The Athenian Murders
Encyclopedia
The Athenian Murders is a novel written by Spanish
author
José Carlos Somoza
. Originally published in Spain under the title La caverna de las ideas (The Cave of Ideas) in 2000, it was translated into English in 2002 by Sonia Soto. The Athenian Murders is Somoza's first novel to be published in English.
novel published in Athens
just after the Peloponnesian War
and the second contained within a modern-day scholar's notes on his translation. In the ancient novel (which is itself called The Athenian Murders) a young ephebe
named Tramachus is discovered on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus
, apparently attacked by wolves. His tutor at the Academy
, Diagoras, enlists the help of a "Decipherer of Enigmas" (a detective named Heracles Pontor) to learn more about Tramachus's death. As Diagoras and Heracles investigate, more youths from the Academy are discovered brutally murdered. Their investigation takes them all over Athens, from mystery cult
worship services to a symposium
hosted by Plato
.
Meanwhile, the translator (who is never named) provides frequent commentary on the work, especially as it appears to him to be an example of a (fictional) ancient literary device called eidesis. "Eidesis" is supposedly the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader's mind, as it were a kind of literary steganography
. As the translator works on the novel, he soon deduces that the "eidetic" secret concealed within the novel is The Twelve Labors of Heracles
, one labor for each of the twelve chapters of the novel. The translator becomes obsessed with the imagery, going so far as to see himself depicted within the ancient work.
Partway through the novel, the translator is kidnapped and forced to continue the translation in a cell. His captor turns out to be the scholar Montalo, whose edition of The Athenian Murders is the only surviving copy of the work. Montalo himself had obsessed over the novel, hoping to find in it a proof of Plato's Theory of Forms
. He felt that should an eidetic text, such as this novel, evoke the same ideas in each reader it would then prove that ideas have a separate, independent reality. However, Montalo finished the translation only to discover that the book proved the opposite—that the book proved his (and the translator's) reality did not exist. The translator finishes the work only to have the same realization: that they themselves are characters in The Athenian Murders, which was written by a colleague of Plato named Philotextus as a way to incorporate Plato's theory of knowledge while criticizing the philosophical lifestyle.
, the philosophical concept that postulates the independent existence of Ideas. According to Plato
, the realm of Ideas is the only true reality; our world is made up of imperfect, ephemeral imitations of the true ideas. The allegory of the cave
also figures prominently: the epilogue penned by Philotextus states that he believes philosophers are the ones inside the cave, oblivious to the real (that is, material) world all around them.
The work also references Plato's Republic
—the future world envisioned by Philotextus in which Montalo and the translator dwell is the ideal society postulated by Plato. In it, men and women are completely equal, violence has been eradicated, and the best of people
rule the cities.
The novel also takes place in a number of locations significant to ancient Greek philosophy. Diagoras and Heracles often walk in the Poikile Stoa
, the birthplace of Stoicism
. The duo also attend a Platonic symposium
at the Academy
of Plato.
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
José Carlos Somoza
José Carlos Somoza
José Carlos Somoza is a Spanish author born on November 13, 1959 in Havana, Cuba. In 1960 his family moved to Spain after being exiled for political reasons...
. Originally published in Spain under the title La caverna de las ideas (The Cave of Ideas) in 2000, it was translated into English in 2002 by Sonia Soto. The Athenian Murders is Somoza's first novel to be published in English.
Plot summary
The novel interweaves two apparently disparate storylines: the first being an ancient GreekAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
novel published in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
just after the Peloponnesian War
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War, 431 to 404 BC, was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases...
and the second contained within a modern-day scholar's notes on his translation. In the ancient novel (which is itself called The Athenian Murders) a young ephebe
Ephebos
Ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity....
named Tramachus is discovered on the slopes of Mount Lycabettus
Lykavittos
Mount Lycabettus, also known as Lycabettos, Lykabettos or Lykavittos , is a Cretaceous limestone hill in Athens, Greece. At 277 meters above sea level, the hill is the highest point in the city that surrounds it. Pine trees cover its base, and at its peak are the 19th century Chapel of St...
, apparently attacked by wolves. His tutor at the Academy
Academy
An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...
, Diagoras, enlists the help of a "Decipherer of Enigmas" (a detective named Heracles Pontor) to learn more about Tramachus's death. As Diagoras and Heracles investigate, more youths from the Academy are discovered brutally murdered. Their investigation takes them all over Athens, from mystery cult
Greco-Roman mysteries
Mystery religions, sacred Mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious cults of the Greco-Roman world, participation in which was reserved to initiates....
worship services to a symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
hosted by Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
.
Meanwhile, the translator (who is never named) provides frequent commentary on the work, especially as it appears to him to be an example of a (fictional) ancient literary device called eidesis. "Eidesis" is supposedly the practice of repeating words or phrases so as to evoke a particular image or idea in the reader's mind, as it were a kind of literary steganography
Steganography
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity...
