Isagoras vs. Cleisthenes & The Birth of Athenian Democracy

Currently I am struggling over how to tackle one of the more confusing and dense passages in The Histories. It's an important passage too: how Athens became the world's first democracy.

It started in 514 BCE. Two men by the names of Harmodius and Aristogeiton murdered the brother of the ruling tyrant Hippias over a lover's quarrel. This resulted in their deaths and the tyrant clamping down hard on the citizens of Athens. Taking advantage of the unstable atmosphere in the city, an exiled family by the name of Alcmaeonid attempted to overthrow the government that same year, but the coup failed. The family then decided to swell their ranks by bringing the famed Spartan warriors over to their cause. Using their connections and influence, they managed to bribe the Pythia of Delphi into convincing the Spartans to help get rid of Hippias and his family. In 510 BCE The Spartans finally sent a small contingent to help the Alcmaeonid, but this second attack on Athens also ended in a route. Angry at the humiliation, the Spartan king Cleomenes personally led an army into Attica (possibly around 508 BCE?), crushing the Athenian tyrant's forces and chasing out his allies. This left the Athenians free to choose a new leader for their polis.

There were two eligible candidates for a new tyrant: Isagoras, a distinguished Athenian noble, and Cleisthenes, grandson to a tyrant himself (the tyrant of Sicyon) and the possible architect behind the bribing of the Pythia. Perhaps not trusting the Alcmaeonid's ambitions, the people favored Isagoras as their new leader in the upcoming election. Realizing he would lose the vote if he didn't do something fast, the clever Cleisthenes decided to defuse people's suspicions by offering them unprecedented freedoms (as well as stressing the role of rotating leadership positions to ensure one man did not have all the power). This proved to be so popular that Cleisthenes won by a landslide, thus resulting in the world's first real democracy.

Furious at having lost, Isagoras went to Sparta and demanded Cleoemenes get rid of this new democracy and its too clever leader. Recognizing a possible danger to his kingship (what if the helots or non-Spartiates wanted rights of their own?) Cleomenes lead a small army of about 300 Spartans back to Athens and kicked Cleisthenes out on the flimsy pretext of a family curse. He then installed Isagoras and his allies as leaders of the city's new government. The people refused to accept this. They besieged the Spartans and Isagoras on the Acropolis until Cleomenes was forced to admit defeat and march home, taking Isagoras with him. The Alcmaeonid returned to the city and all seemed well... until a vengeful Cleomenes showed up for a third time in Attica, along with the entire Peloponnesian League! The new democracy might have ended right then and there, but luckily the Corinthians had doubts about Cleomenes' intentions and decided to return home. Cleomenes' co-king Demaratus also had doubts about the Agiad king's intentions and left with his half of the army. Alone and humiliated yet again, Cleomenes was forced to disband the rest of the army and returned to Sparta to plot revenge (this time on his unlucky co-king). Sparta would not march into Attica again until well into the next century.

Themistocles is around seven in 514 BCE (or at least in my novel) and about fifteen by the time Cleomenes is thwarted for the third and final time (remember he didn't march to Attica in the first attack). Clearly this is a crucial period in Themis' life. The problem is how to pace these events. How much does Themistocles personally witness? How much does he contribute? I have some ideas, but putting them in order has proven to be daunting. I had a couple of inspirations last night, but I'm still struggling a bit. Any suggestions on how I can achieve more inspirations?

Quick Update

I just wanted to drop in real fast and comment that the editing process is actually tons of fun. I feel better about how the novel is coming together and am excited to show off the first few chapters to friends, family and hopefully....an agent! Wish me luck. (^_^)

TRIUMPH!!!

At exactly 5:00 PM on July 4, 2009 I saved my my novel I, Themistokles in its first complete form on my computer after spending weeks typing up 5 notebooks worth of writing. I can now finally begin the process of editing my novel.

WHOO-HOO!!!

*It should be noted that I also have it saved on 2 USB drives so that (hopefully!) I never have to worry about losing it.

Notebook 5 FINALLY complete!

YAY! The final notebook containing my Themistocles novel has been typed up! That one was the hardest to get through as there was so much of it. I'm feeling really good about getting that out of the way.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll be able to recover the 38,000 words of my novel from my first USB drive that I lost (I have the rest of the novel saved on two new USB drives and my hard drive). I'm hoping to re-type it by this weekend. I also need to type up a bunch of loose-leaf notes I have scattered all over the place. Once I do all this I can FINALLY get down to the business of editing it and shaping it into something like a real book!

