Kate Gilhuly-The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens-Cambridge University Press (2008) PDF
Kate Gilhuly-The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens-Cambridge University Press (2008) PDF
Kate Gilhuly-The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens-Cambridge University Press (2008) PDF
Kate Gilhuly
wellesley college
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521899987
© Kate Gilhuly 2009
Acknowledgments page ix
List of Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Collapsing Order: Typologies of Women in the Speech “Against
Neaira” 29
3 Why Is Diotima a Priestess? The Feminine Continuum in Plato’s
Symposium 58
4 Bringing the Polis Home: Private Performance and the Civic Gaze
in Xenophon’s Symposium 98
5 Sex and Sacrifice in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 140
Conclusion 180
Bibliography 189
Index Locorum 199
Subject Index 205
vii
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making, and Leslie Kurke has been
generous with her insight and guidance every step of the way. I owe her spe-
cial thanks. Carol Dougherty has given me crucial assistance and support in
the final stages of writing. She has read many drafts and seemed to know
what I was trying to say even when I did not. Mark Griffith commented
on some of these chapters in their earliest versions. The Mellon Foundation
supported a year of postdoctoral work at Northwestern University. Victoria
Wohl and Florence Dore have given me helpful comments and encouragement
when I really needed it. Bryan Burns, Carolyn Dewald, Vincent Farenga, Tom
Habinek, Amy Richlin, Greg Thalmann, and Phiroze Vasunia contributed
to a lively intellectual environment at the University of Southern Califor-
nia in which this book first took shape. Rebecca Jamin helped prepare the
manuscript. Anne Gilhuly has read and edited much of this work; all of the
jargon that remains is my own. Thanks to Anabel and Aidan Bush for sharing
their mother with this project. Finally, I am grateful to Mark Bush, whose love
and support helped bring this book into the light of day.
ix
Abbreviations
Hell. Hellenica
Herod. Herodotus
Hist. Histories
Hom. h. Aphr. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite
HThR Harvard Theological Review
IG F. H. de Gaertingen et al., eds., Inscriptiones Graecae, 2nd ed.
(Berlin, 1924–)
Il. Homer’s Iliad
Int. of Dreams Interpretation of Dreams
Iph. in Tauris Iphigeneia among the Taurians
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
Mem. Memorabilia
Men. Menander
Nic. Nicias
O. Olympian
Od. Odyssey
Oik. Oikonomikos
Pi. Pindar
Plut. Plutarch
Pyth. Pythian
RE G. Wissowa et al., Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumwis-
senschaft (Munich, 1903–78)
Rep. Republic
Rh. Rhetorica
Sch. Ar. Av. Scholia on Aristophanes’ Birds
Symp. Symposium
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
Theog. Theogony
Thesmo. Thesmophoriazousai
Thuc. Thucydides
W.D. Works and Days
Xen. Xenophon
YCS Yale Classical Studies
1. Introduction
1 For a passage that evokes a similar type of logic see Dio Chrysostom, Euboian Dis-
course 7.133–152, discussed by Houser (2002). Translations are my own unless otherwise
attributed.
2 On this connection see Faraone (2006: 220); Goff (2005: 153).
1
2 Introduction
“It is good for women and girls who are both free and rich to drive a chariot
through a city; it means good priesthoods for them. But for poor women, rid-
ing on horseback through the city announces prostitution” (Artemidorus, Int.
of Dreams 1.57).3
How can we understand these two ideas together? How can there be both
a deep-seated distinction between the prostitute and the wife as well as an
apparent association between the prostitute and the woman, frequently a wife,
performing “the rituals and sacraments and honors of the city”? The answer
to this question is complicated, and the different strategies that Athenian
authors had for representing these relationships will be the subject of this
book.
This book started as a study of prostitution in classical Athenian litera-
ture. When I noticed that the texts in which there was a sustained depic-
tion of prostitution repeatedly figured the prostitute as a part of a particular
spectrum of feminine social roles, the discovery of an indigenous pattern of
thought eclipsed my original aims. The prostitute was only one aspect of a
more expansive frame of conceiving the feminine – and this frame seemed
worth investigating. Indeed, a continuum of femininity has significant impli-
cations for various fields of signification that extend beyond what we can
learn from prostitutes alone, including gender and sexuality, performance and
exchange. The feminine matrix – which configured the relationship between
the prostitute, the wife, and the priestess or other ritual agent – was an orga-
nizing principle that the Athenians in the classical period used to think and
talk about themselves; it was part of the Athenian social imaginary.4 This
structure operates in a variety of texts and genres and was therefore linked to
various facets of Athenian identity.
As we will see, the feminine matrix is a fractured and flexible discourse, and
its polyvalence lends itself to various representational strategies. The word
experiences, statuses, and public and private roles: Indeed, Pomeroy cautions
against thinking of women as an undifferentiated mass.12
As scholars embraced feminist theory, however, they began to grapple with
what Amy Richlin has called “the paradox of our discipline” – the prob-
lem of the feminist’s relation to textual material, which is nearly all written
by men.13 The nature of the relationship between representation and reality
is a relentless riddle for the classicist interested in gender. Linked to this,
but specific to the study of Greek drama, is a problem that Helene Foley
posed: “While women in daily life appear to have been confined to the inter-
nal spaces of the household, to public silence, and to non-participation in
the political life of Athens, women play an exceptionally prominent role in
drama.”14
Engaging with French structuralism, specifically Vernant’s idea that tragedy
was a space where the city put its values on trial, and negotiated its conflicts,
both Helene Foley and Froma Zeitlin read the powerful women of Greek
drama as sophisticated constructs that served in the project of exploring mas-
culine identity.15 They demonstrated that gender was a potent symbolic field
for negotiating complex social relationships such as that between polis and oikos,
Olympian and Chthonic, Greek and barbarian. Around the same time Nicole
Loraux demonstrated the centrality of gender to Athenian civic discourse as
she analyzed the place of gender in the social imaginary.16 With these scholars
I have found that representations of women are “good to think with,”17 and
that gender is a powerful organizing rubric in Athenian thought.
different from our own, they have been crucial to an understanding of sexu-
ality as historically contingent: “the radical difference of Greek sexuality has
been presented as one of the most vivid demonstrations of the efficacy of cul-
tural constructions in the field of experience, desire, and subjectivity, and one
of the most widely credited.”23
Although this school of thought has had tremendous influence, it has also
met with serious criticism.24 The most trenchant critique, with regard to the
Greek evidence, has been proposed by James Davidson. He suggests that mas-
culinity is crucially concerned with self-mastery, especially regulation of the
appetites, as opposed to active and passive sex roles. Taking Timarchus as his
example (the poster boy of the penetration thesis), who is accused of being a
prostitute hired by numerous men, as well as a man who seduces other men’s
wives, Davidson argues that Timarchus cannot be understood simply as an
adult who takes pleasure in being penetrated. Rather, Davidson proposes that
the unifying theme in Aeschines’ speech is Timarchus’ unbridled appetite –
an interpretation that makes sense out of the double accusation of porneia and
the squandering of his estate.25 And yet I don’t think it negates the impli-
cation that when Aeschines refers to Timarchus as the wife of Hegesandros
he is evoking the power dynamics of their sexual relationship.26 Instead of
pitting these two conceptions of masculinity in a zero sum competition, we
can understand both mastery over one’s desires and phallic agency/passivity
27 Wohl (2002: 15n.30) asserts that “Davidson presents himself as a critic of Foucault,
but the very guiding principles of his book are Foucaultian, not only the emphasis
on discourse . . . but also the idea of pleasure as a key element in the struggle for self-
mastery within a culture that prized moderation.” I would add to this criticism that his
use of the term discourse is sometimes unsatisfying, e.g., his suggestion that courtesans
manipulated the complex economic discourse surrounding their trade for their own
interests. Davidson (1997: 125).
28 Davidson (2001) offers an explicit critique of this thesis, but is still focused primarily
on the issue of penetration.
The Feminine Matrix 9
29 Dover (1989: 89); see also Davidson (2001: 35), who argues that Dover’s view of Greek
sexuality is informed by a desire to distance Greek homosexuality from our own con-
ceptions of the homosexual and thus to make them “less other to himself.”
30 Richlin (1998).
10 Introduction
discourses accrete and change (as opposed to superseding one another), we can
accommodate the idea that sex has a history, while certain aspects of it remain
constant.34
SCRIPTING GENDER
Women, Agency, and Foreclosure
Both the prostitute and the ritual agent were women who performed in pub-
lic. Neither their movement nor their representation was constrained in the
same way as the woman in her capacity as wife, and thus in different ways
each role allows the possibility for representing a fuller feminine subjectiv-
ity.35 Because they are arenas in which female agency and subjectivity can be
explored, both prostitution and ritual have been fertile areas for those scholars
who are engaged in recovering the lived experience of ancient Greek women.36
My analysis, however, focuses on the ideological function these roles played
in the social imaginary. Thus, the object of my inquiry is not material reality
but the way people imagined their relationship to that reality.
In the texts I consider, “Against Neaira,” Plato’s Symposium, Xenophon’s
Symposium, and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, I examine an array of depictions of
powerful women: we hear of Neaira supporting a lavish lifestyle for her entire
family, we encounter Diotima as she condescends to Socrates, we see a hired
girl enact her true love, and we watch Lysistrata rally the women of Greece for
a protest against the Peloponnesian War. However, the depiction of feminine
subjectivity is present in these texts not as an end in itself but rather to be con-
tained, and regulated – in other words, feminine subjectivity is foreclosed. We
might understand this persistent tendency toward containment as testimony
to “the female power that may well have inspired this male reaction,”37 which
indeed I do, but it is equally significant that women as powerful public agents
34 This is the argument Sedgwick (1990: 44–48) levels against Halperin and Foucault, and
that Halperin absorbs and responds to in Halperin (2002).
35 On the subjectivity of the prostitute, see Gilhuly (2007).
36 Pomeroy (1975); Connelly (2007); Goff (2004) is trying to recuperate lives, but in
a way that incorporates a sophisticated understanding of the role of representa-
tion.
37 Rabinowitz (1993: 23).
12 Introduction
were integral to the project of constructing the masculine self.38 In much the
same way that Victoria Wohl has argued in the case of tragedy, the contra-
dictory impulses evident in Athenian representations of women reveal woman
as a locus for reading ideology as it is being negotiated. It wasn’t enough for
Athenian men to think of their wives and daughters safe from the public eye
at home; they needed the idea of women as actors to fully imagine themselves.
And this is a tacit acknowledgment of the inadequacy of asymmetrical gender
relations from a masculine perspective.
The texts I examine depict feminine roles as they are being calibrated for
an audience of men. What we see in these depictions is a negotiation of the
public transcript for feminine performance in public – a transcript that had
a profound, but mostly unknowable, effect on women’s lives.39 What we can
recover through the scripting of roles for women in public, however, is a view
of gender hierarchy as it is being constructed from the masculine perspective.
As James Scott observes, “The public transcript is, to put it crudely, the self-
portrait of dominant elites as they would have themselves be seen.”40 While
the negotiation of the public transcript for feminine gender roles can only
suggest the constraints under which Athenian women lived, it reveals Athenian
masculinity as it is being constituted.41
The idea of the public transcript also allows us to consider the frame
through which women’s public presence was interpreted. One advantage to
this approach is that the roles described do not necessarily refer to distinct
women – wives performed rituals and held ceremonial positions; prostitutes
was no single or generic word such as prostitute to designate any person who
engaged in sex trade (which is how I use the term). Rather, a range of status
gradations was recognized by a varied vocabulary: there were common pros-
titutes (pornai), concubines (pallakai), courtesans (hetairai), flute-girls (auletrides),
and acrobats (orchestrides). There were endless periphrases for describing the
professions: almost all the nomenclature carried some stigma, so if a man
were to describe an event at which he was present, or an occasion he simply
did not want to represent in hostile fashion, he was likely to describe a prosti-
tute with a euphemism.46 The most ideologically charged pairing within this
variegated field of terms is the distinction between the porne and the hetaira.47
Dover attributes the distinction to the number of different men a woman had
contact with:
Plainly a woman in a brothel, dealing with a queue of customers every day, was a
porne, and equally plainly a woman who was kept in luxury by a wealthy man
for a year or more, during which time she never (well hardly ever) had intercourse
with anyone else, was a hetaira, but the dividing line between the two categories
could not be sharp. . . . Moreover, whether one applied the term porne or hetaira to
a woman depended on the emotional attitude towards her which one wished to
express, or to engender in one’s hearers.48
The name porne is derived from the verb prnhmi, which means to export for
sale (frequently used in the case of slaves), to sell or be sold.49 Hetaira is formed
on analogy with hetairos, the word for male companion, and both of these
words have strong associations with the aristocratic space of the symposium.50
James Davidson has argued that we should understand these two categories
variously as discursive strategies and symbolic oppositions.51 He aligns the
porne with commodity exchange, the agora, and the open spaces of Athenian
democracy, whereas the hetaira is associated with gift exchange, the elite, and
the symposium.
the role of Archon Basileus (and that of his wife, or basilinna) make it a potent
symbol for the contests over Athenian democracy. Thus, both the priestess
and the basilinna were especially suited to ideological negotiations concerning
the proper relationship between the oikos and polis or the elite and demos; it is
precisely at moments of conflict between these interests where we will see the
manipulation of the ritual performer.
Clearly, these different ways of selecting priests and priesthoods, either by
elite family inheritance or through civic appointment by lot, could represent
distinctions and tensions between the ritual and civic power of elite families
and the rule of the demos. In this way the figure of the priestess represents a
contest in the ritual sphere that resonates with the porne/hetaira distinction. In
my discussion of Lysistrata I argue that Aristophanes plays on this parallel in
his depiction of the Athenian women and their allies. Where the discourse
of prostitution tends to illuminate the economic aspect of contests between
elite and democratic culture, the priestess would seem to be more suited to
the struggle for cultural authority and the long-term identity of the Athenian
community. The fact that the priestess so frequently turns up in relation to
the prostitute might in itself be a democratic strategy for tempering any aris-
tocratic residue that might inhere in the Athenian conception of ritual office.
In contrast to these two ways of being a woman in public, it was essential
for a woman in her capacity as a citizen’s wife to stay out of the public eye.
Her anonymity was essential to her good name. The classic articulation of
the imperative for Athenian women to avoid notoriety is found in Pericles’
Funeral Oration in Thucydides’ History:
tv te gr ËparcoÅshv fÅsewv m ce©rosi
gensqai Ëm±n meglh ¡ d»xa kaª ¨v n pì
lciston retv pri £ y»gou n to±v rsesi klov §.
Great is the glory for you not to be worse than your existing nature, and of her
whose celebrity for virtue or reproach exists least among males. (Thucydides,
History 2.45)
Indeed, it would seem that many of the daughters and wives of Athenian cit-
izens did achieve the paradoxical glory that Pericles endorses, a total lack of
fame, since their lives have scarcely intruded upon the literary record. David
Cohen has challenged the idea that Athenian men and women lived in strict
18 Introduction
adherence to the social and legal rules determining sexual conduct. He argues
from comparative evidence that people relate to normative expectations in
complicated and fluid ways. In practice, social and legal expectations are con-
tested, and their incoherencies are exploited and manipulated.58 We cannot
access the extent to which people did or did not actually live in accordance
with law and social norms, but as Cohen argues, it was important to seem to
abide by these expectations. d»xa and klov are words that imply a pub-
lic reputation. In this sense social norms limited the possibilities for married
Athenian women in the realm of representation.59 Legal practice conveys a
sense of the extent to which this expectation prevailed – respectable Athenian
women were not named in court, but simply identified by their relationship
to a man.60
It seems worthwhile to note here that the Thucydides passage quoted above
represents a moment when Pericles is not only talking about women, but he
is also talking to them in public. These women were, of course, the widows of
the war dead, and in the context of the public funeral rite, their public pres-
ence was condoned. Ritual afforded an escape valve from the expectation that
women would live a sequestered life and allowed for circumscribed moments
in which they might experience public agency.61
Furthermore, in the case of the prostitute and the priestess, the rules
were significantly different than they were for wives. Because prostitutes were
assumed to be non-Athenians (although I don’t believe this was always the
case), they were available for representation: they could be talked about pub-
licly in any manner with impunity. On her own, a woman had no legal
recourse whatsoever: she couldn’t bring a suit in her own name – unless she
was a priestess.62 Women in public cult were honored in inscriptions and
were publicly praised by the demos and the boule.63 Where the prostitute evaded
representational constraints because of her lowly social standing, the woman
as ritual agent had a special exemption from the representational norms that
otherwise applied to her.64
Thus, both the prostitute and the ritual agent played a public role and
could therefore signify different facets of public feminine performance. Fre-
quently in the texts that I analyze, the textual negotiation between the role of
a woman at ritual and that of the prostitute evokes the category of the wife
as a lack, simultaneously legitimizing and eroticizing the woman who lives
her life anonymously. The negotiation between the image of the prostitute
and the ritual performer produces a space in the middle for the wife, some-
where between the immediate personal gratification the prostitute offers and
the long-term cosmic negotiations enacted through ritual.
less extreme than Timarchus’ prostitution of himself, there were more sub-
tle modes of social regulation. To be seen publicly as an economic agent
operating out of self-interest was to invite disapprobation. For example, in
his Characters, Theophrastos sketches a variety of negative personality types,
and strikingly many of their unappealing characteristics are illustrated by the
unseemly way they conduct business in the agora.69 The shameless man is neg-
atively characterized by his undiscriminating willingness to trade:
dein¼v d kaª pandokeÓsai kaª pornobosksai kaª
telwnsai, kaª mhdem©an a«scrn rgas©an
podokimsai, ll khrÅttein, mageireÅein, kubeÅein.
He is skilled at keeping an inn and running a brothel and collecting customs, indeed,
there is no work he rejects as shameful, but he is versed as a herald, a butcher, and he
knows how to run a gambling house. (Theophrastos, Characters 6.5)
The lowliness of these occupations has to do with the fact that they facili-
tate consumption and immediate gratification. While not an offense in itself,
a report of a man lavishing luxuries on himself was a topos in oratory, fre-
quently mobilized to disparage an opponent.70 Demosthenes’ speech “Against
Meidias” famously attacks his opponent’s luxuriance: after describing the
mansion Meidias built at Eleusis and the ostentatious way that he drove his
wife around in a chariot drawn by gray horses from Sikyon, Demosthenes
zeroes in for the ad hominem attack:
kaª tre±v koloÅqouv £ tttarav aÉt¼v cwn di
tv gorv sobe±, kumb©a kaª çut kaª filav
½nomzwn oÌtwv ãste toÆv pari»ntav koÅein.
He struts through the agora with three or four attendants naming his beakers and
drinking horns and cups in a way for passers-by to hear. (Demosthenes 21.159)71
Meidias walks and talks pomposity. He embodies extravagance (sobe±), and
his loud references to his variety of drinking vessels suggest the image of a
You wear a soft cloak and you’ve freed one hetaira and gave another one in
marriage, and you do these things even though you have a wife, and you lead around
three slave attendants, and you live licentiously so that even those you run into
perceive it. (Demosthenes. 36.45)
the prostitute and the ritual agent could signify give room in their representa-
tion for meaning to vacillate and allow expression of the contesting forces that
were so vital to Athenian democratic identity. The contradictions encoded in
these relationships provide a space to imagine the incoherence of the mascu-
line self in an orderly fashion.
Exchange
The feminine matrix, by relating women in different roles – the prostitute, the
wife, and the ritual agent – thus lends itself to representing a more complicated
taxonomy of masculine behavior. These feminine roles represent a range of
civic spheres – the marketplace, government and social institutions, and the
religious sector. They involve graduating temporal and moral commitments.
Each feminine type symbolizes a realm of masculine identity, and each one of
these realms is understood in relation to the others.72
The persistent association of the prostitute with the ritualized woman
speaks of a variety of issues at the center of Athenian identity: both are public
performers, and they share a strong identification with the body and sexu-
ality.73 Both roles are imbued with temporal, moral, and economic signifi-
cance. Just as important as the links between the two roles are the distinctions
that separate them. The prostitute is associated with a short-term time frame,
debased morality, and (more-or-less) disembedded economics. The woman at
ritual represents humanity in a long-term time frame; she has cultural author-
ity and conducts transactions with the divine.
These types represent different ends of a spectrum that might be described
as a “symbolic world of transactions,” to borrow an idea from Jonathan Parry
and Maurice Bloch. Based on ethnographic studies, they identify “two related
but separate transactional orders: on the one hand transactions concerned
with the reproduction of the long-term social or cosmic order; on the other,
a ‘sphere’ of short-term transactions concerned with the arena of individual
competition.”74 The long-term transactional order describes those exchanges
72 Along these lines, Catherine Bell has argued that we must see ritual in the context of
other social practices, as something that relates to and distinguishes itself in relation to
other activities. Bell (1992: 220).
73 For the importance of performance to the identity of the courtesan see McClure (2003:
107–136).
74 Parry and Bloch (1989: 24).
24 Introduction
76 I am concerned here only with the classical period, and thus I do not engage with
Middle Comedy, which does feature women in these roles, but I think as part of a
different conceptual system. See Lape (2004).
26 Introduction
communal notion of the moral and temporal frameworks that should inform
Athenian exchange, and reveals Stephanos’ failure to abide by this code as
symbolized by the fact that he has made a prostitute his wife.
But he takes the accusation further: Neaira and her daughter, Phano, seem
to merge into a single character in their similar crimes, and then Apollodoros
makes the unrelated, unsupported, and shocking claim that Phano actually
assumed the role of basilinna, performing the sacred marriage rite at the Anthes-
teria. By this seemingly gratuitous detail he suggests that Stephanos enabled
a courtesan to usurp not only the role of wife, but also that of ritual per-
former. By merging the prostitute with wife and ritual performer, Stephanos
has brought the ethics of the marketplace to civic ritual. In this case, then, the
feminine triad is used to prescribe an appropriate code of exchange, and its
collapse depicts how absolutely Stephanos has ignored that code.
The next chapter is a reading of the role of women in Plato’s Symposium,
examining its relationship to philosophical pederasty. It begins with a con-
sideration of Plato’s portrayal of the auletris, the hired musician, arguing that
she is confined to and represents the materiality of the symposium. She is
banished when the discussion begins. Curiously, when Eryximachos sends the
flute-girl out, he says she can play for herself or for the women within. This
mention of women inside who could be entertained by a courtesan suggests a
“space-off,” where women could enjoy their own entertainment, and a femi-
nine space that is outside the reach of philosophical discourse. The courtesan,
however, is available for representation; in this instance she serves to gesture
toward unspoken feminine realms. Her dismissal reveals a chink in the mas-
culine space of the symposium and suggests that the material presence and
discursive absence of women are the unspoken preconditions for the discourse
that follows. This combination of presence and absence finds its counterpart
in the priestess Diotima, a persona Socrates evokes to explain his system of
homoerotics.
Thus, in Plato’s Symposium the women of Agathon’s house are produced as
an absence through a negotiation of the prostitute and priestess. The bodily
sexuality of the auletris must be banished for Socrates to leverage the discur-
sive power of the priestess’s authority. At the same time he evokes a concep-
tion of woman not as the opposite of man, but as a continuum that gestures
toward a world that women and the body have no part in. I argue that the
feminine serves in this text not, as Halperin has suggested, to authorize the
The Structure of the Argument 27
1 Cantarella (1987: 48–51); Lefkowitz and Fant (2005: 82). Greek text of [Dem] 59 in this
chapter is drawn from Rennie’s Oxford text.
2 Davidson (1994: 115–123).
3 Lacey (1968: 113).
4 Vernant (1981: 58).
29
30 Collapsing Order
5 This speech was excluded from the corpus of Demosthenic speeches on stylistic
grounds in the late nineteenth century; see Blass (1877: 482). Blass suggests the speech
is that of Apollodoros. More recently, based on a systematic application of Blass’ law
(Demosthenes avoids successions of more than two short syllables), McCabe (1981:
187–198) provides convincing testimony that this speech must not be included in the
Demosthenic corpus.
6 Carey (1992: 3) notes that the speech can be confidently dated to the period between 343
and 340 by the reference to the Theoric fund. He infers from the text that the events
in Neaira’s life that are described probably took place before and during her thirties. A
similar time frame is assumed by Patterson (1992: 205–207).
