Welcome back to New Thinkery. My name is David Bard with me as always. It's my good friend out Spreeo. How are you doing?
I'm doing well with me as always is your good friend Greg McBrayer. Not always, not always. I'm not right. That's right.
He's been able to prolong Greg two weeks and I heard you guys are going to be auditioning replacements. Good luck. That's right. That's right.
And things go as planned. Alex and I revived a version of the film rope. It will take place overseas. Greg may not make it back.
So watch out for the Keonti Greg. I heard Greg's going to Italy. He's been lured by the young wife of a very old and it's a man. I heard tell him a very beautiful woman to be there.
My damn house of IDs. Yeah, that's right. That's right. There's no proper introduction to the lives and you said it's the first one is the first one in the edition that has come down to us.
But at the very beginning, chapter one, section one, this is not the first one he did. Plutar, he tells us. Right. He says this in the first paragraph.
And after publishing my account of like, I'm a new man, I thought I might not not unreasonably go back so far. They're too wrong. Now that my history brought me here to his times and I said, why not also do these? So strangely enough, we seem to be going back in time.
Yeah, we need Hubert Hubert who's at West Point. He probably does not listen to us. But if somebody has contact with them, maybe our friend Rebecca Bergus, please tell him to come on the show. We need to do a Plutar episode before we jump into the life of these kids.
I was wondering if I could just read the first sentence of what translation you have there, Dryden, the Dryden. Before you read that, I was like, I really enjoyed the Dryden translation. I don't give a goddamn. And before Greg, you talk about why you enjoyed the Dryden translation.
Can I, since we're just going before? Yeah. Sorry, Greg. Well, what I was going to say is while I enjoy the Dryden translation, my mind is small.
It needs stopping points and markers to grasp what's going on in the text. So I much prefer the lobe because it breaks the text up into chapters, which just kind of makes it a little easier for me. It's just a sprawling mess of a thing that Dryden translation is very good. They're interesting.
It's the modern library version. But for me, I sort of got frustrated because I couldn't remember where things were and I just had to go back and back. So I pulled up the lobe as well. So I'm using both.
But anyway, you want to read the intro. This is the first sentence. I wanted to give people a flavor of how Plutar writes his history and his approach to history to some of these lives. So I read the first sentence and then a sentence in the following, I guess it's the same paragraph.
So the book is intended for this friend of his associates. So as geographers, socios crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world, which they do not know about adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but the sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unappreciable bogs, city and ice or frozen sea. So in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods, which probable reasoning can reach to in a real history, find it footing in. I might very well say of those that are farther off beyond this, there's nothing but prodigies and bictions.
The only inhabitants are the poets and the inventors of fables. There is no credit for certainty any farther. In just a few sentences later, he says, let us hope that fable may and what shall follow so submit to the purifying processes of reason as to take the character of exact history. So there you have a sense of what he's going to do.
He'll, he'll, there's going to be fantastic aspects to his history, like there are with Herodotus. But don't get, I think, caught up in whether the report is true, but it's the import of the story. But one of the things he says there, I mean, the word that you translated is fable or that Dryden, Dryden translates as fable as mythos in the Greek. So it's a myth or a story.
And what he says he's going to try to do, this is just a little further down from where you are, is he's going to try and purify this myth or fable by making her submit to reason or logos and hopefully become history and inquiry or something like that. So there's this, I think Alex wanted to do something about playing off this mythos logos distinction. But maybe one small point at the beginning of that sense, where he's going to try to distinguish myth from logos, he says I'm going to compare these with Romulus because one was the founder of the lovely and famous Athens and my translation, although I would say the beautiful and sung about Athens with the invincible and highly reputed Rome. So there's the idea here is the first set of lives that at least in our edition are going to compare it to the founders of Rome and Athens.
And there's a distinction between Athens, which is beautiful and sung about on one hand. But Rome is unconquerable or invincible and has a great reputation on the other. So we should say we're going to do the life of, we should do two clarifications. One of the reasons we're interested in BCS and also we're going to do a life of Romulus, especially is in connection to the fact that these are two of the four most excellent as named in Machiavelli's Prince, Chapter 6.
And we did an episode on that and we thought it might be, we want to get through all of Plut's Ark and so we thought maybe this would be a good sort of juncture. I can't wait for us to talk about both of the life of both of me either. There are a lot of lives I have no idea. So Greg, you want to give us an overview of the...
Not really, I thought Dave was going to do that. I thought we all know about PCS. I can just in the broadest strokes, he was born a woman. No, he had a somewhat fabled beginning as all these people do.
He convinced the kind of spiritedness and martial baller in his youth and before he ruled, he set out to make Attica more peaceable by getting rid of the Marauders. So Plutarch informs us that it was dangerous to travel. I think the city might say something. Never mind.
