Philip Matijak is a professor at the University of Cambridge and an expert on ancient history. He has more than 20 books to his credit and has devoted particular attention to the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
In his famous book "24 Hours in Ancient Athens", the scholar reconstructs many images from the daily life of our great ancestors.
From the temple guard and the slaves playing theater to the doctor examining, the Triarch inspecting his ship, and the angiographer starting a new work, the unknown life of the ancient Greeks vividly unfolds.
Also in its pages live the wrestling coach, the witch with her tricks, the fishmonger setting up his counter, the politician taking his lunch break, the runner traveling for Sparta and much more.
His narrative is set in the midst of the war that will end Athens' golden age and puts us in touch with the average Athenian citizen. Even in that situation, the prominent men of the city and the officials do not cease to have daily worries and concerns to attend to.
Philip Matijak is doing something truly new. That is, at a time when ancient writers show the ordinary citizens only interacting with the great personalities of Athens, he presents the important Athenians only through their encounters with the common man.
His study is not arbitrary, of course, for it is based on ancient literature, reconstruction of archeological finds, and surviving historical studies.
In the spring of 416 B.C. During the six-year peace during the Peloponnesian War, initiated by Nicene Peace in 421 B.C., Athens resisted the repeated attacks of the Spartans and seemed stronger than ever. Under the persuasion of Alkibiades, the city-state planned a daring invasion of Sicily that would put an end to the temporary cessation of hostilities.
As long as this happened at the level of central politics, the ordinary Athenian citizen had a life to live. So let us look at what some Athenians did when their politicians and generals came up with new war scenarios.
Examination of a priest by a doctor
Doctor Phoikos was awakened in the middle of the night, and this time it was the guards of the temple of Athena on the Acropolis. One of the priestesses of Athena Poliados has suddenly fallen ill and the doctor fears the worst. The death of a priestess is a terrible fact, especially since it is an 11-year-old girl.
She is one of the Arrifori, "the secret bearers," and is one of the most aristocratic families in the city. After all, they lived in the Erechtheion, in one of the most prestigious parts of the Acropolis.
The doctor assures the worried parents that he already has an assistant on alert. If he cannot make the diagnosis or the case is serious, he will send him to summon his guest from Kos, named Hippocrates, who is said to be a great physician.
The temple is in an uproar. The priestess's illness is no small matter for the city. Phoikos helps her regain consciousness and makes one of the quickest diagnoses of his career. He then goes out to inform the small heart-pounding crowd outside the room:
"She's OK. She will make a full recovery in a few days. Until then, I strongly recommend watering and lying in bed. Give her some porridge if her stomach can take it. The girl has been purged and the crisis is over". "Was she purged? Was it an evil spirit?" the mother asked anxiously.
Phoikos is silent, as he knows, but how can he say it in public? He grabs the commander of the temple guard by the armpits and they step aside. "It is better not to know of the girl's illness," the doctor says to him, "and you should say a word to your men."
"Do you want to search the Acropolis and the mage is still hiding somewhere?" the officer asks him. "What mage?" the doctor asks. "The one who made sure the girl was possessed by the spirit," the guard replies.
"No," says the doctor to him, "I want to know how this got into her hands." And he shows him the little bottle of raw leather that the soldiers have for wine.
The preparing of a wrestling coach to give the lesson
Ariston always starts his lesson by reminding everyone how important exercise is to Athens. He likes to tell them the story of Socrates scolding one of his friends, Epigenes, for being untrained.
Athens has three notable gymnasiums, the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Kynosarges, and Aristonas works in the first. They are all built outside the city walls, as the arenas and athletics events need their space.
The Academy and the Lyceum are exclusively for the children of citizens, while in Kynosarges the children of mixed birth and the illegitimate pupils study. For the gymnasiums are not supplements to the schools, but the schools themselves. There they learn wrestling, music, dancing, and grammar, there also take place scientific discussions and philosophical disputes.
Ariston is third in the hierarchy of the gymnasium. Behind the headmaster, that is, the well-heeled boss of the gym, who pays for everything out of his own pocket, and the educator, a former athlete, who is now responsible for the boys' exercises and nutrition.
The role of the coach
The coach determines the pairs of wrestlers, he is the instructor who supervises the exercises given to the children. Today he is again occupied by Aristocles, a muscular young man with Heraklion, whose shoulders have no fair opponent in the fight. But he cannot exclude him from the arena, for his parents are strong nobles.
And so he decides to fight him himself today! There was a time when Ariston was a famous wrestler in his hometown of Argos. Then, of course, he thinks that such a thing would not be acceptable, and so he will put an older young man to fight "Plato", as they say, Aristocles.
"Plato" also means "broad," a common nickname for robust young people. And Aristocles is so robust that everyone knows him as Plato. He is not only extremely strong but also extremely gifted. After all, he literally follows his teacher, Socrates' instruction that one has an obligation to oneself to be as physically and mentally healthy as possible.
After the fight, the music follows. Here Plato does not fare so well. He has a rather weak and poor voice. No one can be perfect in everything, Ariston thinks mockingly of this gifted boy, who shows passion and earnestness in all physical and mental exercises.
The smuggler and the pile of figs
The peasant Gairestos enters the dark descent of Phanagoras in Piraeus, having just returned from his orchard. This time not to get drunk, nor to roll the dice. But to go unnoticed. The man he came to meet is already there, Nausigenis, sitting in the corner. And he's accompanied by a tall, fierce sailor.
The meeting must be conducted with all caution. If you see them together, you will begin to suspect their business. For what has a fig-maker to do with a sailor but smuggling? And the smuggling of figs, which the Athenians have always loved, is something they do not take for granted.
"Will the cargo be normal?" The old sailor, who lives two seas away and does not normally associate with Athenians, asks conspiratorially. "One-fifth fresh and the rest dried?"
The Nausigenis has no easy task. He must transport the extremely fragile cargo across the Aegean and then head straight to the market in Cyzicus. If a headwind hits him, the whole treasure rots in his barn. The fresher the figs, the longer they last. And when Nausigenis says fresh, he means they were harvested the day he sets sail. And so they will last a week at most.
Fresh figs from Attica are an exquisite delicacy even in Athens itself. Transferring the figs from Gairestos to the "Nereid", which is anchored in the harbor, is an easy task. For months, Gairestos has been filling a stack of barrels with dried figs in a hidden cellar under his warehouse on the estate.
But he remembers and curses again the Spartans who cut down his favorite trees in the last war. Trees that provided food for his father and his ancestors. And the Spartans destroyed them all in their disastrous sweep.
Nausigenis and Gairestos
But now is the time for work. Nausigenis will pay cash as soon as he receives the goods. Gairestos will be paid this time with Greek coins of pure silver, the Attic glaucus.
However, Gairestos and Nausigenis argued about this. "If you do not like foreigners, why are you selling me your figs?" "And if it's illegal?" countered the sailor from the Black Sea. For Gairestos, the subject is touchy. He became a smuggler because he had to rebuild his orchard and got no help from the Athenian state.
Nausigenis will go to Gairestos' house tomorrow while he is on his property. He has kept two sacks in his store, which the sailor is to examine and determine their price. The "Nereid" will then set sail one of the next nights for the sandy coast of Faliro, and there the farmer will be waiting for him with his barrels.
A considerable amount of silver coins will change hands. Even if they are seen on the shore by somebody, he will probably be like them. A ruined peasant smuggling his wares. And nobody cheats anybody. No one wants the rat's rubber.
Those who do so, are called "slanderers", a word that only came up to describe those who condemned the smugglers of figs. No one wants to be called a slanderer.