7 Patterson (1992: 207).
Introduction 31
make antidemocratic transactions both in the civic realm, and in the cosmic
sphere. An investigation of this text will serve to demonstrate one way in
which the tripartite discourse of the feminine – the interrelation between the
prostitute, the wife, and the ritual agent – could be used to regulate Athenian
citizen identity in terms of economic, civic, and ritual transactions.
There is nothing unexpected, of course, in the assertion that an Athenian
orator would style his opponent as antidemocratic; the viability of this claim is
a precondition to the suit itself. Any legal indictment has the effect of creating
a community from which the accused is isolated. Andrew Kelly describes the
exaggeration of this social shaping in the Athenian orators. The prosecutor
positions himself as a “surrogate” for the jury and emphasizes the otherness
of the accused: “The badness of the enemy is unbelievably thorough. Good
sportsmanship needs a few bad sports to define itself against; but here the
game lies in claiming that the other player is permanently out of bounds.”8
The rhetorical maneuver of “isolating the opponent completely from the
citizen group by depicting him as a renegade whose interests are irreconcilably
at odds with the interest of the rest of the citizen population” is a “familiar
tactic.”9 In this speech the picture that is drawn of Neaira acts as a mir-
ror reflecting negatively on those around her, especially Stephanos. My read-
ing explores the way Apollodoros uses gender in the juridical maneuver of
alliance and isolation. I will show how Apollodoros manipulates the narrative
of Neaira as hetaira to construct an identity for Stephanos that transgresses the
ideological boundaries of Athenian masculinity.
Theomnestos begins the prosecution of Neaira and then hands it over to
his more experienced kinsman, Apollodoros. They make no pretense about
the fact that the indictment of Neaira is an attack against their political enemy
and Neaira’s companion, Stephanos. Indeed, they insist that the present suit
is a response to Stephanos’ prosecution of Apollodoros for having made a
proposal to use the Theoric fund for military purposes, carried as a probouleuma
to the council (4). The Theoric fund was money distributed among Athenians
to defray costs of attending dramatic performances during the great festivals
(5–6).10 Theomnestos states that Apollodoros carried this motion with the
laws bidding (keleu»ntwn mn tän n»mwn) that, in times of war, surplus
from the administration should be used for military purposes. Although the
decree was easily passed, Stephanos successfully indicted Apollodoros on the
grounds that he had made this motion as a debtor to the treasury.11 Stephanos
proposed that Apollodoros be fined the exorbitant fee of fifteen talents, with
the intent of disfranchising him and ruining his family’s prospects. The jury
imposed a fine of one talent. Later Stephanos also tried to have Apollodoros
exiled for killing a slave, but was unsuccessful.
Theomnestos’ description of his speech as an act of revenge juxtaposes the
issues at stake in each suit. Stephanos’ attempts to deprive Apollodorus of
his rights as a citizen are implicitly opposed to Neaira’s career as a courtesan.
In what way does the case against Neaira answer the indictments about the
diversion of the Theoric fund and the murdering of a slave? Stephanos’ earlier
litigation against Apollodoros and his kin was designed to deprive them of
their civic rights:
boÅlomai d’ Ëm±n prodihgsasqai präton
pep»nqamen Ëp’ aÉtoÓ, ¯na mll»n moi suggnÛmhn
chte munomnw, kaª Þv e«v [toÆv] scatoÆv
kindÅnouv katsthmen per© te t¦v patr©dov kaª perª
tim©av.
I wish to recount to you, first what we suffered at his hands and how we were put in
severe danger concerning the city and a loss of rights in order that you might have
more forbearance for me as I defend myself. (59.1)
Stephanos tried to penalize Apollodoros with atimia. Although there is no
one definitive record of what this disability meant, the penalty is frequently
described by the orators to mean exclusion from the agora, sanctuaries, and
political office.12 Aristotle says of Solon that he made a law in reference to a
man who refuses to take sides in civil strife: timon e²nai kaª t¦v p»lewv
m metcein (Let him be atimos and have no share of the city; Aristotle Ath.
Pol. 8.5). Raphael Sealey has argued that the earliest vestiges of the content of
11 Demosthenes 1 Hyp. 5 records that it was a crime punishable by death to propose that
any of this money be used for military purposes. For a discussion of the contradictions
in the sources regarding this law see Hansen (1964: 235–246).
12 For the sources see Hansen (1976: 61–62).
Introduction 33
corresponds to the civic sphere, and the ritual agent belongs to the realm of
religion.
The prosecution chooses language to deemphasize any personal interest in
the suit: toÅtw d dika©wv t¼n aÉt¼n ranon neceirsamen podoÓ-
nai (but as for Stephanos, as is just, we have endeavored to pay him back in his
own coin; 59.8). The use of the word eranos to describe this suit is significant.
The eranos was essentially a potluck dinner, which had come to mean money
lent between friends in times of need.17 Paul Millett notes that the term eranos
is often used to denote service to the community. Elsewhere, Demosthenes
describes a citizen’s behavior as a contribution to an eranos: everything done
in obedience to the laws is a contribution to polis and the community (25.22).
Aristophanes uses the term in a chorus of Lysistrata, where the women describe
the contribution of sons to the polis as their eranos (651).18 The use of the anal-
ogy here has a double force: on the one hand, Stephanos’ contribution – gra-
tuitous litigation – is singled out as costly and detrimental to the community;
on the other hand, Theomnestos and Apollodoros appear to be free from
selfish concerns in accusing Neaira. They are merely repaying Stephanos what
he is owed. Their reciprocal aggression is as inevitable as the swing of the
pendulum, and the description of a retaliatory suit as an eranos serves as a way
to bring about the “radical evaporation of the accuser.”19 Stephanos indicted
Apollodoros out of sheer selfishness, acting for the community’s detriment,
whereas Theomnestos and Apollodoros are merely carried along on the tide
of social obligation.
The juxtaposition of the two lawsuits introduces textual and thematic pat-
terns that are repeated throughout the oration. On the level of the text, Apol-
lodoros demeans Stephanos and the members of his oikos in terms like eranos
that usually have positive connotations in the discourse of Athenian democ-
racy. This rhetorical displacement emphasizes Stephanos’ abuse of civic values
and privileges, a maneuver that I shall trace further. On the thematic level, the
use of the word eranos establishes the contrast between proper and improper
civic behavior that structures the entire oration.
17 Eranos is used in this way to describe Neaira’s collection of money to buy her freedom
at 31. For an interesting discussion of the use of this analogy in Demosthenes’ speech
“Against Meidias,” see Kelly (1994: 28–29); see also Millett (1991: 153 ff.).
18 Millett (1991: 154).
19 Kelly (1994: 28).
Introduction 35
When the Athenians voted to grant citizenship to Pasion and his progeny for his
service to the city, my father agreed with the gift of the people and gave to the son of
Pasion, Apollodoros, his daughter, my sister, in marriage; she is the mother of
Apollodoros’ children. Since Apollodoros was good to my sister, and to all of us, and
since he truly believed that relatives share all that they have, I took in marriage
Apollodoros’ daughter, my niece. (59.2)
24 It should also be mentioned that Pasion was enfranchised “because of his benefactions
to the city” (di tv eÉerges©av tv e«v tn p»lin, 59.2). As a wealthy banker, he
was able to give lavishly enough to the city to convert his own status from freedman to
citizen or, in other words, from the short- to the long-term transactional order.
25 Carey (1992: 14). See also Blass (1877: 480 ff.), who notes logical breakdowns in the
speech.
26 Carey (1992: 113 ff.); Cohen (1991: 109); Patterson (1994: 207–208).
27 Carey (1992: 138); Patterson (1994: 210).
38 Collapsing Order
stories about Phano, and a third to the narrative about the Plataians. I show
that the elements of Apollodoros’ speech that have troubled modern schol-
ars contribute to a completely consistent picture of Stephanos and his oikos
as antidemocratic, and I suggest that the integrity of this representation was
strong enough to render the flaws in the oration inconsequential.
NEAIRA
In Apollodoros’ speech, Neaira is completely objectified. She is referred to
by the use of her bare proper name, rather than the patronymic or husband’s
name that would identify her as a member of an Athenian household and net-
work of family relations.28 Apollodoros spends thirty-three chapters describ-
ing Neaira’s career as a courtesan although, as I have mentioned, prostitution
is extrinsic to the charge. She has been accused of being a foreigner living in
marriage with an Athenian, not of being a prostitute. Apollodoros’ version
of Neaira’s life begins not with a birth, but with a purchase: ëE pt gr
taÅtav paid©skav k mikrän paid©wn ktsato Nikarth (Nikarete
acquired these seven girls as small children; 59.18). Neaira was not so much
born as bought. The issue of geographic origin is displaced onto the realm of
economics. It is as though Apollodoros is claiming that Neaira cannot be an
Athenian because she has always been a commodity, although this is itself a
specious opposition. A prostitute is not necessarily an alien,29 and this very
oration has been cited as evidence that citizenship and prostitution were not
mutually exclusive: Neaira was accepted for a long time as a citizen, although
she had been a high-profile courtesan in her younger days, and Nikarete
charged higher prices for her “daughters” by presenting them as free. Later
in her life Apollodoros alleges that Neaira was able to charge higher prices
from customers because of the appearance of being married to Stephanos (a
citizen): toÆv d misqoÆv me©zouv prtteto toÆv boulomnouv aÉt¦
30 Edward Cohen reasons that “the cultural significance at Athens of ‘zero-sum compe-
tition’ would have further enhanced the market attractiveness of free prostitutes, and
especially of youths from established families.” Cohen (1997: 40–41).
31 See Pomeroy (1975: 141).
40 Collapsing Order
these instances (20, 23) follow fast on the quotation of the graphe that Neaira
has been accused of breaking. The beginning of the law states:
The language Apollodoros uses to mark Neaira’s availability echoes the letter
of the democratic law: he says, rgzeto t sÛmati misqarnoÓsa to±v
boulomnoiv aÉt¦ plhsizein (she worked with her body charging a fee
to those who wanted to have intercourse with her; 20), and misqrnei t
boulomnw nal©skein (she worked for hire for he who wished to pay; 23).
He also mentions that Nikarete had charged top dollar to Neaira’s clientele:
toÆv boulomnouv plhsizein (those wanting to have intercourse with her;
19). The most important distinction between types of lawsuits at Athens was
that of private versus public.32 In private actions only the victim could prose-
cute, whereas anyone who wanted (or sometimes, as here, any Athenian) could
bring a public case. ¾ boul»menov is the term in the graphe that marks this dis-
tinction. The transference ¾ boul»menov to Neaira’s clientele emphasizes the
public nature of her intimate commerce. In his oration against Ktesiphon,
Aeschines explicitly connects the public case that allows any citizen to speak
with democracy. He anticipates that Demosthenes will attack him for infre-
quent public address and makes the following preemptive remarks:
And you blame me if not constantly, but from time to time I approach the demos,
and you think that you escape notice transferring this expectation, that does not arise
from democracy, but comes out of another form of government. For in oligarchies, it
is not he who wants to speak, but he who has power that addresses the people. In
democracies, he who wishes speaks, and whenever he feels like it. (Aeschin. 3.220).
33 See Bonner (1933: 67 ff.); Finley (1985: 19); Hansen (1987: 91, 216).
42 Collapsing Order
When he [Phrynion] came here with her he treated her outrageously and recklessly
and he brought her to dinners wherever he was drinking and she always caroused with
him, and he openly made love with her anywhere whenever he wanted, making his
lascivious possession a demonstration of his desire for public honor to those
looking on. He brought her carousing to many people including Chabrias of Aixone,
when he won in the Pythian games, when Sokratides was archon, with the chariot he
bought from the sons of Mitys of Argos, and on his return from Delphi held a victory
feast at Kolias. And there many others lay with her while she was drunk, when
Phrynion was sleeping, including the servants who had served Chabrias’ meal.
(59.33–34)
36 Generally, race horses were mares; cf. Herodotus Hist. 5.77, 6.103. For an interesting
connection between the filly ranging free and a “loose” woman see Gentili (1958: 206
ff.) on Anacreon frr. 71–72.
37 “Against Neaira” 13, 24, 25, 30, 37, 39, 48, 49, 119.
38 “Against Neaira” 20, 22, 26, 36, 41, 49. The house she shares with Stephanos is referred
to as an rgastrion, or brothel; 67.
39 Davidson (1998: 92) claims that ergasterion and ergasia imply prostitution, while mistharnein
is an appropriate term for the professional hetaira (based on this passage). I am argu-
ing that this term is chosen as a part of Apollodoros’ insistence on emphasizing the
fact of trafficking in sex as opposed to the more mystified exchanges between friends
contracted by the likes of Theodote (Xen. Mem. 3.11.4). See Goldhill (1998).
44 Collapsing Order
as not to equate their own legitimate women with taÅth t¦ p»rnh/this
whore here.
If, as I have suggested, we are expected to think of Neaira as an ex-hetaira,
why is it that in this case the terms that scholars have read as so heavily laden
with ideological weight all seem to apply equally to Neaira? How is it that at
one moment she is at a symposium celebrating a victory at the Pythian games
and at another she is plying her trade publicly (pifanäv rgazomnhv,
26)? At one point Apollodorus mixes registers in a single phrase: rgzeto
t sÛmati Þv ta©ra oÕsa (she worked with her body as a hetaira). The
emphasis on trade and menial labor implied in rgzeto t sÛmati sub-
verts any high-cultured and mystified associations the word hetaira might elicit.
Despite her illustrious and lucrative career, in the end she is nothing more than
an indiscriminate porne (115).
As a rhetorical strategy to defame a woman, the advantage of describing
a hired companion as a common prostitute is obvious. Since both hetaira and
porne exist on the sex-trade continuum, the difference between them is at times
subtle and nuanced.40 The obsessive commodification of Neaira already noted
above would effectively serve to traduce any positive associations elicited by
the idea of the hetaira. Although the purposeful muddling of these distinctions
may be at play here, I would suggest that the ideological tensions related to
issues of economics, politics, and class encoded in the distinction between the
hetaira and the porne are not crucially at stake in this context – it doesn’t really
matter if Neaira is one or the other, although it is always worse to be a porne.41
Instead, I am arguing that Apollodorus makes use of another discourse of the
feminine, the interrelationship of the prostitute, the wife, and the ritual agent,
to figure an explicitly democratic ideological structure and its antagonisms. To
see clearly how this triad functions in this text, it is necessary first to consider
how the tale of Phano operates in the narrative.
PHANO
Much of Apollodoros’ case rests on proving that Neaira and Stephanos tried
to pass off their non-Athenian daughter, Phano, as marriage material. The
40 Kurke (1999: 219) notes that this distinction is not always stable but vacillates depending
on the speaker’s relation to the symposium.
41 For an argument about the specificity of the terms in this context see Miner (2003).
Phano 45
42 See, e.g., Ath. 13.567c–d, Klepsydra. Glazebrook (2005: 175). Cox (1988: 176–77).
43 Carey (1992: 121).
44 Cohen (1991: 108). Cf. Kapparis (1999: 297).
46 Collapsing Order
present in court did not testify that Phano was the basilinna. Furthermore, if
this incident did occur, it would have been a very serious crime that should
have been prosecuted in its own right. In addition, it would have been suf-
ficient grounds on which to prosecute Stephanos for giving a foreigner in
marriage to a citizen and for impiety. “Thus,” Carey concludes,
I suggest that it is not only the inattentiveness of the jurors, but also the
thematic integration of this narrative with the rest of the speech, that would
render it comprehensible and plausible to its audience. For the Theogenes
affair is consistent with the portrayal of Stephanos and his oikos as valuing
personal gain at a premium, at the expense of the long-term benefit to the
larger community.
In his digression about the history of the Anthesteria, Apollodoros makes
a strong connection between the ceremony and the city. The basileus is linked
to the originary autochthonous Athenians through Theseus, the mythical
founder of democracy. The king was elected every year by a show of hands,
and the city voted that his wife, the basilinna, who performed the ceremony
for the city’s sake (Ëpr t¦v p»lewv), must be a virgin of citizen birth at
the time of her marriage (75). This decree was written on a stone column.
As if to mark a contrast between the ever-available Neaira/Phano character
and the sacred rites of the city, Apollodoros mentions that the inscription
survived only in faint Attic letters (mudro±v grmmasin %ttiko±v; 76) and
was set up in the “most ancient and holy” (gia kaª rca±a; 76) temple of
Dionysos of the Marshes that was opened only once a year (pax gr toÓ
niautoÓ no©getai; 76). He continues:
The people made a witness on behalf of their piety to the god and left it as a trust to
future generations that we expect the woman who is to be given to the god and who
will perform the sacred rites to be of such a sort. (59.76)
Apollodoros situates the virgin basilinna in a political lineage that begins with
the autochthonous Athenians and reaches through the earliest democracy,
which voted to set up the column, to the present (as indicated in xioÓmen)
and future generations of democratic citizens (to±v pigignomnoiv). The
virginity and citizen status of the basilinna is determined by an indefinite tra-
jectory of democratic history that encompasses Apollodoros and his auditors.
The ritual marriage is described in terms that emphasize its status as a long-
term transaction.
The ceremony that Phano allegedly performed took place in the Boukolion,
the oxherd’s house in the agora, the public center. According to Von Reden,
“as the political centre of the democratic polis, the Athenian agora symbolized
the assembly of citizens and the equality of all its members.”48 Although the
consummation of the basilinna’s marriage to Dionysos is not described, it seems
to have been symbolized in the ritual performance.49 If Apollodoros’ speech
can be construed as alluding to this aspect of the ritual, would this not con-
jure the earlier description of Neaira having sex in public with Phrynion? This
doubling sets up an opposition between reckless sexuality and holy devotion,
once again showing Stephanos and his oikos to be inappropriately devoted to
immediate and self-centered gratification as defined against Apollodoros, the
Athenian demos, and the cosmic order. Furthermore, it explains the rhetorical
need to merge the characters of Phano and Neaira. Phano needs to share her
was contrasted with both the rich and the poor. . . . He was defined through everyday
actions – providing well for his family and community, having a strong sense of
shame, and above all, keeping his appetites under control. . . . A man judged to stand
at any extreme lacked control.52
The leader of the Greeks when he destroyed the army of Medes, Pausanias dedicated
this monument to Phoibos
as though the deed and the dedication were his own, not of the allies in common.
(59.97)
As a result, he says, the Plataians, on behalf of all the Greeks, brought an action
before the Amphictyons for the exorbitant sum of one thousand talents and
had the Spartans replace the inscription with the names of all the cities that
fought the battle. This sparked a festering enmity between the Spartans and
one’s opponent is the goal of ancient forensic oratory. Thomas Habinek interprets an
analogous move made by Cicero, when he levels the insult of banditry against Catiline.
Cicero uses banditry as “a means to differentiate his opponent from the other members
of his audience. . . . The orator aims to deny his opponent standing within the com-
munity and to exclude him from the place of reasoned debate by aligning him with
the very forces that the community cannot incorporate if it wishes to remain the same
community.” Habinek (1998: 70–71).
54 Patterson (1994: 210).
52 Collapsing Order
Plataians, which manifested itself fifty years later in the brutal destruction of
Plataia in 431 through the agency of the Theban Eurymachos.
Although the story of Pausanias’ dedication is consonant with Thucydides’
version (1.132), his involvement in the Plataian debacle is not recorded any-
where else. According to Thucydides, Sparta reprimanded Pausanias for his
behavior and replaced the inscription, there was never hostility between Sparta
and Plataia,55 and the attack on Plataia originated at Thebes and Pausanias was
not involved (2.2.3). Although some scholars have argued for the authenticity
of Apollodoros’ version of events,56 it is generally agreed that the facts have
been changed to emphasize Plataian valor.57 But Pausanias’ role in this account
has yet to be explained. I suggest that the oppositions between the individual
and the group, and self-interest versus the greater good that I have argued
characterize the difference between Stephanos and Apollodoros, are repeated
and amplified in the narrative of Pausanias and the Plataian affair. The Plata-
ians, like Apollodoros and his oikos, remain loyal to Athens even while they
are viciously attacked by their opponents and are accordingly incorporated
into the Athenian demos. Pausanias, by contrast, is presented as an example of
the extreme toward which Stephanos tends. The opposition between aËtoÓ
toÓ rgou . . . ll’ oÉ koinoÓ . . . in Apollodoros’ comment on the dedica-
tion makes the point forcefully and succinctly.
Thucydides describes Pausanias as a deceitful would-be tyrant. Pretending
to join in a struggle against Persia, he took naval forces to the Hellespont
without being authorized by the Spartan government. His intention was to
collude with Xerxes and become the ruler of Hellas. Xerxes welcomed his
advances, and Pausanias began to live extravagantly, in the Persian style. He
wore Persian clothes, threw lavish banquets, and was attended by a bodyguard
of Persians and Egyptians.
Pausanias’ adaptation of Persian ways correlates with his dream of empire.
In the beginning of his history, Thucydides says that Sparta was the first Greek
state to move away from a luxurious lifestyle:
metr©a d’ aÔ sq¦ti kaª v t¼n nÓn tr»pon prätoi
Lakedaim»nioi crsanto kaª v t lla pr¼v toÆv
Moreover, the Spartans were the first to use moderate dress, in the current fashion,
and in other respects, those who were more wealthy represented themselves as having
the same lifestyle as the majority. (1.6.4–5)
CONCLUSION
We have seen that the line of argument in this oration does not exactly cohere
to the charge that Apollodoros proffers. There are serious holes in the argu-
ment: Neaira’s place of birth is never proven, nor is Phano’s father explicitly
identified; no testimony proves that she was married or actually performed
a sacred marriage. The prosecution fails to discuss Phano’s brothers, whose
exact citizen status would be easy to establish (there would be records of their
introduction into the deme) and would provide clear evidence of Stephanos’
fraudulence. Furthermore, there is much in the oration that is extrinsic to the
charge, like the vivid description of Neaira’s career as a courtesan. The histor-
ical digression at the denouement of the speech seems to take serious liberties
with the truth. I have tried to suggest that the gaps and contradictions in Apol-
lodoros’ argumentation, the fissures in his logic, are subsumed by a consistent
representation of Stephanos. This depiction relies not on fact, sworn testi-
mony, and cold logic, but on what David Halperin calls the “cultural poetics
of Athenian manhood.”61
Thus Apollodoros has depicted Stephanos as someone who makes inap-
propriate transactions and therefore does not belong to the democratic com-
munity. In the terms of Parry and Bloch, he has collapsed transactional orders.
These orders are more complex than mere economic structures – they simulta-
neously articulate morality, a temporal frame, and social usefulness. Stephanos
has brought the amoral, short-sighted, pleasure-seeking framework of the
short-term cycle to the realm of marriage, citizenship, and ritual.
If we read [Demosthenes] 59 from within the cultural architecture of trans-
actional orders, considering the exchange of women as constitutive of male
subjectivity, then the prosecution of Neaira effectively becomes an attack
against Stephanos. The narrative of her errant behavior represents Stephanos’
refusal to abide by the transactional code that informs Athenian culture. With
this interpretation in mind, let us return to Apollodoros’ assertion about the
categories and uses of women, with which I began: “Hetairai we keep for the
sake of pleasure, concubines for daily care of the body, and wives for making
legitimate children and for faithful guardianship of our household posses-
sions” (59.122).
Now we can read this statement as a reflection of a code of exchange.
These categories describe increasing levels of temporal and moral commit-
ment, or graduating transactional orders. Apollodoros begins with the hetaira
who belongs conceptually to the realm of pleasure, and involves a short-term
exchange that is unhampered by morality. He then moves to concubinage, a
more permanent relationship that entails more responsibility on the part of
the man, and endures over a long period of time. He concludes with mar-
riage, a long-term transaction, deeply embedded in the politics, economy, and
morality of Athenian society. It is a system of reciprocal exchange designed to
“ensure, through strict rules governing marriage, the permanence of the city
itself through constant reproduction.”62
Thus we see that hetairai, concubines, and wives symbolize different tempo-
ral and moral dimensions of male sexuality. These typologies of women relate
to sexuality, culminating in the production of legitimate offspring. We can
read the impulse, evident in this passage, to categorize the other as a way to
organize the self as a local example of the larger argument of this book. The
feminine is constructed as a multiplicity to construct relationships between
different facets of masculinity.
In his closing argument, Apollodoros evokes the mothers, wives, and
daughters of the jurymen sitting at home, waiting for news of the courtroom.
