“Despite their promises at the last Election, the politicians had not yet changed the climate” – Evelyn Waugh, ‘Love Among the Ruins’ 1953.
Giorgio de Chirico, one of my favourite artists, painted “The Melancholy of the Politician in 1913. A metaphysical masterpiece that explores themes of isolation, alienation, and the human condition. Using a unique blend of classical architecture, everyday objects, and distorted perspective to create a dreamlike, almost surreal atmosphere that evokes a sense of unease and mystery, he poses the question: just how much of a politician can you be in a polis bereft of citizens? The statue of a politician looms large over an empty square populated by the silhouette of a person. Is this also a politician, one who seeks validation by the petrified and the departed? Or a citizen, vainly looking for someone to vote for?
It is exactly this scene that I envisaged when I came upon a most animated friend passionately handing out leaflets on my way to the ballot box, a few weeks ago. I thought I would provoke him by refusing to take his leaflet. To his question as to why I was refusing direction, I pointed him gently in the direction of doyen of the Greek Enlightenment, Iosipos Moisiodax, who asked in 1761, as I did at that moment:
“And what benefit does the state expect from a politician who regards custom and legality indifferently as one and the same thing: who has neither learned, nor shows any desire to learn, what is law, or what is polity?”
My friend persisted, extolling the virtues of the candidate he was tasked with spruiking, and desperately cajoled me into at least tarrying in order for him to complete the entire sales pitch, but I was having none of it. Instead, I referred him to the Ancient Greek tragedy “Hecuba” where, commenting on Odysseus intention to sacrifice her daughter Polyxena to the spirit of Achilles, even though Hecuba has saved Odysseus’ life, the Trojan Queen rails against: “these politicians who cringe for favours from a screaming mob and do not care what harm they do to their friends.”
By way of riposte, my friend demanded that I show him which daughters were sacrificed by his party, in order for this to form the basis of my argument, arguing that I was talking excrement. I shrugged his copronymic assertion aside, reminding him of when, returning to his native Tarsus philosopher Athenodoros had his front door smeared in excrement by partisans of his rival Boethius, Athenodoros wrote: “One may recognise the city’s illness and disaffection in many ways, and particularly from its excrement.” We are after all kin of the Modern Greek αγανακτισμένοι.
This in no way dampened my interlocutor’s fervour. He wanted to know what my political philosophy was, in order, as he maintained, to prove to me that his candidate was aligned with my views. This is an easy task, for such views as I may hold are best expressed by the queen of political activism and dissidence, Lysistrata, who Aristophanes quotes as proclaiming:
“If you had any sense, you would handle all your affairs in the way we handle wool….
First of all, just like washing out a raw fleece, you should wash the sheep-dung out of the body politic in a bath, then put it on a bed, beat out the villains with a stick and pic off the burrs; and as for those people who combine and mat themselves to gain office, you should card them out and pluck off the heads. Then card the wool into the work-basket of union and concord, mixing in everyone; and the immigrants, and any foreigner who is friendly to you, and anyone who is in debt to the treasury, they should be mixed in as well…. and then make a great ball of wool, and from that weave a warm cloak for the people to wear.” Even back then, Lysistrata was proud to be Union.
The shadows were lengthening, like those in De Chrico’s empty, windswept square, and still the candidate, who I was asked to wait for and meet, and not materialised. As we waited, we mused at how gerontocratic Greek community politics is, as compared to Australian politics where renewal is the norm. My friend, of a conservative bent, considered that as our ancient forebears were wise and that wisdom comes with age, the origins of our gerontocracy must lie therein. I disagreed vehemently. In closing his argument as to why old men should remain active in politics, Plutarch digresses, explaining why certain statues of Hermes are designed the way they are:
“That is why representations of Hermes showing him as an old man are created with no hands or feet, but with erect member: the intimation is that there is little need for physical vigour in old men, but they should have, as is fitting, a fertile and productive reason.” This then is the reason why so many elderly members of our community hang onto their positions in brotherhoods with such tenacity and insist on playing politics. It also explains why many Australian contenders in the game tarry longer than they should in search of the elusive fourth term. It helps with their love life.
When the candidate did arrive, at the very end of the day, there were few people to greet him with a cheer. One of his supporters uttered the un-Australian political war-cry “Booyah” which left me completed gobsmacked. Enquiring as to why I was so visibly moved, I confided in my friend that that the American exclamation used to express triumph “Booyah!” actually comes from the Souliote War Cry “Boowah!” and we have Lord Byron’s poem “Song to the Suliotes” to prove it:
“Up to battle! Sons of Suli
Up, and do your duty duly!
There the wall — and there the Moat is:
Bouwah! Bouwah! Suliotes!
There is booty — there is Beauty,
Up my boys and do your duty.”
Best election campaign theme song since “It’s Time,” if you ask me.
I didn’t speak to the candidate. Crisp, clean and eminently a poster boy for Anglo-Saxon vitality, I sidled inside the polling booth, therein to perform my democratic rites. Emerging from the sanctum of the polis, I did not deign to respond to my friend’s entreaties to reveal for whom I had voted, by advising him instead that in 2016, in voting for the President of Lebanon, a Lebanese MP wrote “Zorba the Greek” on the ballot. It was noted (in accordance with the power sharing arrangements between religious groups in Lebanon) that Zorba was a Greek Orthodox Christian, while according to the Constitution the President must be a Maronite (Catholic) Christian. A true but bizarre story.
Inspired by the Lebanese politician and suffering the malevolent after-effects of a rather contrary democracy sausage upon my digestive system as commensurate to the quality of the argument I had advanced with to friend previously, I considered those who would do away with the right to choose altogether and caused to be posted the following piece of frivolity upon my social media page:
“In breaking news it has been announced that in order to effect the necessary cost-cutting needed to bring Australia back from the brink of financial collapse, the Australian Labor Party is merging with the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
Since its prelates are appointed directly from Antioch, Syria (a place infinitely more accessible than Canberra) rather than having politicians be elected, elections will henceforth be abolished. Instead, the victor will be popularly acclaimed with the words “Axios!” pronounced with a lisp.
This will save Australia billions in puerile advertising costs, cheesy photo shoots and will achieve Economies of scale and efficiency as politicians dispense with the need to pretend to listen and claim they care about the electorate.
Electorates will be abolished and replaced with parishes. The first order of business will be to excommunicate the Trumpet and his Patriots and reconcile with the Greens but only on Palm Sunday and Saint Patrick’s Day.
Given that Dutton comes from the Greek άδυτον, a holy sacred place where one may not enter, he will be excluded from the running.”
It was only when reading Tacitus that night that I recalled that acclamation by “Axios” is a process infinitely fraught with danger. Long associated with approbation and acclamation, ἄξιος is the only word the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo uttered when in arriving at Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, messengers from mad emperor Nero met the general and ordered him to commit suicide. Undaunted, he strode forward to accept his fate, and fell on his own sword after exclaiming, “Axios!”
Best stick to ballots and preferences, albeit in desolate squares, after all.