But Plutarch says he was dangerous to travel by foot throughout Attica. So if you see us, we'll walk around and he killed Billings and he killed a boar and he killed a few other people and somewhere else. Well, he was just accused of that. One of the problems I have with the Dryden translation is that frequently he says, well, he carried off a woman.
He carried off so and so he carried off so and so. Hell, yeah. Yeah. But no, it's rape.
The word rape originally meant right to C's. But and then she was under age at the time. Yeah. So, and let me tell you, age agrees to be under age, especially in our cake.
You were really under age. Right? Well, geez, it's not funny. Anyway, sorry.
I don't even know why you suggested this life. So, at a certain point, he becomes a founder and we're going to talk about that today. He found more particularly Plutarch notes, democracy in Athens. So, he's the founder of Democratic rule, even though there is a version of democracy, I think would appear a foreign to readers of the Republic of the United States.
And he institutes laws and what we'll talk about those laws and then he's killed. So that's, I think he dies. The broadest outline. So, you have the feats.
You have his early life, you have these great feats, presumably learning along the way. And then he has in the institutions that VCS pounds. So, why these were able to stick and hold and of course, his name is listed by Machiavelli as a man worthy of admiration. So, why is that the case?
We'll talk about that today. I have a couple of things I thought, maybe before we get too deep into the weeds here. One is, so he's paired with Romulus. So, we get sort of the founder of Greece and the founder of Rome.
It would seem, but what's interesting is why the CCS are not like her guests or is it wise Athens treated as the analog to Rome and not Sparta? That's a question I would have. Right? I don't really have an answer to that.
It's somehow Plutarch saying that Athens, in fact, is Greece or is somehow the capital of Greece and the way that Rome is the capital of Rome and par? It's these, why is it? I've already said the question. Secondly, you touched on this.
These are the prior times. May. Different cities. I think it has a different religion.
I think it has to do with religion. Like, Curtis is more obviously a founder of religion as is, as is Numa. Right? Nice thing.
I don't know. I haven't done this. We emphasize this in Romulus. So, but that's a good question.
We'll see that next. So, a couple of other points. One is, you emphasized his birth, but didn't mention he had this fantastic birth. He's a bastard, like so many of these guys are, but not all of them.
His beginnings were obscure. Plutarch says, like so many of these famous types, like, as beginnings are also obscured. In his name, I sort of wonder why he wouldn't be paired with Numa, because his name seems more analogous to Numa. His name means, Theseus, derived from this verb for it to put down, but also that which is put down, established or instituted as lawful.
And so, he's, you know, Numa's name means almost sounds almost like, no, most in Greek. So, his name means law. And Romulus's name sounds like it's coming from force. So, naturally, the founders of Rome were forced in law.
And here, I think with Theseus, this gets somewhat obscured for people. They don't see that connection to this weird, his name is basically that which is lawfully instituted. So, again, you have this sort of funny sounding thing. Right?
Isn't this from Fesmyos, Alex's name, which would mean something like, basically, Tippamine would be there from the verb. But then I think also that verb is related to that now. Yeah. After Sable Grettamine.
No, you think of Femis? I was thinking of Femis as well. That was good. Yeah, is ambiguous, I think.
Right. It could be from Attic could also be from Fesmyos, as that defined. But who knows that where the house comes from? Maybe one place to start early in his life.
So, when he draws the comparison between the two, he mentioned some of the things that we talked about before. But one of the things in particular is that he was given the reputation of being born of gods. Right? But that aspect of his life is not something that Plutarch's own sort of historical inquiry demystifies.
It was demystified in Theseus's own life. So, it's interesting, as he's trying to get around a legend and get to the real truth, the historical truth, within the life itself, there is an initial moment of demystification. So, it's almost like he's trying to get at the roots of legend. And how do you cope with that in the life of Theseus himself?
He was said to be born from Poseidon. Right? So, we already had to mention that he was conceived by his father while he was on a journey. And he placed a sword, right?
And is it sandals underneath a rock? And it was so big that only a compare it's just we'll be able to move it. But it's set there. That's the tip of any word.
Right? So, that's one of the possible etymologies Plutarch entertained. So, maybe this is why he was gone because the stuff was set there. But when he founded underneath, he's then told you need to make the journey by sea.
And he says, I'm not going to make the journey by sea. I'm going to go by land. And initially, I was thinking, Oh, maybe he's kind of worried because he's been lying that his dad is decided, right? But it's not that, right?
And I think it's interesting to think about what is it like to find out that your father is not a god, but a human being? And when he finally meets his father, he doesn't seem to be that good at willing, right? And he is unable to sigh or other children. And so there's this sort of, and there's a plot, he barely, barely saves him from death inadvertently, I should say, there's a plot to poison.
When he finds out that this is something tosses him down. But when he goes out and he says, I'm going to go out on the land, he says the following, he wants to bring to his real father as proofs. Greek word there for those who know Greek is norismatop, things that are known, right? Like this is something that you can recognize, who's of his birth.