By contrast to the notoriety and independence of Neaira and Phano, these
women are anonymous and unanimous. In defense of these good women,
Apollodoros contextualizes marriage as an exchange related to the interests of
the city on a cosmic level, and shows how the adherence to a transactional
code constitutes civic order:
For as it is now, even if someone is without resources, the law contributes sufficient
dowry for her if nature gives her moderate good looks in any way whatsoever; if the
law is held in contempt by you with her acquittal, and loses its authority, then
undoubtedly it will turn out that the career of prostitutes will fall to the daughters of
citizens, as many as cannot be married because of poverty, while the status of free
women will fall to hetairai, if they are given the right to fearlessly have children as
they wish and to take part in the rituals and sacraments and honors of the city.
(59.113)
63 Significantly, pod©dwmi is the verb Theomnestos uses when he describes his suit as
an eranos returned; see the discussion earlier.
Conclusion 57
58
Introduction: Symposia High and Low 59
disputation among men not keyed up to any high pitch of fervour; we do not have so
well-developed or so formal or so long-sustained philosophical debate, but we enjoy a
feeling of reality in the evening’s event, of seeing more vividly than in Plato just how
an Athenian banquet was conducted.1
1 Todd (1992: 533). In the introduction to his edition of Xenophon’s Symposium Ollier
(1961: 9) notes that it is due to Xenophon more so than Plato that we have an image
of a “veritable banquet . . . nous pouvons nous représenter avec exactitude ce qu’était
à Athènes une réunion de ce genre, du moins entre gens bien élevés. L’intérêt his-
torique est considérable à cet égard.” For an interpretation of Xenophon as a pioneer
of the biographical form, see Momigliano (1971). Strauss (1972: 145) reveals that he
has been seduced by Xenophon’s “realism” in his interpretation of Philip the buf-
foon’s unsought presence at the banquet: “One cannot exclude the possibility that his
apparently unplanned appearance was arranged beforehand between him and Kallias.”
Although I think this extra-textual reading goes too far in presupposing a real historic-
ity informing the text, nonetheless I do agree with Strauss that a familiarity with the
characters’ biographies between the narrative date of the Symposium and its publication
is crucial to an understanding of the text.
2 Gray (1992: 58–75) has challenged the validity of reading Xenophon only in light of
Plato, arguing persuasively that although Xenophon’s Symposium is indebted to that
of Plato, the sources of influence must be acknowledged to extend beyond that text,
even into the domain of poetry. She makes the interesting argument that Xenophon is
interpreting an anecdote about the poet Simonides discussing the silent guest through
the person of Socrates.
60 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
Xenophon’s Symposium, when the dancing girl enacts the role of Dionysos’s
wife.
Hermogenes, who wrote in the second century CE, identifies the inclusion
of the talk of entertainers as indicative of the level of style:
For symposia have been written by both of them. Xenophon does not avoid
mentioning the entrances of the dancing girls, and certain types of dances and kisses
and many other such things, but he does it with pleasure, while Plato leaves such
things to the women, as he himself says, making the simplicity of the affair into
something more solemn. (Hermogenes, On Style 392)3
3 Rabe (1913).
4 Halperin (1990). There is obviously a vast amount of scholarship on the Symposium, and
I have drawn on only that small part that is pertinent to my argument.
Introduction: Symposia High and Low 61
But if Diotima is not a woman but a “woman,” it no longer makes any sense to
inquire into her gender. . . . For “woman” too, turns out to be a trope: in the
representational economy of Plato’s text (as elsewhere) “woman” is always a sign of
something else – of a spurious sexual “difference” that men (as they see themselves) at
once lack and possess.6
8 On aulos-players and other hired entertainers at symposia see Plato, Prot. 347c–d. Later
I will discuss the auletris, more generally.
9 Are we meant to think this is the same auletris? A different one? Whether the auletris is
singular or multiple in this text does not affect my argument, which is that her role in
the text is schematic. They are completely interchangeable.
She’s Not There 63
13 In this way Plato’s use of gender resonates with the elaborate framing of the narrative
that places a heavy emphasis on the distance of the representation of the symposium
from the actual event.
She’s Not There 65
14 Incidentally, the training may have involved learning to read. Starr (1978: 404).
15See West (1994: 28 ff.).
16 K-A Adespota 1007 1.34.
17 Boardman (1975 no. 27).
18 Men. Perikeiromene 337 ff.; Phylarchus FrGr 81F42. Davidson (1998: 82), Starr (1978: 407).
19 Henderson (1975: 81) suggests that fellatio was part of the auletris’ repertoire. Ath. 13.591
preserves a similar association. See also McClure (2003: 21).
20 The ambiguous status of this figure is conveyed by McClure (2003: 21–22).
66 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
this refers to the wives or potential wives of Athenian citizens. The wife, as
the embodiment of legitimate reproduction, is the most glaring absent pres-
ence in the text – while both the auletris and Diotima participate in some way,
these women are only mentioned to be excluded.
In keeping with the ambiguous identities of the other women in the text, it
is not at all clear who Diotima is supposed to be. The only definitive things
Socrates tells us about her is that she is from Mantinea, she is a wise woman,
sof, a teacher of t rwtik, and she was able to intercede on behalf of the
Athenians when they were making a sacrifice, with the result that the plague
came ten years later than originally scheduled (20d1–5).27
Diotima is never actually named a priestess, although she uses the language
of initiation when describing the revelation of beauty.28 The religious idiom
she uses combined with the detail that she could influence the outcome of a
sacrifice certainly characterize her as a woman of ritual authority. Furthermore,
in comparison to the other women under discussion she has a different rela-
tionship to men. She is Socrates’ teacher – an authority on love – and occupies
a role that he can use to gain prestige for his version of philosophic erotics.
Since Diotima is a female authority with a public role, Athenian culture gives
us scarcely any other option than to assume that her status is founded on her
role in ritual. We will come back to the riddle of Diotima’s identity. As Gerald
Press has observed, Diotima’s role in the Symposium raises far more questions
than it resolves.29 For now, we can say that like the auletris and the women
within, she is only elusively characterized. One facet of her characterization
that is stable, though, is how she stands in relation to the other women present
(or not) at Agathon’s symposium. My argument will address the way this triad
of femininity influences our interpretation of the text.
27 I discuss the implications of her influence on the plague later in this chapter.
28 Symp. 210a. Clinton (2003: 59); Cornford (1971: 128); Finkelberg (1997: 258–261); Morgan
(1992: 233–235).
29 Press (2000: 147–159).
68 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
As each solution is presented in ways which are at once plausible and ridiculous –
containing and recombining elements from a number of different poetic and
philosophical discourses – we are invited to partially accept it, then reject it, only to
eventually accept it again in transmuted, sublimated form in Socrates and Diotima’s
revelation of the True Nature of Eros.30
In a way, this tactic demands that we respect the organic quality of the text,
reading it in order. Thus what follows is a brief consideration of how the
other celebrants invoke gender, especially as it is related to their conception
of sexuality.
When the symposiasts have come to agreement on the topic of their dis-
cussion, Eryximakhos suggests that Phaedrus be the first to speak. He quotes
Euripides’ lost play Melanippe to justify his suggestion with a small but telling
adjustment: he says that Phaedrus should be the first to speak because he was
the pthr toÓ l»gou (father of the story; 177d5). The relevant fragment
of the Melanippe is preserved as saying oÉk m»v ¾ mÓqov ll tv mhtr¼v
pra (the story is not mine, but it is from my mother; fr. 484). In the imme-
diate context the gender change of mother to father is appropriate and has
provoked little comment. As I will argue in this chapter, however, this is a
hint of a theme – the male appropriation of the maternal – that pervades the
text.
The first two speakers, Phaedrus and Pausanias, are at pains to negoti-
ate the asymmetry of the pederastic relationship between the lover (erastes)
30 Carnes (1998: 108). I would add, with Nussbaum (1986), that we then need to revise our
understanding again in terms of Alcibiades’ speech.
Gender Asymmetry and Pederasty 69
and beloved (eromenos or paidika). Although neither one of them evokes gen-
der explicitly, my analysis will demonstrate that gender as a binary is crucially
implicated in both these versions of pederasty. While no version of eros in this
text represents a normative version of love, these two accounts seem to wres-
tle especially against the notion that gender roles and their hierarchy inform
the construction of pederastic love. Eryximakhos’ account suggests through
implicit allusion that eros is identified with gender difference. All three of
these early speeches depict eros in relation to a binary notion of gender. By
contrast, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates deploy three different strate-
gies to evoke a nonbinary discourse of gender.31 Finally, I suggest that Socrates’
speech achieves the most successful (and only culturally authorized) evasion of
the gender binary by evoking the feminine as a continuum through the intro-
duction of Diotima. Plato’s deployment of the feminine hierarchy, in and out
of Socrates’ speech, reinforces the description of philosophic pederasty as a
gradual erotic ascent.
The first account of eros, offered by Phaedrus, is driven by the question:
whom do the gods love more, the lover or the beloved? Implicit in this query
is the assertion that the roles are asymmetrical. Phaedrus wants to argue that
the gods love the eromenos who is willing to die for his erastes. But to make this
point he must make use of a devious kind of logic, because the devotion of the
eromenos to his erastes was a touchy subject. For, if an eromenos were physically
devoted to his erastes, he risked the reputation of the pornos.32 In an effort to jus-
tify his claim, Phaedrus appeals to unconventional images of heterosexuality,
while asserting the superiority of the male.
Avoiding the unsavory implication that the gods love an eromenos who grat-
ifies his erastes, Phaedrus evaluates love on the basis of one’s willingness to die
for love. He begins with the assertion that pederasty is the ultimate instigation
to make men better citizens:
31 Cf. Most (2005: 34), who reads the speeches as paired and complementary.
32 Dover (1989: 52); Foucault (1980: 219); Halperin (1990: 88–112).
70 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
If only there were some way that the city or army could be composed of lovers and
their beloveds, there is no better way for them to manage their city, since they would
refrain from everything shameful and compete for honor with one another, and if they
were fighting together, just a few of this type would defeat, as they say, all mankind.
(178e3–179a2)
Phaedrus obviously has in mind a city or army of men. However, he does not
entirely exclude women from his praise of Eros. He mentions that the gods
honored Alkestis for her willingness to die on behalf of her husband, Adme-
tos, by sending her up from Hades back to life. But we would be mistaken
to believe that Alkestis is a model of feminine virtue. Rather, it was Alkestis’
masculine qualities that earned her honor among gods and men. Alkestis is a
wife. Yet significantly she has no association with childbearing: “Phaedrus has
love change this woman from a life-giver to a death-seeker. To earn his praise,
the female must become male.”33 Like the women inside the house, here again,
woman as the embodiment of legitimate reproduction is elided from the text.
Phaedrus depicts Alkestis in masculine terms when he contrasts her to
Orpheus. Orpheus was only shown a phantom of Eurydice, because he
seemed soft (Âti malqak©zesqai d»kei) and lacked the daring (tolmn)
of Alkestis. As punishment for his shortcoming, Orpheus died at the hands of
women (179d8). He goes on to assert that Achilles received greater honor from
the gods than Alkestis, because they sent him to the isle of the Blest. They did
this because he valued Patroklos, his erastes, over his own life. Phaedrus then
claims that the erastes is more divine than the eromenos:
For although the gods truly value this virtue concerning love, they wonder at, marvel
about, and reward it when an eromenos adores his erastes more than when an
erastes adores his beloved (paidika). For the erastes is more divine than his
beloved; he has the god within. This is why they honored Achilles more than Alkestis
and sent him off to the Isle of the Blest. (180a7–180b5)
If Orpheus was less deserving of honor than Alkestis because he was “soft”
and played the lyre, that is, effeminate, then how does Alkestis fit into this
scheme?34 It would seem, according to Halperin’s argument, that, as a woman,
she would be the subordinate member in her relationship to Orpheus, for
paidika can refer to a female.35 But that clearly is not how Phaedrus is constru-
ing the relationship here (180b3) – in his scheme Alkestis is an erastes. Dover
suggests that we are meant to understand that Alkestis loves Admetos, but
that he does not return her affection.36 Although Phaedrus does not explicitly
correlate Alkestis with either pederastic role,37 when he contrasts Alkestis to
Achilles he implicitly characterizes her as an erastes.
Thus to assert the superiority of the devoted eromenos, Phaedrus has mar-
shaled as evidence two non-normative heterosexuals. Orpheus, whose story is
otherwise paradigmatic of romantic heterosexual love, here becomes a wom-
anly man in his desire for Eurydice, while Alkestis is the erastes of her hus-
band.38 To justify the somewhat problematic valorization of a beloved’s love
for his lover, he describes a scheme in which the object of one’s love deter-
mines one’s worth: Orpheus dies ignobly because he loves a woman; Alkestis
34 For the gendering of a luxurious lifestyle, which involves lyre playing and cultivating a
soft aesthetic, see Kurke (1992). See also Dover (1980: 94).
35 Kratinos 258, Eupolis 327. Dover suggests that both of these instances could be thought
of as humorous and therefore should not be taken as normative. See also Symp. 193b5,
where paidika refers to both male and female beloved.
36 Dover (1980: 93).
37 Plato does, however, describe women as räntev at 179b4.
38 Edmonds (2000) and Finkelberg (1997) both note a persistence of role reversals in the
text and identify this as a theme that resonates with the depiction of Socrates in the
text and with Diotima’s erotics.
72 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
is better than Orpheus because she loves a man; but Achilles is best since he is
a man who loves what is more divine, a man who loves a man – the erastes.
Thus, Phaedrus has used examples of deviant gender identification to jus-
tify his praise of the eromenos devoted to his erastes. To reevaluate pederastic
roles, he appeals to the superiority of the male through examples of figures
who don’t conform to gender norms (as he tells their stories). And yet his
version of pederastic eros still depends on a normative gender hierarchy. Fur-
thermore, by devaluing the feminine, Phaedrus has excluded the possibility of
procreation from his erotic world – his fantasy of a city of lovers and beloveds
proves to be founded on a strong association between eros and death, for
lovers are assessed in terms of their willingness to die.
Pausanias’ speech is next, and in it he draws more extreme distinctions
between men and women, elaborating negative associations with the feminine
that will adhere throughout the text. He notes that there are two Aphrodites
and therefore there must be two Erotes. One is Ouranian, and the other is
Pandemian. Pandemian Aphrodite was born of a woman, the child of Zeus
and Dione, and thus this type of eros is common, promiscuous, bodily, and
makes no distinction between the love of women and boys:
This is the (Eros) whom common men love. This sort desires first of all women no
less than boys, secondly they love the bodies more than souls of the people they love, and
furthermore they love the most foolish one possible, looking only toward getting the
deed done, indifferent as to whether they do it nobly or not. (181b1–181b6)
Ouranian love, in contrast, is born from the male only, and is disposed
toward what is male, since it is stronger and more sensible (181c6).39 He
39 Significantly, Pausanias suppresses the detail that she is the product of her father’s
castration (Hesiod, Theogony 176–200).
Gender Asymmetry and Pederasty 73
continues this line of argument, suggesting that the entire category of ped-
erasty might be thought of as originating from this type of eros:
ka© tiv n gno©h kaª n aÉt t paiderast© toÆv
e«likrinäv Ëp¼ toÅtou toÓ rwtov Þrmhmnouvá oÉ
gr räsi pa©dwn, llì peidn ¢dh rcwntai
noÓn scein, toÓto d plhsizei t geneiskein.
And someone might perceive in pederasty itself those who have been roused purely by
this love. For they do not love boys, but just when they begin to be sensible, and this is
near to when they start to grow a beard. (181c7–d3)
The assertion that pederasty might be considered Ouranian casts the rela-
tive values of male and female in stark relief: that which is purely male is
heavenly, and that which has any share of the female is vulgar, because it is
bodily and mindless. Thus he layers the binary of spiritual/worldly over that
of male/female.
According to Pausanias, devotees of Ouranian love desire boys only, and
only for virtuous reasons – they desire the souls of boys and want a long-term
relationship. This kind of love is not compatible with tyranny:
to±v gr barbroiv di tv turann©dav a«scr¼n
toÓt» ge, kaª ¤ ge filosof©a kaª ¡ filogumnast©a.
oÉ gr o²mai sumfrei to±v rcousi fronmata
megla gg©gnesqai tän rcomnwn, oÉd fil©av
«scurv kaª koinwn©avá Á d mlista file± t te
lla pnta kaª ¾ rwv mpoie±n.
Among barbarians this (love) is shameful, as well as philosophy and the love of
gymnastics, for I think it is not convenient for the rulers to engender lofty thoughts in
their subjects, nor strong friendships nor associations, which love and these other things
are especially wont to engender. (182b7–182c4)
Ouranian love inspires both the erastes and eromenos to virtue, and this is bene-
ficial to the city and to private individuals alike (185b5–6). Thus, in Pausanias’
scheme women are associated with a senseless physicality, promiscuity, and
the kind of eros that is not useful to the city. The female role in procreation is
denigrated – this is precisely what renders Pandemian Eros lesser than Oura-
nian. Pausanias’ dichotomy between two kinds of love, one of the body and
74 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
the other of the spirit, corresponds to the association of the feminine with the
material world that was seen earlier in the depiction of the aulos-player.
Careful scrutiny of Ouranian love, however, renders the distinction Pau-
sanias tries to establish between the two types of love less clear. Even in its
exalted form, the asymmetry of pederasty still obtains: the boy seeks educa-
tion while the lover wants to make love to the boy because of his attractive
soul. Pausanias notes that there are complex regulations regarding pederasty in
Athens (187a7–b1). While the behavior of the erastes is condoned and encour-
aged, eromenoi are not explicitly encouraged to gratify this behavior. However,
if the boy perceives virtue in his lover, then in Pausanias’ scheme, even if he is
misguided in this perception, there is no shame in gratifying his lover for this
reason. If the boy thinks his lover is virtuous, then he can gratify him with
the satisfaction that is exactly the same as what the unvirtuous, or Pandemian,
lover desires.
The relationship, as Pausanias describes it, is an asymmetrical exchange, and
Pausanias never explains why a lover of the Ouranian type would need phys-
ical gratification. Early in his speech he implied that the complicated nomos
concerning pederasty in Athens is viable because Athenians are good at speak-
ing (182b5–6). What leers behind Pausanias’ speech is a fast-talking lover who
can convince his beloved that he offers some virtue in return for sex.40
Just as in Phaedrus’ speech, the distinctions that Pausanias tries to draw are
not stable. In the end, it is not clear what makes the Ouranian lover better
than his Pandemian counterpart, if both achieve the same ends. The only
stable hierarchical distinction that inheres in Pausanias’ scheme is that male is
superordinate to female. This hierarchy allows Pausanias to envision a purely
homosocial order that is conducive to education, emulation, grand thoughts,
friendships, and associations – an order that is clearly in the interest of the city,
except that crucially, it comes at a high cost: an inability to reproduce itself.
Eryximakhos mentions neither women nor the polis in his description of
eros.41 But he is integral to the “narrative tease” of the text in that he paves the
way for Diotima’s eros, which transcends the political and is drawn toward
40 Bloom and Benardete (2001: 92) characterize the boy’s role as that of a prostitute:
“Some prostitutes do it for money, some do it to get ahead, and others do it for
wisdom.”
41 Rhodes (2003: 226–242) argues that Eryximakhos has been infected with a tyrannical
eros. He likens the control over Eros that the doctor claims to a form of Titanism.
Gender Asymmetry and Pederasty 75
abstract good. He also anticipates her in his claim that the mantic art is the
demiurge of the friendship between men and gods, since it has expertise about
human erotics insofar as they have bearing on what is right and holy (188c6–
d2). Although he appropriates Pausanias’ notion of a double eros, he main-
tains that both the Pandemian and Ouranian must be kept in balance.42
However, one might infer that there is a place for gender in Eryximakhos’
scheme as two opposing forces that need to be kept in harmony. Indeed, he
speaks in a scientific idiom where the interdependence of the masculine and
feminine was more likely to be expressed. He makes direct reference to Her-
akleitos’ idea of the unity of opposites when he mentions the harmony of the
bow and the lyre. For Herakleitos these opposites included male and female:
“Aristotle records that Herakleitos criticizes the poet who said, ‘Would that
strife might perish from among gods and men,’ for there would not be har-
mony without high and low notes, nor living things without female and male,
which are opposites.”43 Where Herakleitos makes an explicit articulation of
a more balanced view of the relationship between male and female, Eryxi-
makhos remains silent. Here again as in the two preceding speeches the issue
of reproduction is elided.
Until this point all of the hymns to Eros have exhibited either a disregard
for or outright denigration of women. These accounts seem to suggest that
eros is a binary power relationship, and both Phaedrus and Pausanius strug-
gle with the implicit asymmetry of power in pederasty. The political sphere
has been constructed as a hypermasculine realm in which women have no role
and that tends to inspire fantasies of a purely homosocial order. The first
three symposiasts dream of a world without women,44 but they are haunted
by the specter of gender as a dominant paradigm that permeates the way they
understand the dynamics of power. For these three, the feminine is something
to be ignored, derided, or excluded. In contrast, the second triad of speak-
ers, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates, embraces and includes the femi-
nine in different ways. Furthermore they eschew a construction of gender as a
binary – thus enabling themselves to envision eros as something other than a
zero-sum power struggle.
This first triad of speakers has mapped out a trajectory that conforms
to a conventional notion of human progress.45 Phaedrus began with myth-
ical imagery, Pausanius focused on civic institutions – government and the
military – and Eryximakhos concludes with images of balance and harmony
in the register of science. In the second triad of speakers, we will also watch
for a conceptual development in terms of content and form as each speaker
takes his turn.
45 This idea comes from Leslie Kurke, who notes in conversation that the Oresteia also
preserves a parallel progression from myth to civic institutions to science.
46 See Clay (1975: 238–261); Reckford (1974: 41–69).
Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Gender 77
As many men as are cutlets of the shared kind, which in fact at that time was called
the androgyne, they love women and many adulterers have been born from this breed,
and as many as are women love men, and adulteresses come from this line. As many
women as have been cut from the female (sphere), these pay no attention to men, but
rather are attracted to women, and hetairistriai come from this breed. As many as
are cuts of the male pursue masculine things, and as long as they are boys, since they
are cutlets of the male, they love men and they enjoy lying with and embracing men.
And these are the best of boys and youths, because they are the most manly by nature.
In fact, some say that these men are shameless, but they are lying. For they do not do
this out of shamelessness, rather it is out of boldness and manliness and masculinity
that they admire what is similar to themselves. And there is great evidence of this: for
when they come of age, this sort alone enters into politics. (191d6–192a6)
For unlike the woman, a boy does not share in the delights of sexual love with a man,
but sober, he looks on a man drunk under the influence of Aphrodite. (Xen. Symp.
8.22)
introduce the element of diversity.”57 The lust of the eromenos, the depiction
of pederasts as a divided whole who want nothing more than eternal physical
union, and the description of pederasts as lovers of the same all contribute to
paint a picture of a political world in which politicians are the euruproktoi that
Aristophanes calls them in Clouds.58
But, diverging from those who spoke before him, Aristophanes’ treatment
of sexual orientation is based on a kind of gender equity: women and men can
desire or be desired by women or men. In this way, his vision of eros contrasts
especially with the sex systems sketched out by Phaedrus and Pausanias. For
these the only worthy love object is male. But perhaps the most fascinating
and distinct facet of Aristophanes’ myth is that he conceives of a world that
has three genders – the all-male, all-female, and the mixed – where gender
functions as a sort of proto-sexual orientation. This vision troubles the notion
of gender as a binary by adding a third term, at the same time that it allows
Aristophanes to imagine an erotic attachment that is not hierarchical. Both of
these elements will be picked up by Socrates/Diotima and incorporated in a
speech that strives to disengage itself from everything that has been identified
as low in terms of gender and genre.
After Aristophanes, Agathon, a perennial eromenos, eulogizes Eros in his own
image. Agathon renders Eros forever young, pretty, and delicate. He is gentle,
brings peace, and transforms lovers into poets. In this speech the narcissism of
the earlier speakers is developed to full effect. The flowery Eros that Agathon
proposes is an image of the universal desired. The gender of this love is hard
to decipher. On the one hand he embodies many emphatically feminine char-
acteristics:
Since he is always touching in every way with his feet the softest of the softest, he is
necessarily the most gentle. And while he is the youngest and the gentlest, he is, in
addition, fluid in form. (195e7–106a2).
