Review

Reviewed Work(s): Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece by Joan
Breton Connelly
Review by: Lisa Maurizio
Source: Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2008/2009), pp. 331-337
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27639162
Accessed: 11-09-2016 21:44 UTC

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Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By
Joan Breton Connelly. Princeton University Press 2007. Pp. xv, 415; figs.
109, color pis. 27. $39.50. ISBN: 0-691-12746-8.

In the aftermath of the Greek defeat of Troy, Andromache, the wife

of Troy's defender Hector, laments her impending slavery to the son of
her husband's murderer.
... I, who aimed the arrows of ambition high
at honor, and made them good, see now how far I fall,
I, who in Hector's house worked out all custom that brings
discretion's name to women.
... to leave the house and walk abroad

I longed to do it, but put the longing side and stayed always
within the enclosure of my own house and court.
... I knew when my will must have its way
over his, knew also how to give way to him in turn.
Men learned of this; I was talked of in the Achaean camp,

and reputation has destroyed me now.

?Richard Lattimore (translator)
After reading Andromache's words as they appear in Euripides's Trojan
Women, we might be tempted to revise any interpretation that she or her
real-life counterparts were obedient wives, compelled to monitor their
speech and actions to fit into a patriarchal society. We might instead
view such women as capable of actions that will win personal and
familial public honor. In this way, Andromache seems to give voice to
ancient priestesses as Joan Breton Connelly describes them in her book
Portrait of a Priestess. Andromache is not "simply manipulated by a
system that subjected [her] to the requirements of a male-dominated
society" (20) but exhibits "agency," not unlike Connelly's priestesses,
who through the performance of religious duties gained personal and
familial honor in the public sphere.
It is primarily around the question of women's agency that
Connelly marshals her analysis of ancient priestesses in Ancient Greece.

331

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 332 JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION [Vol. XXIV

Connelly aims to discern and trace priestesses' agency in neglected

archaeological and epigraphic evidence that Connelly also seeks to
spotlight. (3) A quick glance at this beautifully produced volume
brimming with illustrations convinces the reader that Connelly has
expended much effort to present "the authority of the archaeological
record." (3) Because Connelly's archaeological material is found in a
broad geographical sweep from South Italy to Asia Minor, it is true that
"this book is about cities." (7) Similarly, because Connelly considers
evidence from archaic times to Roman Imperial times (6), as well as
priestesses' life cycles, and their "unique period" in history, "this study
is about time." (24)
Additionally Connelly locates her work within "a third-wave
deconstructive feminism" because she will pursue priestesses'
"individuality attested in the ancient record." (22) This individuality is
linked to their "agency," a term whose definition Connelly leaves the
reader to infer from the work cited in her numerous and abundant
footnotes, as well as from the historians, archaeologists, sociologists and
anthropologists she briefly mentions. For example, she notes,
"Following Bourdieu, I shall consider the ways in which priestesses
used social, cultural, and symbolic capital to propel their agency and to
work as effective players within the micropolitics of the Greek city."
(22) Connelly's overarching goal is "to restore some measure of
humanity to the women behind the evidence and sketch portraits of
actual lives lived." (25)
How does Connelly compose her portrait of Greek priestesses in
view of her diverse materials, various theoretical agendas and restorative
aims? Connelly organizes the chapters of her book by following the life
of Greek priestesses from youth to death. Chapter Two focuses on the
various religious activities young girls and women performed. These
activities are understood as the sort of training priestesses received
before becoming priestesses. Chapter Three examines four specific
priesthoods for which there is relatively abundant evidence. Chapters
Four through Seven document priestesses' various attributes, their
representation in religious sanctuaries, their religious activities, and the
privileges that inhered in their offices or that priestesses could garner.
Chapter Eight looks at the monuments and memorials of priestesses,
while Chapter Nine provides a glimpse of female leadership in early
Christian communities. Each chapter's brief conclusion gestures toward
Connelly's theoretical agenda.
Chapter Two traces girls and women's "paths through ritual
agency" (55) and is typical of Connelly's treatment of women's agency.