He didn't want to bring just sandals and a sword, unstained with blood, instead of it once offering noble deeds and achievements as the manifest mark of his noble birth. In such a spirit and with such thoughts, he set out determined to do no man any wrong, but to punish those who offer him violence. So it seems like this is my sort of psychological reading of it, is that he's been given the sandals and sword assigned as fathers a king in place of a god as his dad. And I can see that being really that sort of disenchantment being really, you know, it's got to be quite a study for him.
And he's saying, no, I'm the guy who can move the rock. I'm the guy who can do all this stuff. I thought that was evidence of my divine lineage. Well, I'm going to prove that I am great.
And so he goes off and goes on this sort of attempt to prove himself. And in fact, as he goes through and he kills a whole number of monsters, I'm sure, and villains, which I'm sure Greg has counted, like after them, six on the way and more afterwards. But throughout at a number of points, he talks about how Theseus wanted to show how great he is. And the word there for showing is, Ebby, the new me, right?
And it's this idea of showing yourself worth proving yourself. And so this is a man who in the face of de-nestification, is trying to make manifest his essence what he really is. And so while we have this legendary guy, and with all these poetic stories surrounding him, his initial effort at least is to provide proof. And so this theme of myth and reason recurs within the story itself in the sense of who was he really over and against his story of his father being a god.
So there's multiple layers of this that he's pretty fascinating. So a superficial observation to tack onto what you just said, Alex is he ranges across all of Attica. I don't know if you guys did the geographical endpoints of his different exploits. So he ensures, I don't know if by design, that his fame will be far spread.
So because whenever it's dangerous to walk by foot, to walk by land, people are holed up in their communities. So how does knowledge of an exploit or the heroic deeds of a great man travel? And so it seems that these theses have pains to demonstrate before people's very eyes, different martial feats. It's worth applying a legend.
And that's great. I think that's really helpful. If I can check something on there. What's interesting is in that, so he's proving himself, and in that process, giving examples of himself, a legend starts to grow.
And then Plutarch, as a historian, is going through the details. And it turns out some of these deaths aren't that great. One of the guys was not actually a robber. He was a chastiser of robbers.
It was called another one that killed, might have been a woman. And so at the same time, he's proving himself and trying to create a demonstration legend arises. And then from the other side, Plutarch is tearing up the legend. And what you're being exposed to is a guy who maybe in his efforts to prove himself was kind of not so nice.
And this obviously reaches this not so nice. And so it reaches its sort of apex when we get to the rape. Right? Rapes.
That's right. That was the given halibut. Yeah. Yeah.
Because this is another contrast with Romulus. There's only the one rape in the Romulus. We haven't read that yet, but right there's just the rape of Caprisia. Or is here, there's the rape of Ariadness, and then also the rape of Helen.
I never heard of these in conjunction with Helen before. Yeah. It's got to be a different Helen. This is way prior in time.
Right. Right. So about his childhood, we don't learn much. We don't learn anything.
As if he's born, we've learned something of his family name and his not so mythical origins. And then it jumps immediately to these as a presumably young man, killing Sal's and and other various things. In fact, his exploits, his martial exploits, probably take up the majority of his life in Plutarch, right? Or at least a third?
That's right. Who was his teacher? Do we have that here? No.
Yeah. In fact, we hear in Numa, other teachers. Some of these guys are some of these early founders are taught by poets, taught by philosophers. In fact, this musical quality, which is how it happens to strike Greg?
Early on by Plutarch seems missing in the life of Theseus. Son about it, Oads. That's right. I mean, maybe this would be a good time to introduce this observation that when he gets there, there's a lot of tunnels, right?
Because on the one hand, he said to be Aegius's son, but he didn't really, he hasn't been there. Right. So, and then on top of that, Aegius was only the adopted son of Pandion. And so there's this, again, it's this sort of sense that, well, no, we need a lasting tradition, right?
We need this ancestral sort of support and continuity. And yet for the past two generations, it happens. It seems like you've had a sort of strange guy who comes in and says, look, I should be king. I've gotten sandals.
And then you've got another guy who's an adopted son. And it seems like the tradition is severed, right? Though this this Theseus, so you have this guy Theseus who's supposed to be the legendary sort of founder of Athens, but immediately what you're given is this sort of, if this is what happened today in Athens, right? The sense is that this would be sort of illegitimate, right?
And it was illegitimate even then. And this contrast sharply, right? What we'll later hear about is how the poets transformed Theseus, whose death was not remarkable. It wasn't like it was a great loss.
They turned him into a kind of, you know, legend, you know, of he seems to have been a sort of strange, oddity in the midst of that. Yeah. So in that respect, Alex, I thought I'm sorry, good. Look, I was just double checking my other accounts of him have him being taught by Chiron, Senator.
I thought anyway, what the hell can that send our teacher? Senator, sorry, what I say? No, it's not. No, it's not.
