Ecclesia Disbanded

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A hubbub of excited voices from crowds over a hundred strong echoes, drowning the feeble voice of a student offering greetings to his classmates as they watch a procession celebrating the opening of a grand arena in Olympia, Greece pass by.

Anyssos: Greetings! 

Pertikkos: Greetings! How’s your day going? Getting any work done today?

Anyssos: Not exactly, getting back to work after a holiday is an immensely frustrating task, isn’t it?

Pertikkos: Absolutely! Anyway, any idea when will we be allowed to have ecclesia again?

Anyssos: Should happen anytime today ideally, I am waiting for the announcer to arrive.

Pertikkos: Hopefully. It was absurd and a little disheartening, the events of the day before, weren’t they? We had the peace and harmony of the Akademia of Athens threatened.

Anyssos: Well, the person who initiated what devolved into the chaos indeed had a point. They were merely respectfully and politely raising their objection to the Akademia declaring a holiday on the event of what had come to Dionysians and triumphalist sloganeering by the others was quite shocking.

Pertikkos: Exactly! What was especially disturbing was a couple of random Akademians, sorry, urm, ex-Akademians, making disruptive remarks when they did not have the right to do so at all! It is beyond me how the Decanus failed to confiscate their pinecones.

Anyssos: Well, the others weren’t much better either. It is sobering to note that the students of this prestigious institution can scarcely apply the principles they inculcate here to subjects beyond their immediate domain, and degenerate to unscientific mudslinging at the mere scent of an emotionally rousing topic, as though undergoing hangovers from their own dreary academic pursuits.

Pertikkos: This ‘unscientific mudslinging’ inadvertently unmasks an attitude of intolerance and unwillingness to have open discussions. And of course the most atrocious of the statements was one where sectarian slurs were thrown around callously. I used to take pride in the culture we have fostered at Akademia, such open displays of hatred gives you a reality check so as to what the public perception is outside the institute and how it is making its way in. 

[Redacted]:  Dionysians have grown their grapevines on the holy land of Apollo! And all laws were abided by in the process of building the arena.

Anyssos: The Olympians have adhered to their laws, but the manner in which their Chairmen have inaugurated this controversial arena does strike one as highly questionable.

Pertikkos: I did have a pretty worrisome discussion with someone I know who devotedly follows the Olympics. When I asked them about their celebration of an event directly enabled by the cutting down of the sacred grove of Dionysus and attacks on the Dionysians, they gave vague responses regarding the legal disputes surrounding Olympia and how this is a great day for all Apollo devotees, Olympia being their foremost pilgrimage site. All these people who celebrate this ad hoc sectarian event are directly supporting the oppression of the Dionysians.

([Redacted]: It was me!)

Pertikkos: You are invited to the discussion.

([Redacted]: I’ve given my five obols.)

Anyssos: (to Pertikkos) How so? To the vast majority of Apollonians, Olympia has a central place in their beliefs and myths. Why, even the grove was called the Vineyard of Apollo, even though it was in fact a Dionysian holy place? It is a complex issue: an Apollonian and an avid follower of the Olympics may indeed celebrate this event without any ill-will or malice towards the Dionysians, and many Dionysians throughout Greece have partaken in the celebrations!

Pertikkos: See, that might be the case for some people who are unaware of how exactly the inauguration came to be. Do you not personally think that the inauguration of the arena, given the developments of the last few decades, is clearly a political assertion? And do you not think most people celebrating this are somewhat complicit in the burial of the tragic history behind it?

Anyssos: It definitely is. As I said earlier, the people at the helm of affairs are certainly leaving no stone unturned in using all Olympian state resources to celebrate this event as a Greek triumph. Their actions are certainly open to criticism as it threatens the unity of us Greeks, who worship innumerable divinities. Yet, to an average Apollonian, this is indeed not the case. Did you stop purchasing and using Persian glass after the Persians violently invaded a distant city? Or were you supporting the Persian actions for not doing so? It simply is too complex an issue for us to draw simple binaries.

Instead of accusing your Apollonian friend, you could have simply highlighted the gravity of the events to them, and made them aware that beyond their genuine celebrations lie complex historical events.

Pertikkos: I did try to reason with them. They kept insisting that this occasion outweighed all the festivities year-round, combined. Their comparison of this event to other festivals of significance did not sit right with me! Their primary focus lay on the event itself, the grandeur and symbolism of it, and very little to do with their personal religious beliefs.  A declaration of an official holiday on this account clearly gives it an ad hoc festival-like status. Also, the Basileus himself inaugurated the arena, and mind you, not in a personal capacity but an official one, such acts undermine our secular ethos. And as to your second question, the epicentre of the event matters, whether the event was local, national or foreign matters, this event affects our principles disproportionately more than your example.

