Recent studies of classical antiquity have highlighted the differences that separate us from our illustrious predecessors in the Western world. Although similarities are usually emphasized, there are divergences in aspects as basic as the perception of colors or emotions and, for some, even in cognitive processes. Specifically, David Konstan, in one of his works on emotions in ancient times, Before Forgiveness (2010), starts from the idea that “forgiveness” is foreign to the classical world and that it owes its appearance to Judeo-Christian influence. According to this disputed hypothesis, which presents solid arguments in its favor, the times of Demosthenes or Cicero would not have known this mutual recognition of the evil caused between two parties, the offending and the offended, with a reconciliation without compensation. For Konstan, the defining feature of “forgiveness” is the repentance of the aggressor, which implies a certain “transformation of the self.” Although of course there were legal or religious procedures to accommodate individuals and groups, such as rituals of reconciliation or purification in the archaic world, or private agreements (synthekai) for the resolution of conflicts based on the pact and the forgetting of previous grievances.
For us it is surely more interesting to remember the mechanisms of political forgiveness in the city where, despite the differences mentioned, we usually recognize the origin of our democracies. It is precisely in Athens that the most important collective reconciliation of antiquity is remembered, the amnesty of 403 BC. This word, so fashionable today, has to do in some way with the lack of memory. It is curious that a society like the Greek, so based on “memory” – Mnemosyne is the mother of the muses – and so enemy of “forgetting” – the infernal Lethe and philosophy as a-letheia or “unforgotten”—would like to achieve a kind of “forgetfulness.” But this time it was about reconciling the citizen body.
The amnesty of 403 came after a year of civil conflict in Athens. After the calamitous Peloponnesian War, which had lasted thirty years, and had left the city lifeless, evidencing the failures of its democratic system – among others, demagoguery and imperialism – the unmitigated defeat by Sparta led to the establishment of the government puppet of the so-called “Thirty Tyrants”. Tensions between oligarchs and democrats then surfaced in the worst way—massacres, confiscations, exiles—until the restoration of democracy, thanks to the resistance led by Thrasybulus. He defeated the oligarchs in the battle of Munyquia—where Critias, leader of the Thirty and Plato’s uncle, died—and managed to agree with the Spartans on the return of democracy. He then sent the recalcitrant oligarchs into exile in Eleusis and, in the city, advocated for a pioneering amnesty in Western history (see a recent overview in V. Azoulay and P. Ismard, Athens 403. A choral story).
But what exactly was forgiven? It was about reconciling citizens by trying to “not remember evil” (me mnesikakein), that is, the general crimes committed during the days of sound and fury of Tyranny, which had encouraged part of the population to charge against the other, with the entire constitutional system disrupted. To understand how it was really executed there are exceptional testimonies, such as that of the orator Lysias, who shows in his speech Against Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty whom he accused of the murder of his brother, that this did not mean impunity. This exceptional process may have occurred in absentia, during the exile of Eratosthenes, like other oligarchs without immunity for their crimes. In another speech, he accuses an informer in the service of the Thirty: since the charges against informants were prohibited by the amnesty, he elaborates a complex argument that placed the accused as a conspirator against democracy, who was arrested on an accusation of “arrest.” illegal”. Other references to a speech of his, Against the Thirty, perhaps they indicate a campaign of trials against the ringleaders. That is to say, the general forgiveness had clear exceptions.
The amnesty also did not save, for other reasons, the famous Socrates from the most famous death sentence in Western tradition. It may be that religious crimes (the asebeia, of which the philosopher was accused) were not included in the measure: the Thirty had incurred many sacrileges. In any case, Socrates seems to have been an ideal scapegoat for the end of a turbulent time.
In short, the Athenian amnesty was designed for citizen reconciliation, but it did not exempt those directly responsible for the excesses. As Aristotle says about her, “for things past no one could take revenge on anyone, except the Thirty” and the others responsible, if they have not been held accountable. Another key issue is the repentance of those granted amnesty. If postclassical forgiveness, following Konstan, always implies that “moral transformation” of the transgressor, who must regret the events and promise not to repeat them, the original amnesty – which was never, playing with its etymology, an amnesia – seems like an general pact of reconciliation, with the exception of the responsibility of the leaders and, just perhaps, with an invitation to collective moral catharsis.
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