I said, it's a bar bar. You guys started to work. I'm not going to do it. Anyways, sir.
Alex, it's a small point. Response to what you just said about the poets creating the myth. In that respect, Theseus is, it's almost like the founding, the solidification of the founding, or there's a second founding band of Athens. If Theseus doesn't do it, it's it's reliant upon the recognition of his ex-places of founder.
Other founders that we learned about are at serious pains to force the populations of you, them as founders. And here, it seems like Theseus is at the whim of the second generation. So they need not have recognized anything that he did is extraordinary. Does that make sense?
Sorry. He came on the go. Does that great get something to say? Inquine?
They're quite glad. No, I was just thinking about, sorry, I'm kind of lost. I'm still trying to figure this out. I mean, I read it and tried to read it again this morning.
But my own question about him being thought of as the founder of Greece and not just Athens. I think David's point about tracing all the places where he went and conquered people. I think that might be very helpful. He might have actually been the kind of founder of Greece in that way then, because you're right that he sort of goes not just inadical around and makes it safe for people to travel everywhere throughout Greece.
So that's made that something to me. I mean, it reminds you then, I know we want to talk about Machia Valley, but maybe a sort of early anticipation of that discussion. It reminds you of Borja bringing peace to Ramania, right? Getting rid of all the evil doers, right?
And no, that's right. It's not being all the crimes that maybe there's a sort of parallel there that he needs to make an example of himself as sort of willing to do this, though, right, obviously, legend, his paper to oversell his is less than noble deeds, right? Yeah, I mean, what he says is outstanding. He takes a disparate, what seems to be a disparate peoples and solidifies three different types of classes.
The nobles, the artisans were at the lowest and then the middle rung is people engaged in husbandry. We can talk about this. But before that, that strat has hadn't been solidified or even observed. So it's like there were small fiefdoms or something like this.
And so he brings, he brings political, so I take back what I said about the second generation. These he imposes, he imposes political order on the land for the first time in its history. Where's he from? He's not from Athens, right?
So there's a curiosity, he's from the outside. He's a foreigner. He somehow founds Athens and then leaves and then has to cut and then well, has to come back and tries to come back and then tries to go back home, right? Try to successfully go home.
Yeah. What does that sounds about? The founder coming from the outside. That's less clear than it.
And you're pointing about the disperse isn't exactly what isn't that what Machiavelli says about him? Let's see here. Theses could not have demonstrated his virtue if he had not found the Athenians dispersed. And I do remember seeing that word in my translation of Plutarch, he finds the Athenians dispersed.
And it's pretty clear indication. Yeah. And it's literally the Greek word dispersed, right? Scott, that seems sort of rude.
So it's not just like an accident of English. It's really rooted in the language. Yeah. And in this concept of Greekness, there's no indication that it had been solidified at this point whatsoever.
But one of the first injunctions theseses makes as a ruler is he invites people from everywhere to come in with. So Plutarch writes, farther yet designing to enlarge his city, he invited all strangers to come and enjoy equal privileges of the natives. And it is said that the commons won't come hither all ye people. It was the word that Theseus proclaimed when he thus set up a commonwealth in a manner for all nations.
And even just sort of the first guy to sort of empower the Demos, right? Doesn't Plutarch say something that even Homer nods to this? Even Homer recognizes this to you. The only like Athens is the only people that said he would have had a Demos in the catalog of ships or something like this.
Yeah. He does a number of things, right? He claims money for the first time. He's the first thing.
Right. The games, right? The Olympic games for Hercules or whatever. Right.
What's interesting is the part of Theseus' life toward which I gravitate most, namely his political designs in the structuring of the city. Plutarch treats in a manner of paragraphs, in a matter of paragraphs. It's just three or four paragraphs. It's highly compressed.
He talks about so the three class distinctions or the three distinct ranks in the commonwealth. And then he just offhand to the nobility, he commits the care of religion, the choice of magistrates, the teaching and dispensing of laws, right? And he's like, to the artisans, he commits blah, blah, blah, and then we're done with that aspect. So it's like things have been set in motion, but we don't hear anything about the particulars.
For the wisdom of why these choices, why does the mobility get to control the religion? So it's a weird life. It seems less stretched out than other lives in Plutarch, where we hear much more about the mind of the founder. Yeah.
To the nobility, you commit the care of religion, the choice of magistrates, the teaching and dispensing of laws, interpretation, direction, and all sacred matters. It implies that religion is for the, for the demos. Doesn't it? It's for the many.
It's something that the nobles kind of take charge of. Right. But we don't hear, remember, these are dispersed people. So they're nobles from all over.
So you bring all these disparate nobles together, and then you say, what, ponder up a religion to give to the demos? There are all these unanswered questions from me in this life. It's quite perplexing. Can I'm curious why Machiavelli calls on to it?
