ANACHARSIS THE FORERUNNER

Anacharsis gets this entry as an alternate member of the hepta club, but he is, of course, a very large figure in his own right. He is extremely well known in Russia, although the sources of that knowledge are sometimes not very trustworthy. As a curious detail which adds much seriousness to the subject of Anacharsis in Russia,--- among the religious paintings covering the great Novospassky Monastery in Moscow, are the iconic images of the “blessed precursors of Christianity,” which include the mythical Orpheus, Homer, Solon, Anacharsis, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Claudius Ptolemaeus. The paintings were made in the seventeenth century by Fedor Zubov, and they were properly consecrated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

(It is important to stress that Russia thus honored Anacharsis a century and a half before the appearance, in 1788, of Jean Jacques Barthelemy’s historical novel The Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, an imaginary travel journal “kept” by the fictional Anacharsis. One must not dismiss it as lightweight fiction, because Barthelemy was a highly respected classical scholar and Jesuit, and his book caused an explosion of philhellenism in France, and was translated into different languages, including Russian, all across Europe, and in the newly-established United States of America, and made Anacharsis a household name everywhere, although it can be assumed that most readers saw Anacharsis himself as a borderline case between history and fiction, and only in Russia had he reached a hagiographic, iconic status.)

There is a reason why Anacharsis has been thus honored in Russia. His experience exhibits certain parallels with Russia’s historical experience. Anacharsis was a Scythian who was deeply impressed and influenced by Greece, and adopted Greek beliefs and customs in his life. Likewise, the Russians had been heathens who had been, in their time, profoundly influenced by Greece, to the point of adopting Greek Christian religion and Greek literacy. But now let us follow the story of Anacharsis in its general brief outline.

He was the son of a Scythian warlord, who left his country in search of wisdom, and this search eventually led him to Athens, where he arrived circa 589 BC, at the time when Solon the lawmaker was active there.

There is a story told about their first meeting. Anacharsis came to Solon’s house and greeted him with these words: “I have traveled here from afar to make you my friend.” To which Solon replied, “Isn’t it better to make friends at home?”---“Then it is necessary for you being at home to make friends with me!” Anacharsis said, at which point Solon laughed, and they became friends.

Anacharsis quickly endeared himself to Solon and to other Athenians by his unusual way of thinking and his uncommon manner of speech. I suspect that, in the opinion of the Greeks, uncommon intelligence was a sign of being Greek. Anacharsis was definitely uncommonly intelligent, and he was recognized as a philosopher and a man of great wisdom. They say that he was the first foreigner in history to be granted the privileges of Athenian citizenship. Although, I repeat, he was not Greek by birth, he became known, at least in some very reputable accounts, as one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Even the distinct foreign unusualness of his speech would be counted to his advantage, and became proverbially known as Scythian discourse.

He is known as the author of several important works, but none of them are extant. Among these books was one comparing the laws of the Greeks with the laws of his native Scythia, which contained extremely sharp comments on the laws, customs and institutions of the Greeks, which comments coming from an outsider’s perspective were both surprising and instructive to the Athenians. He purportedly compared laws as such to spiders’ webs, capable of catching small insects, but allowing wasps and hornets to escape. There was another book on the art of war, but except for its subject, nothing is known about it. Then, of course, there were the letters of Anacharsis. These letters ascribed to him (all ten of them) are probably fakes, even though the great Cicero quotes one of them as a real thing.

He was also known as a great inventor. Strabo credits him with the invention of the anchor; in other reports he is named as the inventor of the potter’s wheel.

He was known for the great simplicity of his way of living, although such simplicity had to be the trademark of many philosophers. (But by no means of all of them, as many others preferred the opposite extreme, and were noted for the extravagance of their clothes and ways.) He called for a measured moderation in everything, and the Athenians would later inscribe on all his statues what was apparently believed to be his most important motto: Restrain your tongues, your appetites, your passions.

That apocryphal letter quoted by Cicero serves as an embodiment of Anacharsis’ signature virtue:

“Greetings from Anacharsis to Hanno: My clothing is a Scythian cloak, my shoes are the hard soles of my feet, my bed is the earth, my food is only seasoned by hunger, and I eat nothing but milk and cheese and meat. Come and visit me, and you will find me at peace. You may want to give me something, but give it rather to your fellow citizens, or let the immortal gods have it.”

His death was particularly interesting and noteworthy, and was described by Herodotus as follows:

The Scythians have an extreme hatred of all foreign customs, particularly of those in use among the Greeks, as the history of Anacharsis proves. Having traveled over a great portion of the world, displaying wherever he went many proofs of wisdom, as he sailed through the Hellespont on his return to Scythia, he touched at Kyzicos. There he found the people celebrating with much pomp and magnificence a festival to the Mother of the Gods, and was himself induced to vow to the Mother that if he got back safe and sound to his home, he would give her a night festival, and sacrifice to her with the same rites as he saw the men do in Kyzicos. So, when he returned to Scythia, he betook himself to the district called the Woodland, which lies opposite the course of Achilles, and is covered with trees of all manner of different kinds, and there went through all the sacred rites in honor of the goddess, with a kettledrum and images tied to him. While thus employed, he was seen by one of the Scythians, who went and told king Saulios what he had seen. Then the king Saulios came in person, and when he perceived what Anacharsis was about, he shot him with an arrow, and killed him. To this day, if you ask the Scythians about Anacharsis, they will pretend ignorance of him because of his Greek travels and adoption of the customs of foreigners. I learned however from Timnes, the steward of Ariapithes, that Anacharsis was paternal uncle to the Scythian king Idanthyrsos, being the son of Gnuros, son of Lycos and grandson of Spargapithes. If Anacharsis were really of this house, it must have been by his own brother that he was slain, for Idanthyrsos was the son of that Saulios who put Anacharsis to death.

Ironically, even this martyrdom on account of his espousing the religion of the Greeks, yet further validates Anacharsis’ hallowed status in the meta-hagiography of the nation which too has received her religion from the Greeks, allowing Anacharsis to occupy, surprisingly, a very special place in the Russian soul.