New Acropolis Museum

Judith Weingarten has a Youtube video tour of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens up on her site. Since I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd link it here as well:

New Acropolis Museum

I'm hoping to see it myself one day and really enjoyed a close-up look at some of the priceless artifacts. I also thought the news that an entire neighborhood was excavated during the building of the museum was super interesting. Hopefully it will shed even more light on the Ancient Greeks!

Drudge work...so...boring...

UUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHH.

This whole typing up my novel thing is sooooo tedious! I'm on my last notebook but this is taking foreeeveeeer........I just wanna finish so I can edit my story and give it to an agent. ::Bangs head on desk::: Why can't I type faster???

More Ancient Greek Reading Adventures!

Who gets excited about a book like "Pastoral Politics: Animals, Agriculture and Society in Ancient Greece"? I do!!

...Man, I am such a square.

More Progress!

Notebooks 3 and 4 are now complete! Just one more left before I can start editing my novel and looking for an agent!

Go Themistocles!

Notebook 2 Complete!

Despite a mix-up that may have resulted in a few pages gone missing, notebook 2 has now been typed out! I'm excited because I think notebook 3 is relatively short which will put me at the halfway point of finishing all the drudge work!

After that I have to edit the darn thing (yikes) but that will enable me to put together something I can hand over to an editor/agent. I'm that much closer to finishing my novel for real! Yay!

Etymology Fun!

I love knowing the origins of certain words and expressions. To me, it connects us to our past; to a people, time and place that are now beyond our reach.

Many of our modern day expressions come from very old sources, specifically from Ancient Greece and Rome.

Here are some of my favorites that I found around the Internet.

ETYMOLOGY OF...


Abacus : "Comes from the Greek word abax, which means 'sand tray'. Originally, columns of pebbles were laid out on the sand for purposes of counting."

Allegory:

"From Greek allos meaning 'other' and agora meaning 'gathering place'. Some of the topics discussed in the agora were clandestine and when people spoke about them they would speak indirectly. That is to say, they would speak about one thing in such a way as to intimate the actual information to the listener."


Barbarian:
"From the Greek "barbaroi, meaning 'babblers,'; from the sound that the Greeks thought they were making: 'bar bar bar bar...'"


Chaos and Chasm
"From the Greek 'chainein,' meaning, 'to yawn'; chaos was thus the 'original yawning abyss' outside of the ordered universe we know."


Museum, Mosaic
"Both from the Greek Muse (museum is Latin for 'Place inhabited by the Muses'; mosaic is from the Greek mouseios, 'related to the Muses'"

Nemesis
"From the Greek of the same, originally meant, 'the act of distributing or apportioning' and later became, '(divine) wrath and retribution, righteous indignation at the breach of rules.' Nemesis was a deity who restores a balance. Were a bunch of shipmakers to launch a vessel without saluting the gods, for instance, this act of hubris might call forth a counter-reaction, as we saw with the Titanic. There was no judgmentalism or divine punishment involved, simply a response from the other world to lapses occurring in this one."

Planet:
"From the Greek 'Planasthai' for 'to wander.'"

Risk: "Originally a nautical expression. The Latin word meant 'cliff', which came from an ancient Greek word for 'root'. The term is cited in Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus saves himself from Charybdee at the cliffs of Scylla by grabbing the roots of a wild fig tree."


Sardonic smile/laugh: "Another term first used in The Odyssey ('Odysseus smiled in his anger a very sardonic smile'), it refers to bitter or mocking laughter. On the island of Sardinia condemned criminals were forced to ingest a plant that caused their facial muscles to spaz and perhaps wheez due to the toxic effects on their respatory system. This ritual was known through out the ancient world."


Sycophant:
"From the Greek 'sykon,' meaning 'fig'; a sycophant was thus originally someone who makes figs appear. There are a few suggested etymologies: fig smuggling was illegal in ancient Greece, so a sycophant could have been a telltale for a reward; or, it could be from the shaking of a fig-tree, which moved the figs from the hidden heights to the ground where all could see it; or, it could be from 'the sign of the fig,' which is the gesture of making a fist with the thumb in-between the index and middle fingers, which represented female genitalia;--this gesture was used to indicate an accusation of wrong-doing."

Utopia :
"Greek for 'no where.'"

Must Stay Focused!

Even with 35,000 words possibly lost forever in the Twighlight Zone, I'm still upbeat about my novel. I've finished typing up my first notebook and have already started on the second.

Meanwhile, I've signed up for voice acting classes (something I've always wanted to do), and will soon start seeing a private tutor to brush up on my Japanese. The problem these latter two events may interfear with my writing. I can't let that happen. I'm soooo close now! All I have to do is finish typing up my 5 notebooks and then edit my work before hoping and praying some agent/editor wants to take things to the next level.

Help! How can I do other things that I love while staying true to my passion?

Gone.