Can I touch on that a little bit? Right. There's a lot of talk. So the thing for which these is most famous, right, is the killing of the Minotaur.
And I was struck that I was reading it. I don't think we, Plutarch gives so many versions of it. I had no idea what was going on. He's like one person says this for this stage.
And for each stage of what's happening, he throws down on it. So the point that it's almost like the narrative unravels for like a few pages. I had no idea what was going on. And he does the same thing with another famous one, which was with Ariadne.
Right. And in that, he says, this is in chapter 20, says, there are many other stories about these matters and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. A little later in that chapter, he says, the most auspicious of these legendary tales, the most famous or well-spoken of and legendary tales are the things that have been sort of mythologized, or in the mouths of all men, as I may say. Right.
And the story has to do with Ariadne being on an island and the women who are caring for her, bringing her forged letters, Gromita Plasta. Right. So literally plastic, like contrived letters. So again, you see what's going on here, right?
Within the legendary tale, there's a thematization about falsehood, right? False speech coming in and pathologizing. And it strikes me that one of the things that makes it so difficult and maybe so appealing to Machiavelli is he's showing you the sort of patchwork way in which stories are told and which, you know, a great man trying to do great things becomes susceptible to the sort of echoes and forgeries that occur within his own story. This, he even points out, remember the guy that he talks about it and he says, hey, this guy gets way too detailed.
Do you remember that? Right there, he's showing you that, look, you can't be thorough. You can't be exact. You have to leave things out.
So you want to bring the version of the tale that illustrates something more meaningful. And you can even connect this to the, you know, the famous ship of Theseus, right? The same ship being used. He talks about this in chapter 23, the same ship being used, you know, year after year.
And they're replacing boards and you say, well, isn't that like Theseus himself? This one guy, he goes off on a ship and he does this, and bits of his life are replaced. And it all seems like it's the same thing. But by the end of it, how do you know that the present Theseus, the Theseus of legend is the same as the actual Theseus, right?
The Theseus, indeed. And that might be what Machiavelli finds so interesting in this, which is that in going back, he shows that out of the facts and out of the sort of disparate stories, a sort of process of selectivity and emphasis takes place that Machiavelli then I think his own retelling of these tales redoes and his own sort of understanding and brings out a kind of new. So he's in a way that the story about Theseus in showing you the beginning shows the way in which the poet or the historian or in Machiavelli's case, the political sort of scientist or political advisor engages in a kind of selective understanding and brings to the fore certain aspects of the tale. It's in a way, it's in a way, it's the life about how to contrive lives, right?
Or how to construct lives. I don't know, maybe, yeah. What do you think Plutrark is doing here, then? And what's the, what's the, I mean, we'll have to reassess this once we write a few more lives together, but like I'm still struggling to figure out just looking at this one.
So not trying to take a view of the whole of Plutrark's lives. What's being said here? I mean, what is it that the beginnings that they are of scur? I mean, like, just one small example, we did like her together, right?
There weren't these fantastic elements in like her guess his life. I mean, he did some pretty impressive things, but he didn't fight mythical beings, fantastical beings, right? And so I, I just don't know where to go from here. Like the farther back in time we go, the more mythical it seems, the less the more obscure it becomes, the more it admits of these fantastical elements.
Why do we believe these things about, is he trying to shoot us reflect on why we believe fantastic things if it's obscured by the passage of time? Like we wouldn't believe it about like her guess because it's near in time, we wouldn't believe it about so and so, because I really don't understand what's the lesson here that's being taught. Well, if, so my kind of thing, I haven't thought this through, my kind of takeaway was these yes sets out to prove himself, like almost to demonstrate what he is being. So it's not logical, obviously, but it has a kind of, he wants it to have the force of proof, right?
That necessarily, improving himself to the excellent creates legends, right? And those legends are then adapted by specifically much later in time, right? Because he has a sort of nobody really cares that he dies, it doesn't seem to be this, oh, we've lost this great founder, then it sort of transposed in future time and then the historian gets involved. And I think what he's trying to show is that the historian can be kind of twofold, he'd be demystifying and get out the true pieces, or he can kind of construct the market, the only way I guess, construct a sort of account of a life that's illustrated or instructive, right?
You're sort of being brought around to the fact that there is this necessary supervenience of poetry, right, of myth-making and legend telling, that the historian cuts under and yet has to, in some sense, reproduce and telling the tale. And what I think is brilliant about what Plutarch does here is he makes his retelling about the problem of retelling, right? And in a way, I got the sense that this was almost like a key to understanding how to read other lives, right? That Plutarch is engaged in this conscious sort of constructing of tale.
So if you go to read, or if you've read like, Kirk is where he says, look, I don't know what's going on, here's just my version of things. He's now taking you in a way inside his workshop, right? And showing you why this has to happen, how it happens if you don't do anything about it, and why therefore one has to engage in. I mean, it makes you think of what Nietzsche has to say about history, right, as sort of creating grand narratives.