Anyssos: You must know that Grecian democracy and society thrives on near-superstitious allegiance to institutions. You merely need to live here for a month to see priests declare new festivals and people celebrate it with an incomparable zest, to know the way their religion works.

Pertikkos: You talk about allegiance to institutions, then at the very least a call for a festival like celebration and a push for the declaration of holiday should have come from a religious body and the state may or may not have considered it. Ideally a call for a holiday shouldn’t have come in my personal opinion, even in this hypothetical scenario. But here, the state assumed a quasi-religious authority and tried to undermine the beliefs people have in the institutions you talked about.

Anyssos: It is indeed, again, an ominous fact that the religious and secular authorities, today, have become blurred. The Oracle of Delphi has in fact severely criticised the inauguration and threatened all of Greece with the wrath of Apollo, for his rituals have not been followed.

Our greatest threat is the Basileus of our nation assuming immense power, and manipulating the Greeks’ separate respect for political and religious authority.

It is a fundamental principle in our nation that our temples and administration be independent of each other. Both are being undermined by each other, and temple activities are being mandated by puritanical political ideologies and democratic principles are being overridden by religious tenets, today, due to individuals manipulating these systems in pursuit of more power.

Pertikkos: Exactly! Glad we agree on the fact that the political and religious authorities are becoming indistinguishable, although I do not support the hegemony the religious clergy have over religion, it is a fact that it exists and its existence should nowhere near overlap with a secular governing body. And if we are to agree to the blatancy of this happening then I fail to understand how you state that the majority of people involved in the celebrations are not in some way, varying in intensities, complicit in the disintegration of our secular ethos?

Anyssos: See, as long as the democratic code is adhered to, people respect the legislations and judgements as sacrosanct. It may be called contrary to our principles of questioning and scepticism, but this is what has enabled our democracy to survive and our diversity to thrive. Would you gently prod them to look into the facts or accuse them, when they’ve merely respected authority as they always have? Greeks never have thought to question the verdicts of our judges, and this has often been a good thing. Expecting anything different from them now is puerile and unfair.

Pertikkos:  Alright as I see it, even if a Greek is aware of the history leading to this event, they can celebrate this with a purely religious intent, but they would be doing so by deliberately blindsiding the history, and they would use the judicial pronouncements as a tool to do so. Tell me, if the unfortunate destruction of the sacred groves would not have taken place, leading to the clearance of the land, would the judgement have been the same? Again you cannot deny that any sort of development leading to the arena being built has been affected by the decades old unfortunate incident, and thus it is a very strong political symbol in the minds of a good proportion of people.

Anyssos: But you must note that the majority of Greeks view this as a past conflict that has been resolved in goodwill through our own legal mechanisms, and all parties have been satisfied as per Greek conventions and laws. Thus, to them, this is fair and democratic insofar as rules have been given lip-service to. Accusing them of complicitness ignores how democracy has evolved and functioned in our nation.

See, Apollonians had been worshipping in the vineyard for centuries, and history is so complex that we indeed do not know all the possible peoples and sects to whom the land has belonged. Before the vineyard was an ancient Olympian ground, indeed, but what before that?

Many Greeks see the Dionysians as threats to Greek culture, but what is a Greek city today without wine, without Dionysian plays and dramas, without a Dionysus temple?!

Pertikkos: Most people do not view this in this broad context. I think a good proportion of people today will limit their analysis and view the chopping off of the groves as some sort of retributive justice. They have an unwavering belief that the taking over of the old Olympian ground was reflective of the wishes of all Dionysians, past and present and had an underlying element of religious subjugation.

Anyssos: Well, yes. The more important fact is that people are confusing their own sense of justice and revenge with law. Once Solon decreed the democratic principles of the Akademia, it applied to all future Akademians. Can we use those laws to ‘do justice to’ events preceding the law? Of course not. What we can do, is cater to the inequalities of the current day, and remedy them. To understand modern day inequalities, we study history, but we do not in fact remedy past crimes themselves, for crimes preceding our democracy lie outside the purview of our democracy.

