The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the polis as axis of greek history
in the procession on the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis; while Socrates
declared himself a “midwife of thinking,” stating profoundly the mission of his
life in awakening thought within man’s daimon. Alcibiades impiously mocked
the old religion, as it is shown by the incident in which he permitted the statues
of Hermes to be devastated on the eve before his Sicilian expedition. Socrates
prayed to the gods of Attica’s landscape and even after the unjust accusation
against him, he did not dream of fleeing from Athens but died as a martyr,
while Alcibiades fled to the hostile Spartans where he remained in voluntary
exile for eight years.
From the time of the death of Socrates to the battle of Chaeronea, when
Athens was completely deprived of her political independence, there was a
marked decline in the character of certain men as in the case of Alcibiades;
and, at the same time, a state of perfection in that of others as there had been in
the case of Socrates. While the political rights of the polis were declining, the
mission of its spirit was advancing. As in the beginning Thebes had achieved
the leadership and was then followed by Sparta and finally by the empire
of Athens, so now there appeared a reverse order; Sparta again received the
hegemony and was in turn succeeded by Thebes, where the last two political
masters, Epaminondas and Pelopidas, lived. A view of the upheaval of that
period revealed that Thebes in her war with Sparta was supported by Argos,
in alliance with Athens. Elis was hostile to Arcadia, while the Arcadian league
was at war with Sparta but in alliance with Athens and Thebes, and had begun
to fall into disunion within itself.
It was a tragic spectacle which the decline of the polis presented! But at
the same time what a victory of the spirit! The sacrifice of Iphigenia marked
the dawn of the individual intellect, the martyrdom of Socrates its climax. Yet
history is not a smooth current or a simple arch of rise, zenith and nadir. In
its repetition of the past there is always to be found a new fountain of forces.
Socrates is the heir to the rise of the intellect following Odysseus, Thales and
the Sophists; yet he is unique as the genius of the new method of reasoning,
and in his revelation of the daimon of the soul.
The death of Socrates must be understood as belonging to those sacrifices
demanded by the culture of the intellect which we have already mentioned in