Human Time

Radical physiological change was a distinguishing characteristic of mortal man, as the Sphinx’s riddle, which spoke of the ages of man as if they were three completely different species of animal with their own forms of locomotion, made clear. This characterization of mortals as quintessentially changeable over time meant that, like wool to cloth, olive to oil, vine to wine, the processing of man from birth to decrepitude via maturity, citizenship, and marriage could be used as a temporal model in a formal, structured way. Athens, Sparta, and Crete, and probably most poleis, were what anthropologists call ‘‘age-class societies,’’ i. e. each year’s batch of new citizens was enrolled en masse into an age-set (e. g. ‘‘ephebes of 380 BC’’) which then progressed through a number of age grades which carried with them certain (in)eligibilities and responsibilities. Age also qualified one for certain ritual roles: the Arrhephoroi had to be between 7 and 11. The priest of Zeus at Achaean Aigion was the most beautiful boy of all his coevals. As soon as hair appeared on his face he was, apparently, discharged (Pausanias 7.24.2).

These grades were also associated with idealized images, recognizable above all by height and beard: the ‘‘boy,’’ under-height, no beard; the ‘‘man,’’ full height, bearded; and, halfway between them, the ‘‘ephebe,’’ full-grown, no beard, probably representing the intermediate grade referred to in Athens as Meirakion, Neaniskos, or Neanias, ‘‘18’’ and ‘‘19,’’ for puberty came late in antiquity. In this way the ephebic image of a full-bodied, beardless kouros, taking one step forwards, could represent New Citizenship and therefore the new year. The greatest number of such kouroi was discovered at the Boeotian Ptoion.

In Athens each new year-set was identified with one of forty-two eponymous year-heroes endlessly recycled, the one surrendered by the retiring set of those turning 60. These year-heroes remain mysterious, but we can safely assume that, like other heroes, they had tombs and cults, and that the forty-two-year cycle therefore had a cultic and topographical dimension. We can perhaps see reflections of these age-class cycles in the inauguration of the Parthenon in 438, precisely forty-two years after the Persian Sack (Philochorus, FGrH 328 fr. 121), i. e., the year in which the set of the hero initiated at the time of the Sack was socially reincarnated. The construction of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, ca. 456, at the time of the start of the eighth forty-year cycle since the foundation of the Games in 776, is also unlikely to be coincidental.

Age-graded choruses performed at numerous festivals, and different grades seem to have been associated with different times, maiden choruses, for instance, often performing at night. Collectively these divisions by age grade could produce a spectacular self-representation of the community in all its demographic splendor. At the Hyacinthia for instance: ‘‘Boys [paides] with tunics hitched up play the lyre and sing to the sound of oboes. They sing to the god [Apollo] in a high pitch... The entire cohort of neaniskoi enter and sing one of the local [Amyclaean] songs.... ’’ The hard, mechanical structure of the age-class cycle meant that physiological change could represent time itself. Hence when Plato imagines time in reverse he imagines not just stars and luminaries moving backwards but men growing smoother-cheeked and smaller day by day. In Sparta, Plutarch (Lycurgus 21.2; cf. Sosibius FGrH595 fr. 5) mentions performances of three choruses ‘‘in the festivals’’ organized ‘‘according to the three age grades.’’ The old men (gerontes) first sang ‘‘once we were bold neaniaij then the chorus of men at their peak (akmazountes) ‘‘We are; if you are willing, look,’’ and finally paides, ‘‘And we will be mightier far.’’ It seems quite likely that Plutarch is referring to the dances called Gymnopaidiai, and it is quite possible therefore that the middle chorus of Neaniai is directing the gaze of the spectators to their naked bodies in explicit contrast with the older and younger males, their past and future bodies, dancing and singing alongside. It is almost as if each body at any one time contains its past and future selves; hence it seems to have been not uncommon for a mature man to be represented as an ephebe in painting and sculpture.

There were age-grade heroes - the hero Neanias who was offered a full-grown victim at Thorikos, the hero or god Pais at the Theban Cabeirion - and of course age grades were important in images of gods: ‘‘They fashion Zeus as bearded, Apollo as eternal boy, Hermes just getting his beard’’ (Lucian, On Sacrifices 11). In Crete Zeus could be shown as ephebe, the ‘‘Greatest Kouros’’ of the Hymn from Palaikastro, and in Aigion he was worshiped as Zeus Pais. There are even some very rare and shocking images of what seems to be a bearded Apollo. Similarly Hera could sometimes be not matriarch but virginal girl, Parthenia. She was said to be restored to that status, symbolically sent back in time, through taking a bath once a year at the Argive spring Canathos (Pausanias 2.38). At Plataea she was worshiped as both ‘‘Bride to Be,’’ Nympheuomene, and Teleia, ‘‘Complete’’ (Pausanias 9.2,7). At the climax of Euripides’ Heraclidae Iolaus, Heracles’ doddery old charioteer, becomes a young man for a day, or at least he is given a ‘‘youthful’’ arm for holding the reins (857), thanks to the intervention of Heracles and Hebe, appearing as bright lights on the yoke of his chariot, sending youthfulness up the reins, as it were. Together with Hebe, Heracles, and Heracles’ mother, Alcmene, Iolaus was one corner of the quartet of powers worshiped by the youths who attended the gymnasium of Cynosarges.