Her feet are soft: for she does not approach the threshold,
But she walks on the heads of men. (195d4–5)
While this quote refers to Ate, Agathon suggests that it is equally applicable
to Eros. His citation demonstrates a disregard not only for the gender of his
subject, but also for anything but the most superficial linguistic effect. For the
Ate that Homer describes is the destructive madness that possessed Agamem-
non to strip Achilles of his spear-prize, Briseis. Agathon substitutes flowery,
pretty, creative, just Eros for destructive, rash, death-dealing Ate. His appro-
priation of Homer’s description of Ate for Eros exemplifies the promiscuity
with which Agathon appropriates qualities he finds appealing without regard
for the structures that give them meaning.
Agathon’s lack of discrimination and his gender bending are entirely consis-
tent with Aristophanes’ depiction of him in Thesmophoriazousai.59 Here Euripi-
des’ kinsman is dumbfounded by Agathon’s performance of gender:
Where did this womanish man come from? What fatherland? What its cloak? What
this confusion of lifestyle? What does the lute have to chat about with the party dress?
Or the lyre with the hairnet? Wrestling oil and a bra?! Since they don’t go together!
And what’s shared between the mirror and sword? (Thesmo. 135–40)
For the speech reminded me of Gorgias, so simply did I suffer the experience Homer
described: I feared that Agathon in his speech, when he was finishing would send the
head of Gorgias the clever speaker against my speeches and turn me into stone in my
speechlessness. (198c1–5)
Socrates will distinguish himself from the other guests by introducing the
feminine in a more distinguished form – in the persona of Diotima. Socrates
does not merely describe a wise woman possessed of special knowledge of
erotics and the divine – he goes so far as to play the woman’s part. In the
following section we will analyze what advantage Socrates gains for his philo-
sophic eros by speaking through Diotima.
62 Halperin raises the possibility that Diotima is a stand-in for Aspasia because Aeschines
of Sphettos also wrote a lost dialogue espousing Socratic erotic doctrine named after
the courtesan: “in the course of taking over and transforming Aeschines’ erotic doctrine,
he also displaced and replaced Aspasia with Diotima.” Halperin (1990: 123–124). The
notion of the interchangeability of courtesan and priestess, which is manifest in the
strong association of Diotima and Aspasia in the later tradition (see Halperin 1990: 123
n.80), is the product of this discursive triad in which the courtesan and priestess are
extreme positions of femininity.
Socrates and the Feminine Continuum 87
of virtue. This dialectic strives toward that which has no share in the body and
does not participate at all in reproduction, or in the city. The feminine pro-
vides Socrates not only with childbirth imagery, but also with the vertical
matrix that he needs to describe the ascending steps (211b) of the philosopher,
which paradoxically leads away from the material world that is under the sign
of the feminine.65 In the formulation of Adriana Caverero, Socrates’ manip-
ulation of the theme of male maternity is “an act of expropriation carried
out through a woman’s voice, namely the voice of someone against whom the
expropriation is committed.”66
Diotima’s explicit references to the speeches that preceded Socrates’ have
elicited the reading that Diotima is a discursive mask that Socrates employs
that allows and validates the depiction of Eros that he wants to construct.67
The first and most explicit indication that Diotima is a fictional position from
which Socrates speaks occurs when Diotima refutes Aristophanes’ speech by
denying that eros is of the other half and asserting that there is nothing that
human beings love other than the good.68
Halperin has compellingly argued that by positing a female instructor of
erotics, Socrates has the purchase of the female sexual experience. Through
her he can wield the imagery of birth-giving with authority. “‘Diotima’ is a
trope for ‘Socrates.’”69 As opposed to the power and pleasure imbalance that
was thought to adhere in pederastic eros, heterosexual relations, he claims, were
conceived of as being at least as enjoyable for women as for men.70 Socrates
wants to appropriate reciprocal enjoyment for love between men, and the
notion of immortality attendant on procreation, for the process of acceding
toward the forms.71
65 Most (2005: 43): “it seems almost as though Plato wished men alone to take on the
sexual functions of both sexes so that women would at last become altogether dispens-
able and men would finally be able to live on, alone and happily, in a world without
women.”
66 Caverero (1995: 101).
67 Halperin (1990: 256–308).
68 “And there is a certain account, she said, according to which those who seek their own
halves are lovers”; 205e1–2.
69 Halperin (1990: 297).
70 See also Halperin (1986).
71 Reciprocity is an essential aspect of the pederasty described in the Phaedrus, as Halperin
(1986) argues, but the model presented in the Symposium is different.
Socrates and the Feminine Continuum 89
placed under the sign of the body and the female. The movement from the
aulos-player to the women within to Diotima represents the gradual suppres-
sion of the (female) body in favor of the abstract. Diotima is both an advocate
for the philosopher’s ascent and part of a discursive structure that (literally)
embodies it.72
Plato’s production of “woman” in the Symposium has three forms that are
closely related to one another: the first and lowest is material presence and
discursive absence as embodied in the auletris; the second and more elevated
is material and discursive absence that exists to gesture beyond the reach of
representation, as suggested by the women within; and finally, the third and
most lofty term is discursive presence and material absence as in the case of
Diotima.
The fragmented feminine allows Plato to represent an ascending hierarchy
that culminates in the disembodied Diotima, but also gestures beyond her. By
invoking woman as an absent presence, Plato can embrace the material and
reproductive capacity of the feminine – the body, birth, and regeneration – to
found his metaphysics on the exclusion of the feminine. While woman in the
figure of Diotima mediates between the material world and the metaphysical,
the pure presence that she describes, to which the philosopher aspires, exists
beyond the realm of the feminine. It always exists and never is born, it does
not appear like a face, or hands, and it has nothing of which the body takes
part.
73 The identification of Diotima as a priestess is bolstered by the fact that she uses the
language of initiation in her teaching, and she is said to be from Mantinea, which
conjures the Greek word for seer, mantis. Carnes (1998: 116).
74 Saxonhouse (1984: 20). On the other hand, the pro-Athenian role Mantinea played in
the Peloponnesian War and the consequences they endured because of it were referred
to in Aristophanes’ speech (193a1–3).
The City and the Philosopher 93
The uneasy fit between Diotima’s doctrine and the demands of political life
are most powerfully felt in the narrative of Socrates’ encounter with Alcibi-
ades. Alcibiades’ contribution to the evening is his story of a failed love for
Socrates in which he could not engage the philosopher in any form of ped-
erastic exchange. Since we are aware of Diotima’s dialectic model of pederasty,
which serves to divest the older partner of his responsibility for his beloved’s
behavior, we understand that Alcibiades is trapped in the asymmetric binary
that characterized conventional thinking about pederasty. In this way, the fail-
ure of Socrates’ and Alcibiades’ relationship confirms Diotima’s innovative
model – the two men are at different points on their ascent. At the same
time, Diotima’s position plays into an apologetic agenda, addressing specifi-
cally Socrates’ role in corrupting Alcibiades.75 As we learn in Alcibiades’ erotic
logos, Socrates rejects the asymmetrical exchange of wisdom for sex as a crass
devaluation of philosophical knowledge – a transaction that he compares to
“gold for bronze” (219a). Instead he opts for no exchange at all. Socrates never
assumed responsibility for inspiring Alcibiades to virtue, and at the same time,
Alcibiades was unable to absorb his teaching because he could not resist the
“honor from the many” (216b5).76
If we consider that Socrates and Alcibiades are on different points of an
erotic continuum, then a consideration of these two men in terms of the fem-
inine continuum might be in order. We have already noted the close associa-
tion between Socrates and Diotima. The suggestion that Diotima is a fiction
created for the purpose of the dialogue has prompted inquiry into the sig-
nificance of her name, which means Zeus-honor.77 Nussbaum has noticed
that the name “Diotima” finds a counterpart in “Timandra,” the name of a
famous courtesan with whom Alcibiades was associated.78 Timandra means
man-honor. If we assume that Diotima was a kenning on Timandra, then
Socrates stands in relation to Alcibiades as Diotima, the priestess, relates to a
courtesan.
In the narrative of Alcibiades’ death that Plutarch preserves, shortly before
Alcibiades was killed, he dreamed he was wearing Timandra’s clothes, that she
held his head and put makeup on his face (Alc. 39). Socrates’ interaction with
Diotima has been conceived of as analogous to this type of association: “Here,
then Socrates too, takes a mistress: a priestess instead of a courtesan, a woman
who prefers the intercourse of the pure mind to the pleasures of the body,
who honors (or is honored by) the divine rather than the merely human.”79
The alignment of Alcibiades with physical lust is emblematized by the fact
that when he interrupts the symposium, he comes supported by a flute-girl
(212d6).
When Alcibades realizes that Socrates is at Agathon’s house, he launches
into a narrative about their relationship. Alcibades’ account is modeled on the
satyr play, a form that has been described as a negotiation between comedy
and tragedy.80 Alcibiades projects an image of Socrates that is filled with con-
crete details and paints a picture of a particular individual.81 Socrates’ unique-
ness demands that he describe him through images (215a5): First he compares
him to a sculpture of a Silenus – a woodland demigod that was part human
and part beast, often drunk. These sculptures opened up and had fascinat-
ing images of gods inside them. Then he compares him to Marsyas, a satyr,
another liminal figure who played the flute. He likens his music to the Sirens’
song. He then describes Socrates wrestling with him, fighting beside him, and
fighting together on a military expedition. This Socrates could endure depriva-
tion as well as he could enjoy a feast. He could drink as much as anyone, with-
out getting drunk. Alcibiades’ description “shows us what Diotima could only
abstractly tell: what a human life starts to look like as one makes the ascent.”82
Alcibiades’ relationship with this more tangible Socrates was clearly a fail-
ure. When Alcibiades’ beauty did not seduce Socrates, Alcibiades took on
the role of lover, tried to lure Socrates into a physical pederastic relationship,
and was again rebuffed. Since Alcibiades’ primary erotic engagement is with
the Athenian people (in a paranomic relationship that blurs the boundary
between eromenos and erastes),83 he cannot find his way out of the power dynam-
ics of the pederastic relationship. He is capable of recognizing the appeal of
philosophic wisdom, but unable to make the ascent toward the Forms. He is
attracted by the glimpse he has had of philosophy, yet it troubles and confuses
him, because of his unwillingness to give up the asymmetrical erotic dynamics
that bind him to the demos:84
gÜ d toÓton m»non a«scÅnomai. sÅnoida gr
maut ntilgein mn oÉ dunamn Þv oÉ de±
poie±n oÕtov keleÅei, peidn d plqw, ¡tthmn
tv timv tv Ëp¼ tän pollän. drapeteÅw oÔn
aÉt¼n kaª feÅgw, kaª Âtan dw, a«scÅnomai t
Þmologhmna. kaª pollkiv mn ¡dwv n doimi
aÉt¼n m Ànta n nqrÛpoivá e« d’aÔ toÓto gnoito,
eÔ o²da Âti polÆ me±zon n cqo©mhn, ãste oÉk cw
Âti crswmai toÅt t nqrÛp .
I feel shame before this man alone. For I know that I cannot contradict him, (saying)
that I should not do what he commands, but when I go away, I am overcome by
honor from the people. Therefore I am a runaway slave and I flee him, and when I
see him I feel shame about the things we have agreed upon. Frequently I would gladly
see him not existing among men. But, if this were the case, I know that I would feel
much more pain, so that I do not know how to deal with this man. (216b2–c3)
The presence of the auletris, the material emphasis in Alcibiades’ speech, the
way his entrance brings the physical context of the symposium back to the fore
of the narrative, all combine to depict Alcibiades as stuck at the beginning of
philosophical eros. In other terms, he is unable to move from a horizontal to
a vertical model of eros.
The colorful, loud, drunken interruption of Alcibiades and his entourage
provides Plato the opportunity to portray an embodied experience of Eros.
84 Nussbaum has argued that the spate of interest in this symposium has to do with Alcib-
iades. In 404 when Theramenes’ oligarchy was on the verge of collapse and the more
extreme Thirty were poised to take over, the disempowered democratic majority expe-
rienced a swell of longing for Alcibiades as their only possible champion. Nussbaum
thus posits that the conversation between Apollodorus and Glaukon is “set very shortly
before the murder of Alcibiades, between a neutral or sympathetic person and one who
may be linked with his murderers.” The written version, though, is the one repeated two
days later to the anonymous interlocutor. Perhaps in the interval, Nussbaum suggests,
Alcibiades has been murdered in Phrygia. Nussbaum (1986: 170).
96 Why Is Diotima a Priestess?
85 Wohl (2002: 161–169) also sees the depiction of Alcibiades in relation to Socratic orthos
eros as designed to acquit Socrates of responsibility for Alcibiades’ treacherous political
behavior.
The City and the Philosopher 97
98
Introduction 99
But it seems to me that not only the deeds of elite men that are done seriously but also
those done in the spirit of play are worth remembering. I want to present an
experience of mine that gives me this conviction. (1.1)5
I see that you love not someone who revels in luxury nor is spoilt by effeminacy but
who displays to all his strength, fortitutde, manliness, and moderation. (8.8)
9 Cartledge (1993: 70) describes andreia as the “peculiar virtue and emotion of war.”
10 See Dover (1989: 73–81).
11 It is also found in Xen. Cyr. 8.8.15 and Pl. Alc. 1.122.
12 Kurke (1992: 97–120).
The Spectacle of the Symposium 103
13 For a discussion of the extraordinary expense of entering a chariot in the games see
Davies (1981: 99 ff ).
14 For an expression of chariot racing as an event limited to the extremely wealthy see
Isokrates Peri Zeugous, 32–35; cf. Alcibiades’ incredible set of victories at the Olympic
games in 416 (Thuc. 6.16.2).
104 Bringing the Polis Home
even seem a somewhat aggressive invitation.15 Kallias’ invitation not only rep-
resents the host as ostentatious and overly concerned with display but also
suggests suppressed hostilities among the celebrants that Kallias hosts at his
house.
Socrates’ response to Kallias’ invitation reveals the source of tension under-
lying the interaction of these two groups:
You always mock us, looking down at us because while you have given a lot of money
to Protagoras and Gorgias and Prodikos and many others for wisdom, you see that
we, in contrast, are some kind of self-employed philosophy workers. (1.5)
Socrates projects condescension onto Kallias, because he has paid for his wis-
dom, where his group has pursued philosophy on their own. Indeed, Kallias
was said to have spent more money on sophists than everyone else combined.16
Difference of opinion about the role of economics in education, however,
is not the only issue that contributes to a hostile undercurrent to this cele-
bratory event. The real time that elapsed between the date the banquet is
set, 421 BCE,17 and the publication of its representation approximately forty
years later18 revealed a number of fatal enmities among the guests: Lykon
was among those who accused Socrates19 and condemned him to death; both
Autolykos20 and Nikeratos21 were killed by the Thirty, in whose number,
15 For all of these connotations see L.S.J., s. v. In the assertion that nr alone always
means a man in the prime of his life, especially a warrior, Xenophon’s Symposium (4.17)
is specifically cited.
16 Pl. Ap. 20a; cf. Pl. Cr. 391b.
17 Todd (1992: 531).
18 Ath. Deipn. v.216d–217b.
19 Plato’s Ap.
20 Higgins (1977: 17).
21 Nikeratos is introduced as an associate of Kallias’, who was tagging along (sune©peto)
after the horse races.
The Spectacle of the Symposium 105
Right away then, someone who perceived the situation would have realized that beauty
is naturally a kingly thing, especially when someone possesses it together with modesty
and moderation, as Autolykos did at that time. First, just as when a light appears in
22 Xenophon, Hell., 2.3.2; 2.3.39; 2.4.19. See also Huss (1999) who contends that this genial
event is a part of the construction of the Aurea Aetas Socratica. He also sees this text as
apologetic.
23 nnosav tiv comes from Aristeides’ text, going against manuscripts that read just
nnosav.
106 Bringing the Polis Home
the night, it draws the eyes of all, so even then the beauty of Autolykos drew the eyes
of everyone toward him. Next, no one of those looking did not experience something
in his soul because of him: some became very quiet, while others assumed some kind of
a pose. Now, all of those who are possessed by a god seem worth looking at; but those
who are possessed by other gods look more fierce and sound more frightening and have
a very violent bearing, while those who are inspired by chaste Eros have a friendly
look in their eyes and make their voice very gentle and carry themselves in the most
liberal way. Since Kallias was doing these things because of Eros, he was a sight to be
seen for those initiated by this god. (1.8–10)
The text confronts the reader with a static tableau of homoerotic desire.
Autolykos is emphatically represented as an object to be seen. The compari-
son of the young man to the light in the sky constructs him almost too obvi-
ously as a spectacle, at the same time that it suggests the ephemeral quality of
youthful beauty. As a socially correct object of the pederastic gaze, Autolykos
does not return the look, but modestly casts his eyes down, increasing his
erotic allure and reinforcing his own status as object. As Deborah Steiner
says, “within the realm of visual representation, depicting a body in a man-
ner that emphasizes its ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ which codes its appearance for
strong visual and erotic impact, turns that body from subject into spectacle,
and constructs it as the passive and powerless object of the unseen viewer’s
gaze.”24 Autolykos’ role as the object of his admirers’ desire is reinforced by
the dynamics of the gaze.
As Xenophon depicts it, the effect of Autolykos’ beauty is more complex
than merely creating a subject/object relationship between the viewer and the
spectacle. Whoever looks upon the beauty of Autolykos finds himself in the
thrall of a chaste Eros, who functions in the manner of a kindly gorgon.25 Each
onlooker is suspended in an atmosphere of aesthetic admiration and himself
24 Steiner (1998: 123–149). Sartre (1963: 49) articulates the power relations between spec-
tator and the bearer of the gaze in a story about Jean Genet when he was caught by an
adult who calls him a thief, as he stands with his hand in a drawer: “Pinned by a look, a
butterfly pinned to a cork, he is naked, everyone can see him and spit at him. The gaze
of the adults is a constituent power which has transformed him into a constituted nature.”
See also Jay’s explication of Sartre’s phenomenology of vision. Jay (1993: 287–298) to
whom I owe this quote.
25 Xenophon plants the notion of the gorgon in his use of the word gorg»teroi to
describe the effect of gods other than Eros on a person’s appearance. Later Socrates
The Spectacle of the Symposium 107
compares Kharmides’ erotic stare at Kleinias with that of those who look at gorgons
(4.24). For a discussion of gorgons and their iconography see Frontisi-DuCroix (1989:
151–165).
26 It is interesting that the visual focus in this passage begins with Autolykos and ends
with Kallias. I will return to this passage in a discussion of Socrates’ paideia, offering an
interpretation of the description of Kallias as xioqatov.
27 The recurrent cultural identification of these two roles has been established and dis-
cussed recently by Steiner (1998).
108 Bringing the Polis Home
The factors that determine this totally static eros reside in the overdeter-
mined objectification of Autolykos. As a young man on the verge of becom-
ing a member of a polis that puts a premium on self-mastery, but also practices
pederasty, Autolykos finds himself in the grip of a double bind. As a would-be
citizen of Athens, Autolykos must identify himself as an actor, speaker, and
master, and his athletic victory underscores the depiction of him as intensely
active and manly, but pederastic practices assign him a role that is receptive,
silent, and subjective.28 Modesty demands that he not return the look of his
admirers. The eros of the symposiasts must not be reciprocated. Like admira-
tion for a king, these erotics move in one direction only. Men admire him,
but propriety demands that he not return the gaze. The two forces that pull
Autolykos in different directions, the polis, and the pederastic institution as
embodied in the symposium, are represented by the two corporate gazes that
converge on him. In the following I will return to the politics of elite eros as
they are raised in the text.
In a discussion of the Memorabilia, Simon Goldhill has noted the politi-
cal implications of spectacle in classical Athens. The ekklesia and boule both
required that the citizens gather as spectators and then reach a collective
judgment based on debate. Goldhill suggests that this judgmental citizen gaze
extended into the cultural realm in the institutions of the theater,29 athletic
events, and the imperial architectural program. He concludes that
The democratic city of Athens – its institutions and practices – constituted a
particular culture of viewing, in which the roles, statuses, positions of the democratic
actors were constantly being structured in and through the gaze of citizens. This
collective, participatory audience is a fundamental element of the democratic polis – a
fundamental aspect of what constitutes public life.30
The emphasis Xenophon places on spectacle in his Symposium serves to extend
the dynamics at work in the homology of victor and eromenos discussed above.
The elite gathering of the symposium is presented on a continuum with the
28 Some of the most influential discussions of this cultural construct can be found in
the following: Dover (1989: 102–103); Foucault (1990: 220–225); Golden (1984: 308–324,
esp. pp. 313–315); Halperin (1989: 88–12); Winkler (1990: 171–210).
29 For a formulation of the tragic theater as a place where the democratic city puts itself
on trial see Vernant and Vidal-Naquet (1969: 107–108).
30 Goldhill (1998: 108).
The Spectacle of the Symposium 109
civic “culture of viewing.” The analogy that is thereby made between demo-
cratic and elite culture draws attention to a tension central to the institution
of the symposium in a democratic context. As Oswyn Murray has noted, the
symposium served as an anti-city, a place where a homogeneous elite group
could gather and consolidate their views and power.31 By presenting the sym-
posium as something to be seen, Xenophon situates this institution within the
democratic culture of viewing, which he does, as I will argue shortly, to divest
the elite gathering of its problematic, anti-civic associations.
A number of scholars have remarked on the importance of the spectacle in
Xenophon’s writings.32 Indeed, the technique of assimilating two terms that
Athenian culture construed in a clearly oppositional relationship by means of
the metaphor of public spectacle has been noted elsewhere in the Xenophontic
corpus: Sheila Murnaghan has argued that Xenophon’s Oikonomikos is struc-
tured around an assimilation of oikos and polis achieved in part through the
metaphors of civic performance.33 She suggests that Xenophon attempts to
dissolve the tension between the egalitarian city and private property by assim-
ilating the ideal household to the ideal city. Xenophon’s merging of these
opposing terms, she suggests, is a response to a developing awareness of con-
flicting interests between the public and private spheres. A by-product of this
analogy is that Ischomachos’ wife, whose domain is the oikos, becomes closely
identified with her husband, who is versed in civic arts. In the Oikonomikos,
then, the feminine and private property – two problematic terms of oppo-
sitions that occupied a central place in the Athenian cultural imagination –
lose their charge when the distinction between them and their better half is
obliterated. To depict the aristocratic household and its attributes as open,
its contents visible, Xenophon repeatedly compares the affairs of the house
with performances and spectacles.34 In his description of the household, he
invokes a circular chorus (8.20), comedy (3.7), a public trial (11.22–25), and
athletic contests and horse racing (7.9) as points of comparison and analogy.35
ENTERTAINMENT
As I suggested above, the entertainment that Kallias has hired provides a
much-needed diversion for his guests. The performances serve to raise issues
that are refracted and reflected, imitated and rejected by the elite spectacle
of the symposium. In this section the hired performances bring to the table
the notion of monetary exchange, which provokes a discussion of the role of
money in the construction of elite masculine identity. The entertainers also
come to figure relationships that are more abstractly present among the sym-
posiasts.
Xenophon introduces the entertainers by means of a euphemistic circum-
locution:
36 See also Mem. 3.4.12, 3.6.14, 3.9.10–11. For a discussion of the rule of the household as it
relates to rule of the state see Stevens (1994: 209).
Entertainment 111
40 My understanding of the way ritual can be manipulated and operated through recipro-
cal consent depends on Connor (1987, 40–50).
41 Kurke (1990: 268) describes a sympotic strategy of identification and difference with
the hetaira/porne:
The opposition of hetaira and porne operates within a complex network of social,
economic, and political differentiation of middling and elitist traditions, whereby
the aristocratic symposium invents the hetaira to shield itself from the public sphere,
which it figures and traduces through the obscenity of the porne. Egalitarian
discourse, in contrast (at least by the fourth century), can embrace precisely what
the aristocratic texts revile, celebrating the universal availability of pornai as an
emblem and badge of democracy. Yet even within the elitist construction, the
representational category of the hetaira seems to involve its makers in an ideological
double bind. Her sexual role at the symposium depends on difference and pulls
against her complete assimilation to the male symposiasts. And if the category is
created originally to constitute a pristine sympotic space, the pressures and anxieties
of male participants occasionally refashion her as porne, with all the disembedded
economics attendant on that category. Of necessity then, the trafficking of the
Entertainment 113
Athenian people; they are represented at first in the terms of the porne, and
then in the discourse of the hetaira. For Xenophon to invite the polis into his
symposium, he effects a third transition, which is to represent the hetaira in the
idiom of civic ritual.