All of it.

I was just reaching 40,000 words in my novel when I tried to update my save. My flash drive reported some weird error. It wanted to know if I wanted to save my story as a temp file. "No," I thought. "I just saved it with no problems 10 minutes ago."

Confused I took the flash drive out and put it back in.

Nothing.

I, Themistocles was nowhere to be found.

I'm so upset I don't know what to say. It took me hours upon hours just to get 40,000words typed up (and that's only one notebook of work I have to do). I have one copy on my desktop but the last point I saved it at was about 5000 words or so. I was relying on my flashdrive to save the day should anything go wrong. It ate my novel instead.

I know nothing of flashdrives. I know I kept getting an "Internet" eror message but I figured that wasn't going to hurt my novel. I was wrong, because SOMETHING went amiss. Now I might have to start typing my novel up all over again. It's so frustrating I want to cry.

Is there anyway to recover my story? Why after I saved it so many times would it want me to save my story as a temp, and then when I refuse take my saved file away?? It's an EP Memory if that helps.

And now a word from our sponser...

We interrupt Meghan's regularly scheduled updates on her novel to bring your news from her other job. Recently, the popular online gaming site IGN did a spoof on Final Fantasy XIII, involving an English "dubbed" version of the demo disc. In it you can hear Meghan's first attempt at voice acting as the blonde vixen who not only looks good but carries a "big" gun.


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Final Fantasy XIII Dub



*Language used in video may not be suitable for children.

This is going to take forever...

According to Microsoft Word, I typed out a little over 10,000 words today. It took hours. I still have one more section of my notebook to copy onto my computer. Then it's four more notebooks to go.

Bleh.

THE END.

Last night, I wrote out those very words.

It was a clumsy, crummy ending with lots of [ADD DETAILS HERE!!11] and muttering about how unhappy I was with it (too many sentences like "...then Themistocles talked to this person and got an idea. Then he did the idea and then went back to Magnesia.")

STILL, I have SOMETHING like a first draft written down, clusmy and clunky as it may be. And now that my Sony Vaio is FINALLY working again I can take all 5 notebooks containing my novel and type them up on the computer. After that a LOT of adding and subtracting until I actually have a decent piece of work fit to pass along to a willing agent and or editor.

And now Meghan is going to start typing up her novel. :D

Ancient Greek still spoken in the Peloponnese!?

Could it be that a form of archaic Greek still exists in the world?

According to Wikipedia, a dialect derived from ancient Doric is still spoken by a small group of people in the Peloponnese. This language, known as Tsakonian (Τσακωνικά), preserves archaic forms of Greek and is not always intelligible with the modern language spoken in Greece today. Tsakonian is divided into three dialects: Northern Tsakonian, Southern Tsakonian and Propontis Tsakonian. The core vocabulary remains recognizably Doric, though it's hard to say how much of it contains true Doricisms.

Naturally yours truly was excited to learn that a descendant of the language used by the Spartans still exists (though obviously much changed since ancient times), so of course I headed over to Youtube to see if anybody had uploaded a video featuring a native speaker. Sure enough I came across the following links:

Τραγούδια Τσακώνικα

I Told You Mother, Give Me in Marriage

The first song is in (Southern?) Tsakonian and is sung by someone in Leonidio. The second tune also has a dance that accompanies it, which is said to be derived from the Crane Dance of Theseus.

I have to say I love the sound of Tsakonian. It's crisp, clear and easy on the ears. What do you think?

The 21 Letters of Themistocles

As anyone who's tried to research Themistocles knows, there aren't a whole lot of ancient sources on the Athenian navarch. The earliest we know of is Herodotus, and shortly after a few words from Thucydides. From there the sources get pretty dubious due the increasing time lapse between his death and later authors.

But one of the most dubious sources is also one of the most interesting: 21 letters accredited to the political powerhouse that follow his adventures from Argos, where he was exiled sometime after 478 BC, to his triumphant escape to Persia in the mid 460s. These letters are addressed to everyone from King Pausanias of Sparta to Themistocles' personal banker, and go from petulant to proud, angry to contrite. Modern scholars are pretty sure they were written around the first century A.D., so it's safe to say they probably aren't Themsitocles' personal letters (though could there have been an earlier source...?).

That being said, I was still intrigued and decided to read them for myself, but getting my hands on a copy was HARD. No matter what I Googled or where I looked online I couldn't seem to find these phantom letters! Luckily Amazon came to my rescue by bringing up Patricia A. Rosenmeyer's "Ancient Greek Literary Letters", which has all 21 in tact for my reading enjoyment!

The letters are fairly short, and unfortunately they don't shed a whole lot of new information on Themistocles; they just re-hash what earlier sources have already reported. What's really weird about them though is their contradictory nature. They make Themistocles look downright schizophrenic!

