The truth is that there was no single or clear reason why he should have been killed — nothing that makes sense to people of the twenty-first century. Historians are still arguing about whether there was a “real reason” why Sokrates was killed, and what that reason might have been.
It is said that within a week of his death, the Athenians experienced remorse for executing Sokrates. They realized that they had killed a good and wise man and planned to erect a statue of him in the marketplace. The statue was never built.
HISTORY: ON GREEK SLAVERY
Ancient Greece was a slave society. There is a particular meaning to that phrase slave society; most ancient civilizations practiced slavery, and most ancient cities contained enslaved people. A slave society, however, is one where a large percentage of the population is enslaved, in which the economy relies on unpaid labor, and in which laws and social relationships are based on the belief that some men are masters and others are slaves.
Today we use the term enslaved people rather than slaves, because it reminds us that the unlucky victims of a slave society were people. Being enslaved was something that happened to them. But the Greeks didn’t think of enslaved people that way. They believed slaves were “slavish” — lazy, dishonest, cowardly, and unable to control themselves. The very condition of being enslaved degraded them. As the poet Homer said, “Whatever day makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.”
Ancient Greek slavery was never based on skin color. People were born into slavery (that is, their parents were enslaved), sold into slavery, or captured in war. It was against the law for an Athenian to enslave another Athenian, so most Athenian slaves were foreigners. Greek citizens often saw their slaves in terms of ethnic stereotypes. Thracians like Rhaskos and other people from the north were believed to be tough and hardy, but brutal and thickheaded. Persians and Syrians, born in a warmer climate, were considered skillful at handiwork, but timid and frail. The Greeks saw themselves as balanced between barbarian extremes: they were strong and intelligent and skillful and brave.
Nobody knows how many enslaved people lived in Athens during the fourth and fifth centuries BCE. Most of my reference books estimate that at least one-third of the population was enslaved. These enslaved people did almost every kind of work there was to do. A company of Skythian slaves was armed with whips and instructed to keep order in the city. Enslaved people were bankers and teachers, farmers and craftsmen, cooks, wet nurses, entertainers, sex workers, and miners. The only thing that enslaved people did not do was run the government. Only male citizens could be part of the democracy. Slaves, like women and foreigners, had no vote.
I would love to say that Sokrates criticized slavery and wished to abolish it. He didn’t. Neither did his contemporaries. Sokrates liked arguing philosophy so much that he spent time talking to enslaved people, and even to women. But for Sokrates, slavery, like war, was not so much an evil to be uprooted, but a fact of life.
HISTORY: ON ANIMAL SACRIFICE
The Greeks were a religious people: almost every day was the birthday of a god, and that meant there had to be a sacrifice. Before every performance of the theatre, and every meeting of the government, an animal was sacrificed.
The animals that were killed were almost always domesticated animals, though stags were sometimes sacrificed to Artemis. Before the sacrifice, the victims were groomed, fed, petted, and distracted. It was considered unlucky for the animal to struggle or suffer, so they were killed as quickly as possible. When the death blow was given, the women present cried out in mourning.
The blood from the animal was splashed on the altar, and the meat was divided among the people who had witnessed the sacrifice. Meat was precious in ancient Greece. Because it was shared as part of a religious ritual, the poor got a few mouthfuls, as well as the rich.
HISTORY: ABOUT BRAURON AND THE LITTLE BEARS
As Hermes tells the reader, there is almost nothing known about the little girls who “played the bear” at Brauron. The playwright Aristophanes wrote one line about them: one. There are three later manuscripts that tell us more about that single line; they give us the story of the slain bear and the angry goddess. The three manuscripts are similar, but the details vary.
I visited Greece and traveled to Brauron when I researched this story. Brauron is hauntingly beautiful, and there’s a museum full of the artifacts that archaeologists have found there: statues of children, pottery, loom weights, and jewelry. Many tiny cups — the krateriskoi — have been unearthed, but only a small percentage of them have been photographed or catalogued. (As archaeologists remind us, we can’t jump to the conclusion that the pictures on the cups are snapshots of daily life at Brauron.)
So Brauron is full of question marks. Nobody knows how many girls went to Brauron to serve as bears, or what they did, or how long they stayed. Nobody is sure how old the Little Bears were. On the cups I was able to see, they looked young, so I decided to agree with the majority of the scholars, who think the girls were five to ten years old. A few of the cups show girls running with torches, which granted me permission to set some of the scenes at night.
There is no evidence, written or archaeological, that shows how the girls traveled from Athens to Brauron — a journey of twenty-four miles. As a storyteller, I had to work out the details. I thought the girls would need adults to show the way, something to eat, and donkeys to carry the food. I decided that the yellow robes mentioned by Aristophanes would be himations, large and warm