The first performance begins after the postprandial libation and hymn. The
Syracusan arrives with his troupe. The act is a song – the performance of
which ultimately provokes a discussion of gender and class. Immediately after
the number is finished and Socrates compliments Kallias on the meal and
the show, Kallias, intending to provide his guest with an extravaganza for the
senses, suggests that perfume be brought in to extend the pleasure. He thus
situates the entertainers on a continuum of sensual consumer goods, some-
where between food and bottled scents – products procured at the market-
place that provide short-term pleasure. The trajectory on which Kallias locates
the entertainers puts them squarely in the discursive category of pornoi, while it
simultaneously contributes to the association of Kallias with short-term, cash
transactions.
Socrates objects strongly to Kallias’ suggestion. He opposes the introduc-
tion of perfume first because it is the province of women. He goes on to de-
nounce its use altogether. Young brides don’t need perfume, he says, because
they are naturally redolent of a sweet smell. Among men, perfume blurs class
distinctions:
kaª gr d mÅr mn ¾ leiymenov kaª doÓlov kaª
leÅqerov eÉqÆv pav Âmoion Àzei· a¬ d’ p¼ tän
leuqer©wn m»cqwn ½smaª pithdeumtwn te
präton crhstän kaª cr»nou polloÓ dontai, e«
mllousin ¡de±a© te kaª leuqrioi sesqai.
For indeed, when a man has anointed himself with perfume, straightaway both slave
and free man smell entirely the same, but those smells from a free man’s toils
primarily demand fine pursuits and those undertaken over a long time, if they are to
be sweet and redolent of freedom. (2.4)
For Socrates, each person is so deeply imbricated in his or her social posi-
tion that the aroma of gender and status emanates from the individual’s pores.
In a rejection of perfume’s artifice, Socrates suggests that people are natu-
rally redolent of social position and gender: without perfume women smell
like women, men smell like men, and slaves smell like slaves. The categories
he evokes describe three possible degrees of civic involvement for Athenians:
free men were full participants, women were involved in the production of
citizens, but did not participate directly in the polis, while slaves were totally
excluded.
Moving on from the assumption of the natural cathexis of individual with
social role, the conversation goes on to address the aspects of masculinity and
class that can be taught. In response to Socrates’ assertion that the sweet-
est body odor comes from socially appropriate activities, Lykon, Autolykos’
father, inquires how he should smell, since he is beyond the age when it is
appropriate to exercise in the gymnasia. Socrates responds:
personal gain and “in periods of social and economic upheaval were able to
acquire great wealth, status, and ultimately political power.” Their accumula-
tion of wealth and power led to an erosion of the social order under which
the good (agathoi, kaloi, esthloi) were rich and the bad (kakoi) were poor.42 In
Socrates’ scheme, however, status symbols that can be bought, like perfume
or education, confuse not class distinctions as in the Theognidean corpus, but
the gender and class distinctions that define civic participation.
Although Socrates’ assertion that kalokagathia cannot be bought from a mer-
chant is a joke, it points to a less trivial issue – the tension between the
Sophists and the Socratics. This tension is broadly thematized throughout
the text by persistent and somewhat incongruous allusions to monetary value.
What is at stake here is what is the role of economics in pedegogy and ped-
erasty. Socrates’ response to Kallias’ call for perfume constitutes a subtle case
against the sale of education. Objects that can be bought, like perfume, can
wreak havoc with the social order. The market creates a kind of social ran-
domness: it allows an old man to smell like a young bride, and perhaps by
analogy, Kallias to think that he is wise.43
Thus far in the text, the celebrants’ discussion has addressed the question
of whether or not kalokagathia is something that can be taught, an issue that
(an extremely congenial) Socrates suggests they reserve for later, since it is
a debatable (mf©logon) matter. The next act follows. The female acrobat
juggles twelve hoops in the air to the accompaniment of the flute. This feat
prompts Socrates to remark:
Woman’s nature is not at all worse than man’s, except what it lacks in judgment and
strength. So, if any of you has a wife, let him confidently teach her whatever he would
like to make use of her knowing. (2.9)
44 Ar. Rh 1375a29.
Entertainment 117
45 Hobden (2005) argues that Xenophon’s purpose here is to create a dramatic narrative
that will stimulate readers to deliberative reflection.
118 Bringing the Polis Home
46 Fehr (1990: 190) and plate 15a, which depicts a dancer displaying his phallus with legs
spread wide open.
47 See Bartlett (1996: 176).
Elite Display 119
I know that we think we are much better than these people are. Is it not then a shame
if we do not try to render some service or to delight one another while we are together?
(3.2)
The hired entertainment is parallel to, but lower than, the exhibition of the
symposium. In the next section I will discuss elite display, showing how it
picks up and develops the economic issues raised by the presence of the hired
performers.
ELITE DISPLAY
When Socrates asks Kallias to redeem the promise he made when he invited
the Socratics to his house – to make a display of his wisdom – Kallias replies
that he will do this if all of the guests join him. Since the terms of the discus-
sion seem to be shifting, it is important to read the articulation of the sym-
posiasts’ pastime closely. Kallias says: kaª pide©xw ge, fh, n kaª Ëme±v
pantev e«v mson frhte  ti kastov p©stasqe gaq»n (I will make a
display if you all will bring into the middle what each one of you knows that is
good; 3.3). In his use of e«v mson, Kallias introduces elite displays of wisdom
couched in language freighted with political significance, once again making
120 Bringing the Polis Home
the uneasy alignment of the polis with the institution of the symposium.48
Furthermore, his description of these elite performances with the verb pi-
de©xw has interesting resonances. Epideictic speeches refer to public funeral
orations,49 as well as to private speeches written as examples of oratorical elo-
quence intended to be read silently or to a small elite audience.50 Generally
speaking they are concerned with praise or blame. In the following speeches,
Xenophon seems to be evoking the full potential of the genre; each man
intends his speech to redound to his own glory, yet each exposes his falli-
bility in the process, thus evoking the genre’s capacity for both encomium and
invective. Although Kallias uses the word pide©xw ostensibly to denote a
display of eloquence, its association with the funeral oration serves as a
reminder of the political deaths so many of the participants had suffered when
the text was written.
Socrates responds to Kallias with a slight rephrasing of his suggestion, say-
ing that no one would object to saying  ti kastov ¡ge±tai ple©stou
xion p©stasqai (what each one thinks he knows that is most valuable,
3.3). Kallias says that he is able to make men better (3.4), which becomes a
standard for judging each man’s ability. When asked to explain he replies:
ìEpeidn to©nun kaª Ëmän kastov ep  ti
Ýflimon cei, t»te kgÜ oÉ fqonsw e«pe±n tn
tcnhn diì ¨v toÓto pergzomai.
Well then, when each of you says what beneficial skill he knows, then I shall not
begrudge to say the skill through which I get this result. (3.5)
The knowledge Kallias and Socrates originally spoke of has now become a
skill, and the standard is that it be Ýflimon. In a discussion of the verb to
which this adjective is related (Ýfele±sqai), John Stevens says it is “a neutral
48 I am not suggesting that e«v mson is a by-word for democracy, rather that in Athens in
the fifth century the word had a legible association with egalitarian discourse. Morris
(1996: 19–48).
49 For the particularly Athenian character of the funeral oration, see Loraux (1986: 1 ff.).
See also Burgess (1902).
50 Ober (1989: 47). According to Aristotle these speeches were addressed to spectators
concerned with the speaker’s facility in demonstrating that which is honorable or dis-
graceful. The genre has subdivisions: panegyric, encomium, invective, and funeral ora-
tion. Ar. Rh. 1358b2 ff. See also Kennedy (1963: 152–202).
Elite Display 121
term that can apply to things or to people. When used to describe how one
benefits from a thing it refers to profit and when used of benefit to people
it refers to good service.”51 Goldhill argues that Xenophon uses Ýflimov to
mean useful to the city in particular.52
The question is changed again as it is put to other guests, becoming pª
po© pistm mga frone±v (of what knowledge are you most proud?;
3.5) in the case of Nikeratos. It is put to Kritoboulos, Antisthenes, Kharmides,
Socrates, Lykon, and Autolykos as pª t©ni mga/mgiston frone±v (of
what are you most proud?; 3.7–12). Finally Nikeratos asks the somber Her-
mogenes pª t©ni mlista gll (on what do you stake your reputation?;
3.14).
The exact question put to each participant changes. Moreover, the symposi-
asts’ responses indicate a variety of interpretations at play. Although everyone
addresses themselves to the issue of value, some are far more concerned with
profit than political service, and only Socrates, Nikeratos, and Kallias seem
to be responding to the question “of what art (that can make men better)
are you proud?”53 The significantly divergent question that Nikeratos puts
to Hermogenes, “in what do you set store?” is perhaps an acknowledgment
of Hermogenes’ role at this symposium as wet blanket, for gllomai is a
strongly moral word.
In a discussion of the sources of the priamel, Anne Pippin Burnett refers to
a traditional sympotic game that was popular in the archaic period:
A speaker was challenged to name the best, the first, the strongest, the sweetest item in
a given category, and he responded with an ordered sequence that showed off his
command of erudite information. . . . The final term had to be given a special epithet
in order to fix and enhance its value, but even so these first comparative lists could be
made by almost any dolt, and so they were replaced in sophisticated circles by a
sharper game. With this, the true priamel, a witty man could distinguish himself, for,
by breaking out of the category or shifting the grounds of evaluation he might establish
an unexpected item in the final seat of superiority.
the form of cultural capital. But later on in the conversation Nikeratos admits
that what he really learned from Homer is a delight in counting, which in turn
makes him yearn for vast riches.
Kritoboulos, who is proud of his beauty, takes his turn next. Appealing to
an idealized version of pederastic discourse that figures this erotic relation-
ship as the exchange of enjoyment of the eromenos’ beauty for the erastes’ wis-
dom, he argues that his beauty can influence men toward virtue.58 His pride in
his looks prompts Socrates to call for a beauty contest between Kritoboulos
and Socrates where Socrates proves that although his ugly features are more
serviceable, they are not more beautiful. Finally he emphasizes Kritoboulos’
mercenary employment of his beauty when he describes it as money (t¼ s¼n
rgÅrion).59 Kharmides ironically stakes his value on his poverty, a claim
that Antisthenes then inverts, saying he is proud of his wealth, though as it
turns out, he has given up his possessions to consort freely with Socrates.
Next, Hermogenes explains the basis for his pride: Epª f©lwn . . . ret
kaª dunmei, kaª Âti toioÓtoi Àntev moÓ pimlontai (contained by the
excellence and power of my friends, and that being such they look after me;
3.14). When he defends his claim (4.46–49), it turns out that his friends are the
gods, whom he cultivates with thrifty services (eÉteläv). Like Antisthenes,
Hermogenes uses the tactic of casting the value he places in the symbolic realm
in language that conforms to the economic standard of value set by the host.
Both Philip and the Syracusan are brought into the discussion (4.50–55).
Philip says he is proud of being a jester, since people want him around only
when they are happy, and the Syracusan says he bases his pride on the fools
who come to see his entertainment. Neither makes any attempt to disguise the
fact that his pride is linked to his own profit.
Autolykos’ and his father Lykon’s reciprocal pride in one another needs no
explaining. Their silence is interesting: the love between a father and son is
beyond the realm of evaluation. Its usefulness to the city goes without say-
ing. Through this depiction it occupies the position of the ultimate symbolic
capital – so valuable it need not be quantified. Despite the reticence of his
guests, however, Kallias feels no qualms about putting a price on this father-
son relationship. When Autolykos announces his pride in his father, Kallias
proclaims that Lykon is the richest of men: ll lanqnei se Âti oÉk n
dxaio t basilwv crmata ntª toÓ u¬oÓ; (Don’t you know that you
would not exchange the wealth of the king in return for your son?; 3.13). This
question adds to the characterization of Kallias as oriented toward real capi-
tal: he ascribes a money value to a type of symbolic capital that everyone else
agrees exceeds economic evaluation.
It remains for Socrates to defend his pride that he claims is laid in the
skill of mastropeia. When he originally announced his pride in this trade, all
the other guests laughed, to which Socrates responded that he could make a
lot of money by pursuing this disreputable profession. Although Socrates will
explain his claim in his own terms, the common understanding of the term –
to make one person sexually attractive to another – has immediate significance
in regard to the reputations of the host and his beloved that would develop
between the fictive setting of the text and its publication date. Both Kallias
and Autolykos were mocked by their contemporaries for their engagement in
prostitution. Kallias had a reputation for debauchery that the comic poets and
the scholiasts preserve: Aristophanes designates Kallias with the patronymic
ëIppob©nou (the son of horse fucker; Frogs 429) In Birds (284) he is depicted
as a bird plucked by prosecutors and women. A scholiast explains this line,
saying that Kallias was known for his whoremongering, pornokop©an, and
the amount of money he spent on adultery.60 He is derided for throwing his
inheritance away (Ekkl. 810),61 and a scholiast comments,
Kallias was a man born rich who squandered his wealth on prostitutes and lived for
the rest of his life in poverty. (Sch. Ar. Ekkl. 810)
Eupolis’ play Kolakes, or Flatterers, was set at the house of Kallias, indicating
that he was as ready to sell affection as he was to buy it. Autolykos seems
to have had enough of a reputation for sexual license to merit some comic
mention: Athenaios records that in the archonship of Aristion (421/420 BCE)
Eupolis satirized (cleuzei) the victory of Autolykos. Pollux cites the use of
porneusqai in the same comedy, perhaps referring to the behavior of the
boy whom Xenophon represents here as modest and chaste.62 The Etymologicum
Magnum makes reference to the Autolykos in an entry for the word eÉtrsiov,
which comes from the verb tetrsqai, meaning to be bored through, in the
obscene sense, noting that Eupolis applied it to Autolykos. Dover interprets
Eutresios as meaning “easily penetrated,” and speculates on the wide disparity
between Xenophon’s depiction of Kallias and Autolykos’ relationship and the
way it is represented in comedy:
62 The fragments of a satyr play titled Autolykos are also ascribed to Euripides, the largest
fragment of which is a tirade against athletes, because of their uselessness to the city:
Nauck (1989: fr. 282).
63 Dover (1989: 147).
126 Bringing the Polis Home
Thus far, all of the sympotic performances have existed purely on the surface.
Whether they be music or dance, death-defying acrobatic stunts, or the imita-
tion of a hoop or a drinking cup, the entertainment has provided a momentary
pleasure or thrill that fades with the passing of the act. Each performance has
been discrete, and totally artificial, forging no connections between the actors
and the audience.
71 Beckerman (1970: 16–17).
130 Bringing the Polis Home
Right away, when Ariadne heard (the music) she acted so that everyone might know
that she was delighted to hear it. And although she stayed seated, and did not stand up,
it was clear that she sat still with difficulty. Then, when Dionysos looked at her, he
danced toward her and in a most loving way sat on her lap, embraced and kissed her.
She seemed like a modest maiden, but nevertheless returned his embrace lovingly. As
the symposiasts watched, they clapped and cried out “Again.” After Dionysos stood
up and helped Ariadne up with him there was presented the pose of lovers kissing and
caressing one another. The audience saw a truly beautiful Dionysos and beautiful
Ariadne not pretending but truly kissing with their mouths, and everyone watching
was lifted aloft on wings. Then they heard Dionysos asking her if she loved him, and
she promised that she did in such a way that not only Dionysos but also all those
present would swear that the boy and the girl were in love. For they seemed not as if
they had been taught the poses, but as if they were allowed to do what they had long
desired. Finally, as the symposiasts looked on them embracing one another and going
off as if to the marriage bed, those who were unmarried swore that they would get
married, and those who were married mounted their horses and rode off toward their
wives, so that they might chance upon them. As for Socrates and the others who stayed
behind, they went out to take a walk with Kallias joining Lykon and his son. (9.3–7)
This final performance gives full play to the erotics of the gaze. The audi-
ence perceives the desire of the actors as they look at each other from within
the position of their roles: Dionysos approaches Ariadne as if he were her
lover (ãsper n e tiv) and she is like a modest maiden (¡ d ì a«doumn
mn kei). When the pretense of performance dissolves in their standing
embrace, and they finally act on their mutual desire, the symposiasts witness
an epiphany of Dionysos. There is a total cathexis of the actors and their roles
that completely engages the audience. When Dionysos asks Ariadne if she
loves him, the audience perceives the love of the actors (¡ pa±v and ¾ pa±v).
The complementarity of physical attraction and its divine representation is an
erotically motivating sight for the symposiasts. They all desire to live the rep-
resentation and go home to their wives, or if they don’t have one, swear to get
one. Thus, the subject–object dynamics implied by spectacle are diminished –
the show seems to depict subject positions the audience members desire to, or
already, inhabit.
Unlike the girl’s previous performance in which she represented what
Socrates implied was the dull fact of materiality, a hoop or a clay pot, here, in
132 Bringing the Polis Home
the person of Ariadne, Dionysos’ bride, she moves toward the divine realm.
She makes this ascent by acting out her emotions – the performance is a
representation of the truth. Socrates’ injection of criv into the scene of the
hired entertainers dispels the objectification of the performers, replacing it
with a vision of perfect reciprocity. The axis of heterosexual erotics that is
thus inscribed in the sequence of the performances moves from the material
world through heterosexual reciprocity toward immortality.
The language of this scene lays heavy emphasis on mutuality. Indeed, forms
of lllwn, a pronoun that encapsulates the notion of reciprocity, occur
three times. The girl responds in kind to the boy’s advances (ntiperielm-
banen), and her actions reflect his (nistmenov sunansthse). The
mutual feelings they share emanate outward to the audience; when the girl
swears her love (pomnuoÅshv), the audience swears that their love is real
(sunom»sai). This performance lacks any suggestion of artifice (kesan
gr oÉ dedidagmnoiv t scmata ll ì feimnoiv prttein plai
peqÅmoun) (For they seemed not as if they had been taught all the poses,
but as if they were allowed to do what they had long desired); it seems just
the opposite of Beckerman’s constructed activity.
By incorporating Socrates’ suggestions into their performance, the troupe
has migrated from the realm of the short-term, artificial, moneyed transaction
to the elite world of reciprocal exchange. At the end of the Symposium, the
entertainers of ambiguous status that Kallias hired for his banquet, with the
help of Socrates’ teaching, have graduated to the discursive level of courtesan-
ship. They are described unambiguously in the language of charis; their status
has risen to the level of a long-term erotic, reciprocal engagement that befits
the private elite symposium.
Earlier in the evening the girl was characterized as a hired worker who
performed a service with immediate and short-lived consequences. Although
she was never called a porne, she was associated with the marketplace and cash
transactions. Now she is characterized by charis, and her sexuality is located on
a longer-term temporal continuum. Significantly, the same move that elevates
her to the status of hetaira, thus refashioning her in a way more appropriate
to the elite sympotic context, casts her in a distinctly civic role. Entertainer’s
enactment of the marriage of Dionysos and Ariadne certainly evokes the ritual
marriage between Dionysos and the wife of the Archon Basileus, discussed in
Chapter 1, that was performed at the Athenian Anthesteria, a fertility festival
The Polis and the Gaze 133
72 “Dionysos and Ariadne can be seen as a reflection of this ritual. We get the ‘king’ of
Athens, Theseus who retires and leaves Ariadne to Dionysos.” Aviagnou (1991: 181). See
Chapter 1 of this book.
73 Part of the festival’s aetiology cites Orestes’ arrival at Athens and Pandion’s reception
of him (Eur. Iph. in Tauris 947–960). It memorializes the democracy’s dynastic past
([Dem.] 59. 75). Burkert (1985: 239–241).
74 Burkert (1985: 241). Alkiphron 4.18; 10 ff.; Callimachus fr. 178.
75 Cf. Davidson (2006), who argues that etymologically hetairos is the masculine form of
hetaira, instead of the other way around.
134 Bringing the Polis Home
76 Interestingly, Socrates is also linked to these human thaumata through the association
with light. Kritoboulos demanded that a light be turned on Socrates during the beauty
contest to illuminate his looks.
The Polis and the Gaze 135
And if you believe that he intends not only to decorate himself and his father, but also
to be capable through his courageous virtue to do well for his friends and to augment
his fatherland by setting up trophies against his enemies, and because of this to be
conspicuous and famous among both the Greeks and the barbarians, don’t you think
that he would hold in the highest honor whomever he thought would be the most
powerful accomplice toward these ends? (8.38)
The next stage for the athletic victor is civic service, and again the motivation
is to occupy the limelight – military victories will make Autolykos conspic-
uous in the arena of international politics. Socrates prescribes a future for
Autolykos in which his allegiance to his father is transferred to the city and
his athletic prowess combines with arete to become civic virtue. He goes on to
exhort Kallias to consider what qualities characterized the heroes of Athenian
democracy – Perikles, Themistokles, and Solon. But this process of discovery
will involve a new kind of looking – he uses the words skepton, qrhton
reunhton – that is, the contemplative consideration of philosophy.
Socrates’ monologue concludes with an apology for such serious discourse
at a symposium, which he justifies by saying: gaqän gr fÅsei kaª
tv retv filot©mwv fiemnwn e© pote t p»lei sunerastv àn
diatelä (For I have always been a sunerastes together with the city of men
who are good in nature and desire virtue vigorously; 8.41). In his final state-
ment, Socrates has aligned himself with the city as the desiring subject whose
objects of desire are elite citizens who make a display of their civic excel-
lence. By factoring the city as a third term in the sphere of elite homoerotics,
the erastes and the eromenos are mutually cast as performers of elite citizenship.
The addition of the polis into the pederastic equation establishes a dialectic
that allows for the simultaneous subjectivity of the erastes and eromenos. Now
cast with Socrates as an erastes of elite culture, the polis has been absorbed
by sympotic culture. The text has redirected the civic gaze from one that
exists in contrast to the elite erotic gaze to one that is assimilated to elite
The Polis and the Gaze 137
For the purposes of my analysis, I have taken the text out of order. But
Xenophon does not end his Symposium with an affirmation of homoerotics.
The company disbands after watching the enactment of the marriage of
Dionysos to Ariadne, inspired by the desire to go home to their wives, or
if they don’t have one, to get one. Although there are no wives present at this
symposium, a nearly universal desire for wives is produced when the pros-
titute plays the part of the legitimate wife as she performs ritual. Through
this superimposition, the role of wife is both eroticized and legitimized. This
symposium ends in a kind of anti-komos, where the chaotic destruction of the
return homeward has been transformed into an affirmation of marriage.81
Pederasty has become specular and asexual, and the sympotic sphere has
been refashioned on a civic model of ritual heterosexuality. Attributes of the
elite and the demos have been redistributed to neutralize any threat or differ-
ence the symposium represented to the polis. Socrates has corrected the tense
relationship between the city and the symposium that has troubled this ban-
quet by introducing a transformed paradigm of exchange. The emblem of
this transformation is the recasting of the prostitute in the image of a role
of Ariadne – an allusion to the sacred marriage performed at the Anthesteria.
Under Socrates’ direction we move from homoerotic politics to a tableau that
suggests the most normative of civic values – a celebration of heterosexual
marriage that signifies the fertility of the land, the fertility of the people, and
a lasting relationship between the human and the divine. This is Xenophon’s
apology – if we know how to interpret performance with our gnÛmh, we
understand that Socrates was committed to the civic good.
When the show is over, Kallias and Socrates go out to join Autolykos and
his father on their walk.82 In the end there is a comfortable coexistence of a
civic sphere of reciprocal homosocial activity, where men exchange amorous
looks and emulate one another before the collective gaze of the polis, and a
private heterosexual realm – the rightful place for sexual gratification. This
81 In Dem. 54. 7–9, “The Speech against Konon,” Ariston describes himself as the victim
of drunken carousing. See also 54.14 for the violent behavior of the Ithyphalloi and the
Autolekythoi.
82 The father and son left just before the sex scene (9.1). Wohl (2004: 356) similarly argues
that this move allows Xenophon to have it both ways: he encourages the heterosexuality
of the polis, while advocating a chaste pederasty to his followers, including Kallias and
Autolykos.
