The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down (16 page)

The death of Petronius Arbiter is a fairly seminal text for classical historians, but I have never understood why it is not
more commonly known and retold. There are few deaths in all of literature, let alone history, to rival it for elegance, dignity,
thoughtful humor, courage, generosity, tact, worldly sophistication, and philosophical consistency. It's hard enough to pull
off the kind of beautiful death that all men must admire, envy, and strive to emulate; to do so while graciously hosting an
evening of delicious food, delightful conversation, and pleasant entertainment may be an achievement unique in the annals
of human civilization.

It should also be pointed out, in case it is not perfectly obvious, that Petronius' death was every bit a martyrdom. He died
because he had dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth and the truth ended up pursuing him. He wanted to know, needed to
know, had to understand, at peril to his own life and soul, what happens to a person when all his fantasies of inclusion are
fulfilled. Most of us are privileged to participate in only a fraction of the entertainments to which we imagine we might
like to be invited; in turn, we have no access to many people we imagine we might care to invite to our own. We are saved
by this exclusion; it makes us humble, judicious, optimistic, inventive. Imagine if you were suddenly invited to all the most
glorious parties and glamorous homes in the world. It doesn't have to be vulgar - no swimming pools or movie stars - it just
has to be your fantasy: the intimate dinners of a revered biochemist; a private recital by your favorite soprano; after-hours
drinks in the Oval Office; the pope's birthday party. You are welcome everywhere, anytime. Everybody wants to be your friend,
to be you; everybody envies, hates you. How much of you survives? Do you really believe you are strong enough to resist the
gravitational force of temptation? Are you really stronger, smarter, humbler, more detached, more self-aware, more cynical,
more intellectual than all those idiots in the gossip columns, in
Dan's Papers,
on
Entertainment Tonight,
in black tie at the Stockholms Stadshus for the Nobel banquet? The only way you will ever know if you are better than the
people you envy is to put yourself in harm's way and take your chances. The stakes are high: if you are no better, you lose
your soul; if you are better, you lose your life.

Fortunately, there is no need to put yourself to the test. Petronius sacrificed himself to save you. He assumed all the world's
burdens of celebrity, vanity, unlimited self-indulgence, and depravity, and embraced his martyrdom so you would not have to.
Today, when we are tempted by or envious of some thing or event from which we have been excluded, solace is available in the
form of a simple formula: What Would Petronius Do?

CHAPTER VIII

FRIENDLY TO STRANGERS

For what other reason would a man pray to the gods to give him wealth
and abundance of means, than that he may help his friends and sow the
harvest of gratitude, that sweet goddess? For in drinking and eating we
all take the same pleasure; but it needs not rich feasts to quell hunger.

Athenaeus of Naucratis,
Deipnosophistae

Sometimes, in the quiet moments just before the first guest arrives, I find myself suddenly paralyzed by fear. I stop what
I am doing and look about the room. Is there something I have forgotten to do? I run through a mental checklist of the menu.
No, every course is fully prepared and accounted for. The table is set, silver polished, linens folded and in place. Wine
is chilling in the refrigerator, vodka in the freezer. The CD changer isfilled. All the lightbulbs are working, all the invitations
accepted. The TV is off and the girls are in the bath. Nothing is out of order, yet something feels terribly wrong. What am
I missing?

A lot of people I know are afraid all the time. We all share many of the same worries over our jobs, our own or our children's
health, our savings, our success, our own worth, our sex lives, our spouse's ongoing interest, or our lack of a partner. But
there is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds
our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn, and know not what we yearn for. There is a black
hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing.

You are a footsoldier in Agamemnon's army camped before the walls of Troy. You live in an almost constant state of hunger,
filth, exhaustion, and irritability. You have been fighting for almost ten years now, laying waste the once green plain, engaging
in skirmishes and the occasional pitched battle with the Asiatics, who show no sign of weakening. For almost ten years, you
have slept on the hard shingle or in the beached ships, enduring untold hardships and privation. Not a day goes by that you
do not cast a longing gaze across the sea toward your home, your little farm on the gentle slopes of Boeotia.

How you miss all the food you once took so for granted, available in such abundance in your orchards and fields and the surrounding
lands! The cherries, persimmons, grapes, damsons, figs, melons, almonds, quinces, and myrtle berries; the asparagus, artichokes,
radishes, chickpeas, cucumbers, mallow, and truffles; the barley cakes, honey cakes, cheesecakes, and sesame cakes; the snails
and eggs and milk; the thrushes, finches, titmice, ringdoves, quail, finches, and blackbirds. When was the last time you had
an olive - a simple, humble olive?