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 331] BOOK REVIEW 333

Among a number of recent books on women and ritual in ancient

Greece, Barbara Goffs Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual in Ancient
Greece,1 like Connelly's, aims to articulate women's agency in ritual
through the lens of theorists such as Bourdieu and Giddens. In
comparable sections where Connelly and Goff look at the nature of
women's ritual activity outside of priesthoods, Goff details the
intersection of women's ritual activities with domestic labor. Quoting
Giddens on how social constraints "operate through the active
involvement of the agents concerned," Goff interrogates four ways
women's ritual and domestic duties are related to one another in order to
determine how women's performance of both sets of duties shapes and
reinforces a "conventionally sanctioned female identity" particular to the
society in which they operate. (59-60)
In this regard, Goffs understanding of agency comports with that
of archaeologists such as John Barrett, who has argued that ideas from
sociology and anthropology are necessary to interrogate the
archaeological record. Barrett defines agency as
the means by which things are achieved. . . human agency
operates knowledgeably and reflexively. Agents are therefore
accepted as monitoring their own actions as well as the actions of
others in the construction of their world and themselves culturally
and socially.2
While knowledgeable and reflexive agents know the rules of their
society, they do not necessarily know or share the perspective of those
who study them. In fact, Bourdieu often argued that what individuals do
not know, what remains hidden about their society to them and by
extension often to those who study them, may be more important than
what they know. Their actions are reflexive, that is, a largely
unconsidered consequence of following social rules that they in turn
monitor and recreate, even as these rules constrain them. In Goffs
analysis, women's agency stands for a more complex notion than simply
a capacity to act or to act knowingly. Rather, agency refers to a practice
of acting that is informed by and then informs social structures and
mores, a practice implicated in the larger social structures Goff also
studies. Connelly's notion of agency, in contrast to Goffs, is far less
nuanced and often seems to indicate little more than the capacity for
action and/or the participation in social practices.

1. Barbara Goff, Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual in Ancient Greece (U. Cal. Press 2004).
2. J.C. Barrett, Agency, the Duality of Structure, and the Problem of the Archaeological
Record, in Archaeological Theory Today 141 (Ian Hodder ed., Polity 2001). Although Connelly
cites Barrett (292 n. 126), she does not discuss the analysis of agency he offers.

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 334 JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION [Vol. XXIV

In Chapter Two, Connelly notes that women's ritual practices,

while similar to women's domestic chores, trained girls and women for
priesthoods conferred by birth or lottery or obtained by purchase.
Connelly believes attention to these ritual practices, which correspond
with different stages of women's lives, will correct modern "culturally
determined assumptions" that emphasize the lack of training of ancient
priestesses and priests. (28) Most of the ritual activities from the fifth
and fourth centuries, such as participation in choruses or bearing
implements in processions, would have been pursued by mostly, though
not exclusively, elite girls and women, not just priestesses. Such
practices were widespread and not, at least from the evidence we have
and despite efforts to redescribe them, closely linked to training or
holding the office of priestess. Indeed, girls' choruses from the seventh
century BCE were "central to the education and socialization of women
from childhood and maturity" (29) but they seem quite different from a
zakoros, a priestess's assistant, established by decree in the second
century BCE. This is the era when one begins to see evidence that there
was anything approaching the sort of training Connelly suggests might
have obtained in earlier centuries. (50)
Connelly concludes this chapter by claiming that political and
economic developments changed cult practices and therefore also
women's "paths through ritual agency." Even if we are willing to allow
that such paths existed in any meaningful way before the second
century, it is hard to accept its corollary
But one thing remained constant across time and space: girls,
maidens, and mature and elderly women could rely throughout life
on female divinities who especially understood them. These
women found fulfillment, learning, and pleasure in serving their
goddesses and, in return, gave these goddesses honor and delight.
(55)
Connelly implies that religious practices bear no relationship to religious
postures, attitudes, and sentiments, since she proposes that religious
practices change while religious sentiments remain constant. Many will
find this notion startling and unpersuasive without further argument.
Additionally, her claim also makes it difficult to understand what "ritual
agency" might mean if it can be divorced from its changing political,
economic and social context. In Connelly's survey of girls' and
women's ritual practices, then, agency does not seem to be a
theoretically inflected term grounded in a historical analysis. "Ritual
agency" seems to refer to something more like " ritual competency."

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 331] BOOK REVIEW 335

Because Connelly provides little historical contextualization, and

no direct citations or discussion of theoretical work cited, agency seems
to stand for action, competence, or the capacity to act. Connelly
describes "the agency of the kanephoros [basket-bearer] [that] was held
in such high esteem that the maidens were awarded portions of the
sacrificial meat," (34) for example. Although one is persuaded that the
post of kanephoros was rewarded because it was valued, we are left to
wonder if it was the agency of the kanephoros that was valued, or the
elite family from which she was most likely chosen. More to the point,
the kanephoros' agency seems to mean simply her fulfillment of her
duties in the inscription that records this reward. The story Connelly
reports before she refers to the kanephoros' reward demonstrates that
elite girls who fulfilled the role of kanephoroi were used in the political
gamesmanship of their male kin. One cannot help but wonder if proof
of agency would require greater analysis of the micropolitics of the
relevant cities and sanctuaries than can be managed given the temporal
scope of time and number of places Connelly covers.
It may be that the diversity of Connelly's materials demands a
telescopic view of priestesses and women's ritual. While there are
surely gains from such an approach?one is the ability to find
continuities, i.e., forests where others see only trees?there are also
risks, such as Connelly's tendency to project later practices onto earlier
material. In Chapter Five, Connelly examines implements and statues
from sanctuaries in order to assess "the possibilities of priestesses," that
is, the scope of social action available to priestesses. (118) Connelly
presents her evidence from sanctuaries chronologically and then
organizes the Hellenistic period geographically in order to cover the far
greater amount of material from this late period. In the archaic period,
korai (female statues) can be identified variously as goddesses, nymphs,
worshippers, cult attendants and votaries. These sculptural blanks that
are capable of meaning whatever their dedicator wishes have never
"been examined within the greater context of statutes of standing draped
women set up in sanctuaries throughout the classical and Hellenistic
periods." (127) If we accept that later "epigraphic habits" that identify
sanctuary statues of women as priestesses can be projected on earlier
ones (127), if we do not ask for any reasons to justify such a projection
other than religious conservatism (118-119), and if we do not ask how
the ubiquitous koroi (archaic male statues) might be interpreted in light
of Connelly's hypothesis, then we are able to locate portraits of
unnamed priestesses in the archaic period and to find this broad
chronological context of significance. Yet, korai are tethered to the