Pertikkos: Yes, I absolutely agree with you regarding the non-retrospective nature of modern democratic principles. But again, fact remains people do refer to history to validate the confusion you talked about. And, if that is to happen, I think in this case, a couple of points should be considered:

 1. More often than not, especially the timeline we’re referring to, the general populace had no say in most matters of the state, and the clergy- nobility controlled the narratives and especially these tangible actions. 2. The intent of such actions like the takeover of the Olympian ground, can never be exactly categorised as something specific and remains debatable. 3. But if we are still to try and do that, it is only logical to think of the intent behind the action as completely political, symbolic and financial, given how in the era we are talking about such arenas would more often than not represent themselves as civilisational symbols, and financial centres. Having ample examples of different kingdoms encroaching upon such places of worship in different places across the world, it becomes clear that majoritarily, it used to be a way to assert political dominance not religious. This becomes clearer knowing how various Greek kingdoms themselves have engaged in the exact same actions against other communities in the past.

Can we restore justice by ridding us of all Greek temples because we ourselves, according to Pausanias, migrated from the far north and subjugated the natives?! At some point there was no Apollonian temple to speak of.

Anyssos: Absurd, right? And the most ironic part of this event being celebrated as a panhellenic festival in spite of its history is how such conflicts panned out. Our ancient city-states routinely demolished places of worship, because for the rulers they were symbols of power too, and we can talk about an Athena temple being built over a Poseidon temple by the Akademians.

But in modern Greece, we have accepted all the gods of the Olympus, and every one of them is treated equal in our modern religion. In light of this, Dionysian persecution and Apollonian victory being celebrated? What a travesty!

But, when we want people to listen to us, see how overarching large scale trends are tending towards and see what they can do about it, we should first acknowledge that individuals need not have evil intentions for their actions to, in a large scale, lead to something undesirable. The soldiers of the Persian empire are no less human than you or me, and yet it is only natural that they did as they did, given the social pressures around them.

Pertikkos:  What about the people in ecclesia the day before? What social pressures did they have? To resort to such foul language and act like utter zealots, if any social pressures lead to such outcomes, it is fair to call the factors contributing to it, and to categorise these social pressures as regressive.

[Redacted]: To All of You,

Give me the opportunity to express the feelings that are stirring deep within me. I sincerely hope to clarify and make sure you understand everything. I sincerely promise that I will never give up on you and that I-

Pertikkos: I am very sure this person is commenting purely with the intention of filibustering.

[Redacted]: ….will pray and familiarise myself with the established principles, as you have done. The deep reflection that fills my mind is nothing less than a whole and steadfast dedication, feelings so strong that they cannot be matched by any other suitor.

Anyssos: Yes in fact that is but entirely a syntactically correct filler text. Sad. Anyways, people, like those foulmouthed ones of the ecclesia here, do exist who celebrate this in a spirit of jingoism and triumphalist hatred. But the fact remains that the majority of Greeks are simply celebrating a natural religious festival from their point of view, and if we demonise them it is only natural that they defend themselves by going over to the side of the Basileus. Instead, we must show our fellow Greeks how the Basileus is even undermining Greek religion and culture and fitting it into their own mould for some ominous purposes. The moment we start demonising commoners with innocuous intents out of our frustration, we have lost them.

Pertikkos:

I don’t intend to and haven’t demonised anyone, but merely called out zealots. I strongly believe that the people partaking in the most visual displays make up a good proportion of the total celebrants, and they are aware of underlying correlations, and are active supporters of the political project. The next major bloc is aware, doesn’t endorse it, but conveniently ignores it, not calling out the politicisation, and then a select few, celebrate it with a purely innocuous religious intent and will call out the politicisation, if aware of the history. I believe in these times, citizens of our city-states, especially young adults, have the onus upon themselves to continually introspect and analyse if they are contributing to disruption of our democratic principles in any way. The narratives around the event have largely overshadowed the religious aspect of it, if there was any. 

Nonetheless, despite some disagreements about the event in itself, I feel both of us can agree that the communal harmony is rapidly deteriorating. that the culprit, majorly, is political machinery manufacturing the disharmony and they need to be the common entity we all question; that our Akademia is not immune to these seeds of discord and we need to call out intolerance whenever we see it.

As Pertikkos and Anyssos are about to conclude their conversation they hear a loud proclamation ( a question rather) nearby. They see a crowd gathering, an informal ecclesia of sorts, and depart in that direction.

_______________________________________________

[Redacted]: ………………… are we not forgetting something?

– Pratik Kulkarni and Anish Bharadhwaj

Edited By: Shivika Gupta and Aniruddha Mishra