Ancient Fragrant Lore: Of Classical Values (Part 3)

by: Elena Vosnaki

"Here first she bathes; and round her body pours
Soft oils of fragrance, and ambrosial show'rs."
  —Homer, "The Iliad", XIV rhapsody, 8th century BC

"The newly weds do not need to use perfumes
because the sweetest emanations rise off their persons."
   —Xenophon, "The Banquet", 5th century BC

"Take care that the good scent of his scent
does not highlight the bad scent of his life."
   —Diogenes, 4th century BC

Paris and Helen by Jacques Louis David (1748-1825)

The classical Greek culture is strewn with paradigms of fragrant worship as much as restraint to the extremes of carnality associated with it. Perhaps because, more than any other culture of its time, it championed the balance of body and spirit, of rising above the instinctual and demonic-fearing old world and paving the path to the rationality and luminosity of the ideals founding the western civilization.

The significance of such a discrepancy in classical culture is striking, carrying its core message even to our days. For modern Greeks, no doubt removed from numerous habits and ideals of the ancient world and justifiably so, perfume use remains something to be savored as both a sensual and an intellectual hobby, a gesture of well being, a gift to be shared, nevertheless always in a manner that does not impact the enjoyment of others or becomes an obsession. It is not only bad manners to marinate in it, it is also indicative of an excessive preoccupation with the body. And the ideal of a sane mind in a healthy body (νοῦς ὑγιής ἐν σώματι ὑγιεῖ) never ceased to hold an almost mystical power over cultured humans.

The Incense Burner by Alfonso Savini (1836-1908)

Classical civilization thrives on this dichotomy of "the Dionysian and the Apollonian," of Bacchanal chaos and Sun God rational forms, as Nietzsche would have said. Indeed the German philosopher, originally a philologist and only 28 at the time he penned the superb The Birth of Tragedy; Or: Hellenism and Pessimism, explains that it is these two clashing forces that merge to give birth to the classic world, but also those that eternally battle for control over the existence of humanity. And thus this dichotomy, as expressed by fragrant essences used, manifests itself clearly throughout Hellenic thought.

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier

On the one hand the lavish offering of pricey incense to the gods and the congregation; the maddening hallucinations of the oracles in Delphi, chewing and smoking locally grown bay leaves and prophesying infamously ambivalent outcomes to visiting travelers the world over; the thriving industry for aryballoi (αρύβαλλοι), forpuxis (πυξίδες) and for alabastra (αλάβαστρα), i.e., glazed terra-cotta vials for holding cosmetic preparations and perfumes, that contributed to a significant degree to the prolific commerce of Athens and Corinth.

Many of the latter, beautifully figural, bottles and jars (in the shapes of birds, rams, monkeys, you name it) were to be carried on a strap or cord from the wrist or from the belt, rather than to sit flat on classical tabletops, as depicted even on the relief of grave markers of youths. Even Laconian aryballoi were exported, a subset of Greek culture not usually associated with beautifying rituals; the pleasantly scented oil used for athletic preparations. Supply in such magnitude surely meant a huge demand, by both ladies and gentlemen. The Latin origin of the word perfume, fumare, i.e., to smoke, brings us to rituals involving fumigation and votive offerings. Hesiod in his Theogonystresses "May the purest incense burn on the altars, so as to obtain the favors of our gods."

Indeed the very word incense in Greek (θυμίαμα) comes from the verb thuo(θύω), meaning to sacrifice, originally denoting both the fragrant smoke of the roast of sacrificed animals on the pyre rising to please the gods (the flesh was served to the congregation) and the ritual burning of precious locally harvested—such as cistus labdanum—or imported resins like myrrh and frankincense, their smoke also rising to the enjoyment of the Eternal ones. But scents had a markedly prophylactic use beside their Olympians' appeasing one.

Not everyone agreed on the bloody aspects of the sacrifice. From Porphyry's The Life of Pythagoras, 36, in the translation found on p.130 of The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library 1987 edition, we find confirmation of these ideas:

"When Pythagoras sacrificed to the Gods, he did not use offensive profusion, but offered no more than barley bread, cakes and myrrh, least of all animals, unless perhaps cocks and pigs. When he discovered the proposition that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle, he is said to have sacrificed an ox, although the more accurate say that this ox was made of flour."
 