More than anything, you miss the fish and mollusks drawn in such delightful profusion at all times of the year from local
waters, eaten with such relish at every meal. It has been so long you can barely remember what they taste like, the mussels,
oysters, bear crabs, scallops, clams, sea squirts; moray, conger, and electric eels ("the king of everything associated with
a feast," goes the well-known saying); small fry, anemones, gilthead, and sea bream, parrot wrasse, hake, boar fish, thresher,
and saw-toothed sharks, pig fish, lobster, shrimp, bullhead, lyre fish, turbot, tuna, bonito, mackerel, swordfish, parrot
fish, red and gray mullet, monkfish, ray, angler, and octopus. All for the asking! They practically jumped into the nets!

How ironic, that you should be camped out for ten years on the beach and never taste a fish. How ironic and cruel. The plain
above the beach has been reduced to dust by the marauding armies and the livestock must be raised or rustled miles away then
shipped or herded back to the Greek camps through hostile territory, yet all you and your fellows ever get to eat is lamb
and goat, goat and lamb, roasted unseasoned on spits, a little wild boar when it is available, and the occasional beef on
holy days. And why? It's all because of the fickle gods! You are careful not to complain out loud, and you try not to even
think such blasphemous thoughts, but everybody on that godforsaken beach - with the possible exception of Menelaus, who is
determined to get his wife back and is fully convinced that his quest is divinely ordained - feels exactly the way you do.
You are all heartily sick and tired of having to cater to the gods' every whim.

The gods are everywhere, walking among you, watching your every move, meddling in your most trivial affairs for their own
amusement, sniffing out the least impiety and punishing it. You can be sure that every time there is a violent downpour, or
a setback on the battlefield, or a shipwreck, or a drought, or a thunderstorm, or a death by illness, or a spring tide forcing
the boats to be hauled up in the middle of the night, someone somewhere did something to displease some god. You can take
nothing for granted when it comes to the gods because they are so moody and changeable and childish, and there are so many
of them and so few with firm allegiances. You can do nothing, nothing at all, without first ascertaining that some god won't
be offended.

Most exasperating of all, you can put nothing in your mouth without first dedicating a portion of it to the gods. And it so
happens that the gods don't care for fish. All they want from humans is wine and the greasy smoke from burning animal fat,
which rises to Olympus and pleases their nostrils. No other sacrifice will satisfy them. And so, in order to leave nothing
to chance on the battlefield, the armies of the Greeks and of the Trojans have eaten nothing but red meat for the past ten
years. And you are still no closer to getting inside the Trojan walls than you were when you first arrived.

You have no way of knowing this, but hundreds of years from now - long after Troy has been reduced to rubble, long after Helen
has been carted back to Lacedaemon, long after Agamemnon has met his sorry end, long after your own spirit has fled to the
gloom of Tartarus - the poet Homer will record all of your travails in stunning verse. Nothing will be lost - not the endless
sacrifices; not the compromises and petty foibles of the generals; not the sounds and sights of spilling gore or the dying
cries of homesick boys; not the vindictive, implacable rage of Achilles; not the terrible, eternal grief of Hector's family.
And not, definitely not, the whims and meddling and treachery of the capricious gods.

Soldiers on both sides have every reason to fear the gods, but no amount of pious abjection can guarantee their protection
or dependability. You might imagine that you are being looked after, but you have no real way of being sure until a bronze-tipped
spear miraculously glances off your breastplate or, conversely, plunges lethally into your bowels. Then you know; but even
if you're spared this time, surviving once does not automatically mean you will survive again. It's all up to the gods, which
is a little like placing your life in the hands of a class of cliquish schoolchildren.

Since every little reversal of fortune is the result of divine intervention, it's hardly surprising that everyone is a little
con fused as to when and why the gods are on their side or have abandoned them. You've heard Menelaus say, "When you fight
a man against the will of the gods, a man they have sworn to honor - then look out." He's right, but the problem is, you can
never know whom the gods have sworn to honor or whether they will abide by their word. Time and again, they descend to earth,
assume human form, and whisper advice and blandishments into human ears. How to know who is who or whether you are getting
good advice or bad? Any military historian will tell you that a battlefield is the worst place in the world for getting a
sense of the big picture.

Look at the great heroes, the ones to whom the gods appear and make their will known. Even the generals are more or less clueless.
There is no hotline to Olympus, and a man may be godfearing all his life to no avail when push comes to shove. Zeus has a
number of offspring on the battlefield, but they can't count on his protection. He even allows his own son Sarpedon to be
slaughtered, specifically to discourage the other gods from playing favorites. Aeneas, Zeus's Trojan grandson, is spurred
on to fight by the feckless Apollo, who promptly abandons him on the battlefield. It is Poseidon, a sworn enemy of Troy, who
has to save him at the last minute. And why? "He always gave us gifts to warm our hearts, gifts for the gods who hold the
vaulting skies." But then again, so does everyone else. Hector certainly did, as Zeus is compelled to admit: "He never stinted
with gifts to please my heart. Never once did my altar lack its share of victims." Much good this did poor Hector when he
needed help, as Apollo points out: "Now you cannot bring yourself to save him - even his corpse." Apollo is not much better,
however. Supposedly the great protector of Troy, he simply throws in the towel and walks away from all his obligations in
mid-battle. "Let these mortals fight themselves to death," he mutters, abandoning an entire city of devoted followers to a
hideous fate. A god's allegiance is never bankable, no matter how much you've paid for it.

