Where did Theseus Die?

Where did Theseus Die?

Oikos is Not Greek Yogurt - If It Is You Are Deficient in Knowledge

Sophia sits at a simple, polished stone table, observing the two men who are, for the moment, equal in her timeless gaze.

Sophia: Welcome, gentlemen. Let us speak of Oikos, not as a dairy product, but as the concept of the house, the family, the foundational memory of a people. I have gathered you to discuss the final memory of a certain great man, Theseus.

Lycomedes: He scoffs, a pragmatic,earth−stained man of the sea and rock.

Memory is a luxury for those with soft hands, Lady. A great man’s end is often less a story and more a practical necessity. When a hero becomes a liability, a danger to the stability of my house, my island, the fall from a precipice is simply... efficient. The glorious past does not pay the bills or protect the present.

Sophia: You speak of the necessity of oblivion for the sake of order. You acted to remove a threat to your immediate oikos. But did you truly erase the hero, or merely change his setting? A body at the base of a cliff is a truth, but it’s not the final truth.

Cimon: He is a commanding figure, radiating the confidence of a man who understands power and the city.

My dear Lycomedes, that is precisely where you mistake the nature of a hero's life. A hero is not merely flesh and blood; he is public utility. The people of Athens were adrift, their great figure lying unhonored and unremembered in a barbarian’s ground. I understood that the city’s oikos—its collective identity and strength—required not just a truth, but a restorative symbol.

Lycomedes of the island of Skyros threw Theseus off a cliff after he had lost popularity in Athens. In 475 BC, in response to an oracle, Cimon of Athens, having conquered Skyros for the Athenians, identified as the remains of Theseus "a coffin of a great corpse with a bronze spear-head by its side and a sword.
— The Death of a Hero

Lycomedes: A symbol! You found a coffin, a skull, a large spear-head, and declared it the very spirit of Athens! You turned a forgotten man into a propaganda piece to rally the city's power. Did you truly believe that was his corpse?

Cimon: Belief is a matter for priests, my friend. Knowledge is what I deal in. I knew that what the Athenians required was a body of imposing stature, a relic of ancient might, something that spoke of their storied past and justified their conquest of your island. I knew what to look for, and when the oracle’s instruction aligned with a timely 'discovery,' the deficiency of knowledge concerning the corpse became irrelevant. The Athenians embraced a story of glorious retrieval to replace a story of ignoble, unavenged death. I gave them reverence, and with it, unity.

Sophia: Cimon, you understood that the meaning of the relic was far more potent than the reality of the bones. You re-established the hero’s oikos within the very heart of the city, using a coffin and a sword to re-forge the city’s spirit. You transformed a quiet act of political murder into a grand act of political memory.

Sophia: So, the question remains for both of you: Is the foundational oikos—be it a hero’s fame or a city’s glory—defined by a single, factual event, such as a private moment of death, or by the grand, useful narrative woven around it afterward?

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“I see!” said Homer

A deluded entry into Homer starkly contrasts the battles and hero-worship that united our Western sensibilities and the only psychology that we no? Negation is what I often refer to as differentiation within and through the individual’s drive to individuate.

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