And as far as the political lesson, because that was really good, Alex, as far as the political lesson is concerned, in his comparison, so not all lives have a comparison with one another, but many of them do. So he compares Theseus with Romulus. In his comparison, Plutarch writes, both Theseus and Romulus were by nature meant for governors, yet neither lived up to the true character of a king, but fell off in Rann, the one into popularity, the other into tyranny, falling both into the same fault out of different passions. So I think Plutarch is trying to teach us, if this is, if Theseus and Romulus are blueprint lives, we could say, for understanding the lives to come, I think he does want us, he is trying to call our attention to their their mode of ruling, and particularly why their ruling breaks down or is unsuccessful.
So I think with Theseus, he says that too much attention was paid to the demos or too much liberty was granted to the demons. That's what I thought too. But then I'm wondering about, so I'll look at this in chapter 35. So Alex says, well, Theseus dies, well, He's killed, right?
He says it doesn't just die. So it says, but like comedies, either because he feared a man of such reputation or as a favor to Menestheus, led him up to the high places of land, unprecedented showing him from thence, his lands threw him down the cliffs and killed him on a rock, by the way, so the funny part about his name being stones or rocks at the beginning and the end of his life. Somehow, I would say that he slipped and fell down himself while walking thereafter supper as was his custom. So there are three alternatives for his death, either he was killed by like comedies because he was afraid of him.
He killed him like comedies killed him because he was trying to help his friend Menestheus or maybe these just slipped and fell. But Menestheus, I thought, I'm trying to find my page here. This is back in chapter 32. It sounded to me like, let me just read this.
Meanwhile, Menestheus, the son of Petios, grandson of Ornius, great-grandson of Erexius, the first of Men, as they say, to affect popularity and ingratiate himself with multitude stirred up and embittered the chief men and Athens. So is it correct that now I'm doubting myself? So the dispute between Menestheus and Petios is political, one's siding with the Demos and one's siding with the few, right? And so is it Menestheus that's a demagogue and that he's able to get the chief men on his...
Can I see you want to talk about here? Meanwhile, Menestheus, to affect popularity and embrace himself with a multitude stirred up and bitter to the chief men and Athens. So it seems like Petios' opponent was trying to anger the nobles so that he could become a friend of the people. And so that somehow, Theseus and trying to make a democracy is undone by someone who outdoes him in democracy.
That he sort of becomes a populist, it makes sense. It's interesting. So then this makes me think of Machiavelli, obviously, the sort of last- Yeah, of course. manipulation.
So that maybe Machiavelli and Petios, the man of legend, is... I mean, actually, to go back to the Borgia thing, right? He restores peace. And then what does Machia Borgia do?
He to please the people, right, has Ramiro. So maybe Theseus is meant to be like a kind of remit or a character in Menestheus, it's meant to be like Borgia. Now he's not Yeah, that's very interesting. We want to go...
Just to pick up the Machiavelli point here, I was surprised by the ending of this. That this seems like a very un-Makgevellian ending for a Machiavelli and excellent prince. He's either killed or he falls. This is not...
And by the way, he's killed because he doesn't recognize that this guy, if he's killed, it's either because somebody fears him or because somebody is his political rival. And it seems like both of those things show an error on his part. Well, I've just looked and fell and maybe it's a problem. Another error at its root is that he doesn't pay enough mind to what it takes to establish new modes and orders.
Right. Yeah. Very good. One thinking.
So it doesn't like Ria's lead, by the way. Yeah, he departs. He says, don't change the laws to like compact. He just kills himself.
Right. Right. Another interesting aspect to continue on the Machiavelli line is that when Theseus sets out, he's not only trying to prove himself, he's also imitating Heracles, right? And you're told to imitate Theseus by Machiavelli, who is prior imitating Heracles.
And you find out later in the Prince, right? That a lot of these sort of excellent princes, right? Imitate others. So Alexander 14, yeah, imitates Achilles, for example.
Right. And so there's this sort of recursive thing. But what's really happening in the imitation is you end up imitating blue tarks Theseus, right? And that that Theseus imitated Heracles.
And I think one of the darker things that's being suggested here is that you start off with this guy and then he does some nasty things, right? And then he's killed and nobody seems upset. You're wondering how much of this is actually made up. And maybe the actual Theseus was just kind of the nastiest of these violent dives, right?
Right. Right. That's the easiest used to political advantage. And yet allowed or many generations, legend grew up around.
Right. No, that's a that's really wonderful. And that would help if what you're saying is correct, that it explains how he was able to effectuate these new class divisions. It takes violence to to bring in political order from chaos.
Like you have to think that you have to think that you're a custom to their beef films or tribal leaders. And then all of a sudden, it's this new way of doing things. You think that's brought about by gentle words, you know, or common counsel, you know, no. So I think you're correct.