The Polis and the Gaze 139
INTRODUCTION
The previous chapters have illuminated the way that a variety of Athenian
authors construct femininity through a negotiation of various public roles for
women. In this chapter, moving backward in time, I will show how this poly-
valent discourse was at play on the comic stage. I will suggest that in Lysistrata,
Aristophanes represents the women of Greece by combining the idiom of the
prostitute with that of the priestess and ultimately subjects the prostitute to
the process of ritualization. In a sense this analysis provides a counterpoint
to the dynamics explored in “Against Neaira”: there we saw the threat posed
by a prostitute who trespassed into the realm of civic ritual; in this chapter
we will encounter the mechanism by which ritual could contain the potential
disorder posed by the prostitute.
By elaborating the relationship between the sacred and sexual in his depic-
tion of women, Aristophanes avails himself of a rich spectrum of juxtaposi-
tions and unexpected associations for the sake of his comedy. The image of
the prostitute is superimposed over that of the priestess, resulting in humor-
ous associations of sex and food, the sacred and the profane, the bedroom and
the temple.1 In addition to providing fodder for humor, the conflation of sex
and ritual also imparts a violent undertone to the play.
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata was produced in 411 BCE and was performed at the
Lenaia, a festival in honor of Dionysos, to an audience composed exclusively
of Athenians.2 It was just two years after the disastrous Athenian expedition
to Sicily, which resulted in extensive casualties. When the play was performed,
the Spartans were securely garrisoned at Deceleia, trade routes were cut off,
and Athenian allies were ready to revolt. Alcibiades was advising the Spartans,
1 Faraone (2004) also traces these roles in the representation of the women in the play. I
will discuss his conclusions further.
2 On dating see Henderson (1987: xv); Sommerstein (1977: 112–126). At Ach. 504–506,
Aristophanes describes the Lenaia as a domestic festival with no strangers or allies
present. On the festival see Pickard-Cambridge (1988: 24–42).
140
Introduction 141
and the Persians were backing them with financial support. Despite this dire
predicament, however, the Athenians remained bellicose – they had appointed
an extraordinary body, the Probouloi, to expedite the handling of wartime fiscal
and policy decisions. They had been able to build and man new ships and had
forced the retreat of a Peloponnesian naval force into a Corinthian harbor.3
Given this grim political context, the Lysistrata has been interpreted as a
fantasy. The play, in which the women of Greece take over the Akropolis and
foreswear sex with their husbands until the warring factions come to terms
with one another, has generally been seen as one that emphasizes peace, fer-
tility, and marriage. Jeffrey Henderson calls it “a triumph of wish fulfillment
over reality.”4 According to Douglas MacDowell, “The audience is left with
more favorable thoughts about Sparta than are to be found in any other play
of Aristophanes.”5
On the surface Lysistrata is a peace play, but as I argue here, the peace plot is
undermined by deliberate but coded expressions of aggression toward Athens’
enemies. Indeed, a reconciliation fantasy seems a suspiciously simplistic polit-
ical message to attribute to Aristophanes. There can be no doubt that the
battered yet still feisty Athenians in the audience were war-weary. However,
as Thucydides has it, in spite of the odds they faced, and the major setbacks
they had suffered, the Athenians remained intensely hostile toward the Spar-
tans.6
If we keep in mind that the Athenians were still actively pursuing war with
the Spartans, and were having some degree of success in this endeavor, it
becomes difficult to see the humor in an all-out pro-Spartan peace fantasy.
While the desire for an end to the war would have been entirely reasonable, the
idea of giving up and making friends with the Spartans just isn’t that funny.
It seems implausible that the Athenians, engaged in conflict in this second
phase of the Peloponnesian War almost continuously for twenty years, would
3 These events are narrated in Thucydides, Bk. 8. See also Dover (1972: 158); Henderson
(1987: xv–xxv).
4 Henderson (1987: xxix); Dillon (1987: 97–104) sees the play as a post-Deceleian peace
play, with women symbolizing fertility. Dover suggests that the ending of the play is a
reminder that sexual love, festivals, dancing, and poetry are more pleasurable than war.
See also Newiger (1996: 143–161).
5 MacDowell (1995: 246).
6 Thuc. 7.28.3.
142 Sex and Sacrifice
suddenly start seeing the good side of Sparta. The advantage of reading the
peace fantasy as ambivalent is that it accommodates a broader spectrum of the
political positions probably represented by the audience of this play. Because
the means by which peace is obtained in Lysistrata are so ridiculous in their
context – women on top, old women warriors, sex-starved men – it seems
appropriate that we carefully scrutinize the nature of this peace.
Through a close consideration of the construction of femininity in Lysis-
trata I will suggest that the women of Greece are not simply the collaborative
peaceniks they claim to be. There is a dark side of their peace plot. This vio-
lent subtext is represented in the language and practice of sacrifice and gives
expression to an underlying current of Athenian hostility toward Sparta and
its allies. To understand this play we need to be able to see double.
Thus, the essential ambivalence of this play becomes apparent when we
consider the prism through which femininity is projected and how the action
of the play engages with Aristophanes’ characterization of the women of
Greece. It should be noted that Aristophanes’ manipulation of the parallelism
and overlap of the scripts for the ritual agent and prostitute is exuberant.
Not every permutation of the convergence of sex and ritual that he presents
furthers the plot, nor are they all integrated into a perfectly cohesive whole.
However, at times the way Aristophanes simultaneously evokes the sphere of
ritual and of prostitution is crucial to understanding the message of the play.
In the next two sections I will explore how the depiction of the women in the
play evokes generally cultic and erotic scripts for women in public. Then I
will describe how the simultaneous reading of these different registers shapes
our understanding of the play.
7 Scholia to Lucian, Dialogues of the Courtesans 2.1 and 7.4, describe the proceedings at
the Thesmophoria and Haloa, which involved ribald language and genitals made out
Ritual and Erotics 143
of dough and other sexual symbols. For the texts and the problems posed by their
interpretation see Lowe (1998).
8 The scholiast rejects this title. It was also referred to as Diallagai, according to a scho-
liast’s note on 1114. Adonis and his worship provided material for other comic poets:
we have attestations of seven plays entitled Adonis or Adoniazousai. Winkler (1990: 190).
Fragments are preserved of an Adonis by Plato Comicus and an Adoniazousai by Philippi-
des; Diphilus Fr. 43; 39–41, Kock, II 554.
9 The most complete source for this myth is Panyassis ap. [Apollodoros] Bibl. 4.14.4. In
other versions Adonis’ death is either engineered by Artemis or carried out by Apollo,
who appears as the boar.
10 Detienne (1977: 62).
144 Sex and Sacrifice
the gardens around from place to place, and they ultimately brought them up
to the rooftop where the festival was celebrated.11 There is a reference to this
aspect of the festival when the old women say that they are watering the old
men so that they will sprout (rdw s’ Âpwv nablastane±v, 384).12
The festival was celebrated by men and women; it condoned licentious
behavior and involved fancy clothes and feasting.13 All of these elements fig-
ure in the play. The rite seems to have involved statues of Adonis over which
women mourned.14 This facet of the ritual is echoed when the women joke
about preparing the Proboulos’ corpse (610–614). At some point in the cel-
ebration of the Adonia, the women would let out a lament for the beautiful
boy lost in his prime. In Lysistrata the Proboulos mentions the festival, juxta-
posing its disruptive feminine ritual language with the serious deliberations of
the ekklesia:
The hedonism of the wives was clear as day – There was tambourine playing and the
cries of Sabazios were thick and fast. There was a celebration of Adonis on the roofs,
which I heard when I was in the assembly. Demostratos was saying “May you sail
with good fortune to Sicily,” while his wife said “Woe for Adonis” as she danced.
But Demostratos told us to gather the hoplites from the Zacynthians, while his wife,
already quite drunk on the roof, said, “Beat your breast for Adonis.” But he persisted
in pressing his agenda, the foul maniac, hated by the gods.
Such is the incontinence of these women. (387–399)
Not a few also were somewhat disconcerted by the character of the days in the midst
of which they dispatched their armament. The women were celebrating at that time the
festival of Adonis, and in many places throughout the city little images of the god were
laid out for burial, and funeral rites were held about them, with wailing cries of
women, so that those who cared anything for such matters were distressed, and feared
lest that powerful armament, with all the splendor and vigor which were so manifest
in it, should speedily wither away and come to naught. (Nic. 13.7 trans. Perrin)15
The loss and deprivation the women endured because of Athenian lust for
empire is famously and poignantly articulated elsewhere in the play: the
women claim the right to advise the city because they contribute sons to the
city, ndrav e«sfrw (651), they lose them, and they are denied the possibil-
ity of enjoying their own sexual prime (588–597).
If we think of the Adonia as rites in which Athenian women played the
role of Aphrodite – activating her power both in its sexual and sacred aspect,
mourning the loss of her young son/lover – we might consider this rite as
paradigmatic for the play as a whole, and as a sufficient explanation for the
depiction of women in the image of the priestess and prostitute. Indeed,
Detienne has argued for a strong association of courtesans with the Ado-
nia.16 Winkler has diagnosed this reading as a symptom of Detienne’s patri-
archalism, pointing out that although courtesans might have been included in
the rites, the evidence does not support the notion that it was their special
province.17 Indeed, the allusion to the festival in Lysistrata seems to suggest
that the rite was celebrated by wives, and that it gave expression to a facet of
feminine sexuality that was threatening to masculine civic ideology.18
But as the scholarship on the play from the scholiasts to the present attests,
ritual allusions far exceed any one practice, or the worship of any one god
or goddess.19 The takeover of the Akropolis has been thought to evoke the
Amazons.20 The sex-strike plot has been explained through reference to the
Lemnian women and the rites associated with them, as well as the Thes-
mophoria. The treatment of the Proboulos as woman and corpse has also
been interpreted as an echo of the disappearance of King Thoas in the Lem-
nian story, whom his daughter Hypsiple either dressed up as a woman or
hid in a coffin so that he could escape the murderous wrath of the Lemnian
women. Allusion to the New Fire rite on Lemnos can also explain the play’s
emphasis on the olfactory and the role of fire and water in the exchanges
between the old men and women.21
Nicole Loraux reads Lysistrata as using the sacred civic space of the
Akropolis to mediate between the contradictory dictates of Athena and
Aphrodite for Athenian femininity.22 Lysistrata’s weaving metaphor (572–
586), her explicit association with her father (toÆv d’ k patr»v te kaª
O, city dwellers, we begin a speech useful to the polis: reasonably so, since it raised me
gloriously enrobed. When I turned seven, I was immediately an arrephoros. Then
when I was ten I was a corn-grinder for our leader, and I was a bear in the
Brauronia shedding my yellow dress. Then I carried the basket when I was a
beautiful young girl, wearing the necklace of figs. (638–646)
This passage has been much discussed for the way it preserves the course of an
elite young woman’s ritual development, prior to sexual maturity. It has been
frequently noted that this trajectory could not have applied to many Athenian
women, but rather the chorus is drawing on the civic prestige of women in
their role as ritual practitioners.25 The women refer to a range of cultic offices
and identify themselves in relation to a variety of rituals. Here it will not be
my purpose to consider the relationship of the action or particular references
THE PRIESTESS
In this context – richly evocative of women’s ritual – some of the characteri-
zations of the women seem to make more explicit cultic references. In the late
1940s I. Papademetriou made the controversial suggestion that the name of
Myrrhine, the woman who teases her already horny husband Kinesias, referred
explicitly to the Priestess of Athena Nike in 411 BCE.27 D. M. Lewis added
the suggestion that Lysistrata’s name is a thinly veiled reference to Lysimache,
who was the priestess of Athena Polias – the highest cultic position a woman
could hold in Athens – at the time of the production of play.28 She held
this office by virtue of being a member of the aristocratic Eteoboutadai genos.
Lewis’ case is supported by Lysistrata’s prayer to Aphrodite when she actually
invokes the name of Lysimache:
ll’ ¢nper  <te> glukÅqumov ï Erwv c
Kuprognei’ %frod©th
26 Although I do think this approach has produced interesting results: thus, Bowie (1993),
Martin (1987).
27 Papademetriou (1948–1949: 146–153). Henderson (1987) is skeptical about this associa-
tion, as is Sommerstein (1990: 5n.31).
28 Lewis (1955: 1–12). Lysistrata means dissolver of the army, and Lysimache means dis-
solver of battle. Interestingly, Hesychius records that strat, strat could mean
p»rnh.
The Priestess 149
29 The name Lysimache is also associated with peacemaking at Peace 991–992. Henderson
(1987: xxxix).
30 CEG 93 = IG i3 1330.
31 Greek text is from Lewis (1955: 1).
32 See Introduction.
150 Sex and Sacrifice
in the Athenian method of appointment to the priesthood that took place over
the course of the fifth century. Beginning around midcentury, inscriptions start
to appear indicating that certain ritual offices were appointed by lot out of all
citizens, as opposed to the traditional means of selection through inheritance
or qualified allotment.33 The idea of universal eligibility of all Athenians has
been seen as radically democratic – the transition in selection for sacerdotal
positions has been interpreted as a reflection of the encroachment of demo-
cratic practices even into the religious sector, which had traditionally been
dominated by aristocratic families. While the most prestigious priesthoods
remained in possession of noble clans, and were passed along through inheri-
tance, rituals that were new, reorganized, or imported trended toward the use
of qualified or, as here, unqualified allotment as a method of selection.34
The epitaph announces that the choice of Myrrhine was sanctioned by
divine suntuchia because of Myrrhine’s name. It is not clear what exactly this
coincidence of meaning was: it has been suggested that Myrrhine’s name
derives from mÅrtov, and that there was a strong association of myrtle to
Athena because crowns of myrtle were awarded to archons and Athenian gen-
erals.35 Another thesis proposes that Myrrhine’s name seemed appropriate
because of the crowns made out of myrtle that priestly women wore.36 With-
out resolving this disagreement, I would emphasize that the epitaph defini-
tively states that there was an obvious connection between Myrrhine’s name
and her service to Athena Nike. This fact alone is germane to my argument.
Jeffrey Henderson has convincingly argued that because Athena’s temple
was completed in the 420s and the appointment was chosen by lot annually, it
is unlikely that Myrrhine was the actual priestess when the play was performed
at the Lenaia in 411. He continues:
The Myrrhine in our play is a typical housewife with a farcical role. It is impossible
to discern any contribution to her characterization that a connection with Athena
Nike would provide. Furthermore, Myrrhine is one of the most common Athenian
33 Qualified selection means that the group out of which the selection was made had been
narrowed down before the sortition as in the case of the selection of archons described
in Ath. Pol. 4.3. Turner (1983: 74). Feaver (1957: 136) argues that ancestral priesthoods
may also have used sortition as a method of selection within the genos.
34 Turner (1983: 69). See also Goff (2004: 183–184).
35 Papademetriou (1948–1949: 148); cf. Chantraine (1933).
36 Turner (1983: 95).
The Priestess 151
names and was evidently chosen (like Kinesias) for its sexual connotations. . . . If it
suggested any cult it was Aphrodite’s, not Athena’s.37
life as other women, probably with a husband and children. Thus the fact that the
women in the play have domestic lives and an interest in sex is in no way
incompatible with the view that they are priestesses.40
Frequently there were constraints regarding sexual activity and cultic ser-
vice, but these varied according to the nature of the divinity being served.41
Myrrhine bears an association with Aphrodite and Athena, and there is no
reason to assume that these connections are incompatible.42
In contrast to the democratically appointed ritual office that the name
Myrrhine is associated with, Lysistrata, through her link to Lysimache, is
associated with the most prestigious inherited sacerdotal office for a woman
in Athens, the priestess of Athena Polias. This was a lifelong office that could
only be occupied by an appropriate member of the elite Eteoboutadai clan.
Social status is encoded in the cultic positions evoked by the names of the
characters in the play. Returning to Parry and Bloch’s model, we might say
that Lysistrata and Myrrhine are associated with sacerdotal positions that
correspond to the long- and short-term transactional orders. The priestess
of Athena Polias was elite and had a lifelong tenure while Myrrhine is associ-
ated with the short-term position of an attendant that was assigned through a
radically democratic procedure – unqualified allotment out of all Athenians.
As Turner says, “Unqualified allotment (k pntwn) of priestly women in
the Athenian cult of Athena Nike takes on special importance because other
examples of allotted female priesthoods are less demonstrably ‘unqualified’
or ‘from all.’”43 Later I will suggest that Aristophanes uses the relationship
between these two women to prescribe the proper relationship between the
demos and the elite, when I consider Myrrhine’s seduction of Kinesias.
40 MacDowell (1995: 241), where he also notes the importance of contrasting ancient
priestesses to Christian nuns.
41 Goff (2004: 146–159).
42 As Helene Foley argued years ago (1982: 8), in this play the relationship between oikos
and polis, as they are mapped onto the register of gender, can be understood as one of
“mutually defining terms.” The intricacy of this interdependence becomes even richer
if we see the figure of the prostitute actively informing the depiction of women in
Lysistrata. Where the priestess is a wife in her specialized circumscribed public role, the
prostitute is the public woman performing a private service. That is to say, she makes
physical intimacy a publicly traded commodity.
43 Turner (1983: 96).
The Priestess 153
44 Bowie (1993: 192) translates her name as “Lady of the Lamp” in loose association with
the Lemnian theme that he elaborates.
45 Foley (1982: 8–9).
46 This view is shared by MacDowell (1995: 242).
47 For other types of comic censorship, see scholiast on Acharnians 378; Wasps 1284–1291,
Henderson (1990: 287–289).
154 Sex and Sacrifice
PROSTITUTES
Lysistrata is filled with women circulating in the public sphere, talking about
sex. Inevitably, the eroticized woman in public evokes the image of the pros-
titute. Sarah Stroup has made the important observation that the women in
this play are depicted as hetairai. Focusing on the swearing of the oath, the
seduction scene between Myrrhine and Kinesias, and the division of Dial-
lage, she notes an assimilation of the wives with hetairai and a degeneration
of this image as the play progresses. The wives are seductive women who are
outfitted with the props of the symposium, while Diallage is the porne, who
is divisible and accessible to all. By depicting wives as hetairai, Aristophanes
depicts a topsy-turvy world in which the sympotic becomes civic and the wife
in public represents the social and sexual disorder caused by war.49 In a similar
vein, Christopher Faraone has argued that the young women are represented
in terms of the language of the hetaira and that Lysistrata in particular can
be seen as a madam and a priestess. He suggests that Aristophanes elaborates
the similarities between the priestess and procuress, because they were both
images of powerful women in public.50
With Faraone and Stroup I agree that the sexuality of the young women is
represented in the idiom of the hetaira, and my reading of this play is indebted
to their illuminating analyses. In what follows I would like to explore the
implication of these observations somewhat further, diverging from their read-
ings in my assessment of what is at stake in the assimilation of hetaira to wife
or madam to priestess. Stroup’s interpretation, I think, relies on a distinction
48 Nagy (1990: 347–348) argues that members of the royal family were afforded a preemi-
nent position in choral performance. On stage Lampito’s vigor attests to her participa-
tion in races that would have had a cultic dimension. Pomeroy (1975: 25).
49 Stroup (2003).
50 Faraone (2006).
Oath Sacrifice 155
between public and private that is overly schematic. Because she assumes that
the only way to talk about women in public is to describe them in the lan-
guage of the courtesan, she misses the relation of the courtesan to the priest-
ess. Faraone elaborates the assimilation of priestess and courtesan, suggesting
that the two are thematically united by being “the only two kinds of women
who could . . . assume roles of leadership in their communities.”51 This reading
makes sense of the characterization of Lysistrata, to some degree, but doesn’t
integrate these two images of feminine leadership into a sustained reading of
the play.
OATH SACRIFICE
In this section I will be tracing the way sacrificial and sexual imagery in the
play are intertwined. I will elucidate the ways the text provides clues that
what was performed on stage does not always seem to conform to what the
characters say they are doing – that is to say, while the women talk about peace
their actions are not exactly conciliatory. Lysistrata begins with the protagonist
raising the specter of women’s religious activity of the more ecstatic, and less
somber kind:
ll’ e tiv e«v bakce±on aÉtv klesan
£ ’v Pan¼v £ ’pª Kwlid’ £ ’v Genetull©dov,
oÉd’ n dielqe±n §n n Ëp¼ tän tumpnwn.
But if someone had called them to a Bacchic revelry or to the Grotto of Pan or to
Kolias or Genetyllis’ shrine, it would have been impossible to get through for the
tambourines. (1–3)
Lysistrata is contrasting her gathering with unofficial rites associated with
drinking, dancing, and sexuality, but it is not yet clear what kind of assembly
she has called. If her name is meant to call to mind the priestess of Athena,
the most prestigious cultic position an Athenian woman could occupy, it
seems logical to assume that she is contrasting newer, wilder rituals with more
traditional and staid celebrations.52 Lysistrata then reveals that she has
summoned the women to take counsel over a serious matter. The fact that
Lysistrata has a political agenda does not negate the ritual aura; it was cus-
tomary for political gatherings to begin with a sacrifice.53
After some cajoling, Lysistrata gets the women to agree to her twofold
plan – that is, for the young women to starve their husbands of sex and
the older women to seize the Akropolis.54 The older women can avoid
suspicion on the Akropolis by going there under the pretext of making a
sacrifice:
The old women have been assigned to do this, to seize the Akropolis under the guise of
making a sacrifice, while we arrange these things. (177–179)
The old women can use their role in civic ritual as a pretense for going out
in public and taking control of the symbolic and economic stronghold of
the city.55 Although the Akropolis was no longer host to Athens’ political
gatherings, it did still house the treasury.56
53 At the beginning of an assembly, peristiarchoi would carry piglets around the area where
the proceedings would take place, cut their throats, and cause the blood to spray on
the seats: Sch. Ar. Ekkl. 128. Then they would cut off the piglets’ genitals and dispose
of them. Burkert (1985: 81). Jacoby FrGrHist 334; Demosthenes 54.39; RE XIX 859.
54 Vaio (1973) analyzes the thematic integration of the two strands of the double plot.
55 Lauren Taafe reads the play through the lens of performance practice and metatheater.
She describes Lysistrata’s plan as a play in which women enact the roles of men by
playing the parts of “women,” and men enact the roles of women by playing the parts
of “men.” “This play is resolved when the middle, role-playing, level of character is
eliminated and the super-feminine women reunite with their super-masculine men and
recreate ideal marriages” (Taafe 1993: 52). This assessment is not incompatible with
my reading, although I am emphasizing the nuances created by the assumption of the
roles of priestess and prostitute, and their interrelation. I think that the performative
aspect of both the priestess and the courtesan are emphasized in the play. Taafe does
not consider the metatheatrics of the old women seeming to sacrifice, but the use of
drw and dokw might suggest such a reading here.
56 The treasury is referred to in the play, e.g., 488. See MacDowell (1995: 232–235). On
the symbolic importance of the Akropolis see Loraux (1993: 147–183).
Oath Sacrifice 157
57 Casabona (1966: 323–326) discusses the prevalence of sacrificial language in this passage.
58 Plato Laws 753d; Dem. 23.68 describes the oath sacrifice required of a man bringing a
homicide accusation to the Areopagus. He must stand upon the tomia of a boar, a ram,
and a bull.
59 Henderson (1987: 91). Cf. Casabona (1966: 220).
60 Burkert (1985: 251). Generally in oath sacrifice, the victim was not eaten. See, e.g., Homer
Iliad 19.252–268; Pausanius Description of Greece 5.24.9–11. Van Straten (1995: 106) iden-
tifies Lysistrata’s sacrifice with sfag©a on the battlefied, performed for the purposes
of divination. She identifies an image on the tondo of an Attic Red Figure kylix as
depicting this type of sacrifice, notably one of the few representations of sacrifice that
depict the knife, and here it is being driven through the victim’s neck (Van Straten’s
figure 112).
61 Henderson (1987: 93) suggests that stamnion might be a pun on the Homeric mn©on, a
bowl for catching a victim’s blood.
