how all of this was actually accomplished, I never knew. Turns out a tremendous amount of labor goes into it -
reaping,
threshing,
winnowing, all done by hand. Villages worked together to get it all done before the rains came and ruined the crop, and it could take weeks or months.
We just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the US, where around 2% of the labor force engages in farming. That number is just...telling, I think. In 1920, it was 30%. In 1850, it was 64%.
It seems as a nation we're almost entirely removed from the harvest. Every year there's the debate about ending summer vacation for the kids since so few of them are needed on the farm anymore (
a myth we all grew up believing). Pretty much any food you want is available at a supermarket at any time of the year. Sure, we go to farmer's markets, we eat local food at farm-to-table restaurants, we have little vegetable gardens, but the number of us who really do anything significant to produce food is just minuscule. We're removed from the cycle of the seasons, of planting and growing and harvesting, on all but the most superficial levels. Carving pumpkins, making apple pies, visiting a corn maze. There aren't a lot of us who actually know how to drive a combine and get the massive grain harvest stored so we don't all starve this winter.
Two percent of the nation feeds all of us and more. That number just floors me.
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| They sell these at Michael's. |
Still, when I look around my neighborhood and talk to my friends, most of us who have a little bit of land will try to grow a vegetable garden and/or flower beds. The instinct to have little bits of nature around us is still pretty strong. We all gleefully take part in the harvest ritual of buying enough food to purposefully gorge ourselves and our families, and I think it's generally a time we remember to stop and take a moment to feel gratitude for those things we usually take for granted.
We're a long way from the days of our ancestors, though. We're seldom most thankful for the food, if my Facebook feed is any indication. We're thankful for our families, our friends, our circumstances if they are good. But the notion of being thankful for this food as the old prayer says, is somewhat remote. The dangers of a poor harvest are less likely to result in famine as in those small tribal city-states. People still go hungry in our nation, of course, but on the whole I think we are very much removed from the real danger of starvation that was faced by our ancestors.
The funny thing about history is that people haven't changed much. We're all still driven by emotions, for the most part. Love and anger and fear and jealousy and grief and hope and compassion.
It seems to me that what we fear has always been a prime mover, and this is a thing that does change. I think about those ancient Greeks who fought against Persian invaders because they literally had foreigners landing on the beach with swords. Sure, the invaders expected to be able to say "give us earth and water" (i.e., tribute money) and the Athenians would choose to capitulate instead of all getting killed, but they were perfectly prepared to slaughter all the soldiers, then move through Attica enslaving and killing the remaining men, women, and children, burning their farms along the way before laying waste to Athens.
Side note: Incidentally, the Athenians started it. They joined up with their allies from Miletos to attack the Persian empire, and they set fire to their city of Sardis. How much history would be altered if they had not done this? Maybe the Persians would never have bothered trying to take revenge on the Greeks, and nobody would know the name of Marathon, and a bunch of people who inexplicably enjoy running wouldn't have any reason to do a 26 mile race every year.
But I digress, because that is the nature of the rabbit hole. Where was I? Fear. It's hard, as an American, to imagine having to physically fend off invaders at our shores. Having to pull our weapons off the walls and go defend our homesteads, lest we be killed or sold into slavery by hostile invaders. Yet we are our ancestors: we still feel the same emotions, and emotions still drive us. We're still afraid of invasions. We're still afraid of The Other.
But that wasn't where I started either. Where was I originally? Oh yes, the religious festivals of the Greeks and the role of women in the rituals that shaped their year. The perception that women were disrespected, ignored, and abused, but I think this is wrong. Women were the guardians of the home and the family, managers of the household, and played key roles in most of the city-wide religious festivals. Goddesses, too, were the patron of many cities - Athena to Athens, of course, but Artemis was the primary deity worshiped in Sparta, and so devoted to her were the Spartans that they refused to join the Athenians against the Persian invasion until their holy festival, the Carneia, was completed.
And we're back at Marathon again.
This is the rabbit hole. Now I am off to read about the Thesmophoria, a pretty odd ritual for Demeter, the grain goddess. Involved in this was the sacrifice of a pig, whose remains would be cast into a pit to be retrieved at a later festival, planting I think. I'll have to read that again. Women were the only participants at these rituals, and they were secret - regrettably, the ancient sources were pretty closemouthed about things that were supposed to be secret rituals, so we really don't know much about the mystery religions. They remain a mystery.
I'll see myself out. Oooh, is there still pie?