Great. I talked about numerology, right? Before Greg, you say that one thing that I think Machiavelli may enjoy in the life of Theseus is his use of display. That's one thing in Blue Tark again, that Theseus constantly displaying prowess, displaying his activities, ensuring everyone heard about it.
So and if Alex is correct, that Theseus may have just been the most vicious class of men, then one lesson is how to turn viciousness into political account. And part of what you do is you have to make sure that people see it in our wild with their own eyes. But your numerology ensures more interesting. No, I'm sure it's not actually.
I don't really have much to say about it. I always like numerology. Well, first off, so there's six flavors on the way out. Alice, did you count the other ones too?
Yeah, I saw at least two others. Two others would make sense that it's eight. Yeah, which is the number at the end. Okay, so I don't have much to say, except at the very end, this is the very end of the text.
For some reason, the last chapter. So he's killed in the penultimate chapter. Right. And in the final chapter, we learned that the Greeks go to great lengths to try and procure his relics, his bones.
And it seems it seems clear to me that Plutar says that that Simon basically recovered some bones and pretended like they were Theseus's, because he found on an island, an eagle pecking in a place, and they started, you know, digging around and they're like, Oh, they found a coffin with a dude who was big in it, and he had a spear and a sword next to him. So I go, this has to be Theseus. And so they'd be speaking about the spear and a sword. None.
I can't think of a single one. That's slightly problematic. But in the final chapter, he dies in this final chapter. For some reason, they're really interested in finding his bones, his relics, which is interesting.
So his post his posthumous, it's, I mean, I don't know, this is interesting, like how many of these founders have strange deaths or are killed, but then subsequent generations want to deify them and dig the bones back up. In any event, it says, but they, the Athenians honor him also on the eighth day of the other months either because he came to Athens in the first place from Troedsen on the eighth day of the month as a diadores the topographer states, it's geography, by the way, again, right? So it began with geography and end with geography, or because they get through the summer more appropriate for him than any other since he has said to be a son of a side, but they'd be honest with side on the eighth day of every month. The number eight as the first cube of an even number two and the double of the first swear, poor, fiddly represents the steadfast and immovable power of this God, side, to whom we give the epitaphs of secure and burst stare.
I don't really know what to do with this except to think like what I mean as we go through blue dark as we do more lives, it seems like I'm not saying that blue dark is using numerology, maybe is so much as he seems to think that people are attributing power to numbers. This might be one reason why thinkers use numerology, sort of exploiting the belief in numbers of the people or something like this. So a human usage of something that ordinary people find, people believe in lucky numbers and these kinds of things, all the time, people, 13 is unlucky, like most of them have 13 floors. And also an offer is the kind of exactitude that's reassuring.
Yeah, that's a very good point. One plus one. I mean, one thing I found funny about the edge, maybe this connection point is that he says, oh yes, of course, we call up a side in the Asfale on right the safe and Guy Earth on the earth hold it by far by far the name of this. I was like, I didn't call that because usually it's called a nussic ion, which means the earth shaker.
Yeah, it's already a kind of suspicious association. If you look in in Homer, for example, you're going to see an also guy on so much more. I have a question for you guys, since I guess we're getting close to the end. Is the Cs so if you hadn't heard of blue dark's lives, didn't understand how they were ordered?
Is there somebody prior in time to Theseus that you would have started your lives with? Or do you understand? Because right now I just take it as granted, oh, of course he begins with Theseus and Romulus. But would there have been somebody earlier, or is this this Shrek you as the most natural beginning?
Because he already says in some of these lives, we're going past the edge of the map metaphorically. And we don't we can't untangle fable from reality. Turns out you can't do that in any of the lives he spends. But he could have written a life about an earlier person, no, or is this just where Greek history in its human form is traditionally set to begin?
That'd be my guess. I mean, Alex said like her guess on later. So I don't know about you. Yeah, I mean, I'm just I'm serious.
You know, it's funny. Yeah, I just realized that's one point. We're not pointing. You know, maybe this is what he's pointing to.
There isn't a clear in the case of Rome, by the way, which is probably something that there is a clear founder guy. Maybe the problem with Greece is there isn't this clear founder guy? Well, at least with Athens, right? So long as much later way later to the point that he's like, you know, kind of legendary, but he's not like hugely distant memory, right?
In Athens in classical Athens, right? Yeah. So it may be because one of this numerous numerous numerous numerous numerous numerous moments of history, right? So it's like a weird sort of, and so maybe that's interesting that the founders much later will recall the in-appropiate him because they're trying to give this sort of antiquity a plutarch, this storyography shows that well, one, these was not this beloved guy to the rape to a strange woman, right?
And three, it's suspicious that that even some of his heroic deeds were all that nice, right? And he points instead to a guy like Menestius, who whose deeds, yeah, I'd be interested to read more about Menestius and try to put together what exactly like he was up to, right? And how he will, but there isn't a life line at least as we have. So, Lane, as you big Thucydides buffs, is C.C.S mentioned in the archaeology, as he mentioned early on, I can't recall him.
