HERMS, KOUROI AND THE POLITICAL ANATOMY OF ATHENS

Extract

During preparations for the ill-fated Sicilian expedition in 415 BC, Thucydides tells us, the Athenians woke up one morning to find that:

Of all the stone herms in the city of Athens (the square-cut type, which following local custom stand in great numbers in the doorways of private houses and shrines), most had their faces [προ´σωπα] mutilated during a single night. No one knew who the perpetrators were, but there was a search for them with large rewards out of public funds . . . They took the matter seriously; it looked like an omen for the voyage, and furthermore as though it had been done as part of a conspiracy for revolution and the overthrow of the democracy [δη´μου :kgr;αταλυ´σεωσ].

Some accused the flamboyant politician and general Alcibiades, ‘adducing as evidence the undemocratic licentiousness of his conduct in general’. Andocides emphasizes how seriously the matter was taken by the city authorities:

The boule, summoning the generals, ordered them to make an announcement that those of the Athenians who lived in the city should take their arms and go to the Agora, those within the Long Walls should go to the Theseion, those in Piraeus to the Hippodamian agora. As for the knights, a signal was to be given by trumpet before nightfall for them to go to the Anakeion; the boule was to go to the Acropolis and sleep there, the prytaneis in the Tholos.