The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the triad of the tribes
Zeus-, Hermes- and satyr-types. It is clear that in Ionia the unfolding of the
three tribal impulses reached their greatest amalgamation and that the forces
of the Zeus-Apollo-Athena type appeared in their final predominance. This
victory, however, came as a harmony achieved through the decisive influence of
the eastern and southern Hermes-type of Asia Minor as well as through the
sublimation of the satyr.
How wonderfully this was realized in Ionia’s center, Athens! It was for
this city that Zeus created out of his forehead the goddess of wisdom Pallas
Athena, assisted by Hermes, who brought the heights of Olympus into contact
and harmony with the depths of Hades. And here the outer ugliness of the
satyr-faced Socrates was exalted to that of the lover of wisdom.
In Athens’ agora the triad of the tribes reached its fulfillment. “Athens is
Hellas of Hellas,” according to a Greek saying. Indeed, her agora gradually
replaced all the sanctuaries of antiquity and the courts of tyrants and kings.
Here Solon gave the laws and Pericles spoke of Athens as the school of Hellas;
here Socrates discovered the daimon of man as the divinity within the soul;
here Plato taught at the Academy and here Aristotle’s Lyceum became the
school of the world. It was the agora that became the scene on which Saint
Paul appeared before the Stoa Basileos where the chairs of the Areopagitae
stood. The authorities of the Areopagus who once guarded the cults of Eleusis,
protected the laws of Solon, watched the origin of drama, accused Aeschylus of
the betrayal of the mysteries and also condemned Socrates, now sat in a semicircle
before Saint Paul who spoke in their midst to the Athenians. In no other
place on the earth save at the heart of Ionia, Athens, the Hellas of Hellas, could
the reformation of the world start anew.
The blessing of the Attic landscape could not be better expressed than
through the words which Socrates (in Plato’s dialogue) spoke at his departure
from Phaedrus. Looking like the satyr Silenus, he prayed to Pan in gratitude
for the deities which worked upon and molded the gulfs and hills, valleys and
fields around Athens: “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place,
give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward man
be at one.”