158 Sex and Sacrifice
oath is complete, Lampito says she hears an ololuge (239), which, among other
things could mark the successful completion of a sacrifice. The ceremony is
consistent with the language and procedure of blood sacrifice.62 As Burkert
notes, wine libations play a role in animal sacrifice, but in a sense they stand in
opposition to the shedding of blood: “The sphagia open hostilities, the spondai
end hostilities.”63 In Lysistrata’s oath, however, the spilling of the wine is
assimilated to the shedding of blood. Sacrificial codes are mingled as are the
representational codes for the depiction of women: the effect is that there is a
convergence between the association of the hetaira with wine and the priestess
with blood. In this scene the depiction of the women as bibulous and sexy is
set against a backdrop of sacrificial violence.
Before considering the implication of the sacrificial inflection to the sex-
strike oath, it is important to note that this passage is also where the women
are first characterized as courtesans. Extrapolating from the evidence of vase-
painting, Stroup notes that the kylix (the personified receptacle that Lysistrata
evokes at 203) had a strong association with the symposium, as opposed to
the domestic skyphos. The wives’ plan to dress seductively in luxurious, exotic
clothing depicts them outfitting themselves in a way that is designed to be
appealing to the male gaze in the manner of a courtesan.64 Finally the descrip-
tions of the sexual positions – legs in the air and lioness on a cheesegrater –
belong to the rhetoric of prostitution,65 not legitimate marriage.
RITUAL HIERARCHIES
Generally speaking Lysistrata stages a world upside down by depicting men as
subject to the power of women. This gender dichotomy then reverberates in
the play with more divisions among the women: they are explicitly divided
into young and old; the older women are honorable and easily succeed in their
task. The young women, on the other hand, are shown to be bibulous and
incontinent.66 It is these women also who are depicted in the idiom of public
female actors, the prostitute and the priestess. Each one of these schisms can
be read as a division of a group between its more moderate, self-controlled,
transcendent element and its more bodily, vital, incontinent counterpart.
The splitting of the self into a vital and transcendental aspect has been
identified as a common element in ritual practice. Maurice Bloch has described
a core ritual process, in which identification with the transcendental element
is enacted, which then conquers the vital through violence to a surrogate.
In this way sacred violence can be used to legitimize political aggression.67
I suggest that the plot of the Lysistrata works according to a similar logic.
Women are presented fluidly in terms of various hierarchies; the most vital
bodily aspect of femininity accretes various negative associations and in the
end all that has been associated with that which is lower is stabilized in a
relationship of subordination to that which is transcendent. In the next two
sections I will show how Aristophanes deploys this ritual dynamic of dividing
and conquering in terms of the relationship of elite to demos and Athens to her
enemies – Sparta and her allies.
actions (Herod. 7.85; Thuc. 8.75). Lysistrata is trying to control her army of
women but has little success when she tries to restrain their libido. In the
following scene, however, when Lysistrata uses the eros of Myrrhine to her
advantage, she achieves her desired end.
In this scene Lysistrata seems to take on the role of a madam, hiring out the
services of Myrrhine to her client, Kinesias. In response to Kinesias’ demand
to see his wife, Lyistrata asks, t© oÔn; dÛseiv t© moi; (What then? What
will you give me?; 861). “Lysistrata treats Kinesias as if he were a customer
in a brothel; now that he has settled on a girl the bawd begins to discuss the
price.”68 The end result of Myrrhine’s teasing of her husband is, of course,
the reconciliation between the Spartans and Athenians.
In this scene we have seen how the mapping of sex and ritual onto one
another allows for fluid cross-fertilization of numerous associations. By super-
imposing the image of the priestess on the prostitute, Aristophanes invites us
to see hierarchies within the priesthood – the inherited positions in relation to
the democratically elected ones – as parallel to the relation of a madam to her
girl. By playing on these hierarchies, Aristophanes seems to encode a political
message humorously. When the elite (as represented by Lysistrata the gentile
priestess/madam) are able to harness the skittish eros of the demos (as repre-
sented by Myrrhine, the democratically selected temple attendant/prostitute),
the two together are politically effective. The sex-strike plot succeeds when
the elite direct the demos, just as the courtesan is successful when she heeds the
advice of her madam.
Coincidentally, if we read this passage as a political prescription as I have
suggested, and consider it together with Lysistrata’s wool-working metaphor
(567–586) in which she argues that the city incorporate all people, citizens,
metics, and friends, then the political stance in this play seems to conform
neatly to the position espoused in the parabasis of Frogs (687–737). There,
in the epirrhema, the poet suggests that all those citizens who did not sup-
port the democracy under the regime of the Four Hundred and those who
have been disenfranchised as debtors or for other reasons should have their
rights restored. There he goes beyond his advice in Lysistrata to say that any-
one willing to fight in the navy, including slaves and foreigners, should enjoy
the rights of citizenship. But this civic inclusiveness is tempered in the antepir-
rhema by the famous analogy of citizens to Athenian coinage, where Aristo-
phanes complains that the Athenians “use” foreign red-haired rascals born of
rascals, instead of the traditionally educated members of elite Athenian fam-
ilies.69 Between these two plays, there emerges a consistent, evolving political
stance advocating a liberal extension of civic rights under the auspices of elite
leadership.70 It is salient for my reading that this political message is conveyed
through a wool-working analogy, for wool-working was a kind of women’s
work that found representation in ritual,71 in the domestic sphere, and in
the iconography of prostitution and even in the archaeological remains of
brothels.72
Priestess/Victim: hetaira/porne
There is yet another strand of association between ritual and sex traffic that I
think is crucial to the thematics and plot of the play. It is the overlapping of
the priestess and her victim with the shifting discourse of the hetaira and porne.
Insofar as this correspondence overlays the imagery of the cultic on that of
the sexual, it is a similar kind of play to the one I analyzed in the previous sec-
tion, but there the relationship related to intra-Athenian relationships, while
in this section I will suggest that it is mapped onto Athens’ relationships to
her enemies. This complex game of cross-identifications becomes legible by
a consideration of the treatment of Lampito when she first arrives on stage.
When the foreign delegates arrive from Sparta, Boiotia, and Corinth, the asso-
ciation of the sexual and sacrificial is made explicit:
69 MacDowell (1995: 284–286). See also Dover (1993: 278–281) for the political content
of Frogs’ parabasis.
70 MacDowell (1995: 235–236) also notices the similarity of the political views expressed
in the wool-working metaphor and the epirrhema of the Frogs’ parabasis.
71 Wool-working played a role in the cult of Athena, most notably in relationship to the
peplos woven and presented at the Panathenaia.
72 For the spinning hetairai see Keuls 258–259; Reinsberg (1988: 122–125); Williams (1983:
94–97).
162 Sex and Sacrifice
When Lampito arrives on stage, she is addressed with a pet name (77).73
Her body is admired in a way that seems to objectify it sexually: she has a
nice figure, she is in good shape, healthy, and strong looking. When Lysistrata
comments that she looks as if she could strangle a bull, if we are thinking
of Lampito in sacerdotal terms, then we might understand this comment to
mean that she would be an effective actor in a sacrifice. But then the word
used to describe her vigorous body – sfrig – applies equally to women’s
breasts as it does to an animal’s body. If her status might seem to have changed
from actor to object with this remark, this slippage is clearly articulated in her
response when she refers to herself being groped like a sacrificial victim: –
¬are±»n (84).
Lysistrata moves on to consider some of the other envoys who have arrived
with Lampito. A woman from Boiotia is ogled in a slightly different manner.
She is admired in the idiom of woman-as-land,74 with her pubic hair described
as pennyroyal,75 an important wildflower in Boiotia.76 The last woman, a
Corinthian, is sexually assessed through her ethnic identity. The scholiast on
this passage describes her as porne, an assessment that is probably made merely
because of her association with Corinth. The verb form derived from the name
Corinth, korinqizomai, means to play the part of a prostitute.77 Some have
thought this identification reflexive on the scholiast’s part – Corinthian equals
prostitute – and inappropriate to the context, 78 but I think there may be good
reason to accept the reading of the Corinthian as a prostitute.
In these women we have representatives of Athens’ three most potent Greek
enemies. The enmity between the Spartans and Athenians has already been
discussed; Thucydides locates the Corinthians at the crux of the beginning
73 Schwyzer (1939–1953: i.478–479) identifies the suffix used in Lampito’s name as appro-
priate to Kosenamen. Henderson cites this section of Schwyzer, saying that the suffix
connotes sacerdotal privileges, but this assertion is not supported there.
74 For a discussion of the assimilation of the woman with the earth see DuBois (1988).
See also Dougherty (1993: 61–80). Monty Python’s Flying Circus seems to have tapped
into the same vein of humor as Aristophanes (with an upward displacement) in the
description of a woman’s “huge tracts of land” in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
75 For this metaphor see Henderson (1975: 135).
76 Henderson (1987: 78).
77 Henderson (1987: 78).
78 See also Suda s.v.
164 Sex and Sacrifice
THE SURROGATE
The themes identified in the scene in which Lampito is introduced recur but
are transmogrified in the “reconciliation scene.” To make sense of the rec-
onciliation between Athens and Sparta, it is necessary to take stock of the
political atmosphere in which it is set, because Athens’ history with Sparta
is explicitly described here. While Lysistrata has the undivided attention of
the Spartan and Athenian ambassadors because of their urgent need for sex-
ual relief, she launches into a lecture, chiding the representatives for fighting
among themselves while the Persian threat looms (1133–1134). This reference
to Persia has been considered topical and fraught, because at the time of the
play Persia was vacillating in its alliance to Sparta and perhaps had recently
made overtures to the Athenians.80 Lysistrata reminds the ambassadors of past
cooperation between Sparta and Athens, emphasizing their mutual participa-
tion in panhellenic rituals (1131). But the instances she chooses to demonstrate
the compatibility of the two cities cannot bear scrutiny and have generated
much critical discussion and attempts at explanation.
She begins by reminding the Spartan ambassador of the time when Perik-
liedas was sent to ask for Athenian aid in 464, when Sparta was staring down
79 Thuc. 1.23–68.
80 Dover (1972: 170); Henderson (1987: xxv).
The Surrogate 165
81 Thuc. 1.102.3.
82 MacDowell (1995: 245).
83 Moulton (1981: 75).
84 For the polysemic nature of comic narratives see Kolek (1985).
166 Sex and Sacrifice
her behind and the Athenian her frontside. To Lysistrata’s prompting that the
two groups reconcile (dihllghte 1161), the following exchange ensues:
Pr.l mv ga lämev, a tiv mªn tßgkuklon
l toÓt’ pod»men.
Lu. po±on å tn
Pr.l tn PÅlon,
tsper plai de»meqa kaª blimddomev.
Pr.a m t»n Poseidä toÓto mn g’ oÉ drsete.
Lu. fet’, ågq’, aÉto±v.
Pr.a k
ta t©na kinsomen;
Lu. ter»n g’ paite±t’ ntª toÅtou cwr©on.
Pr.a t¼ de±na to©nun, pardoq’ ¡m±n toutonª
prÛtista t¼n ìEcinoÓnta kaª t¼n Mhli
k»lpon t¼n Àpisqen kaª t Megarik sklh.
Pr.l oÉ tÜ siÛ, oÉcª pnta g’, å lissnie.
u. te, mhdn diafrou perª skelo±n.
Pr.a ¢dh gewrge±n gumn¼v podÆv boÅlomai.
Pr.l gÜn d kopragwgn ga {präta} naª tÜ siÛ.
u. pn diallagte, taÓta drsete
ll’ e« doke± drn taÓta, bouleÅsasqe kaª
to±v xummcoiv lq»ntev nakoinÛsate.
Pr.a po©oisin, å tn, xummcoiv; stÅkamen.
oÉ taÉt d»xei to±si σummcoisi nn,
bine±n, pasin;
Pr.l to±si gän naª tÜ siÜ mo±si.
Pr.a kaª gr naª m D©a Karust©oiv.
Lu. kaläv lgete. nÓn oÔn Âpwv gneÅsete,
Âpwv n a¬ guna±kev Ëmv n p»lei
xen©swmen æn n ta±si k©staiv ecomen.
Ârkouv d’ ke± kaª p©stin llloiv d»te.
kpeita tn aËtoÓ guna±c’ Ëmän labÜn
peis ’ kastov.
Spartan Ambassador: We must demand this promontory here return to us.
Lysistrata: Which one?
Spartan Ambassador: This one in back:
The Surrogate 167
we are asking for it for a long time, we can almost feel it.
Athenian Ambassador: By the God of Earthquakes, that you’ll never get!
Lysistrata: Give it to them, good man.
Athenian Ambassador: What do we get, then?
Lysistrata: You’ll ask for other land in return for this.
Athenian Ambassador: Let’s see now, I know, hand over to us first of all Echinos
here, the Malian gulf that runs behind it, also the two Megarian legs.
Spartan Ambassador: My dear ambassador, you’re not getting it all.
Lysistrata: You’ll give it. Don’t quibble over legs.
Athenian Ambassador: I want to strip and plough naked!
Spartan Ambassador: Me first: I want to spread the manure.
Lysistrata: When peace is made you’ll both do all you want. For now, are all these
items to your liking?
If so, you’d best confer with all your allies.
Athenian Ambassador: Confer with allies? Come back and take your share. Too hard
up for that. They’ll go along with us. I’m sure they’re just as anxious to start fucking.
Spartan Ambassador: Also ours, is certain.
Athenian Ambassador: Every Greek likes to fuck.
Lysistrata: You argue well. And now for ratification.
The women on the citadel will host
the banquet, for we brought our picnic baskets.
You’ll swear your oaths and give your pledges there.
And then let each man take his wife
and go home. (1162–1187)
Diallage’s body becomes a map of Greece, and the Athenians and Spar-
tans busily set about dividing it up, assimilating the sexually attractive parts
of her anatomy to geographical sites, most of which were hotly contested in
the Peloponnesian War.85 Her body is apportioned and distributed among
the participants, and in a crowning conflation of sex and women at sacri-
fice, Lysistrata announces that the women will produce a feast out of their
kistai, or picnic baskets. Not surprisingly, these baskets have a sexual as well
85 The Athenians captured and fortified Pylos in a major victory; see Thuc. 4.2–41. King
Agis had campaigned in the Malian Gulf (Thuc. 8.3). For the destruction of the Megar-
ian walls, see Thuc. 4.109.1. See also Henderson (1987: 204–205).
168 Sex and Sacrifice
as religious connotation.86 Burkert calls this sexual use of the kiste “almost
over-obvious.”87 The extent of the assimilation of food and sex in this comedy
is what makes sense out of the play’s end – a communal banquet that serves as
a peaceful and satisfying resolution to the panhellenic hard-on caused by the
women’s sex-strike.88
Diallage is a sacrificial victim whose body is divided, distributed, and con-
sumed among the parties being reconciled. As such, she is a substitute for
Lampito, who complained of being fondled like a ¬are±»n (84). When her
body is treated as a map, she stands in for the Boiotian woman whose anatomy
was praised through the register of agricultural land (85–88). Insofar as she
clearly is meant to represent a naked woman in public available for indiscrim-
inate male consumption, she can be, and has been read as, a prostitute,89 and
thus we can think of her as a surrogate for the Corinthian representative of
the earlier scene. It seems relevant here that the word diallage basically means
both change and exchange. The abstract noun related to it, diallagema, can mean
surrogate. Diallage is a sacrificial surrogate – she takes the place of the women
who came as envoys from Athens’ enemies.
Because she is a mute nude female, a sexual and topographical commodity
that can be divided, Diallage has been read as the porne, as opposed to the
sexualized representation of all the women earlier in the play, who are rep-
resented in the idiom of hetairai. Because Diallage is divisible, Sarah Stroup
argues that she becomes “a politically compelling means of transforming the
earlier hetairizations of the citizen wives into an undiluted embodiment of
eroticized, and newly attainable, democratic impulse.”90 Here Stroup is rely-
ing on Leslie Kurke’s analysis that describes a process whereby the elite hetairos
or symposiast identifies with the hetaira, but also occasionally refashions her as
86 Aristophanes uses the image in a similar way at Peace 666. For its relation to kÅsqov see
Henderson (1991: 130). For its use in ritual see Elderkin (1940: 395).
87 Burkert (1983: 271) enumerates various sexually charged uses of these baskets in ritual
practices, commenting that “intercourse as a mystery is a common metaphor, or more
than a metaphor.”
88 Dover (1972: 153) says that the men have forgotten their sexual need, “since its imme-
diate satisfaction would be irreconcilable with the way Aristophanes wants the play to
end.” Of course, many comedies end with a feast.
89 Faraone (2004); Stroup (2003).
90 Stroup (2003: 25).
Women as Animals 169
a porne thus expelling her from the symposium.91 In his conflation of sex and
sacrifice, Aristophanes assimilates the mechanics of the porne/hetaira discourse
to the logic of sacrifice.
In Lysistrata, as elsewhere, a move from identification to alienation is rep-
resented through the transformation of the hetaira into a porne. The hetaira is
the superior aspect of the prostitute whose engagement in all the lurid aspects
of sex-trade is mystified; the porne is the vital, chaotic embodiment of pros-
titution. In Aristophanes’ comic world, the hetaira is a ritual substitute for
the wife. The women identify with this “other” so that they can ritually
expunge the degraded aspect of themselves (pornai), but only after this lowly
element of the feminine has been imprinted with the civic identity of Athens’
enemies.
When we consider the sacrificial dynamics in this scene, the politics behind
Aristophanes’ vision of peace become more evident. Diallage is represented
through the same images that were used to figure the first meeting of Lysistrata
and her neighbors with the women from Sparta, Corinth, and Boiotia, but in
a different constellation, or more accurately, in a different embodiment. For
just like Sparta and her allies, Diallage is a victim, she is land, and she is a
prostitute. The simple hierarchical structure of god over man and man over
beast and land affirmed in sacrifice is here invested with additional nuances.
The brutish reassertion of male dominance over the prostitute is intertwined
in this ritual equation, which has in turn come to signify Athens’ dominance
over her enemies.
WOMEN AS ANIMALS
If we see now the way that the ritual dynamics of the play are intertwined
with the language of prostitution, many of Aristophanes’ jokes become more
intelligible. Just as above we saw the overlay of the priestess on prostitute,
another locus where the cultic and sex traffic converge is in the depiction of
woman as animal.
91 On the possibility that Diallage, a mute nude female figure on stage, was played by a
hetaira, see Stone (1981: 147–150); Zweig (1992). Taafe (1993: 171n.42) thinks that this
type of character was played by a male actor in a body suit; see also Henderson (1987:
195).
170 Sex and Sacrifice
of sacrifice in the play. Here I will consider a few examples that show how
animal imagery in Lysistrata supports the development of these two themes.
The Heifer
When the women are swearing off sex in their oath sacrifice, they express their
promise to be chaste by saying that they will live without a bull, taurÛth
(217/218). Henderson suggests that this adjective (perhaps sophistically trans-
formed from two termination to three) recalls the characterization of Iphi-
geneia on the verge of sacrifice in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon:
In this passage as well we can identify the mingling of ritual practice, that
of sponde with sphagia, for as Iphigeneia is about to be sacrificed, her partic-
ipation in the peacetime ritual of the sympotic libation is evoked. Victoria
Wohl has interpreted this scene as “a perverted marriage,”96 noting that Iphi-
geneia is dressed as a bride, and the possibility that we are meant to imag-
ine Iphigeneia’s dress falling to the ground,97 at the same time that she is
The Eel
Aristophanes also finds material that conjoins the sexual with the sacrificial
in other quarters of the animal kingdom. James Davidson has discussed the
Athenian passion for fish and the strong association of fish with seduction,
noting that “the practice of comparing women to mouth-watering fish and
fish to women” seems to have been rather widespread. He describes the eel-
as-beautiful-woman as a familiar trope.100 Aristophanes uses it in Acharnians.
When Dikaiopolis comes upon a merchant from Boiotia carrying eels from
Lake Copais, he begs to be introduced to the maidens and addresses one as
his beloved: å filtth sÆ kaª plai poqoumnh (You most beloved and
long-desired; Ach. 885). The same association, somewhat more attenuated, is at
work in Lysistrata when the chorus of old women criticizes the men for their
decrees, including the prohibition of imports from Boiotia:
98 Fraenkel (1950 ad 245 ff.) notes that Iphigeneia’s presence at such an event “would
hardly be conceivable within the limits of Athenian custom,” but argues that this diver-
gence from Athenian practice together with the emphasis on Iphigeneia’s purity at
precisely this point was purposefully Homericizing.
99 Wohl (1998: 71–82).
100 Davidson (1998: 10).
Women as Animals 173
victim is Boiotian, one of Athens’ most vigorous enemies at the time, beside
Sparta. This pattern of identifying women who are from hostile poleis (Sparta,
Boiotia, and Corinth) as sacrificial victims was also noted in the characteriza-
tion of Lampito. Here again, the women seem to be united in their effort to
stop the war, while the language that describes this process allows for the ex-
pression of Athens’ political animus. This double strategy enables the peace
theme to progress while exorcising political tensions through the subtextual
theme of sacrifice.
In the register of prostitution, there is a shift here from characterizing the
friend as a hetaira to a common marketplace commodity – the essence of the
porne. The Athenian woman says that she invites a hetaira to join her in cele-
brating Hekate. The word hetaira (the only time it occurs in the play) is sig-
nificant here and bears the associations of the elite discourse associated with
the symposium, as opposed to the disembedded economics of the porne.104 It
establishes a social parity between the two women, which is then denigrated
when the friend is characterized as an eel. The eel, though a delicacy, had
strong associations with the marketplace. This connection is evident in both
instances cited above: in Acharnians the eels are explicitly identified as Boiotian
wares, and in Lysistrata (703) the decree the woman complains of is one that
focuses on trade, sanctioning Boiotian imports. In the unexpected character-
ization of her friend as an eel, the imagery of woman as porne and woman as
sacrificial victim converges.
riding white horses (Pyth. 1.66). The dance narrated in this song was ritually
institutionalized in well-known theriomorphic choral dances performed by
Spartan maidens.106
There is yet another horse associated with the Tyndarid family: Pausanias
records that on the road between Sparta and Arcadia there is a temple called
the Tomb of the Horse:
For Tyndareus, having sacrificed a horse here, administered an oath to the suitors of
Helen, making them stand upon the pieces of the horse. The oath was to defend Helen
and him who might be chosen to marry her if ever they should be wronged. When he
had sworn the suitors he buried the horse here. (Pausanias 3.20.9 trans. Jones and
Ormerod)
Perhaps an allusion to this sacrifice was intended when Kalonike offered her
suggestion for how the women of Greece could seal their oath:
Ka. e« leuk»n poqen
¯ppon laboÓsai t»mion ntemo©meqa;
Lu. po± leuk»n ¯ppon;
Kalonike: What if we got a white stallion from somewhere and cut off a slice of him?
Lysistrata: Where can we get a white horse? (191–193)
The reference seemed obscure in antiquity, since to the Greeks horse sac-
rifice occurred in legend, among barbarians and under extraordinary circum-
stances. The scholiasts conjecture that the white horse is a double entendre
for penis and refers to Amazonian sacrificial custom. I think that the Spartan
myth is germane here, especially since the white horse is mentioned shortly
after an allusion to Agamemnon’s first encounter with Helen’s “apples” (155).
In the myth and the ritual related to it, the women dance in the place of the
horses, shaking back their hair. They are thought to represent the Leukip-
pides, Hileira and Phoibe. They also have a strong association with all the
horses in this cluster of narratives, and that would link them to the white
horse whose sacrifice guarantees the honorable conduct of Helen’s suitors.
Lysistrata’s question po± leuk»n ¯ppon is a joke because the white horse
had a strong ritual association with Spartan women, who were to be found
106 Pi. Fr. 112; Eur. Helen 1465–1468; Calame (1997: 185–206); Henderson (1987: 221).
176 Sex and Sacrifice
MEN AS WOMEN
After the apportionment of Diallage, the women, even Lysistrata, recede from
the stage. Perhaps the women’s disappearance is less puzzling if we think of
Diallage as a surrogate who takes on the vital qualities that have been used
to characterize the women. In the person of Diallage the female comes to be
entirely bodily. The men then come into focus, now that the play has effected
their symbolic domination of all that has been associated with the female
body on stage (Sparta and allies). As the men take control, we see that the
original schism between men and women is no longer operative. Thus from
a wide-angle view the women in this play have served as the ritual surrogate
for men in this play, useful in their capacity to project the vital (animal/porne)
aspects of human nature, as well as the morally superior elements (priestess/
hetaira).