If a god breathes courage into one man, how can his opponent fail to blench like a coward? If a god strikes quaking fear into
an entire army, what is the value of courage? If you are fated to die, why bother running? If you are slated for victory,
whom should you fear? Do these gods to whom you relentlessly pray and sacrifice actually have the power to alter your destiny,
or are they only playacting? To the soldier in the field, unable to conceive of a universe without moral cause and effect,
it must have been maddeningly confusing.

From a modern perspective, we have to wonder why the Greeks bothered. Being in the thrall of their gods seems infinitely more
dangerous, far less predictable and cost-effective than living in a genuinely random, material, and affectless universe. Such
a universe was, of course, as unimaginable to them as theirs is to us. The overriding sense among the ancient Greeks seems
to have been that, as bad as things could get, they could only be worse without divine sanction. It is better to know what
you fear than to live in fear of the unknown. This point of view makes a little more sense off the battlefield, where strangers
meet not in conflict, but in the sanctuary of hospitality.

"What are they here - violent, savage, lawless? Or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?" On his arduous ten-year voyage
home from Ilium, Odysseus is forced to ask himself this question again and again as he is cast up on one foreign shore after
another, dependent on the kindness of strangers. What he really means is "Are these barbarians or Greeks?" Greeks know that
the gods walk the earth in many guises and that any stranger who appears at your door could be a divine being testing your
piety. So devotion begins at home, laid down in the rules of hospitality. And the justly famous hospitality of ancient Greeks,
especially as extended to strangers, is clearly linked to their deepest religious and cultural identity. Barbarians - even
those who, like Poly­phemus the Cyclops, enjoy divine ancestry - have no fear of the Greek gods and are therefore not bound
by those rules. They are more likely to eat you. Equally liberated, you are now free to steal their cheese and to blind them
with hot pokers.

Odysseus has any number of opportunities to sample the hospitality of strangers, good and bad, but never to question the assumption
that the handles "god-fearing" and "friendly to strangers" are essentially synonymous. It is a simple equation: If you are
afraid of the gods - and Odysseus, having sampled the measure of their temper in Troy, most certainly is - then you will be
friendly to strangers. And since Zeus himself, as even the lowly pig herder Eumaeus knows, is the god of guests, you'd better
get it right. If you don't, you could easily end up like any one of the poor fools who unwittingly offended the goddess Demeter's
sense of good hospitality: Asclabus, turned into a gecko; King Lynkus, turned into a lynx; Colontas, burned to a crisp in
his own house.

So a Greek knew what to expect from another Greek, friend or stranger, when he arrived at his home, and he knew why he could
expect it: fear, pure and simple. Eumaeus makes it very clear to Odysseus, who has arrived home on Ithaca disguised as a beggar,
why he is treating him so kindly. It is not because of the charming stories with which Odysseus regales him through the dark
night: "Never for that will I respect you, treat you kindly; no, it's my fear of Zeus, the god of guests." Even Penelope's
vicious suitors, who for years have abused her hospitality by camping out in her atrium, eating all her food and drinking
her best wine, know why it is wrong for Antinous to strike a lowly beggar at the threshold: "Your fate is sealed if he's some
god from the blue." Their understanding of the rules of hospitality does not stop them from violating every single one, but
it should, as they will soon find out to their chagrin.

Greek hospitality followed certain standard rituals that varied only in the luxury with which the host could afford to extend
them. Visitors are warmly welcomed at the threshold and ushered in. "Greetings, stranger!" Telemachus hails Athene, disguised
as a chieftain. "Here in our house you'll find a royal welcome. Have supper first, then tell us what you need." In a wealthy
household, he - always he, as women do not travel alone or eat with the men may first be led to the baths, where maidservants
will wash him, anoint him with oil, and bring him fresh clothing. He will then be led to a comfortable chair. A servant brings
a pitcher of water and a bowl with which the guest washes his hands. The housekeeper sets up a small table of food, usually
simple bread and roast meats, along with a goblet of wine. The meat may be supplemented with a relish of raw onion, and a
rich host may offer aged wine, into which he may grate goat cheese and sprinkle white barley, but there is no need whatsoever
for luxury. The point is to refresh a weary traveler. It is only when the guest has put aside the desire for food and drink
that the host is allowed to question him as intrusively as he will on his identity, his home, his family, and the purpose
of his journey. It is at this point that guests arriving in disguise - gods masquerading as mortals or noblemen testing the
probity of would-be allies - tend to reveal themselves. The talking goes on late, prolonged by lengthy genealogies and detailed
accounts of every adventure, after which the honored guest will be led out to sleep under the shelter of the porch on a makeshift
bed of throw rugs, blankets, and woolen robes.