I think you mentioned offhand that the idea that it wasn't safe to travel in Athens by foot that he does. Yeah, or C.C.C says also C because of the Marani pirates thought maybe I got a C.D. right? In all events, I think it was it was dangerous everywhere, but I can't recall if he brings up these C.S.
so if C.D.C. doesn't, and he is talking about the origins of Athens, in the same with Herodotus too, there's that damn Cukukkal. I wonder why he's not mentioned, or if he has mentioned what they say. I don't remember a mention of C.C.S.
in the entire text, but I can check it out. I just looked it up. This is in chapter 15 of the second book. He says, after C.C.S.
came to the kingdom, one who besides his wisdom was also made of very great power. He not only set good order in the country and other respects, but also dissolved in councils and magistrates to the rest of the towns, and assigning them all one hall and one council house brought them all to go have it in the city that now is and constrained them enjoying their own as before to use this one for the city, which now when they all paid their dues to it grew great and was what these who so delivered to posterity. From that time to this day, the Indians keep a holiday at the public charge to the goddess and call it suenrikiya, right? We should really mention this, but this is called the suenrikiya, right?
When he brings all the deems together and sort of centralizes. She's one of their word names for the books, like the bringing of the houses together or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he's first mentioned in Thucydides and book two else?
Yeah. Interesting. And then he's mentioned some other times, but this seems like an obvious connection. But he's not mentioned in the archeology to your first one.
No, he's not. He's not. The archeology is that that would be kind of interesting that he mentions them here in sort of institutional way, right? But when it comes to the actual clearing of the evils, right, he actually attributes that to Venus, right?
He's to the seas from the pirates and it's not clear. He doesn't really talk about what basically commerce is where it seems to calm things down, right? Peaceable commerce on the seas. I think there's anything to the notion that because Athens is a democracy, it doesn't have a clear founding pure person.
Is that partially responsible for these who have secured anything? What do you most want to point to a singular founder? Well, see, the interesting question for me is why he instituted that type of regime in the first place. It's not as if.
So let's say if he is the strong man, he's the who, Grouchoves of Attica, why he decides to essentially abdicate some of his power and rulers don't do that lightly. So why is he, why is he instituting this? Here, I think I have an answer from Machiavelli. I think it's a criticism of founders who want to found a kingship and then sort of establish a hereditary monetary monetary or something like this, is that it seems like, in other words, if I really understand my own love of honor well, you see really ambitious people try to establish monarchies and then try to keep it perpetuated.
But what we find in history, in fact, is that those founders who set up not kingships but something like Republic are actually more greatly honored by the people that come later. So it could be a love for his own honor and a recognition that actually I'm seen as the guy who found this as the thing that's beneficial to the most, the demos will love me. And that's a firmer foundation to be admired and wondered at over time. But George Washington since now, these are the types that are more impressive than what.
So then it would be interesting, it would be interesting, institutes this thing that the Menestius used us to get rid of him. But when it comes to what it comes to happens to honor itself in its institutions, perhaps it's compelled to honor Theseus. And so maybe that's an interesting point here that the reason straight history doesn't work is where one, not only are these legends cropping up to the people need the legends, right? They need to honor them.
People give them their institutions, even if they're nasty, take that 1619 project. Right. Well, I mean, I was just in the four examples that Machiael gives in chapter six, it seems like they all with the exception of Cyrus established something that looks more like a Republic than a principality, right? So Moses gives them the law and sets down the, what, after the departure of Moses, we get the rule of judges, right?
It's not quite a democracy, it's certainly not a democracy, but it's also not really a principality. Romulus, the Roman Republic, Theseus, the democracy only Cyrus found an empire. So it does seem to be that there's actually greater renown for the Prince to establish something that will be longer lasting to it seems, but that's a good note to end on. Hopefully, I mean, we're going to work through these lives, all played on all Shakespeare.
So to one day, beautifying the life of Greg McBrayer, actually, we are into a it's a far more beautiful thing than it wasn't true. You know, for these lesser known figures, we should do an episode on the pair, that might be the way. So I was just doing the math. If you add them platonic dialogues to the remaining Shakespeare plays and all who charts lives, there's a good chance one of us will die before we can complete this task.
Why I get up and exercise every Monday, it's my duty to posterity. When I die, please do me a favor, find my bones or the bones of somebody that could be me and put them in the town swear and worship me every every the eighth day of every month. I was going to grind up your bones and smoke them in a joint, but we can also do that great. Folks, with that, please like, subscribe.
And if you have a if you have your own ideas about what to do with Greg's bones, send them to the newthinkery at gmail.com. I'd love to hear. We'll get one of his arms. Yeah, come up with something good and we'll read it on the show.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. All right, folks.
My gentlemen. My ladies.