The men come out from their feasting completely inebriated, the Athenian
celebrating drunkenness as the preferred state for interactions with the Spar-
tans (1228–1240). Although communal drinking is common in comedy, here
it also recalls the behavior of the women when they were swearing their oath.
Indeed, the play’s plot has forced the men to be defined by stereotypes that
usually apply to women on and off the comic stage: the old men are physically
inferior to the old women who control the Akropolis; they are incomplete
without their women and lacking in self-sufficiency. The Proboulos is dressed
in women’s clothes. In the interaction between Kinesias and Myrrhine, we see
a man sexually dominated by his wife, and by the time the Spartan ambas-
sador meets with Kinesias, all the ambassadors want nothing more than to
have sex, a lack of self-control that has strong associations with the feminine.
In addition, men are also implicated in the women-as-animals trope: when the
women call themselves ataurote the counterpart of the male as bull is implied.
When Lysistrata instructs Diallage to lead the Spartan and Athenian toward
her, she tells her to lead them by the tail (1119), a euphemism for penis. Male
sexuality is as animal as female.
Aristophanes projects masculine concerns onto female characters in Lysis-
trata. After all, waging war and controlling sexuality were the business of
Men as Women 177
Athenian men.107 The women in this play are ritual substitutes for men in
this Dionysiac rite produced for the men of Athens. Aristophanes uses the
feminine as schematized through ritual and sexuality (and multiple related
permutations) to imagine the only kind of peace that would be desirable to
the Athenians in 411 BCE, that is, a victory.
Thus Lysistrata gives expression to the incompatible urges of the mascu-
line Athenian subject to whom the play was addressed.108 Throughout the
play we have seen these conflicts represented through what was interpreted
as a ritual model of dualism. This pattern persists until the end of the play,
where we encounter a flurry of doublings that dramatize Athenian ambivalence
toward Sparta. When the Athenian ambassador emerges from the banquet he
describes the symposiasts as sofÛtatoi, a marked term for those who speak
in the code of a hetaireia, the riddling language used at symposia to distinguish
an inner circle.109 We might then interrogate the final songs for the meaning
they encode.
After the Athenian ambassador praises the virtues of drunkenness for com-
municating with the Spartans, it is as though we see Spartan culture through
a drunken double vision. The Spartan ambassador sings two songs, and in
the second one especially, there are myriad images of doubleness. The Spar-
tan singer refers to the naval success at Artemision and the heroic stand of
Leonidas and his Spartan warriors against the Persian foe at Thermopylae. In
this battle the Spartans were killed to a man, but their fortitude and brav-
ery were legend (Herod. 7.175–178). Moulton describes the assimilation of the
Spartans to boars (1255) as a Homeric allusion.110 Allusions to these battles are
unproblematic in that they are examples of cooperation between Sparta and
Athens, but they provide a setup for the less straightforward image of Sparta
projected in the second song.
Here, the doubling becomes more marked: the Spartan sings of Helen lead-
ing the Leukippides in a dance. Calame notes the similarity of this passage to
the choral song in Euripides’ Helen (1465 ff.) that envisions Helen’s return
home.111 In Lysistrata Helen is depicted in her cultic role, as maiden-goddess
choral leader. Can we expect the Athenians to have thought of her in this
singular identity, or would her name have conjured a double image, eliciting
also her reputation as the cause of the Trojan War, especially since Homer’s
influence is marked in the earlier Spartan song?
The Tyndaridae, the twin sons of Zeus, and the two Leukippides whom
they carried off are two more sets of doubles in the final Spartan song.112
Athena of the Brazen House is mentioned twice in the exodos (1299, 1321).
She is the counterpart to Athena Polias – goddess of the citadel. Because of
Athena’s close association with Lysistrata, and the setting of the action on the
Akropolis, this reference has been interpreted as an appropriate seal of the rap-
prochement brought about by the women. But there is also another significant
association with the Goddess of the Brazen House that was a symbol of con-
flict at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. According to Thucydides,
after Sparta and its allies had resolved to engage in war, they began to set the
stage with various demands, one being that the Athenians should drive out the
curse of Kylon (which, conveniently, would have driven Perikles out of office).
In response, the Athenians demanded, among other things, that the Spar-
tans drive out the curse of the Goddess of the Brazen House. The Spartans
111 Calame (1997: 192). Here also Helen dances with a chorus of girls beside the Eurotas in
front of the temple Athena Khalkioikos. We should recall that in this play, produced
in Athens only a year earlier, Euripides expressed the ambiguous character of Helen
by asserting that she actually had a doppelganger. It was this double who ran off with
Paris and ignited the Trojan War. It is fascinating that this surrogate Helen is once
referred to as dillaghma (Eur. Helen 586).
112 Calame (1997: 221); see also Nagy (1990: 348). Alcman fragment 1 PMG names two
Spartan dancers, Agido and a female choregos. Calame speculated that the name Agido
is related to the Agiadai, one of the two dynastic families of Sparta (recall the King
Agis besieging Athens from Deceleia). Greg Nagy has argued that the names Agido
and Hagesichora are generic identifications for the priestesses of the Leukippides, real
women, likely from Spartan royal families, who play the Leukipiddes in the dance. He
suggests that the chorus is a microcosm of the social hierarchy that enacts and ritually
authorizes the Spartan political order, with its double dynasty. Nagy (1990: 345–349).
Men as Women 179
incurred this curse when they starved Pausanius to the point of death, block-
aded in Athena’s temple, removing him only in time to expire.
The aggregation of ambiguous references in an ostensibly celebratory clos-
ing hymn does not seem satisfactorily explained as a recasting of history, nor
does it seem appropriate to the dynamics of comedy to suggest that a figure
like Helen or Athena Chalkioikos should be limited to one aspect of her signi-
fication. The foregoing interpretation has suggested that Lysistrata can be fully
understood only by an audience willing to see double – the priestess as a pros-
titute, the libation as a sacrifice, the prostitute as a sacrificial victim, the peace
process as the violent enactment of Athenian supremacy. The double vision
of Sparta that concludes the play corresponds with this theme – there are two
Spartas in this play, one with which Athens makes peace, and another that is
ridiculed, victimized, and sacrificed. Aristophanes can imagine reconciliation
between Athens and Sparta, just as long as the peace process declares Athens
the victor.
Conclusion
Although I have focused only on a small collection of texts in this book, I hope
that readers will recognize the interplay of the categories of prostitute, wife,
and ritual agent elsewhere as well. By way of an epilogue, I would like to offer
one more example in which these roles define the parameters for representing
the feminine. In the story of Hypereides’ defense of Phryne, we find a beauti-
ful and famous courtesan in the middle of the fourth century BCE who was
accused of impiety because she allegedly reveled in the Lyceum, introduced a
new divinity, and formed illicit thiasoi, or bands, of men and women.1 The tra-
dition memorializing this case bears traces of being shaped by the discursive
matrix that defines the prostitute against the wife, while assimilating her to the
ritual agent. Athenaios preserves a fragment from Hermippos (ca. 200 BCE),
who adapted a story from Idomeneus (ca. 300 BCE), describing the trial:
180
Conclusion 181
This fragment, and one other found in ps-Plutarch, are the only versions of
this frequently repeated vignette that explicitly give Phryne’s beautiful naked-
ness a persuasive role in her defense.2 In other accounts the rending of her
clothes conforms more to the social conventions of supplication, depicting
her more humbly, and, indeed, many scholars believe that the original version
described Phryne trying to evoke pity, not the fear of god.3
The shaping of the story has been ascribed to the influence of stock
invective against orators, describing them as sexually immoderate: “The evi-
dence, then, indicates the disrobing scene was invented by Idomeneus, perhaps
to parody and ridicule the courtroom displays of Athenian demagogues.”4
Phryne’s own biographical tradition is also thought to be influential. Famous
for her beauty, she was said to be even more spectacular in the parts unseen
(Ath. 590f.). Although she wore a chiton and didn’t frequent public baths, she
was seen disrobing at the Eleusinia and the Poseidonia (590f.), and there is a
tradition that she was Praxiteles’ model for his Knidian Aphrodite – a sculp-
ture of the goddess bathing. Phryne’s claim to fame was that she was a beau-
tiful nude. With this in mind, it is easy to understand how the rending of her
garments in supplication was transformed into a display of her naked body.5
In addition to these biographical traditions, I see precisely the same con-
stellation of roles that we’ve seen operating in the texts of [Demosthenes],
Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. When Phryne’s naked chest is dramat-
ically revealed to sway the jurors in her favor – the drama of her exposure
is informed, in part, by our understanding that it was shameful for a citi-
zen’s wife even to be named in this venue. Phryne’s nakedness in court is only
2 There are numerous accounts of this scene, [Plutarch] Hypereides 849e; Harpocration
s.v. “Euthias; Alciphron Letters of the Courtesans 3–5 (130–132); Anon. De sublimitate 34.3;
Quintilian mentions that translating Hypereides’ defense of Phryne into Latin was a
common rhetorical exercise 10.5.2; see also Davidson (2006: 29–30); McClure (2003:
132–136); Cooper (1991). Phryne’s story has also been memorialized in painting. The
image of the courtesan before the law court is perhaps most well known from Jean-
Léon Gérôme’s 1861 painting Phryne devant le tribunal.
3 Posidippus Ephesia F13KA=Ath. 591e–f describes Phryne taking the hand of each juror
in supplication, crying and pleading for her life. Cooper (1991: 314); McClure (2003:
134).
4 Cooper (1995: 315); Davidson (2006: 29) calls the trial “docu-fictional.”
5 McClure (2003: 126–132).
182 Conclusion
possible because nudity was the stock in trade of the prostitute (and Phryne’s
specialty). In contrast to a wife who is concealed by her clothes and hidden
in the midst of a man’s property, the prostitute is exposed, naked in public
places. Indeed, her nakedness advertises her social alienation.6 And yet, here
Phryne’s exposed body communicated something quite different. For, when
the jurors looked upon Phryne, they thought she was the hupophetis (interpreter)
and zakoros (honorific term for temple attendant) of Aphrodite.
In the court setting, erotic feminine display is not understood in terms of
the marketplace – an advertisement of the prostitute’s availability. Rather, in
the civic space of the law court, Phryne’s naked body is translated into the lan-
guage of ritual, the other Athenian idiom that could accommodate feminine
eroticism. When given legitimacy, the naked prostitute is transformed into the
interpreter and attendant of Aphrodite. It is as though the transgressive display
of the courtesan in court – her silent testimony – has the effect of ceremonial
aporrheta, rites so solemn they cannot be named, and, indeed, here the exposure
of Phryne’s body comes close to a divine epiphany (deisidaimonsa©).
While the reinterpretation of the naked prostitute as divine attendant
asserts a distinction between the marketplace and civic institutions, it also
points to a marked association between the erotic and the ritual sphere. The
perils of this link were tempered by an insistence on the distinction between
the prostitute and the wife; civic legitimacy formed a nearly impenetrable
barrier between the two identities. The similarities between sex and ritual
were elaborated through a conceptual association between the public perfor-
mance of the prostitute and the ritual agent. In Phryne’s story we see the law
court transform the naked courtesan into a divine attendant. The image of her
exposed body before the tribunal is so compelling because it aligns two dif-
ferent scripts prescribing the performance of femininity in public, one prosaic
the other sublime. At the same time, it demonstrates the power of context to
determine meaning.
Indeed, Phryne’s story makes the most sense if we read it through the dis-
cursive strategy that structures the feminine through the interplay of public
roles: the prostitute is defined against the wife, but aligned with the ritual
agent. If the erotic woman in public is not going to be seen as a prostitute,
then there is a preexisting cultural inclination to see her in the role of rit-
ual agent, a reflex that is structured around the idea of the legitimate wife as
absence.
In the previous four chapters we have seen this feminine matrix operating
in a variety of seemingly unrelated projects: in the speech “Against Neaira”
it is an index against which to calibrate masculine morality and economic
behavior; in Plato’s Symposium it is used to symbolize philosophical transcen-
dence; in Xenophon’s Symposium it demonstrates a new politics of viewing that
integrates the elite and demos through the mediation of the philosopher; and
in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata it serves as a vehicle to express Athenian ambiva-
lence about the Peloponnesian War. Yet in all four of these texts the feminine
continuum reflects and negotiates the intricacies and conflicts at play in the
masculine subject, while providing testimony that images of powerful women
were integral to Athenian conceptions of masculine subjectivity.
The feminine continuum offers an alternative to an asymmetrical power
model for conceptualizing the self. As opposed to a zero-sum relationship,
where male is dominant and active and female is subordinate and passive, this
tripartite conception of gender juxtaposes different feminine roles in order to
relate different types of public performance, and all their associations. The
prostitute, the wife, and the ritual agent symbolize a cultural spectrum that
provides a rubric for interpreting people, their actions, and contexts. In each
context we are asked to interpret how one role relates to the others. To adapt
a formulation of Catherine Bell’s, feminine performance “must be understood
within a semantic framework whereby the significance of an action is depen-
dent upon its place and relationship within a context of all other ways of
acting; what it echoes, what it inverts, what it alludes to, what it denies.”7
My readings have insisted on the absent presences, the echoes, inversions,
allusions, and assimilations that characterize representations of women. Time
and again we have seen that each position on the spectrum is given a value
as it relates to the others. Thus, the social inversion that Neaira and Phano
come to signify – the outrageous image of the prostitute-basilinna – depends
on the echoing life story of mother and daughter and the resonance between
the erotics of ritual and marketplace sexuality.
In Plato’s Symposium, all the women are constructed as both absent and
present in different degrees, always with an insistence on excluding the female
body from the realm of philosophical discourse. Diotima’s disembodied voice
is all the more singular and powerful when considered in contrast to the silent
auletris. The semi-inclusion of these extreme positions on the feminine spec-
trum facilitates Plato’s deft sleight-of-hand by which he excludes woman as
symbol of legitimate reproduction at the same time that he appropriates the
power of maternity for his philosophical project. But this feminine spectrum
provides Plato with a necessary alternative to the conventional active–passive
model of pederasty, a model based on perceptions about male and female sex
roles. The feminine spectrum allows him (perhaps ironically) to depict all
lovers as agents and to depict a hierarchy of realms of erotic experience, now
linked explicitly to the feminine, for the philosopher to transcend.
Plato’s ambivalent embrace of femininity finds a counterpoint in Xeno-
phon’s Symposium, where the entertainment structures the text. Here the rit-
ual agent is evoked only allusively, through the performance of the marriage
of Dionysos. The superimposition of hired dancer and ritual wife produces
longing for marital love – a similar triangulation of roles as we saw in “Against
Neaira,” but with drastically different implications. In both of these texts the
graduating order of prostitute, wife, and priestess symbolizes civic reproduc-
tion, while women out of order portends sterility – in Xenophon this is rep-
resented by the undynamic performance of amazing feats, and in “Against
Neaira” the barren city is represented by the image of citizen wives forced
into prostitution.
The characterization of the women in Lysistrata, on the other hand, as pros-
titutes and ritual agents is completely allusive – the text is written against the
cultural association of ritual practice and prostitution and must be decoded
like a palimpsest. Once this subtext is made explicit, however, the play has
more coherence. The number of permutations on the association between the
registers of sex and sacrifice that Aristophanes incorporates in his play is stun-
ning – the priestess as madam, the temple as bedroom, women as animals, the
Conclusion 185
prostitute as ritual surrogate. All of these testify not only to his comic genius
but also to the richness of the vein he is tapping, this matrix of feminine roles.
While I hope the cumulative evidence compiled in these chapters convinces
readers that femininity could be constructed as a multivalent and fragmented
category through the negotiation of various public scripts for female behavior,
it is not possible to point to “evidence” that would irrefutably confirm my
argument. It is discursive practice that aligns these different faces of woman,
and it is because this book is concerned with discourse that I can’t point
to any succinct and explicit articulation of the feminine as tripartite. It has
to be pieced together by compiling glimpses that show now the prostitute
in opposition to the wife, now the ritual agent assimilated to the prostitute,
now the wife elicited as absence through the superimposition of the priestess
and prostitute. Even these categories seem to divide or transform from text
to text, even passage to passage: the hetaira, the porne, the auletris are no more
identical than the basilinna, the priestess, and the temple attendant. We are
constantly seeing the prostitute contextualized by her difference from the wife,
and yet there is an insistence on the continuity between the performance of the
prostitute and that of the ritual agent. There is a compulsion to differentiate
the hetaira from the wife, the porne from the priestess. To do this they must be
understood in relation to one another, which in turn begs their assimilation,
and the collapse of these categories can only mean crisis.
The analyses in this book have illuminated the way discourse functions, and
this has never been a straightforward affair. We have seen the feminine matrix
evoked on its own terms, as a model for organizing behavior. Thus, in the
speech “Against Neaira,” the threat Stephanos posed to Athenian democracy
was depicted by the degree to which he did not respect distinctions between
the prostitute, the wife, and the ritual agent. Norms for appropriate exchange
became visible in the negative relief of his outrageous transgressions.
At the same time, this model has been shown to coexist with other
paradigms for describing sex, gender, performance, and exchange. The fem-
inine continuum provides an alternative to a range of binary structures:
active/passive, male/female, polis/elite, porne/hetaira, sometimes colluding
with these discursive structures, at other times subverting them. Thus in
Xenophon’s Symposium this matrix was deployed to advocate for reciprocity
as opposed to alienated exchange in terms of erotics, performance, and educa-
tion. In this text the feminine continuum worked together with the discourse
186 Conclusion
of the porne/hetaira in order to forge a relationship between the polis and elite
Athenians.
In Plato’s Symposium, however, we saw the feminine continuum at work in
a different semantic field. There it underpinned a reconfiguration of conven-
tional notions of pederasty. It allowed a conception of erotics based not on
male–female sex roles, but rather on different degrees and contexts of erotic
agency. In the course of this text two different discursive strategies for talking
about sex were juxtaposed. The penetration model informed some of the sym-
posiasts’ conception of eros but was then shown to be inadequate for others.
Nonetheless, both of these models imply that gender is implicated in sexuality
and valorizes my earlier claim that an accurate history of sexuality demands a
serious engagement with gender as a complex category.
In my reading of Lysistrata, I suggested that Aristophanes exploited the insta-
bility of the subject–object relation in his representation of women. Thus,
he evoked the image of the prostitute to configure women as both sexual
agents and sexual objects, and he manipulated the semantics of ritual to depict
women as simultaneously sacrificial agents and victims. This strategy played
on the analogies between prostitutes and women at ritual, at the same time
that it exposed the tensions inherent in this homology. By superimposing the
image of the prostitute over that of the priestess, Aristophanes’ text suggested
that the dynamic that recasts the hetaira as a porne is a ritual logic akin to the
process of identification and destruction between a sacrificial agent and vic-
tim. At the same time this analogy served another purpose, for the potentially
threatening and powerful image of the priestess, as characterized by Lysis-
trata, is both undermined and contained by her implied relationship to the
prostitute.
These analyses have argued that the feminine continuum is one strategy
among others that the Athenians used to describe and prescribe behavior. By
allowing the possibility that one discursive formation can serve even opposing
interests, and that different strategies for describing and regulating identity
coexisted without necessarily being reconciled, my readings point toward a
radical incoherence of the masculine subject.8 Although I haven’t made claims
about the effect that this discourse of femininity had on the lives of Athenian
women, I think the implications that this argument has about the relationship
189
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Aeschines Lysistrata
1.41 7 1–3 155
1.82 7 76–91 162
1.110 7 77 163
3.216ff 41 84 163, 168
85–88 168
Aeschylus 115 170
Agamemnon 155 175
238–247 171 168–169 153
177–179 143
Alkiphron 184–185 157
Letters of the Courtesans 189 157
3–5 (130–132) 181 191–193 175
4.14 144 192 157
4.18 133 202 157
10ff 133 203 158
204–205 157
Anon. 205 157
De sublimitate 34.3 181 217–218 170, 171
231 170
Apollodorus 239 158
Bibliotheca 4.14.4 143 260 170
Fr.Gr.Hist. 244F 109 173 363 170
384 144
Aristophanes 387–399 145
Acharnians 468 170
504–506 140, 178 476 170
885 172 551–554 149
Birds 567–586 160
284 124 572–586 146
sch. 286 124 588–597 145
Ekklesiazousai 610–614 144
Sch. 810 124 615–619 146
Frogs 638–646 147
429 124 651 34, 145
199
200 Index Locorum
Pindar 188c6–d2 75
Fr.112 175 189e5–190a8 78
O. 13 13 190b5–6 79
Pyth. 1.66 175 190d6–e1 78
190e7–191a3 78
Philippides 191a5–c6 78
fr. 20 144 191c1–2 78
191d4 78
Phylarchus 191d6–192a6 79–80
Fr.Gr.Hist 81F42 65 191d9–e4 78
191e8 81
Plato 192a 81
Apology 192a4 81
20a 104 192d3 78
Crito 193a1–3 79, 92
391b 104 193a2 78
Laws 193a5–8 78
753d 157 193b5 71
805e 66 193e3–4 78
836e 8 195d4–5 83
Protagoras 195e7–196a2 82
347c–d 62, 65 196d2–3 83
Republic 196d3–4 83
9.571b–576c 53 198a2–3 79
330b 124 198c1–5 85
Symposium 201d 92
176e 63, 66 201d1–5 67, 77
177d5 68 201d3 77
178b–180b 123 204b 77, 91
178e3–179a2 70 205e1–2 88
179b4 71 206e7–8 87
179d8 70 207d2–e5 87
180a7–b5 71 208b8 77
180b3 71 208c1 77
181b1–b6 72 208d 87
181c6 72 208e1–209a8 87
181c7–d3 73 210a 67
182b5–6 74 210e2–211b5 89–90
182b7–c4 73 211b 88
184a4 81 212e 62
185b5–6 73 212d 62
187a7–b1 74 212d6 94
Index Locorum 203
205
206 Subject Index
epideictic speeches, 120, 121 Helen of Troy, 170, 172, 174, 178, 179
eranos, 34, 56 Henderson, Jeffrey, 141, 149–150, 155, 171
erastes, 68, 69–72, 136 Hermogenes, 123
ergazesthai, 43 hetaireia, 13–15
eromenos, 69–72, 81, 102, 132, 134, 136 hetairistria, 80, 85
as athletic victor, 108 heterosexuality, 9–10, 80, 132–134, 138, 139
subjectivity of, 133, 135 hieros gamos, 16–17, 48, 138
Eros, 72–74, 84–86 Hileira and Phoibe (daughters of
ouranian, 59 Leukippos), 174
pandemian, 59 Hippias, 165
erotics Hippokleides, 117
autocratic, 107 homoerotic desire, 106, 133–135
reciprocal, 128 horse-races, 37–43, 48, 102–104, 107
Eryximakhos, 74–75 horse, white, as sacrificial victim, 157, 175–176
euandria, 101, 125–127
eutresios, 125 Iphigeneia, 171
exchange, 98. (see also women)
Kallias, 98, 101, 102–104, 119–120, 122, 124,
Faraone, Christopher, 140, 154–155 135–137, 138
feminine, 9–10 kalokagathia, 115–117
and the body, 76, 78, 91, 92 Kalonike, 157
as continuum, 2, 61, 69; related to civic Kelly, Andrew, 31
identity, 91 Kharmides, 105, 117, 123
and material world, 88 Kimon, 165
matrix of, defined, 2–6, 8 Kinesias, 148, 159–160, 176
feminism (in classics), 10–11 King Thoas, 146
Foley, Helene, 5, 152, 155 kiste, 167
Foucault, Michel, 3, 6–7, 132–134 Kleisthenes of Sicyon, 117
korinthiazomai, 163
gaze, 27, 99, 108, 131 Kritoboulos, 123
gender, 68 kulix, 158
-bending and Agathon 83–85, 86 Kurke, Leslie, 9–10, 102, 112
as binary, 61, 69, 93–97 Kylon, 178
Goldhill, Simon, 108, 127
Gorgias, 85, 87 Lacey, W. K., 29
Lampito, 153, 161, 163, 168, 170
Habinek, Thomas, 51 Lemnian Women, 146
habrosune, habrotes, 102, 132 Lenaia, 140
Haloa, 142 Leonidas, 177
Halperin, David, 20, 54, 60–61, 86, 88–89, Leukippides, 174, 178
96–135 Lewis, D. M., 148
hedone, 128 Loraux, Nicole, 2, 5, 146
Subject Index 207