. As the translator works on the novel, he soon deduces that the "eidetic" secret concealed within the novel is The Twelve Labors of Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
, one labor for each of the twelve chapters of the novel. The translator becomes obsessed with the imagery, going so far as to see himself depicted within the ancient work.
Partway through the novel, the translator is kidnapped and forced to continue the translation in a cell. His captor turns out to be the scholar Montalo, whose edition of The Athenian Murders is the only surviving copy of the work. Montalo himself had obsessed over the novel, hoping to find in it a proof of Plato's Theory of Forms
Theory of Forms
Plato's theory of Forms or theory of Ideas asserts that non-material abstract forms , and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. When used in this sense, the word form is often capitalized...
. He felt that should an eidetic text, such as this novel, evoke the same ideas in each reader it would then prove that ideas have a separate, independent reality. However, Montalo finished the translation only to discover that the book proved the opposite—that the book proved his (and the translator's) reality did not exist. The translator finishes the work only to have the same realization: that they themselves are characters in The Athenian Murders, which was written by a colleague of Plato named Philotextus as a way to incorporate Plato's theory of knowledge while criticizing the philosophical lifestyle.
In the ancient novel
- Heracles Pontor– A "decipherer of enigmas" whose name and physicality bear a strong similarity to those of a later detective, Hercule PoirotHercule PoirotHercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
. - Tramachus – A young student at the Academy whose mutilated body is discovered on Mount LycabettusLykavittosMount Lycabettus, also known as Lycabettos, Lykabettos or Lykavittos , is a Cretaceous limestone hill in Athens, Greece. At 277 meters above sea level, the hill is the highest point in the city that surrounds it. Pine trees cover its base, and at its peak are the 19th century Chapel of St...
. - Itys – Tramachus's mother and childhood love-interest of Heracles Pontor.
- Diagoras – A tutor of philosophy at the AcademyAcademyAn academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...
who enlists Heracles Pontor to solve the case. - Yasintra – A hetaeraHetaeraIn ancient Greece, hetaerae were courtesans, that is to say, highly educated, sophisticated companions...
working in Pireaus. - Ponsica – Heracles Pontor's slave and worshipper of the Sacred MysteriesEleusinian MysteriesThe Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance...
- Euneos and Antisus – Classmates of Tramachus at the Academy.
- Crantor – An errant philosopher who rejects Plato's rationality.
- Menaechmus – A sculptor and tragedian in Athens.
- PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
– A highly regarded philosopher at the Academy.
In the footnotes
- The translator – An unnamed character who is only known through his footnotes to the translation of The Athenian Murders.
- Helena – A colleague of the translator who correctly identifies the first eidetic message.
- Montalo – The scholar who first compiled and annotated the papyriPapyrusPapyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
on which The Athenian Murders is told.
Platonic references
The novel extensively references Platonic idealismPlatonic idealism
Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas,Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an abstraction...
, the philosophical concept that postulates the independent existence of Ideas. According to Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, the realm of Ideas is the only true reality; our world is made up of imperfect, ephemeral imitations of the true ideas. The allegory of the cave
Allegory of the cave
The Allegory of the Cave—also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or the Parable of the Cave—is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education"...
also figures prominently: the epilogue penned by Philotextus states that he believes philosophers are the ones inside the cave, oblivious to the real (that is, material) world all around them.
The work also references Plato's Republic
Republic (Plato)
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man...
—the future world envisioned by Philotextus in which Montalo and the translator dwell is the ideal society postulated by Plato. In it, men and women are completely equal, violence has been eradicated, and the best of people
Philosopher king
Philosopher kings are the rulers, or Guardians, of Plato's Utopian Kallipolis. If his ideal city-state is to ever come into being, "philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize" .-In Book VI of The Republic:Plato defined a philosopher...
rule the cities.
The novel also takes place in a number of locations significant to ancient Greek philosophy. Diagoras and Heracles often walk in the Poikile Stoa
Stoa
Stoa in Ancient Greek architecture; covered walkways or porticos, commonly for public usage. Early stoae were open at the entrance with columns, usually of the Doric order, lining the side of the building; they created a safe, enveloping, protective atmosphere.Later examples were built as two...
, the birthplace of Stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
. The duo also attend a Platonic symposium
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
at the Academy
Academy
An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...
of Plato.
See also
- Fiction set in Ancient GreeceFiction set in Ancient GreeceThere is a body of ancient and modern fiction set in ancient Greece and ancient Greek culture, including Magna Graeca and Hellenistic kingdoms. Titles include:-Books:*The Dancer from Atlantis, by Poul Anderson...
- Pale FirePale FirePale Fire is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional John Shade, with a foreword and lengthy commentary by a neighbor and academic colleague of the poet. Together these elements form a narrative in which both authors are...
by Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...