In Euripides's famous Helen play, the prophylactic use of fragrant smoke is stressed. The heroine is assumed to have never sailed to Troy but to have been whisked away by the goddess Aphrodite to Egypt and to its ruler Theoclymenus, sworn to her safekeeping. News from the exiled Greek soldier Teucer, washed upon the shores of Egypt, that Menelaus never returned to Greece from Troy and is presumed dead, puts Helen in the perilous position of being available for Theoclymenus to marry. She consults the prophetess Theonoe, sister to Theoclymenus, to find out Menelaus' fate. Theonoe purifies the air of the altar by having the servants burn sulfur and resins, conjuring shadows and images to tell her of her husband's impending return.

On the other hand the philosophical treatment of olfactory excess as a sign of decadence and deviation from the path of a free civilian is palpable through the texts of the classical authors. The Athenian statesman Solon, adored by his fellow citizens for alleviating the accumulated debts of formerly free land owners that had lost their land and freedom to the greedy lending gentry (the famous seisachtheia regulation) tried to ban perfume use altogether. He considered it represented the corrupt—and ethnically dangerous—lifestyle of Persia, Greece's (and for that matter Europe's, since Greece was the critical gateway to gain passage to the continent) prominent enemy.

In Plato's Republic there is the following poignant passage:

"And when his other lusts, amid clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life, now let loose, come buzzing around him, nourishing to the utmost the sting of desire which they implant in his drone-like nature, then at last this lord of the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard, breaks out into a frenzy: and if he finds in himself any good opinions or appetites in process of formation, and there is in him any sense of shame remaining, to these better principles he puts an end, and casts them forth until he has purged away temperance and brought in madness to the full."
 

And further on the dialogue continues:

~Then if the man is like the State, I said, must not the same rule prevail? his soul is full of meanness and vulgarity --the best elements in him are enslaved; and there is a small ruling part, which is also the worst and maddest.

~Inevitably.

~And would you say that the soul of such an one is the soul of a freeman, or of a slave?

~He has the soul of a slave, in my opinion.

~And the State which is enslaved under a tyrant is utterly incapable of acting voluntarily?

~Utterly incapable.

~And also the soul which is under a tyrant (I am speaking of the soul taken as a whole) is least capable of doing what she desires; there is a gadfly which goads her, and she is full of trouble and remorse?

~Certainly.

~And is the city which is under a tyrant rich or poor?

~Poor.

~And the tyrannical soul must be always poor and insatiable?

~True.

~And must not such a State and such a man be always full of fear?

~Yes, indeed.

~Is there any State in which you will find more of lamentation and sorrow and groaning and pain?

~Certainly not.

~And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires?

~Impossible."
 

For Plato, as surely as for other philosophers, the reckless capitulation unto desire and passions speaks of enslavement, of tyranny in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, of the misery of being insatiable, of not being able to feel rich no matter what surrounds you. It also speaks of assimilating The Other, of forfeiting Hellenic values.

For classical Greeks, extremely proud of their political uniqueness (the compartmentalization of the city states is the very factor which allowed the birth of democracy) the traits similar to the despotic rulers of the East are anathema, the corrupt stench of slavery a greater miasma than the odor of the unadorned, cleansed body. (Parenthetically, this is also the reason they avoided tattoos).

Since actual slaves invariably were prisoners of war (and therefore of Eastern descent) or people that had lost their freedom due to excessive debt, separating the free man from the slave is a matter of political cruciality in a world that lives and dies by the values that differentiate it. Free men were civilians, contributing to the election of their ruling bodies as well as eligible for election themselves, and they formed a unique body of army the world had never known before, "the phalanx of hoplites". The feats of the battle of Marathon (490BC), the sea fight of Salamis (480BC) and the ultimate battle of Plataea (479BC), marking the end of the Greco-Persian wars, moments that shaped history as we know it, were the feats of the hoplites. (Indeed if Europe has remained European it has been suggested it is because of the battles of Marathon in 490BC, of Poitiers in 1356 AD and of Vienna in 1863AD).

Hence sprang the halting of the Persian imperialism into the core of Europe, the harbinger of the Golden Age of Pericles about to start. And it is exactly free men, the hoplites, defending their houses, their altars and their values, that managed to defeat the invisible army of the all mighty Persians, as the historian Herodotus stresses. It couldn't be no other way. How can man be free, think free, when he is encumbered, enslaved by desire, by insatiable passions?

The famous motto inscribed on the oracle of Delphi dictates meden agan (μηδέν άγαν), everything in moderation. Τhe lesson out of the journey into classical Hellinism is exactly that; enjoy all things, including fragrance, in a manner that you control, lest they end up controlling you.

Greek Woman at the Bath by Joseph-Marie Vien (1716 – 1809)

The backlash of all the perfumes of Arabia comes with Alexander the Great in our 4th part of Ancient Fragrant Lore to follow.