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 336 JOURNAL OF LAW & RELIGION [Vol. XXIV

statues of priestesses from Hellenistic wealthy cities in the second

century by way of one priestess's portrait, Lysimache's, in the mid
fourth century. (130) To place one of the most puzzling features of
archaic religion, namely the koroi and korai, in such a trajectory
potentially blanches out what is distinctive about archaic religion. If
setting up statues of priestesses in such different times and places could
be shown to be a constant practice, it would still beg the question: how
do statues in sanctuaries in different historical settings convey "the
possibilities of priestesses" or their agency, if these possibilities are
necessarily a function of the micropolitics of each sanctuary and its
region or city?
To return to where we began, after Andromache bemoans the
rewards of her good reputation, she and Hecuba, Hector's mother, try to
imagine how Andromache might negotiate her new life as a slave in the
family of Hector's murderer. Hecuba urges that Andromache garner her
master's good will if only to protect her son, Astyanax. Two scenes
later, these ruminations are rendered pointless because the Greek victors
have determined to kill her child. (One can view this scene where
Andromache, played by Vanessa Redgrave, relinquishes her son to
certain death in Michael Cacoyannis' 1983 movie Trojan Women,
available of all places on YouTube.) Agency, it seems, cannot be fully
understood from one action, one choice, one statue, or one dedication.
To put it another way, agency acquires significance and meaning only in
its varying relationship to the social constraints and structures in which
it operates. It would be nothing less than a Herculean task, then, to
demonstrate how items such as dedications indicate agency without
considering how such agency is shaped by the micropolitics of its
setting, given the range of places and times in which Connelly's material
is found.
Connelly's impressive collection and organization of evidence will
be of great utility to everyone interested in women in antiquity. In a
field that encourages and values even multiple collections of the same
materials, whether textual, archaeological or epigraphical, this book is a
particularly valuable contribution. A precursory glance at any chapter's
subdivisions (which one hopes will be included in the table of contents
in the next edition that will surely follow) indicates that Connelly
organizes her materials under rubrics that are largely descriptive not
theoretical. The religious activities of priestesses listed in Chapter Six,
for example, are organized in the following categories: procession (167),
prayer (173), libation (176), sacrifice (179), ritual feasting (190) and
benefactions (192). One might find such categories, and they are

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331] BOOK REVIEW 337

comprehensive and clear, in a handbook on Greek religion whose goal is

to present and document a general outline of religious practices. And
indeed one is tempted to evaluate Connelly's book in terms of'"second
wave' feminism, of the 1970s and 1980s, when women's studies, gender
studies, and other newly established fields sought out long-neglected
source material." (21) The separation of data from interpretation
implicit in such an approach may be unacceptable in our current
academic climate. And Connelly's attempt to contextualize this
evidence in terms of modern critical theory is not wholly persuasive.
Yet, where the evidence has continued to suffer scholarly neglect
precisely because it has not been collected in accessible volumes and
sometimes has not been translated, one can appreciate not only the sheer
labor of Connelly's effort but also the contribution this book offers in
the study of women in antiquity.
Connelly has pursued a bold fusion of sophisticated methodologies
and a survey of ancient materials that have not previously been brought
together. The broad vision and monumentality of the task itself
impresses. Every one of Connelly's chapters will provoke and generate
specialized studies and raise significant questions about ancient
priestesses. Thus, Connelly's book succeeds in placing priestesses on
the historical stage in ancient Greece. Portrait of a Priestess will
become a valuable reference book for the volume of material collected,
for the lengthy footnotes, which contain citations beyond its already
deep bibliography. It will also be invaluable for the areas of inquiry
Connelly presents?not least, how scholars might best understand the
uneasy fit between fragments from the distant past and our own desires
to make sense of them in a coherent theoretical whole or in a historical
trajectory.

Lisa Maurizio

* Associate Professor, Classical and Medieval Studies, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine.

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