For example, in one letter Themistocles thanks Aristeides for helping take care of things back in Athens for him. Yet in another correspondence Themistocles has only childish spite for "The Just" one:

"I hope the victory statue set up at Salamis will fall down and crush you; it's stone you know, large and plenty heavy[!]"

And:

"So Aristeides, son of Lysimachas can go hang himself, and the rest of you [Athenians] can go hang yourselves too."

I have to admit out of all 21 letters, this is by far my favorite. It's just so hilariously immature! I can't help imagining Themistocles standing in the direction of Athens and sticking his tongue out.

As for the I, Themistocles itself...I'm SOOO close to finishing my first draft! Themis is in Aeolia right now, trying to get an audience with the Persian king. I think Themistocles should be involved in one last good ruse before I write "The End", but I'm still not sure what that should be. Does he help the Athenians at the battle of Eurymedon? Is he involved in Artabanus' court intrigues in Susa? Does he create more mischief for Sparta while abroad? Can't seem to decide...

Oh. before I forget, there's something I want to ask readers: what do you think of the title I, Themistocles? I like it, and the words even appear in a "letter" to Artaxerxes according to Thucydides, but it's far from original (I, Claudius, I Elizabeth, etc.). What do you think of these alternative titles?

1) King of the Sailing/Floating/Windswept/Briney Walls
2) King of The Winedark Sea
3) Teaching Cattle to Walk Backwards: The Life and Times of Themistocles
4) Odysseus in Athens
5) A Victory Wreath for Foxes

I'm really liking Teaching Cattle to Walk Backwards (a shout-out and 1000 points to anyone who gets the reference!, King of The Briney Walls, or Odysseus in Athens. Let me know what you think in the comments section (and feel free to make your own suggestions).

My Blog is Fabulous!

According to Carla, that is! Awesome. Now I just have to name 5 things I love/can't get enough of and 5 people who deserve this award.

1) Writing (duh)
2) Reading (double duh)
3) Studying languages
4) Dining out
5) Shoes

And the following awesome sites deserve an award too:

The Writing Greek
Jason Pinter
Helena Schrader
Jason Evans
de praeter tempore

Yay! My blog is fabulous!

Here We Go Again!

"Wretched ones why sit you here? Flee and begone to remotest Ends of earth..."
--Delphic Oracle to Athenians 480 BCE

So I've finally got Themistocles on the run (he's been implemented in a conspiracy and his enemies in Athens want to pass a death sentence on him), but the problem is I don't know how to write this part of Themistocles' saga. Ancient authors agreed Themistocles ran around in circles before ending up in Magnesia, but WHERE and HOW he got to his destination is a matter of dispute.

And there are little details that elude me. Like, did he take his family with him into ostracism? Or if he snuck them out of Athens while on the run how did they know where to meet him? What route is the most realistic if he goes first to Corcyra then Sicily then to Ionia? Is the story about running to the king of Molossi in Epirus true? And why run at all? Why not just go to Athens, make a speech and remind people that somebody who is dealing with the Persians would go to PERSIA, not Argos. Why not point out the Spartans merely hate him for stirring up democratic sympathies in their territory? Or was he afraid of meeting an assassin before he got the chance? It's not unheard of (see Hipparchus and Ephialtes).

It's an exciting and interesting part of Themistocles' history to write about and it's full of space for me to fill in, but it's got me banging my head against a wall because I don't know how to tackle it. Ugh.

Themistocles: The Ancient Greek Churchill?

Or to be more chronologically correct, is Churchill the British Themistocles?




These mens' lives are a near perfect mirror image of each other. Both saved their respected cities from aggressive conquerers, both were stubborn and difficult to get along with, both were unperturbed in the face of danger, both were voted out of office after a smashing victory, and both were known to have a sharp wit and a sharper tounge. The more I read about Churchhill, the more struck I am by how much he and Themsitocles are alike. Which leads me to a question for my blog readers:

Should I give my novel a Churchillian flavor?

I LOVE WC's writing, but worry about my novel looking like I took a copy of My Early Life and simply crossed out the word Winston and wrote Themistocles above it. I don't want any accusations of plagiarism or unoriginal voice. Still, I think it would be neat if the style was reminiscent of the witty Prime Minister. Or is that just lazy/lame/annoying?

There's also the problem I'm having finding my own voice. Right now the tone of my novel changes depending on which of my favorite authors I'm currently reading. I have yet to establish my own unique voice and it's driving me crazy.

What do you think? Any suggestions would be helpful.

BTW, I'm getting closer to writing THE END for my first draft. I'm so excited!