The Wisdom of Silenus
Life is bad it is not good.
It is best not to be born at all.
Next to that it is best to die, as soon as one can.
The above sobering words are given to us by a lost fragment of the writings of Aristotle, quoted in Plutarch, and placed in the mouth of Silenus, the Satyr who in myth was captured by King Midas. The mythical Phrygian asked Silenus what was best for man in life, and the above is his reply.
Silenus’ or, one might say, the ancient Greek’s outlook on life is bleak, terrible, but honest. It is a brutal truth, but the Greeks were a brutal people. In Homer’s Contest, Nietzsche remarks on how the Hellenes embraced cruelty, their tiger-like pleasure in destruction. The example he points to is Alexander the Great’s treatment of Batis, the brave defender of Gaza, who’s feet were pierced and who’s body is dragged behind Alexander’s chariot for show in a simulacrum of Achilles’ mythical hectoring of his enemies’ corpses.
Spengler in Man & Technics stated that man at his best is “brave, crafty, and cruel.” What gives mankind this cruelty? And why were the Greeks, an apotheosis of cultural achievement, so in-tune with this ethos? Nietzsche notes in The Birth of Tragedy that the frankness of this outlook of the Greeks provides the actual soil from which their high culture could be formed.
Silenus was a Satyr, a male spirit who has the appurtenances of a horse, including a tail and in early depictions a horse’s hind legs and permanent priapism. The equestrian nature of this knowledge is telling.
Robert Drews in The Coming of the Greeks describes how conquering horse-taming and chariot riding bands of the Pontic Steppe swarmed across Greece between the 16th and 12th century BC, decapitated the sedentary agricultural societies and lorded over them as aristocratic rulers to create the ancient Hellenic Poleis. Drews points out explicitly that their chariot riding technology enabled them to conquer swiftly and that horses were venerated throughout society as a mark of nobility.
The ties of horsemanship, and its representation of aristocracy, wildness, and grandeur were a leitmotif of Greek culture and myth. In Il Principe, Machiavelli remarks how the half-man, half-horse centaurs were the fabled teachers of great leaders and warriors of the Greek world, like Achilles.[1]
Out of this same Greek aristocracy blossomed a society that was a great flower of humanity. But the Greek nobility were not quick to forget their wild, venturing, and conquering roots – and the pathos of distance they maintained over those they ruled and conquered was ever present and absolute.
The Greek leaders, as evidenced by Silenus’ confession, fully imbued the idea that mere life has no inherent value, that labor and toiling were its only effects and that these were ignoble and ugly things. Life was tragic and they had utter contempt for those who simply strove to get through the day – those were for the slaves and peasants they ruled over. They aspired for κλέος, for great works and great deeds that would echo throughout time. It is this κλέος, or kleos meaning fame (infamy?), renown, or glory, which Socrates is told is the root cause of all men’s actions in Plato’s Symposium and is a central theme in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Silenus’ outlook and the lust for more were the sine quibus non for all their cultural achievement.
So, what to do with this?
Accepting Silenus’ vision of the world opens further regretful and painful verities. As Nietzsche notes in The Greek State, because life is drudgery and worthless toil, then slavery is a must for society to exist and for culture to thrive. The vast majority must be enslaved so that a higher exclusive stratum can be freed to bear and create the flowering of human achievement. Nietzsche went so far as to state that “slavery belongs to the essence of a culture.”
Is this any less true today than it was before 1865 in the USA, or 1861 in Russia, or 1833 in the UK?
Thralldom is as alive today as it ever was – physically less barbaric – but in certain subterranean ways perhaps crueler – as it gives the illusion and promise of freedom. As I have written before: you are trapped in this.
The contradiction of Silenus’ wisdom, the belief in the sanctity of life, or the idea that there is honor in labor and work is an intellectual fig leaf maintained so that the benighted canaille can go about their days of worthless toil and society can function. It is the noble lie that Plato first laid out in The Republic.[2] The exalting of life for life’s sake is slave mentality through and through – a nobler spirit would lust for higher aims.
Eschewing this and accepting Silenus’ wisdom is the first step for those not seeking not merely a palatable existence, but an honest relationship to being; a life with the potential for daring, adventure, and achievement.
As Nietzsche put it man’s dreadful capabilities are “the fertile soil from which all humanity in feelings, deeds, and works can grow forth.” Man’s bellicosity, his lust for conquering, for the agon, for achieving and creating are the sparks of the divine – they are the sole remnants of the Godly image that man was created in – and they are the only possible things that could make life worth living.
[1] I owe this insight to a Bronze-Age minded former PhD candidate.
[2] I hesitate to believe that our effete, sere, milquetoast leadership could be accused of creating anything approaching great culture.