Mark Haskell Smith - Rude Talk in Athens: Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writer’s Journey through Greece

Also by Mark Haskell Smith

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Nonfiction

Heart of Dankness
Naked at Lunch

AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK

Copyright 2021 Mark Haskell Smith

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ISBN: 978-1-951213-34-3

eISBN: 978-1-951213-38-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021939547

This book is a work of nonfiction.

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Ancient Rivals, the Birth of Comedy, and a Writers Journey through Greece

MARK HASKELL SMITH

You will never create anything great by drinking water.
Attributed to Cratinus, fifth century BCE

T he Meltemi was not fucking around. We had intended to sail in the morning, from Koufonisia to Iraklia, but the fierce seasonal wind that torments these islands, the Aegean version of the Santa Ana winds in Los Angeles, had other ideas. A small craft warning had been issued. We were stuck. Not that anyone complained. Why set out in heavy seas for a beautiful Greek island when youre already on a beautiful Greek island?

Better to live in the moment, which is easy to do when theres a bar that, every day at sunset, lays cushions along a stone jetty so that you can have a drink and watch the daylight fade. As the sun drops behind the horizon, the light cuts through a channel between two islands, plunging the undulating hills into a deep purple while the sea shimmers and the sky glows violet and ros. Or maybe that was the wine. It really wasnt an inconvenience. When life gives you a glass of ros, order a bottle.

Koufonisia is a small island in a string of small islands in what is called the Lesser Cyclades in the Aegean Sea. Its a few hours by ferry from Athens, not far from Naxos, which is larger and part of the regular Cyclades. The small island that turned purple, only a few hundred meters away, was inhabited solely by goats.

The air was fresh, the wine was cold and delicious, and the smell of grilling fish was drifting from the kitchen of a nearby taverna. I was with my wife and some friends, and we were relaxed and happy. If it sounds idyllic, it was. In that moment, life felt extremely pleasurable. I thought, Why isnt this the goal of human existence? Not necessarily this island or this ros or these friends, but the feeling of pleasure, the joy at being alive in the world. Why cant we arrange society so that everyone can experience this feeling most of the time? We could, you know, if we werent so busy chasing a dollar, extracting the life out of the planet, and dropping bombs on each other. And for what? Why the unrelenting hustle? You cant put a sunset or friendship or a summer breeze on your credit card. Which is not to say that the journey to this spot was free, but there are sunsets and friends and breezes in Los Angeles that are right outside my door. Why do we devote our lives to activities and objects that dont bring us pleasure?

I am not the first person to have this thought. Around 311 BCE, a Greek philosopher named Epicurus believed that pleasure should be the highest goal of humanity. He described the three main ingredients for happiness as friendship, disengagement from material concerns, and free time to pursue your own interests. In other words, live communally with people you like, free your mind from the delusion that objects or money or fame will make you happy, and take time for contemplation, for walks in nature, for reading and art. This simple philosophy became extremely popular in ancient Greece, and by the first century CE there were approximately a half million people living in Epicurean communes throughout the Mediterranean. A couple thousand years after Epicurus laid out his ideas, an economist in London named Karl Marx used it as inspiration for a very similar societal model he called communism.

Epicurus was not a food snob or wine aficionado. By his own accounts he lived simply, preferring lentils and bread to lavish banquets. How he became associated with luxury goods, brand ambassadors, ortolan gobblers, and, for want of a better word, assholes is a consequence of the Catholic Churchs two-thousand-year smear campaign against him and his followers. Thats because Epicurus had no time for deities, he was all about simple pleasure and contemplation in the here and now. He didnt believe in the afterlife. As he wrote, When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Once you were dead, you were dead, which is a distinctly off-brand idea for the Church, an organization promising eternal reward in the afterlife as long as you did what it said while you were alive.

Epicurus didnt only write about pleasure; long before the invention of the electron microscope he believed that the world was made up of tiny particles, and he had profound thoughts about social justice, politics, and the corrosive nature of money. The dude was blessed with serious foresight. His ideas resonated with me. After writing books about the history of nudism and the worlds best cannabis, it seemed natural to explore the idea of the pursuit of pleasure as a force for social justice. I thought I would write a book on the history of pleasure, from Epicurus to the present day, and why making pleasure a priority in our lives might be the radical idea we need to halt climate change, minimize income inequality, and reimagine a life postconsumer capitalism.

I was reading historian James Davidsons remarkable book Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens when I came across a throwaway line in a chapter about the drinking culture of ancient Greece. Davidson wrote: At some point in the last quarter of the fifth century a man called Ariphrades had managed to acquire notoriety as a practitioner of cunnilingus. In the context of Davidsons book, he was quoting the playwright Aristophanes, who felt that what Ariphrades did was disgusting and advised his friends not to share their wine cups with him. And that was the needle-scratch moment, when writing about the history of pleasure went caroming off the rails. My curiosity was piqued. As a fan of the practice myself, I wondered what kind of notoriety a practitioner of cunnilingus could attain. Was he really adept at it? Did he make a public nuisance of himself? And, really, why would anyone care?

A ncient Greek comedies start with a prologue, a brief introductory scene that sets up the story and provides a little context for what follows. The previous chapter was the prologue. What happens next is the parodos, the entry of the chorus, a moment when the costumes are revealed. Sometimes theres a little song or a dance that sets the vibe for the performance. A chorus is fundamental to early Greek comedies; it is essentially a troupe that takes to the stage at various times to perform musical numbers and interact with the actors. Often it breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience.