captive King Croesus finally achieved gender equality with wife

In the sixth century BGC, the Lydian king Croesus was extraordinarily wealthy. His reputation for extraordinary wealth developed under the same misleading accounting used to value the wealth of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos while they were married to Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Bezos, respectively. Croesus himself was rightly unsure about his wealth and his welfare. He gained much better understanding when Cyrus the Great violently captured him and forbid him from ever again participating in war. Cyrus made Croesus happy by establishing gender equality between Croesus and his wife.

King Croesus, king of ancient Lydian Empire

Before Cyrus the Great captured King Croesus, Solon of Athens, revered for his wisdom, visited him at his Lydian capital Sardis. Croesus displayed to Solon enormous wealth. Croesus thought of himself as the man most favored with good among all men. Nonetheless, he seemed uneasy about his welfare and sought validation. Recognizing that Solon was well-known for wisdom, he said to Solon:

Now thus longing has come upon me to ask if you have ever seen anyone more favored with good?

{ νῦν ὦν ἐπειρέσθαι με ἵμερος ἐπῆλθέ σε εἴ τινα ἤδη πάντων εἶδες ὀλβιώτατον. }[1]

Eschewing flattery of Croesus, Solon spoke the truth as he understood it. He said that Tellus of Athens was most favored with good. Solon explained that Tellus’s city of Athens was prosperous, and Tellus fathered noble and good sons who all had surviving children, and Tellus was wealthy. Moreover, Tellus died a “most glorious {λαμπροτάτος}” death attacking the Athenians’ Megarian enemy at Eleusis. Tellus received a public burial and great posthumous honor. However, being dead, even being dead and highly honored, isn’t good in a more gender-enlightened view. Solon, like the Spartan mothers and so many others throughout history, valued men as instruments of war above men’s very lives.

King Croesus shows his treasure to the wise Solon of Athens

Hoping to be rated just behind Tellus, Croesus asked Solon who had the most good second to Tellus. Solon said Kleobis and Biton. These two young men worked in the place of oxen to pull their mother atop her wagon about five miles to a festival of the reigning goddess Hera. Exhausted, the two sons died that night in the temple of Hera after receiving great honor. In common sense of ordinary persons throughout history, it isn’t good for men to be dead. The great ancient Greek poet Sappho valued her brothers Charaxos and Larichos not as instruments, but as fully human beings. All men deserved to be valued, not merely for the feats that they perform, but primarily for their intrinsic worth as living, fully human beings.

King Croesus questions the wise Solon of Athens

Women need men as fully human beings. Despite his wisdom, Solon upheld the gender-traditional view of men as instruments valued in serving others and ultimately as disposable persons. But Solon didn’t support female supremacism or a female exclusivism. Solon in his wisdom declared:

No land suffices to provide everything for itself, but it has one thing, and another it lacks. The best land has not all but the most. In the same way, no single person is self-sufficient. Every person needs another.

{ ὥσπερ χώρη οὐδεμία καταρκέει πάντα ἑωυτῇ παρέχουσα, ἀλλὰ ἄλλο μὲν ἔχει ἑτέρου δὲ ἐπιδέεται· ἣ δὲ ἂν τὰ πλεῖστα ἔχῃ, αὕτη ἀρίστη. ὣς δὲ καὶ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα ἓν οὐδὲν αὔταρκες ἐστί· τὸ μὲν γάρ ἔχει, ἄλλου δὲ ἐνδεές ἐστι· }[2]

Women as a gender are not self-sufficient. Men as fully human beings are others to women. Men are good as others to women.

Only after being defeated and captured did King Croesus understand how to be better favored with good and experience gender equality. Because he misinterpreted one Delphic oracle, Croesus allied with the Assyrians in attacking the Persian king Cyrus the Great. Cyrus routed Croesus’s Lydian army and conquered the Lydian capital Sardis. Croesus realized through this defeat that he had failed to uphold a second Delphic oracle: “know yourself {γνῶθι σαυτὸν}.”[3]

Now knowing that he was inferior in military might to Cyrus, Croesus wondered whether now he would be happy. Feeling sorry for Croesus, Cyrus restored to him his wife and children, his friends and servants, and his home. Cyrus, however, forbid Croesus from further participating in wars. Croesus was delighted. He explained:

Because the life that others considered to be the most fortunate, and I agreed with them, this life I will now have and enjoy myself.

{ ὅτι ἣν ἄλλοι τε μακαριωτάτην ἐνόμιζον εἶναι βιοτὴν καὶ ἐγὼ συνεγίγνωσκον αὐτοῖς, ταύτην καὶ ἐγὼ νῦν ἔχων διάξω. }[4]

Cyrus, who hadn’t yet married, didn’t understand. He asked who lives a life that is the most fortunate. Croesus declared:

“My wife,” he said. “She, O Cyrus, always shared equally with me in wealth, luxuries, and every joy that life brought, but she had no share in the anxieties of securing it, nor in those of war or battle. Indeed you seem be putting me thus in the same position as I did my wife, whom among humans I love the most. I hence feel that I owe the god Apollo new offerings of thanks.”

{ Ἡ ἐμὴ γυνή, εἶπεν, ὦ Κῦρε· ἐκείνη γὰρ τῶν μὲν ἀγαθῶν καὶ τῶν μαλακῶν καὶ εὐφροσυνῶν πασῶν ἐμοὶ τὸ ἴσον μετεῖχε, φροντίδων δὲ ὅπως ταῦτα ἔσται καὶ πολέμου καὶ μάχης οὐ μετῆν αὐτῇ. οὕτω δὴ καὶ σὺ δοκεῖς ἐμὲ κατασκευάζειν ὥσπερ ἐγὼ ἣν ἐφίλουν μάλιστα ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι ἄλλα μοι δοκῶ χαριστήρια ὀφειλήσειν. }[5]

Croesus is famed for his wealth. That’s shallow fame. With Croesus’s wise insight into his and his wife’s happiness, those who have ears to hear and eyes to see should perceive that one greater than Solon is here.[6] Husbands’ supreme love for their wives need not be an obstacle to gender equality. Upholding the solemn public commitment to gender equality, everyone should encourage wives to work stressful, full-time jobs to provide for their husbands and to stand ready to defend their husbands through military service. Become as wise as Croesus was!

silver jug showing naked man holding on to wild animals. From Karun Treasure

Throughout history, wives have done much for their husbands. Wives strengthened their husbands amid the destroyed civilization of fifth-century Roman Gaul. The woman hero Felice didn’t commit suicide so that her husband wouldn’t be charged with murder. Gliceria, a very sensual woman, compromised with her husband over gloves and jesses in the marital bed. Wives saved their husbands from castration, even duping the devil to do so. Not every husband can offer his wife the wealth of Croesus. Every husband, however, can demonstrate his support for women and gender equality by learning and implementing the wisdom of Croesus.

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Notes:

[1] Herodotus, Persian Wars / Histories {Ἱστορίαι} 1.30.2, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Godley (1920). For a freely available commentary on Herodotus, Book 1, Steadman (2012). The account above of Solon and Croesus follows Herodotus, Histories 1.29 to 1.34.

I’ve translated the accusative case of ὀλβιώτατος, the superlative form of ὄλβιος, as anyone “more favored with good” among everyone. Other translations: “more blest” in Godley (1920) and “to be the happiest” in Steadman (2012). In current English, “blessed” tends to be associated with divine favor of a spiritual sort. In ancient Greek, ὄλβιος had strong connections to material wealth. Rutter (2023) p. 9. On ὄλβιος in Herodotus specifically, id. pp. 28-32. The meaning of “good” / “happy” is a central issue in the discussion between Solon and Croesus.

The discussion between Solon and Croesus tends to be superficially moralized as “Call no man happy until he is dead.” However, in Herodotus’s Histories, the textual source for Solon’s dictum, Solon is not sententious, but prolix. Here is merely a small excerpt of Solon on this issue:

He who is very rich is not more blessed than he who has but enough for the day, unless fortune so attend him that he ends his life well, having all good things about him. … We must look to the conclusion of every matter, and see how it shall end, for there are many to whom heaven has given a vision of blessedness, and yet afterwards brought them to utter ruin.

{ οὐ γάρ τι ὁ μέγα πλούσιος μᾶλλον τοῦ ἐπ᾽ ἡμέρην ἔχοντος ὀλβιώτερος ἐστί, εἰ μή οἱ τύχη ἐπίσποιτο πάντα καλὰ ἔχοντα εὖ τελευτῆσαὶ τὸν βίον. … σκοπέειν δὲ χρὴ παντὸς χρήματος τὴν τελευτήν, κῇ ἀποβήσεται· πολλοῖσι γὰρ δὴ ὑποδέξας ὄλβον ὁ θεὸς προρρίζους ἀνέτρεψε. }

Herodotus, Histories 1.32.8, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Godley (1920).

The popularized dictum of Solon, “Call no man happy until he is dead,” has a more sophisticated variant. In the context of ancient Greek worship of dead men-heroes, the dead man-hero might be honored as “blessed {ὄλβιος}. A living man who is ὄλβιος is merely “fortunate.” Nagy (2012) p. 57.

Classicists have scarcely yet begun to examine the devaluation of men’s lives in ancient Greek culture. A leading classicists with apparently unintentional irony declared:

As the narrative of Herodotus implies, only those who are initiated into the mysteries of hero cult can understand the sacral meaning of olbios {ὄλβιος}.

Nagy (2012) p. 57, parenthetical gloss added. The sentence is repeated in Nagy (2013), “Hour 11. Blessed are the heroes: the cult hero in Homeric poetry and beyond.”

[2] Herodotus, Histories 1.32.8, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Godley (1920). Like most persons throughout history, Solon seems to have treated uncritically gender in relation to men. To execute Croesus, Cyrus made the following arrangements:

Having piled up a great pyre, Cyrus placed upon it Croesus, bound in chains, along with fourteen Lydian boys beside him.

{ ὁ δὲ συννήσας πυρὴν μεγάλην ἀνεβίβασε ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν τὸν Κροῖσόν τε ἐν πέδῃσι δεδεμένον καὶ δὶς ἑπτὰ Λυδῶν παρ᾽ αὐτὸν παῖδας }

Herodotus, Histories 1.86.2, sourced as previously. In this context, the children being sacrificed are surely boys. See, e.g. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.2.12. The social forces that condemn men to a shorter lifespan on average than women significantly reduce men’s blessedness relative to women.

[3] Croesus sent Lydians to Delphi to complain about the oracle that had been given to him. The priestess at Delphi declared:

Regarding the oracle that was given him, Croesus has no right to complain. Apollo Loxias declared to him that if he should lead an army against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire.

{ κατὰ δὲ τὸ μαντήιον τὸ γενόμενον οὐκ ὀρθῶς Κροῖσος μέμφεται. προηγόρευε γὰρ οἱ Λοξίης, ἢν στρατεύηται ἐπὶ Πέρσας, μεγάλην ἀρχὴν αὐτὸν καταλύσειν. }

Herodotus, Histories 1.91.4, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Godley (1920). The great empire that Croesus destroyed was his own Lydian empire. He had failed to know himself — that he wasn’t as mighty as Cyrus the Great. On Croesus not knowing himself, Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.2.23-4.

[4] Xenophon of Athens, The Education of Cyrus / Cyropaedia {Κύρου παιδεία} 7.2.27, ancient Greek text and English translation from Miller (1914). For another English translation of the Cyropaedia, Ambler (2001). Here’s an online discussion forum for the Cyropaedia. The subsequent quote above is similarly from Cyropaedia 7.2.28. Cyrus the Great’s marriage occurred later, as described in Cyropaedia 8.5.28.

[5] A joke currently circulating on social media shows the extent to which wisdom has decayed since the time of Croesus. Consider it:

I was mugged by a thief last night on my way home. Pointing a knife at me, he said “your money or your life!” I told him I am married, so I have no money and no life. We hugged and cried together. It was a beautiful moment.

Joke posted, e.g. on Facebook seven years ago, and on Radnor Heights NextDoor a few weeks ago. This “joke” gender-stereotypes the criminal as a man and the victim implicitly as a woman (“we hugged and cried together”). That stereotyping supports the severe gender injustice of the vastly gender-disproportionate incarceration of men.

In addition, the joke pushes the ideology of individualism against truth. If a woman marries a man earning more more than she, then her effective income increases. Her living expenses are likely to decrease due to couple economies in housing and food and even entertainment, assuming the couple is passionately in love. Married couples spend their time and money differently than single persons, especially if the married couple has children. Characterizing married life, e.g. having children, as “no life,” defies the ordinary sense of life.

Even apart from the new life that children can bring to marriage, the issue of “life” plausibly runs against the joke. A single woman can spend her evenings sitting on her couch and eating ice cream while binge-watching Nexflix series. A married woman is unlikely to do that because of her interests in her husband, include her desire to stay sexually attractive to him, and her interests in the couple’s children, if they have any. A married woman typically interacts extensively with at least one real person. Compared to a married woman, a single woman much more readily can “have no life” in the historical sense of ordinary human life.

[6] While upholding the deeply entrenched gender ideology that men are disposable persons relative to children and women, Croesus offered sound wisdom on profit maximization in conquering cities. Cyrus inquired about alternatives to having his army kill all the men of Sardis, carry off its the women and children, and plunder its material wealth. Croesus answered:

“Well,” Croesus said on hearing all this, “permit me to say to any Lydians that I meet that I have secured from you the promise not to permit any pillaging nor to allow the women and children to be carried off, and that I, in return for that, have given you my solemn promise that you should get from the Lydians of their own free will everything there is of beauty or value in Sardis.”

{ Ἀκούσας ταῦτα ὁ Κροῖσος ἔλεξεν, Ἀλλ ἐμέ, ἔφη, ἔασον λέξαι πρὸς οὓς ἂν ἐγὼ Λυδῶν ἔλθω1 ὅτι διαπέπραγμαι παρὰ σοῦ μὴ ποιῆσαι ἁρπαγὴν μηδὲ ἐᾶσαι ἀφανισθῆναι παῖδας καὶ γυναῖκας· ὑπεσχόμην δέ σοι ἀντὶ τούτων ἦ μὴν παρ᾿ ἑκόντων Λυδῶν ἔσεσθαι πᾶν ὅ τι καλὸν κἀγαθόν ἐστιν ἐν Σάρδεσιν. }

Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.2.12, sourced as previously. Croesus explained that by not destroying Sardis, the city would continue to produce wealth for Cyrus.

[images] (1) King Croesus, king of ancient Lydian Empire. Detail from depiction of Croesus being executed on pyre by Cyrus the Great. Painting on amphore made in Athens between 500 and 490 BGC. Preserved as entry # LP 1266 in the Louvre Museum (Paris, France). Detail and apparent source image on Wikimedia Commons, with source image thanks to Bibi Saint-Pol.

(2) King Croesus shows his treasure to the wise Solon of Athens. Painting by Frans Francken II (Frans Francken the Younger) and Cornelis de Baellieur probably in the seventeenth century. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. Here’s a similar painting by Frans Francken the Younger.

(3) King Croesus questions the wise Solon of Athens. Painted by Gérard van Honthorst in 1624. Painting preserved in the Hambourg Kunsthalle. Source image by jean louis mazieres on flickr with a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Alternate image. Many pictures of the meeting of Croesus and Solon were painted in seventeenth-century western Europe, e.g. painting by Nikolaus Knüpfer about 1651, one by Claude Vignon about 1625 (here’s another version), and one by Willem de Poorter in the seventeenth century,

[4] Silver jug with handle of naked man holding on to wild animals. From Karun Treasure (Lydian Treasure) from seventh-century BGC and found near Uşak, Turkey. Source image thanks to Arif Solak and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Ambler, Wayne. 2001. Xenophon of Athens. The Education of Cyrus. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.

Godley, A. D., ed. and trans. 1920. Herodotus. The Persian Wars. Loeb Classical Library 117-120. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miller, Walter, ed. and trans. 1914. Xenophon. Cyropaedia. Volume I: Books 1-4, Volume II: Books 5-8. Loeb Classical Library 51 & 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Nagy, Gregory. 2012. “Signs of Hero Cult in Homeric Poetry.” Pp. 27-71 in Franco Montanari, Antonios Rengakos, and Chrēstos K. Tsangalēs, eds. Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry. Trends in Classics Supplementary, Volume 12. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Nagy, Gregory. 2013. The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Rutter, Isaac Allen. 2023. Happiness in the Archaic Period: A comprehensive analysis of the evolution of happiness-related keywords during the Archaic Period. Final Thesis for Degree in Classical Philology (Greek). Faculty of Philology. University of Barcelona (Spain). Course: 2022-2023. Tutor: Sergi Grau Guijarro.

Steadman, Geoffrey. 2012. Herodotus, Book 1, Commentary. 2nd ed. Online.

selfless eunuchs followed Panthea’s suicide at Abradatas’s death

According to Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, King Cyrus the Great’s soldiers captured Panthea, the queen of Susa. They also captured three of Panthea’s marginalized eunuch servants. She was “said to be the most beautiful woman in Asia {καλλίστη δὴ λέγεται ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ γυνὴ γενέσθαι}.”[1] Many men surely were killed in the fighting through which the eunuchs and Panthea were captured. However, Panthea’s husband King Abradatas, an ally of the Assyrians against Cyrus and the Persians, wasn’t killed. He fortunately was away seeking an alliance with the Bactrians. Nonetheless, neither the three eunuchs, nor Abradatas, nor Panthea escaped violent death.

After the three eunuchs and Panthea were captured, Cyrus told his close friend Araspas, a Mede whom he had known from his youth, to bring Panthea to him to be his wife. Being made the wife of King Cyrus the Great is a much more favorable fate than that of men killed in battle. The gender privilege of being made a royal wife didn’t please Panthea:

Now when the woman Panthea heard that, she tore her outer garment from top to bottom and wailed. Her servant women also cried aloud with her.

{ ὡς οὖν τοῦτο ἤκουσεν ἡ γυνή, περικατερρήξατό τε τὸν ἄνωθεν πέπλον καὶ ἀνωδύρατο· συνανεβόησαν δὲ καὶ αἱ δμωαί. }

Women often fail to appreciate their privilege relative to men. Panthea’s gesture of tearing her garment is associated with mourning death. Death is what happens almost exclusively to men on the battlefield.

Cyrus recognized that the male gaze often disadvantages men. When Panthea tore her clothes and wailed about becoming Cyrus’s wife, she dropped her face veil. Araspas excitedly reported to Cyrus:

“At this moment was revealed most of her face, and her neck and arms were revealed. And Cyrus, let me tell you,” he said, “it seemed to me, as it did to all the rest who saw her, that never had been born from mortals so beautiful a woman in Asia. But,” he added, “you must by all means see her for yourself.”

{ Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ ἐφάνη μὲν αὐτῆς τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος τοῦ προσώπου, ἐφάνη δὲ ἡ δέρη καὶ αἱ χεῖρες· καὶ εὖ ἴσθι, ἔφη, ὦ Κῦρε, ὡς ἐμοί τε ἔδοξε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασι τοῖς ἰδοῦσι μήπω φῦναι μηδὲ γενέσθαι γυνὴ ἀπὸ θνητῶν τοιαύτη ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ· ἀλλὰ πάντως, ἔφη, καὶ σὺ θέασαι αὐτήν. }

Cyrus, who was a rather frigid man and very focused on his job, chose not only not to have Panthea as his wife, but also not even to see this beautiful woman. He explained:

If now I have heard from you that she is beautiful, and if I am inclined just by your account of her to go and gaze on her, then when I have no time to spare, I am afraid that she herself will much more readily persuade me to come again to gaze on her. And in consequence of that, I might sit there, in neglect of my duties, idly gazing upon her.

{ εἰ νυνὶ σοῦ ἀκούσας ὅτι καλή ἐστι πεισθήσομαι ἐλθεῖν θεασόμενος, οὐδὲ πάνυ μοι σχολῆς οὔσης, δέδοικα μὴ πολὺ θᾶττον ἐκείνη αὖθις ἀναπείσῃ καὶ πάλιν ἐλθεῖν θεασόμενον· ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἴσως ἂν ἀμελήσας ὧν με δεῖ πράττειν καθῄμην ἐκείνην θεώμενος. }[2]

Despite their burdensome job responsibilities, men should allow themselves simple joys of life such as gazing upon a beautiful woman.

Cyrus the Great ignores beautiful, topless Panthea while Araspas looks on

Laughing at Cyrus’s concern, Araspas told him that a woman’s beauty cannot compel a man to act against his interests, and that love is a matter of free will. Cyrus from experience knew better:

“If falling in love is a matter of free will, is it not possible to stop whenever one pleases? But,” he said, “I have seen men both weeping from grief because of love and enslaving themselves to their beloved young men, even though before they fell in love they considered enslavement to be very bad. I have seen them giving their beloveds many things for which they could ill afford to be deprived. I have also seen men praying to be delivered from love just as from any other disease, and, for all that, unable to be delivered from it, but fettered by a stronger necessity than if they had been fettered with shackles of iron. Nonetheless, they surrender themselves to their beloved young men and irrationally serve them in many ways. And yet, in spite of all this lovers’ misery, they do not attempt to run away, but they even guard their beloved young men to prevent them from running away.”

{ εἰ ἐθελούσιόν ἐστι τὸ ἐρασθῆναι, οὐ καὶ παύσασθαι ἔστιν ὅταν τις βούληται; ἀλλ᾿ ἐγώ, ἔφη, ἑώρακα καὶ κλαίοντας ὑπὸ λύπης δι᾿ ἔρωτα, καὶ δουλεύοντάς γε τοῖς ἐρωμένοις καὶ μάλα κακὸν νομίζοντας πρὶν ἐρᾶν τὸ δουλεύειν, καὶ διδόντας γε πολλὰ ὧν οὐ βέλτιον αὐτοῖς στέρεσθαι, καὶ εὐχομένους ὥσπερ καὶ ἄλλης τινὸς νόσου ἀπαλλαγῆναι, καὶ οὐ δυναμένους μέντοι ἀπαλλάττεσθαι, ἀλλὰ δεδεμένους ἰσχυροτέρᾳ ἀνάγκῃ ἢ εἰ ἐν σιδήρῳ ἐδέδεντο. παρέχουσι γοῦν ἑαυτοὺς τοῖς ἐρωμένοις πολλὰ καὶ εἰκῇ ὑπηρετοῦντας· καὶ μέντοι οὐδ᾿ ἀποδιδράσκειν ἐπιχειροῦσι, τοιαῦτα κακὰ ἔχοντες, ἀλλὰ καὶ φυλάττουσι τοὺς ἐρωμένους μή ποι ἀποδρῶσι. }

In analyzing men’s subordination in love, Cyrus didn’t regard the beloved’s gender to be significant.[3] Araspas in response distinguished between “wretched men {ἄθλῐοι}” and “beautiful and good men {καλοὶ κἀγαθοὶ}.” According to Araspas, the latter type of men have enough self-control not to enslave themselves in love. Cyrus, however, declared:

“As for me, I neither willingly touch fire nor look upon beautiful persons. And I advise you, too, Araspas,” he said, “not to let your eyes linger upon beautiful persons, for fire, to be sure, burns only those who touch it, but beautiful persons set on fire even those who gaze at them from afar, so that they are inflamed with passion.”

{ ἔγωγε οὔτε πυρὸς ἑκὼν εἶναι ἅπτομαι οὔτε τοὺς καλοὺς εἰσορῶ. οὐδέ γε σοὶ συμβουλεύω, ἔφη, ὦ Ἀράσπα, ἐν τοῖς καλοῖς ἐᾶν τὴν ὄψιν ἐνδιατρίβειν· ὡς τὸ μὲν πῦρ τοὺς ἁπτομένους κάει, οἱ δὲ καλοὶ καὶ τοὺς ἄπωθεν θεωμένους ὑφάπτουσιν, ὥστε αἴθεσθαι τῷ ἔρωτι. }

Araspas arrogantly dismissed Cyrus’s concern:

“Do not fear, Cyrus,” he said. “Even if I never cease to look upon Panthea, I shall never be so overcome as to do anything that I ought not.”

{ Θάρρει, ἔφη, ὦ Κῦρε· οὐδ᾿ ἐὰν μηδέποτε παύσωμαι θεώμενος, οὐ μὴ κρατηθῶ ὥστε ποιεῖν τι ὧν μὴ χρὴ ποιεῖν. }

Men must have the humility to recognize their own weakness relative to women. Those who don’t are on the road to serfdom and incarceration.

What happened to Araspas shows a pattern typical of men’s love for women in the ancient world. Araspas was attracted not merely to Panthea’s beautiful body, but to her whole person and the sense of a reciprocally loving relationship:

The young man found the woman very beautiful and at the same time came to know her goodness and nobility of character. He attended her and thought he pleased her. Then he also saw that she was not ungrateful, but always took care by the hands of her own servants not only that he should find whatever he needed when he came in, but that, if he ever fell sick, he should suffer no lack of attention. As a result of all this, he fell desperately in love with her. What happened to him was perhaps not at all surprising.

{ Ὁ δὲ νεανίσκος ἅμα μὲν ὁρῶν καλὴν τὴν γυναῖκα, ἅμα δὲ αἰσθανόμενος τὴν καλοκἀγαθίαν αὐτῆς, ἅμα δὲ θεραπεύων αὐτὴν καὶ οἰόμενος χαρίζεσθαι αὐτῇ, ἅμα δὲ αἰσθανόμενος οὐκ ἀχάριστον οὖσαν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐπιμελομένην διὰ τῶν αὑτῆς οἰκετῶν ὡς καὶ εἰσιόντι εἴη αὐτῷ τὰ δέοντα καὶ εἴ ποτε ἀσθενήσειεν, ὡς μηδενὸς ἐνδέοιτο, ἐκ πάντων τούτων ἡλίσκετο ἔρωτι, καὶ ἴσως οὐδὲν θαυμαστὸν ἔπασχε. }

Taking up the gender burden that men have endured throughout history, Araspas proposed to Panthea:

Seized by passionate love for the woman, he felt compelled to approach her with words proposing sexual intercourse.

{ ληφθεὶς ἔρωτι τῆς γυναικὸς ἠναγκάσθη προσενεγκεῖν λόγους αὐτῇ περὶ συνουσίας. }

Men throughout history have ardently loved women. Men should not be demonized for proposing to women.

Almost all men learn to accept women rejecting them in love. Panthea would not sexually betray her husband even in her desperate circumstances. She thus rejected Araspas’s courageous proposal for sexual intercourse:

But she refused and was loyal to her husband, although he was absent, for she loved him devotedly. Still, she did not accuse Araspas to Cyrus, because she was reluctant to cause conflict between men friends.

{ ἡ δὲ ἀπέφησε μὲν καὶ ἦν πιστὴ τῷ ἀνδρὶ καίπερ ἀπόντι· ἐφίλει γὰρ αὐτὸν ἰσχυρῶς· οὐ μέντοι κατηγόρησε τοῦ Ἀράσπου πρὸς τὸν Κῦρον, ὀκνοῦσα συμβαλεῖν φίλους ἄνδρας. }

Panthea here shows greatness of character. Not only was she loyal, but she also sought to avoid causing conflict between men. Such conflict often contributes to the terrible history of violence against men. Nonetheless, she had an entirely appropriate limit:

But Araspas, thinking he could succeed in obtaining what he wanted, threatened the woman. He said that if she would not willingly comply, he would do it against her will. Then the woman, because she feared his violence, no longer kept his amorous advance secret, but she sent her eunuch to Cyrus with the order to tell him everything.

{ ἐπεὶ δὲ ὁ Ἀράσπας δοκῶν ὑπηρετήσειν τῷ τυχεῖν ἃ ἐβούλετο ἠπείλησε τῇ γυναικὶ ὅτι εἰ μὴ βούλοιτο ἑκοῦσα, ἄκουσα ποιήσοι ταῦτα, ἐκ τούτου ἡ γυνή, ὡς ἔδεισε τὴν βίαν, οὐκέτι κρύπτει, ἀλλὰ πέμπει τὸν πέμπει τὸν εὐνοῦχον πρὸς τὸν Κῦρον καὶ κελεύει λέξαι πάντα. }

Most sexual activity in primates, human and non-human, doesn’t involve physical coercion. A man is no more likely to have sex with a woman against her will than a woman would have sex with a man against his will. Araspas’s action was aberrant and despicable.

While condemning men raping women, particularly captive women, Cyrus normalized Araspas’s intention toward Panthea. He laughed when he heard about it. He sent his deputy Artabazus with a message to Araspas:

Cyrus ordered him to say that Araspas should not force such a woman, but if he could persuade her, Cyrus said, he would not oppose it.

{ κελεύει αὐτῷ εἰπεῖν βιάζεσθαι μὲν μὴ τοιαύτην γυναῖκα, πείθειν δὲ εἰ δύναιτο, οὐκ ἔφη κωλύειν. }

Artabazus, an older man in love with the younger Cyrus, conveyed Cyrus’s message to Araspas. In addition, he harshly condemned Araspas:

When Artabazus came to Araspas, he rebuked him. Artabazus said that the woman had been given to him in trust and spoke of Araspas’s impiety, injustice, and lack of self-control. On hearing these words, Araspas wept much from grief. He was overwhelmed by shame and frightened to death that he might suffer harm from Cyrus.

{ Ἐλθὼν δ᾿ ὁ Ἀρτάβαζος πρὸς τὸν Ἀράσπαν ἐλοιδόρησεν αὐτόν, παρακαταθήκην ὀνομάζων τὴν γυναῖκα, ἀσέβειάν τε αὐτοῦ λέγων ἀδικίαν τε καὶ ἀκράτειαν, ὥστε τὸν Ἀράσπαν πολλὰ μὲν δακρύειν ὑπὸ λύπης, καταδύεσθαι δ᾿ ὑπὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης, ἀπολωλέναι δὲ τῷ φόβῳ μή τι καὶ πάθοι ὑπὸ Κύρου. }

Men threatening to rape women has long been generally regarded as a serious crime. Araspas later explained to Cyrus:

Ever since the report of my misfortune spread, my enemies have been rejoicing over me, and my friends come and advise me to hide myself from you, for fear that I might suffer harm from you, as if I had committed a large wrong.

{ ὡς γὰρ ὁ θροῦς διῆλθε τῆς ἐμῆς συμφορᾶς, οἱ μὲν ἐχθροὶ ἐφήδονταί μοι, οἱ δὲ φίλοι προσιόντες συμβουλεύουσιν ἐκποδὼν ἔχειν ἐμαυτόν, μή τι καὶ πάθω ὑπὸ σοῦ, ὡς ἠδικηκότος ἐμοῦ μεγάλα. }

Men’s ardent love for women is normal and shouldn’t be condemned. Men threatening to rape women is a grave wrong and should be harshly condemned. Men’s ardent love for women neither implies nor excuses rape. The account of Panthea and Araspas regrettably conflates love and rape.

Cyrus exploited Araspas’s acute loss of social esteem to use him to spy on the enemy Assyrians. Araspas’s social downfall provided cover for him to flee to the Assyrians and seek their friendship. He could learn of their circumstances and plans and relay that information back to Cyrus. Cyrus instructed Araspas on how to best deceive the Assyrians and weaken them relative to the Persians. Telling only a few trusted friends of this scheme, Araspas then fled to the Assyrians as if he were betraying Cyrus and the Persians.

Panthea thought that Araspas, after wronging her, had then wronged Cyrus in fleeing to the enemy. Taking the initiative to help a wronged man, she sent a message to Cyrus:

Do not be distressed, Cyrus, that Araspas has gone over to the enemy. If you will allow me to send a message to my husband, I can guarantee you that a much more loyal friend will come to you than Araspas was. Moreover, I know that he will come to you with as many troops as he can bring. While the king’s father was my husband’s friend, this present king once even attempted to separate me from my husband. Since my husband considers the present king to be an insolent scoundrel, I am sure that he would be glad to transfer his allegiance to such a man as you.

{ Μὴ λυποῦ, ὦ Κῦρε, ὅτι Ἀράσπας οἴχεται εἰς τοὺς πολεμίους· ἢν γὰρ ἐμὲ ἐάσῃς πέμψαι πρὸς τὸν ἐμὸν ἄνδρα, ἐγώ σοι ἀναδέχομαι ἥξειν πολὺ Ἀράσπου πιστότερον φίλον· καὶ δύναμιν δὲ οἶδ᾿ ὅτι ὁπόσην ἂν δύνηται ἔχων παρέσται σοι. καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν πατὴρ τοῦ νῦν βασιλεύοντος φίλος ἦν αὐτῷ· ὁ δὲ νῦν βασιλεύων καὶ ἐπεχείρησέ ποτε ἐμὲ καὶ τὸν ἄνδρα διασπάσαι ἀπ᾿ ἀλλήλων· ὑβριστὴν οὖν νομίζων αὐτὸν εὖ οἶδ᾿ ὅτι ἄσμενος ἂν πρὸς ἄνδρα οἷος σὺ εἶ ἀπαλλαγείη. }

Cyrus readily accepted Panthea’s proposal. She then sent a secret message to her husband Abradatas. Her message evidently instructed Abradatas exactly as she had said to Cyrus. As most husbands would, Abradatas followed his wife Panthea’s enormously consequential instructions. He left his Assyrian home and presented himself and a thousand men cavalry soldiers to Cyrus as allies.

While Panthea and Abradatas loved each other warmly and mutually, Panthea functioned as the head of the couple. She thought that Cyrus had protected her as a man would a “brother’s wife {ἀδελφός γυνή}.” She told Abradatas “of Cyrus’s piety and self-control and compassion towards her {τοῦ Κύρου τὴν ὁσιότητα καὶ τὴν σωφροσύνην καὶ τὴν πρὸς αὐτὴν κατοίκτισιν}.” Abradatas, a leading warrior, then sought his wife’s advice:

When he heard this, Abradatas said, “Tell me, Panthea, what can I do to repay the favor to Cyrus on behalf of both you and me?”

Panthea said, “What else, but by trying to be to him as he has been to you?”

{ Ὁ δὲ Ἀβραδάτας ἀκούσας εἶπε, Τί ἂν οὖν ἐγὼ ποιῶν, ὦ Πάνθεια, χάριν Κύρῳ ὑπέρ τε σοῦ καὶ ἐμαυτοῦ ἀποδοίην

Τί δὲ ἄλλο, ἔφη ἡ Πάνθεια, ἢ πειρώμενος ὅμοιος εἶναι περὶ ἐκεῖνον οἷόσπερ ἐκεῖνος περὶ σέ }

Panthea badly misunderstood Cyrus’s attitude toward her. Cyrus treated persons not as friends but as tools for his purposes.[4] In fact, Cyrus had instructed Araspas in relation to the captive Panthea:

Take care of her, for perhaps this woman might be very valuable for us at the right time.

{ ἐπιμέλου αὐτῆς· ἴσως γὰρ ἂν πάνυ ἡμῖν ἐν καιρῷ γένοιτο αὕτη ἡ γυνή. }

Cyrus shrewdly anticipated developments. Interpreting Panthea’s advice straightforwardly within its context, Abradatas went to Cyrus and declared that in return for him treating them very well, “I give myself to you as a friend, a servant, and an ally {φίλον σοι ἐμαυτὸν δίδωμι καὶ θεράποντα καὶ σύμμαχον}.” This pledge was very valuable to Cyrus in war.

Panthea’s insistent concern for Abradatas’s status in others’ eyes led to disaster not only for them, but also for her three selfless eunuchs. Abradatas foolishly volunteered to lead warriors directing into the enemy Egyptian phalanx. Panthea dressed him finely for this horrific violence against men:

When he was about to put on his linen breastplate, such as they use in his country, Panthea brought him one of gold. She also brought him a helmet, arm-pieces, and broad bracelets for his wrists — all of gold. She further gave him a purple tunic that hung down in folds to his feet and a helmet-plume dyed with hyacinth. All these she had made without her husband’s knowledge, taking the measure for them from his armor.

{ ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ἔμελλε τὸν λινοῦν θώρακα, ὃς ἐπιχώριος ἦν αὐτοῖς, ἐνδύεσθαι, προσφέρει αὐτῷ ἡ Πάνθεια χρυσοῦν1 καὶ χρυσοῦν κράνος καὶ περιβραχιόνια καὶ ψέλια πλατέα περὶ τοὺς καρποὺς τῶν χειρῶν καὶ χιτῶνα πορφυροῦν ποδήρη στολιδωτὸν τὰ κάτω καὶ λόφον ὑακινθινοβαφῆ. ταῦτα δ᾿ ἐποιήσατο λάθρᾳ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐκμετρησαμένη τὰ ἐκείνου ὅπλα. }

Husbands typically buy luxury goods for their wives. Was Panthea seeking to promote gender equality? Abradatas didn’t know:

And he, seeing the fine armor, was astonished. Turning to Panthea, he asked, “Tell me, my wife, you didn’t break your own jewels to pieces, did you, to have this armor made for me?”

“No, by Zeus,” answered Panthea, “surely not, not my most precious one. If you appear to others as you seem to me, you shall be my greatest jewel, at least to me.”

{ ὁ δὲ ἰδὼν ἐθαύμασέ τε καὶ ἐπήρετο τὴν Πάνθειαν, Οὐ δήπου, ὦ γύναι, συγκόψασα τὸν σαυτῆς κόσμον τὰ ὅπλα μοι ἐποιήσω;

Μὰ Δί, ἔφη ἡ Πάνθεια, οὔκουν τόν γε πλείστου ἄξιον· σὺ γὰρ ἔμοιγε, ἢν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις φανῇς οἷόσπερ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖς εἶναι, μέγιστος κόσμος ἔσει. }

A woman valuing her husband as her most precious jewel values him rightly. Nonetheless, women shouldn’t regard men as things like other possessions. Moreover, Panthea’s response suggests that her appreciation for her husband depends on his status in others’ eyes. Even worse, she wanted her husband to be recognized as a “noble man {ᾰ̓γᾰθός ἀνήρ}” through violence against men:

Oh Abradatas, if ever any woman loved her husband more than her own life, I think you know that I, too, am such a one. Why, then, should I tell of these things one by one? For I think that my conduct has given you better proof of it than any words I now might say. Still, with the affection that you know I have for you, to you I swear by my companionate love for you and by yours for me that, in truth, I would far rather share an earthly burial with you, you having been recognized as a noble man, than live disgraced with one disgraced. I thus have deemed you and myself to be worthy of the best.

{ ὦ Ἀβραδάτα, εἴ τις καὶ ἄλλη πώποτε γυνὴ τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα μεῖζον τῆς ἑαυτῆς ψυχῆς ἐτίμησεν, οἶμαί σε γιγνώσκειν ὅτι καὶ ἐγὼ μία τούτων εἰμί. τί οὖν ἐμὲ δεῖ καθ᾿ ἓν ἕκαστον λέγειν; τὰ γὰρ ἔργα οἶμαί σοι πιθανώτερα παρεσχῆσθαι τῶν νῦν ἂν λεχθέντων λόγων. ὅμως δὲ οὕτως ἔχουσα πρὸς σὲ ὥσπερ σὺ οἶσθα, ἐπομνύω σοι τὴν ἐμὴν καὶ σὴν φιλίαν ἦ μὴν ἐγὼ βούλεσθαι ἂν μετὰ σοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἀγαθοῦ γενομένου κοινῇ γῆν ἐπιέσασθαι μᾶλλον ἢ ζῆν μετ᾿ αἰσχυνομένου αἰσχυνομένη· οὕτως ἐγὼ καὶ σὲ τῶν καλλίστων καὶ ἐμαυτὴν ἠξίωκα. }

Women are complicit in violence against men. Panthea preferred Abradatas and herself to die gloriously in the eyes of others than to live with others’ disparagement of them. Regrettably lacking meninist consciousness, Abradatas uncritically honored his wife’s words:

Abradatas was moved by her words. Touching her head and lifting his eyes toward the vaulted sky, he prayed: “Almighty Zeus, grant that I might prove myself a husband worthy of Panthea and a friend worthy of Cyrus, who has honored us.”

{ ὁ δὲ Ἀβραδάτας ἀγασθεὶς τοῖς λόγοις καὶ θιγὼν αὐτῆς τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐπηύξατο, Ἀλλ᾿, ὦ Ζεῦ μέγιστε, δός μοι φανῆναι ἀξίῳ μὲν Πανθείας ἀνδρί, ἀξίῳ δὲ Κύρου φίλῳ τοῦ ἡμᾶς τιμήσαντος. }[5]

Lack of meninist consciousness is tragic for men and women. Such lack prompted Abradatas to seek to prove his worth as a man to Panthea and Cyrus in violence against men.

Abradatas and other men suffered terribly in battle. He on his war chariot led men directly into Egyptian war chariots. Many men died in the resulting fight. Then, after breaking through the line of Egyptian chariots, Abradatas drove straight at the Egyptian phalanx. That was the strongest enemy position on the battlefield. The result was horrific carnage:

In the place where Abradatas and his companions charged, the Egyptians could not make an opening for them because the Egyptian men on either side of them stood firm. Those enemy men who stood upright were consequently struck in the furious charge of the horses and overthrown. Those who fell, they and their arms, were crushed to pieces by the horses and the wheels. Whatever was caught in the scythes — everything, arms and men, was horribly mangled. In this indescribable melee, the chariot wheels bounded over piled-up heaps and were tossed about. Abradatas, along with the others who had joined in the charge, were thrown to the ground. These men, who provided themselves here to be noble men, were cut to pieces and slain.

{ οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ Ἀβραδάταν ᾗ μὲν ἐνέβαλλον, ἅτε οὐ δυναμένων διαχάσασθαι τῶν Αἰγυπτίων διὰ τὸ μένειν τοὺς ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν αὐτῶν, τοὺς μὲν ὀρθοὺς τῇ ῥύμῃ τῇ τῶν ἵππων παίοντες ἀνέτρεπον, τοὺς δὲ πίπτοντας κατηλόων καὶ αὐτοὺς καὶ ὅπλα καὶ ἵπποις καὶ τροχοῖς. ὅτου δ᾿ ἐπιλάβοιτο τὰ δρέπανα, πάντα βίᾳ διεκόπτετο καὶ ὅπλα καὶ σώματα. Ἐν δὲ τῷ ἀδιηγήτῳ τούτῳ ταράχῳ ὑπὸ τῶν παντοδαπῶν σωρευμάτων ἐξαλλομένων τῶν τροχῶν ἐκπίπτει ὁ Ἀβραδάτας καὶ ἄλλοι δὲ τῶν συνεισβαλόντων, καὶ οὗτοι μὲν ἐνταῦθα ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ γενόμενοι κατεκόπησαν καὶ ἀπέθανον. }

In proving himself to be a noble man, Abradatas became a dead man. That’s foolish. Men’s lives should matter more.

Cyrus sees Panthea mourning over the dead body of Abradatas.

The romance of Panthea and Abradatas should be recognized as a pioneering comic horror. Panthea recovered Abradatas’s dead body. She cradled his dead head in her lap as her eunuchs and servants dug a grave. Cyrus arrived to offer honor:

When he saw the woman sitting upon the ground and the corpse lying there, he wept at the suffering and addressed the dead man: “Alas, O noble and loyal soul, you have indeed departed, leaving us behind.” And with those words he clasped Abradatas’s hand. The dead man’s hand came away in his grasp, for it had been cut off by Egyptian swords. Having seen this, Cyrus felt much more pain. The woman Panthea wept aloud. Taking the hand from Cyrus, she kissed it and fitted it on again as best as she could.

{ Ἐπεὶ δὲ εἶδε τὴν γυναῖκα χαμαὶ καθημένην καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν κείμενον, ἐδάκρυσέ τε ἐπὶ τῷ πάθει καὶ εἶπε, Φεῦ, ὦ ἀγαθὴ καὶ πιστὴ ψυχή, οἴχει δὴ ἀπολιπὼν ἡμᾶς; καὶ ἅμα ἐδεξιοῦτο αὐτὸν καὶ ἡ χεὶρ τοῦ νεκροῦ ἐπηκολούθησεν· ἀπεκέκοπτο γὰρ κοπίδι ὑπὸ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων. ὁ δὲ ἰδὼν πολὺ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἤλγησε· καὶ ἡ γυνὴ δὲ ἀνωδύρατο καὶ δεξαμένη δὴ παρὰ τοῦ Κύρου ἐφίλησέ τε τὴν χεῖρα καὶ πάλιν ὡς οἷόν τ᾿ ἦν προσήρμοσε }

That’s a fitting antecedent to the ending of the early medieval comic Christian epic Waltharius. Panthea added a moralization addressed to Cyrus:

“The rest of his limbs, O Cyrus, you will also find in the same condition. But why should you see it?” she said, “I know that he suffered these wounds not least because of me, and perhaps no less, O Cyrus, because of you. I, a foolish woman, strongly urged him to act such that he might be recognized as a worthy friend to you. As for him, I know that he himself never considered what he might gain, but only what he might do to please you. And so,” she said, “he himself has truly died a blameless death, while I, who urged him on, sit here alive.”

{ Καὶ τἄλλα τοι, ὦ Κῦρε, οὕτως ἔχει· ἀλλὰ τί δεῖ σε ὁρᾶν; καὶ ταῦτα, ἔφη, οἶδ᾿ ὅτι δι᾿ ἐμὲ οὐχ ἥκιστα ἔπαθεν, ἴσως δὲ καὶ διὰ σέ, ὦ Κῦρε, οὐδὲν ἧττον. ἐγώ τε γὰρ ἡ μώρα πολλὰ διεκελευόμην αὐτῷ οὕτω ποιεῖν, ὅπως σοι φίλος ἄξιος γενήσοιτο· αὐτός τε οἶδ᾿ ὅτι οὗτος οὐ τοῦτο ἐνενόει ὅ τι πείσοιτο, ἀλλὰ τί ἄν σοι ποιήσας χαρίσαιτο. καὶ γὰρ οὖν, ἔφη, αὐτὸς μὲν ἀμέμπτως τετελεύτηκεν, ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἡ παρακελευομένη ζῶσα παρακάθημαι. }

Cyrus declared that Abradatas had died in victory, and thus achieved the best end. He offered Panthea the finest ornaments with which to adorn Abradatas’s body. Cyrus also pledged that he would free her and have her conveyed to wherever she sought to go. She declared that she knew where she wanted to go.

Panthea had morbid plans. She sent her three eunuchs away. She then instructed her woman servant to cover her and Abradatas with the same cloak when she was dead. Her woman servant pleaded with Panthea not to commit suicide. Nonetheless, Panthea drew out a dagger, plunged it into her heart, and placed her head upon her husband bosom. The woman servant wept and covered them both with the same cloak, as Panthea had instructed her. The woman servant didn’t herself commit suicide. She valued women’s lives, including her own.

Panthea stabs herself with a dagger over the dead body of her husband Abradatas.

Panthea’s three eunuchs differed starkly from her woman servant. When they heard of Panthea’s death, the three eunuchs were standing where she had ordered them to stand. They then drew daggers and plunged them into their own hearts. These eunuchs didn’t value themselves apart from the woman that they served. Like too many men through the ages, they were selfless eunuchs.

ancient bronze scepter

An alleged memorial provides a wry commentary on the influential romance of Panthea and Abradatas. A stone monument honored the three eunuchs, Abradatas, and Panthea. It was tellingly known as “the monument of the eunuchs {τὸ μνῆμα τῶν εὐνούχων}”:

Now, even to this day, it’s said that the monument of the eunuchs is still standing. Upon the upper section, people say that the names of the husband and wife are inscribed in Assyrian letters above. Below, it’s said, are three slabs with the inscription “Scepter-Bearers.”

{ νῦν τὸ μνῆμα μέχρι τοῦ νῦν τῶν εὐνούχων κεχῶσθαι λέγεται· καὶ ἐπὶ μὲν τῇ ἄνω στήλῃ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς ἐπιγεγράφθαι φασὶ τὰ ὀνόματα, Σύρια γράμματα, κάτω δὲ εἶναι τρεῖς λέγουσι στήλας καὶ ἐπιγεγράφθαι σκηπτουχων. }[6]

Like Abradatas, Panthea’s three eunuchs suffered from having body parts cut off. Those eunuchs, who probably lacked penises, were memorialized as carrying scepters — ceremonial staffs indicating authority. Like Abradatas, those selfless eunuchs ironically lacked the authority to value their lives independently of women whom they served. That’s the rotten gender core of many romances throughout literary history.[7]

* * * * *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Xenophon of Athens, The Education of Cyrus / Cyropaedia {Κύρου παιδεία} 4.6.11, ancient Greek text and English translation from Miller (1914). For another English translation freely available online, Dakyns (1909). Here’s a collaborative online commentary on the Cyropaedia.

Some authors transliterate Panthea {Πάνθεια} more literally as Pantheia. Both Panthea and her husband Abradatas are thought to be fictional characters.

Xenophon, both a military leader and wide-ranging thinker and author, wrote his Cyropaedia about 370 BGC. Its subject, Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia), reigned from 550–530 BGC as founder and King of Kings of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

The Cyropaedia is a fictionalized historical didactic biography that has been regarded as “the founding document” for the “mirror for princes” genre. Nadon (2001) p. 152. On fictional characteristics of the Cyropaedia, Stadter (1991). On the problem of genre in relation to the Cyropaedia, Madreiter (2020).

The Roman Emperor Lucius Aurelius Verus (reigned 161 to 169 GC) reportedly had a lover named Panthea / Pantheia of Smyrna. The Augustan History {Historia Augusta} from about 400 GC states of Emperor Verus:

It is reported, furthermore, that he shaved off his beard while in Syria to humor the whim of a lowborn lover, and because of this much was said about him by the Syrians.

{ fertur praeterea ad amicae vulgaris arbitrium in Syria posuisse barbam; unde in eum a Syris multa sunt dicta. }

Historia Augusta, 5. Versus, 7.10, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Magie (2022).

Panthea of Susa in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia and Emperor Verus’s lover Panthea of Smyrna are associated in Lucian of Samosata’s Essays in Portraiture / Imagines {Εἰκόνες} and his closely linked Essays in Portraiture Defended / Pro Imaginibus {Ὑπὲρ τῶν Εἰκόνων}. In Lucian’s Imagines, the dialog participant Polystratus says of the Emperor’s “female companion {σύνειμι}”:

She has the same name as the beautiful wife of Abradatas. You know whom I mean, for you have often heard Xenophon praise her as a prudent and beautiful woman.

{ ὁμώνυμος γάρ ἐστιν τῇ τοῦ Ἀβραδάτα ἐκείνῃ τῇ καλῇ· οἶσθα πολλάκις ἀκούσας Ξενοφῶντος ἐπαινοῦντός τινα σώφρονα καὶ καλὴν γυναῖκα. }

Lucian, Imagines 10, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Harmon (1925). Imagines compares Panthea to Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus. For reading notes, Amar (2018).

Subsequent quotes from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia are similarly sourced, but I have modified Miller’s translations to more closely follow the ancient Greek text. The quotes above are Cyropaedia 5.1.6 (Now when the woman Panthea heard…), 5.1.7 (At this moment was revealed most of her face…), 5.1.8 (If now I have heard from you…), 5.1.12 (If falling in love is a matter of free will…), 5.1.13 (wretched men), 5.1.14 (beautiful and good men), 5.1.16 (As for me, I neither willingly touch fire…), 5.1.17 (Do not fear, Cyrus…), 5.1.18 (The young man found the woman so beautiful…), 6.1.31 (Seized by passionate love for the woman…), 6.1.32 (But she refused and was loyal to her husband…), 6.1.33 (But when Araspas…), 6.1.34 (Cyrus ordered him to say…), 6.1.35 (When Artabazus came to Araspas…), 6.1.37 (Ever since the report of my misfortune spread…), 6.1.45 (Do not be distressed, Cyrus…), 6.4.7 (brother’s wife), 6.1.47 (of Cyrus’s piety and self-control…), 6.1.47 (When he heard this, Abradatas said…), 5.1.17 (Take care of her, for perhaps…), 6.1.48 (I give myself to you as a friend…), 6.4.2 (When he was about to put on his linen breastplate…), 6.4.3 (And he, seeing the fine armor, was astonished…), 6.4.5 (Oh Abradatas, if ever any woman loved her husband…), 6.4.9 (Abradatas was moved by her words…), 7.1.31 (In the place where Abradatas and his companions charged…), 7.3.8 (When he saw the woman sitting upon the ground…), 7.3.10 (The rest of his limbs, O Cyrus…), 7.3.15 (Now, even to this day, it’s said that the monument of the eunuchs…).

[2] In establishing an alliance with Cyrus, the Assyrian military leader Gobryas offered his daughter to Cyrus. She was “a marvel of beauty and grandeur {δεινόν τι κάλλος καὶ μέγεθος}.” Cyrus wasn’t interested in having her. Cyropaedia 5.2.7-9. Cyrus’s officer Chrysantas insinuated that Cyrus was a “frigid king {ψυχρὸς βασιλεύς}. Cyropaedia 8.4.22.

The Cyropaedia has been read as more generally validating Cyrus’s understanding of falling in love:

Time apart – whether briefly for Critobulus and Clinias, or a long time for Abradatas and Pantheia – does not diminish true love’s intensity. The best way to avoid love is, in fact, to avoid the young and beautiful in the first place.

Sanders (2021) p. 117. Even in oppressive circumstances in which love involves grave risks, avoiding the young and beautiful might not on net be the best choice.

Lucian’s portrait of Panthea of Smyrna in Imagines perhaps drew upon Cyrus’s warning about beautiful women in the Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. In Lucian’s Imagines, Lycinus warns about looking upon Panthea:

You may be very certain that if you get but a distant view of her she will strike you dumb and more motionless than any statue. Yet the effect, perhaps, is not so violent and the wound less serious if it should be you who catch sight of her. But if she should look at you as well, how shall you manage to tear yourself away from her? She will fetter you to herself and haul you off wherever she wishes, doing just what the magnet does to iron.

{ Καὶ μὴν εὖ εἰδέναι χρή σε, ὡς κἂν ἐκ περιωπῆς μόνον ἀπίδῃς εἰς αὐτήν, ἀχανῆ σε καὶ τῶν ἀνδριάντων ἀκινητότερον ἀποφανεῖ. καίτοι τοῦτο μὲν ἴσως εἰρηνικώτερόν ἐστιν καὶ τὸ τραῦμα ἧττον καίριον, εἰ αὐτὸς ἴδοις· εἰ δὲ κἀκείνη προσβλέψειέ σε, τίς ἔσται μηχανὴ ἀποστῆναι αὐτῆς; ἀπάξει γάρ σε ἀναδησαμένη ἔνθα ἂν ἐθέλῃ, ὅπερ καὶ ἡ λίθος ἡ Ἡρακλεία δρᾷ τὸν σίδηρον. }

Lucian, Imagines 1, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Harmon (1925).

[3] Xenophon’s Symposium concludes with a female dancer and a male dancer enacting erotic love for each other. Xenophon’s Symposium thus suggests that “Xenophon did not see a pathological distinction between erotic feelings for boys and those for women.” Sanders (2021) p. 109, italics in original.

[4] Cyrus responded to Araspas’s outrage against Panthea by taking that opportunity to use him as a spy. Cyrus similarly found advantage from Panthea and Araspas:

Panthea and Abradatas die in complete ignorance that Cyrus has dealt with them from start to finish solely on the basis of political expediency

Nadon (2001) p. 257.

[5] The parting of Panthea and Abradatas before he engages in violence against men is sacrificially framed:

the long parting scene between Abradatas and his wife Panthea, framed between references to Cyrus performing sacrifices and finding the omens from his sacrifice favorable prior to his final battle, has the effect of adding an almost holy quality to what the narratees are led to suspect will be the couple’s final parting

Beck (2007) p. 293. Another effect is to underscore Abradatas’s lack of self-esteem.

[6] This passage is “perceived by the majority of the publishers of Kyroupaideia as interpolated or corrupted.” Podrazik (2017) p. 21. Scholars have been skeptical of this passage’s authenticity because it associates eunuchs and scepters. That suspect association indicates the passage’s ironic merit. On irony in Xenophon generally, Nadon (2001).

According to the Cyropaedia, Cyrus judged eunuchs to be loyal servants. Cyropaedia 7.5.58-65. He used eunuchs in key royal positions:

Beginning with his doorkeepers, King Cyrus used eunuchs for all those servants who attended to him personally.

{ ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῶν θυρωρῶν πάντας τοὺς περὶ τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σῶμα θεραπευτῆρας ἐποιήσατο εὐνούχους }

Cyropaedia 7.5.65. Cyrus in procession had with him three hundred scepter-bearers. Cyropaedia 8.3.15-7. These were important men:

They ride on horseback right next to him, so that they can carry out his order at any time. Their total number is about three hundred, with six of them, as it seems, riding in threes to the left and to the right side of the monarch’s chariot. They were the dignitaries who Cyrus gave his orders to directly.

Podrazik (2017) p. 18. Panthea having at least three eunuch scepter-bearers is plausible.

[7] Writing about 100 GC, Plutarch shows that extent to which Xenophon’s story of Panthea and Abradatas has been misinterpreted as delightful:

Who would find greater pleasure in going to bed with the most beautiful of women than in sitting up with Xenophon’s story of Panthea, Aristobulus’ of Timocleia, or Theopompus’ of Thebê?

{ τίς δ᾿ ἂν ἡσθείη συναναπαυσάμενος τῇ καλλίστῃ γυναικὶ μᾶλλον ἢ προσαγρυπνήσας οἷς γέγραφε περὶ Πανθείας Ξενοφῶν ἢ περὶ Τιμοκλείας Ἀριστόβουλος ἢ Θήβης Θεόπομπος }

Plutarch, Moralia. That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible 10 / 1093C, ancient Greek text and English translation from De Lacy & Einarson (1967). Any man with a sense of real life would surely find greater pleasure in going to bed with the most beautiful of women — a woman who necessarily loved him — than merely reading a story. Plutarch drew upon Xenophon’s Panthea in portraying the suicidal spousal devotion of Camma and Porcia. Beneker (2020).

Writing about 200 GC, Philostratus of Lemnos / Philostratus the Elder similarly sentimentalized the story of Panthea and Abradatas. He described a painting of Panthea committing suicide at Abradatas’s dead body. Consider some of Philostratus’s description:

Desire, the companion of love, so suffuses the eyes that it seems clearly to drip from them. Love also is represented in the picture, as a part of the narrative of the deed. So also is the Lydian woman, catching the blood, as you see, in a fold of her golden robe.

{ ὀπαδὸς δὲ ἔρωτος ἵμερος οὕτω τι ἐπικέχυται τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς, ὡς ἐπιδηλότατα δὴ ἀπ᾿ αὐτῶν ἀποστάζειν. γέγραπται καὶ ὁ Ἔρως ἐν ἱστορία τοῦ ἔργου, γέγραπται καὶ ἡ Λυδία τὸ αἷμα ὑποδεχομένη καὶ χρυσῷ γε, ὡς ὁρᾷς, τῷ κόλπῳ. }

Philostratus the Elder, Imagines {Εἰκόνες} 2.9.14-8, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Fairbanks (1931). That’s death-seeking desire misinterpreted as love. As a scholar aptly noted, “Panthea is the real focus of Philostratus’ ecphrasis.” Tatum (1989) p. 21. Men unconcerned about other men’s lives characterizes the male audience for romance in the tradition of Panthea and Abradatas.

Madeleine de Scudéry’s seventeenth-century long tale Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, an adaptation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, presented the story of Panthea and Abradatas in a way that particularly appealed to women. Consider the seventeenth-century case of the wealthy, noble Englishwoman Lady Dorothy Osborne, who took as her husband Sir William Temple:

She approved especially of the episodes based on Panthea and Abradatas (Le Grand Cyrus, 5.1); here was a lady exacting in her search for the ideal lover (l’honnête homme) who would devote himself to her and give undivided service. The point of her enthusiasm would not have been lost on her future husband, Sir William. Her sense of self and her expectations of her future husband were frankly strategic matters, inspired by the example of Mlle de Scudéry’s fiction.

Tatum (1989) p. 27. Panthea’s three eunuchs, unjustly marginalized in the literary tradition, also provided Panthea with “undivided service.”

Lady Dorothy Osborne, who had as husband Sir William Temple

Romance writers / novelist who drew upon the Cyropedia typically drew upon the story of Panthea and Abradatas. Tatum (1989) p. 20. Christoph Martin Wieland’s drama Araspas und Panthea (1759) pairs the bad man Araspas with the good woman Panthea, while Panthea’s husband Abradatas is given less importance.

Scholars have recognized the importance of Xenophon’s story of Panthea and Abradatas to the development of romance. One scholar declared:

The Cyropaedia is also, then, among the founding documents of the genre “romance novel,” a species of writing whose emergence is usually associated with a radical deprecation of the political sphere of life.

Nadon (2001) p. 152. Writing on the eve of the massive slaughter of men in World War I, another scholar declared of the Cyropaedia:

it contains also, in the episode of Panthea and Abradatas, one of the most charming love stories in literature. We may best call it an historical romance — the western pioneer in that field of literature.

Miller (1914) p. viii. Romance needs to be rewritten such that men’s lives, and women’s too, matter more.

[images] (1) Cyrus the Great ignores beautiful, topless Panthea while Araspas looks on. Painted by Laurent de La Hyre between 1631 and 1634. Preserved as accession # 1976.292 in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA). Image CCO thanks to the Art Institute of Chicago via Wikimedia Commons.

(2) Cyrus sees Panthea mourning over the dead body of Abradatas. Painted by Willem de Poorter in the first half of the seventeenth century. Image via Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis.

(3) Panthea stabs herself in the heart with a dagger over the dead body of her husband Abradatas. Painted by Peter Paul Rubens between 1635 and 1638. Image via Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis and via Wikimedia Commons. For a nineteenth-century drawing of this scene, see object # 87.12.167 recto in the Metropolitan Museum (New York City, USA).

(4) Ancient bronze scepter. Made between 500 and 200 BGC and found in the Sanctuary of Son Corró (Costitx, Mallorca). Preserved as Inv. 18464, Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España. Source image thanks to Jerónimo Roure Pérez and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s an ancient relief of the Persian King Darius I (Darius the Great) holding a scepter. For ancient Persian reliefs of scepter-bearers, Podrazik (2017) Figures 1-4.

[5] Lady Dorothy Osborne, who had as husband Sir William Temple. Painted by Gaspar Netscher in 1671. Preserved as accession # NPG 3813 in the National Portrait Gallery (London, UK). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Amar, Jesse. 2018. Lucian’s Imagines: A Student Reader, and Pro Imaginibus: a Translation. Honors Scholar Theses. 601. University of Connecticut.

Beck, Mark. 2007. “Xenophon.” Chapter 24 (pp. 385-396) in Irene J. F. de Jong and René Nünlist, eds. Time in Ancient Greek Literature. Leiden: Brill.

Beneker, Jeffrey. 2020. “Death Is Not the End: Spousal Devotion in Plutarch’s Portraits of Camma, Porcia, and Cornelia.” Pp. 199-218 in Jeffrey Beneker and Georgia Tsouvala, eds. The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Dakyns, Henry G., trans. 1909. The History of Xenophon / Cyropaedia: The Education of Cyrus. Revised by Florence Melian Stawell. London: Dent.

De Lacy, Phillip H. and Benedict Einarson, trans. 1967. Plutarch. Moralia, Volume XIV: That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible. Reply to Colotes in Defence of the Other Philosophers. Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept? On Music. Loeb Classical Library 428. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fairbanks, Arthur, trans. 1931. Philostratus the Elder, Philostratus the Younger, Callistratus. Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions. Loeb Classical Library 256. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Harmon, A. M., trans. 1925. Lucian. Anacharsis or Athletics. Menippus or The Descent into Hades. On Funerals. A Professor of Public Speaking. Alexander the False Prophet. Essays in Portraiture. Essays in Portraiture Defended. The Goddesse of Surrye. Loeb Classical Library 162. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Madreiter, Irene. 2020. “Cyropaedia and the Greek ‘Novel’ Again.” Pp. 19-44 in Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger, eds. Ancient Information on Persia Re-Assessed: Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. Proceedings of a Conference Held at Marburg in Honour of Christopher Tuplin, December 1-2, 2017. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Magie, David, trans. 2022. Historia Augusta. Volume I. Revised by David Rohrbacher. Loeb Classical Library 139. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miller, Walter, ed. and trans. 1914. Xenophon. Cyropaedia. Volume I: Books 1-4, Volume II: Books 5-8. Loeb Classical Library 51 & 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Nadon, Christopher. 2001. Xenophon’s Prince: Republic and Empire in the Cyropaedia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Review by John Dillery.

Podrazik, Michał. 2017. “The skēptouchoi of Cyrus the Younger.” Anabasis: Studia Classica et Orientalia. 8: 16-37.

Sanders, Ed. 2021. “Xenophon and the Pathology of Erôs.” Pp. 101-118 in Dimitrios Kanellakis, ed. Pathologies of Love in Classical Literature. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Stadter, Philip A. 1991. “Fictional Narrative in the Cyropaideia.” The American Journal of Philology. 112 (4): 461–91.

Tatum, James. 1989. Xenophon’s Imperial Fiction: On the Education of Cyrus. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

dancing Apollo slayed dragon serving Hera’s oppressive gynocracy

In ancient Athens and elsewhere, the god Apollo had the epithet “Averter of Evil {Ἀλεξίκακος}.” That epithet reportedly arose from Apollo freeing Athenians from a plague during the Peloponnesian War.[1] Apollo, however, more generally averted evil. He slayed an evil female dragon that served the goddess Hera and disrupted her oppressive gynocracy.

Roman Kassel Apollo after Parnopios Apollo of Phidias

The vicious goddess Hera caused Apollo mother’s Leto to suffer greatly in her pregnancy with him. Leto was a single mother goddess from her affair with Zeus, who was Hera’s husband and a god with strong, independent sexuality. Like Mary the mother of the fully masculine Jesus, Leto had primitive lodging for giving birth. Only Delos, a poor, rocky island in the Aegean Sea, would give Leto a place to birth Apollo.[2] On Delos in the absence of the goddess of birth labor Eileithyia, Leto suffered extensively:

Leto for nine days and nine nights relentlessly
was tormented with childbirth pains.

{ Λητὼ δ᾿ ἐννῆμάρ τε καὶ ἐννέα νύκτας ἀέπτοις
ὠδίνεσσι πέπαρτο. }

Eileithyia wasn’t with Leto because Hera enviously had conspired to ensure her absence:

Eileithyia sat in golden clouds atop Mount Olympus
by the designs of white-armed Hera, who out of envy
held her back, for a faultless and mighty son
was just about to come forth from lovely-haired Leto.

{ ἧστο γὰρ ἄκρωι Ὀλύμπωι ὑπὸ χρυσέοισι νέφεσσιν
Ἥρης φραδμοσύνηις λευκωλένου, ἥ μιν ἔρυκεν
ζηλοσύνηι, ὅ τ᾿ ἄρ᾿ υἱὸν ἀμύμονά τε κρατερόν τε
Λητὼ τέξεσθαι καλλιπλόκαμος τότ᾿ ἔμελλεν. }

Other Olympian goddesses sympathetically attending to the pregnant Leto summoned Eileithyia to her without Hera’s knowledge. With the mother earth smiling, Leto then birthed her magnificent son Apollo on soft meadow grass.

19th-century sculpture of the infant Apollo with his mother Leto and his infant sister Artemis

The goddess Hera bitterly rejected equality with her spouse Zeus and instead furiously promoted oppressive gynocracy. She was in fact “one of the oldest and most honored deities of Greece.” Moreover, Hera and Zeus weren’t originally equal:

there were no temples in Greece equally shared by Zeus and Hera. Here and there temples were found that belonged either to Zeus or to Hera, but wherever temples to both exist, excavation has shown every time that Hera’s temple is older.[3]

Hera was historically privileged:

Her temple at Olympia had been in existence for a century and a half before the Temple of Zeus was built. The placement of the ancient cult statues, still seen by Pausanias (5.17.1), leaves little doubt as to who was the real proprietor of the temple. Hera sat on the throne; Zeus, bearded and helmeted, simply stood at her side.

Lion Gate honoring goddess Hera
Hera, Potnia Theron relief on pithos

Once a dominant figure surrounded by powerful lions, Hera became by the sixth century BGC merely Zeus’s much-honored equal as queen of Olympus. A Homeric hymn from that time praised Hera as Zeus’s equal:

Of Hera I sing, the gold-throned, whom Rhea bore,
she the immortal queen, of supreme beauty,
sister and wife of Zeus the loud-booming —
she the glorious one, whom all blessed ones on far Olympus
revere and honor no less than thunder-enjoying Zeus.

{ Ἥρην ἀείδω χρυσόθρονον ἣν τέκε Ῥείη,
ἀθανάτην βασίλειαν ὑπείροχον εἶδος ἔχουσαν
Ζηνὸς ἐριγδούποιο κασιγνήτην ἄλοχόν τε
κυδρήν, ἣν πάντες μάκαρες κατὰ μακρὸν Ὄλυμπον
ἁζόμενοι τίουσιν ὁμῶς Διὶ τερπικεραύνῳ. }[4]

Despite being honored as a supremely beautiful queen and being revered no less than Zeus, Hera insistently felt that she should be explicitly honored and revered as more important than her husband Zeus. She wanted to rule over Zeus, and over all mortal men and women, too.

Colossal head of Hera (Hera / Juno Ludovisi)

Like women expressing no concern about men being subject to compelled financial fatherhood and men having no reproductive rights whatsoever, Hera thought only of herself. She was furious at her husband’s initiative for reproductive independence. She complained to all the divinities:

Hear from me, all you gods and all you goddesses,
how Zeus the cloud-gatherer started to dishonor me
first. After he had made me his wife, one knowing prudence,
he has now given birth without me to bright-eyed Athena,
who stands out among all the blessed immortals.

{ κέκλυτέ μεο, πάντές τε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι,
ὡς ἔμ᾿ ἀτιμάζειν ἄρχει νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς
πρῶτος, ἐπεί μ᾿ ἄλοχον ποιήσατο κέδν᾿ εἰδυῖαν,
καὶ νῦν νόσφιν ἐμεῖο τέκε γλαυκῶπιν Ἀθήνην,
ἣ πᾶσιν μακάρεσσι μεταπρέπει ἀθανάτοισιν· }

Hera’s husband Zeus bore Athena from his forehead. For that, Hera disparaged and threatened him:

You wretch of many schemes, what will you devise next?
How did you dare to birth bright-eyed Athena on your own?
Could I not have given birth? She would be called yours nonetheless
among the immortals who inhabit broad heaven.
Now take heed that I might not devise some evil for you hereafter.

{ σχέτλιε, ποικιλομῆτα, τί νῦν μητίσεαι ἄλλο;
πῶς ἔτλης οἶος τεκέειν γλαυκῶπιν Ἀθήνην;
οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ τεκόμην; καὶ σὴ κεκλημένη ἔμπης
ἦ<ν ἄ>ρ᾿ ἐν ἀθανάτοισιν οἳ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν.
φράζεο νῦν, μή τοί τι κακὸν μητίσομ᾿ ὀπίσσω. }

Mothers know their biological children for certain. Without parthenogenesis or modern DNA testing, fathers lack that certainty. That’s a fundamental gender inequality. Hera contemptuously attacked her husband for his bold initiative to promote gender equality.

Underscoring her disregard for actual gender equality, Hera undertook a “me too” reproductive action. She scornfully told her husband:

And right now I will contrive so that I will birth
my son, who will be outstanding among the immortal gods.
I will neither disgrace your sacred bed, nor my own.
I won’t sleep with you, but will rather stay far
from you and instead associate with other immortal gods.

{ καὶ νῦν μέν τοι ἐγὼ τεχνήσομαι ὥς κε γένηται
παῖς ἐμός, ὅς κε θεοῖσι μεταπρέποι ἀθανάτοισιν,
οὔτε σὸν αἰσχύνασ᾿ ἱερὸν λέχος οὔτ᾿ ἐμὸν αὐτῆς·
οὐδέ τοι εἰς εὐνὴν πωλήσομαι, ἀλλ᾿ ἀπὸ σεῖο
τηλόθ᾿ ἐοῦσα θεοῖσι μετέσσομαι ἀθανάτοισιν. }

Hera thus declared that she wouldn’t cuckold her husband, but would impose on him a sexless marriage. Just as Zeus on his own gave birth to Athena, Hera planned to give birth independently:

Having spoken so, from the gods Hera departed, angry at heart.
Then immediately she prayed, large-eyed lady Hera did.
She struck the earth with the flat of her hand and said:
“Hear me now, Earth and broad Sky stretching above,
and you Titan gods who dwell beneath the earth
around huge Tartarus and from whom gods and men descend —
all of you, hear me and grant me a son
apart from Zeus, one in no way inferior to him in strength,
but as much superior as wide-thundering Zeus is to Kronos.”

{ ὣς εἰποῦσ᾿ ἀπονόσφι θεῶν κίε χωομένη κῆρ.
αὐτίκ᾿ ἔπειτ᾿ ἠρᾶτο βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη,
χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ δ᾿ ἔλασε χθόνα καὶ φάτο μῦθον·
“κέκλυτε νῦν μοι, Γαῖα καὶ Οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ὕπερθεν
Τιτῆνές τε θεοί, τοὶ ὑπὸ χθονὶ ναιετάουσιν
Τάρταρον ἀμφὶ μέγαν, τῶν ἒξ ἄνδρές τε θεοί τε·
αὐτοὶ νῦν μεο πάντες ἀκούσατε, καὶ δότε παῖδα
νόσφι Διός, μηδέν τι βίην ἐπιδευέα κείνου,
ἀλλ᾿ ὅ γε φέρτερος εἴη, ὅσον Κρόνου εὐρύοπα
Ζεύς.” }

Hera engaged in familial and cosmic treachery. Zeus overthrew his father and the rest of the Titans and banished them to Tartarus. He then married Hera. Under Hera’s power and control, Zeus became merely the nominal ruler of the cosmos. Hera’s prayer for a son stronger than Zeus suggests that she sought a son who could depose Zeus and establish her as the explicitly recognized, sole ruler of the cosmos. Hera beat the earth again and felt it move. She took that movement to signal that her prayer would be fulfilled.

Lernaean Hydra, an ancient Greek monster

Asserting her independence, Hera for a full year neither slept with her husband nor sat at his side. Hera’s action produced not a wise, skillful divinity like Athena, but a monster:

After a year had revolved and the seasons came again,
Hera gave birth to one resembling neither gods nor mortals,
the fearsome and troublesome Typhon, misery to mortals.

{ ἂψ περιτελλομένου ἔτεος καὶ ἐπήλυθον ὧραι,
ἣ δ᾿ ἔτεκ᾿ οὔτε θεοῖς ἐναλίγκιον οὔτε βροτοῖσιν,
δεινόν τ᾿ ἀργαλέον τε Τυφάονα, πῆμα βροτοῖσιν. }[5]

Hera, a vicious mother, threw her own son Hephaestus into the sea merely because he was differently abled.[6] Apparently unconcerned about Typhon’s welfare, she gave him to Delphyne to nurture. Delphyne was an evil serpent:

a savage monster, one that inflicted many evils
upon men on the earth — many to themselves,
many to their long-shanked sheep, for she became a bloody calamity.

{ τέρας ἄγριον, ἣ κακὰ πολλὰ
ἀνθρώπους ἔρδεσκεν ἐπὶ χθονί, πολλὰ μὲν αὐτούς,
πολλὰ δὲ μῆλα ταναύποδ᾿, ἐπεὶ πέλε πῆμα δαφοινόν. }

One monster begets another monster, who is nurtured by a third. Without heroic action, monsters will dominate the world.

Apollo Belvedere, Roman marble sculpture of Apollo after Greek original by Leochares

The heroic god Apollo with his mighty bow slayed the evil serpent Delphyne. His action benefited all of humanity:

She used to do much harm to the teeming peoples.
Whoever encountered her was carried off to his day of doom
until the far-shooting lord Apollo discharged his powerful arrow
at her. Racked by horrible pain she lay,
loudly gasping, rolling about the place.
A wondrous, unspeakable noise arose, as she among the trees
kept writhing this way and that. Her life departed
with bloody exhalations.

{ ἣ κακὰ πόλλ᾿ ἔρδεσκε κατὰ κλυτὰ φῦλ᾿ ἀνθρώπων·
ὃς τῆι γ᾿ ἀντιάσειε, φέρεσκέ μιν αἴσιμον ἦμαρ,
πρίν γέ οἱ ἰὸν ἐφῆκεν ἄναξ ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων
καρτερόν· ἣ δ᾿ ὀδύνηισιν ἐρεχθομένη χαλεπῆισιν
κεῖτο μέγ᾿ ἀσθμαίνουσα, κυλινδομένη κατὰ χῶρον.
θεσπεσίη δ᾿ ἐνοπὴ γένετ᾿ ἄσπετος· ἣ δὲ καθ᾿ ὕλην
πυκνὰ μάλ᾿ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα ἑλίσσετο, λεῖπε δὲ θυμόν,
φοινὸν ἀποπνείουσ᾿. }

Apollo rightly exulted over this dead monster:

Now rot away here on the earth that feeds humanity!
You will not be an evil calamity to mortals
who will eat the fruits of the nurturing soil
and bring full and effective cattle sacrifices to me here.
Not from grisly death will either Typhon
or the accursed Chimaera save you, but you indeed here
will rot into the dark earth and the sun-god Hyperion.

{ ἐνταυθοῖ νῦν πύθε᾿ ἐπὶ χθονὶ βωτιανείρηι·
οὐδὲ σύ γ᾿ ἐν ζωοῖσι κακὸν δήλημα βροτοῖσιν
ἔσσεαι, οἳ γαίης πολυφόρβου καρπὸν ἔδοντες
ἐνθάδ᾿ ἀγινήσουσι τεληέσσας ἑκατόμβας,
οὐδέ τί τοι θάνατόν γε δυσηλεγέ᾿ οὔτε Τυφωεύς
ἀρκέσει οὐδὲ Χίμαιρα δυσώνυμος, ἀλλὰ σέ γ᾿ αὐτοῦ
πύσει γαῖα μέλαινα καὶ ἠλέκτωρ Ὑπερίων. }[7]

Hyperion was one of the Titans that Hera implored to help her give conceive independently of her husband. Typhon fared no better than his mother the evil serpent that Apollo slayed. The monster Typhon was badly burned and cast into Tartarus after he rebelled against Zeus. The reign of monsters isn’t inevitable.[8]

Apollo after slaying the monster Delphyne

Apollo resisted oppressive gynocracy and showed a joyful alternative. In contrast to men dancing war dances displaying themselves as social instruments of violence against men, Apollo danced for joy in a festival on Olympus:

The lovely-haired goddesses of grace and the jovial goddesses of seasons,
the goddesses of harmony and youth, and Zeus’s daughter Aphrodite
all dance, each holding each others’ hands at the wrist.
Among them sings and dances a woman neither ugly nor short of stature,
but tall to behold and admirable in appearance.
She is Artemis, ready with arrows and twin of Apollo.
Also among them the war god Ares and the keen-sighted giant-slayer Hermes
dance joyfully while radiant Apollo plays his lyre in the middle.
Apollo is stepping high and beautifully, and radiance shines around him
from the glintings of his feet and his skillfully woven tunic.
The golden-haired Leto and the resourceful Zeus delight
in their great hearts as they watch
their beloved son dancing joyfully among the immortal divinities.

{ ὐτὰρ ἐϋπλόκαμοι Χάριτες καὶ ἐΰφρονες Ὧραι
Ἁρμονίη θ᾿ Ἥβη τε Διὸς θυγάτηρ τ᾿ Ἀφροδίτη
ὀρχέοντ᾿ ἀλλήλων ἐπὶ καρπῶι χεῖρας ἔχουσαι·
τῆισι μὲν οὔτ᾿ αἰσχρὴ μεταμέλπεται οὔτ᾿ ἐλάχεια,
ἀλλὰ μάλα μεγάλη τε ἰδεῖν καὶ εἶδος ἀγητή
Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα ὁμότροφος Ἀπόλλωνι·
ἐν δ᾿ αὖ τῆισιν Ἄρης καὶ ἐΰσκοπος Ἀργειφόντης
παίζουσ᾿· αὐτὰρ ὃ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων ἐγκιθαρίζει
καλὰ καὶ ὕψι βιβάς, αἴγλη δέ μιν ἀμφιφαείνει
μαρμαρυγαί τε ποδῶν καὶ ἐϋκλώστοιο χιτῶνος.
οἳ δ᾿ ἐπιτέρπονται θυμὸν μέγαν εἰσορόωντες
Λητώ τε χρυσοπλόκαμος καὶ μητίετα Ζεύς
υἷα φίλον παίζοντα μετ᾿ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν. }[9]

Within that divine celebration, the Muses recognized the difficulties that men endure:

The Muses, all responding together with beautiful voices,
sing of the gods’ divine gifts and the endurance of men,
all that men have from the immortal gods,
and yet men live ignorant and helpless, not able
to find a remedy for death and a defense against old age.

{ Μοῦσαι μέν θ᾿ ἅμα πᾶσαι ἀμειβόμεναι ὀπὶ καλῆι
ὑμνέουσίν ῥα θεῶν δῶρ᾿ ἄμβροτα ἠδ᾿ ἀνθρώπων
τλημοσύνας, ὅσ᾿ ἔχοντες ὑπ᾿ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν
ζώουσ᾿ ἀφραδέες καὶ ἀμήχανοι, οὐδὲ δύνανται
εὑρέμεναι θανάτοιό τ᾿ ἄκος καὶ γήραος ἄλκαρ. }[10]

In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite understood that Anchises’s mortality made him more sexually attractive to her. Men’s sexuality seeds humanity’s remedy against death and old age. Oppressive gynocracy seeks to control and repress men’s sexuality, just as Hera did in relation to Zeus. Nonetheless, benefiting from Apollo’s example, men need not live ignorantly and helplessly. Men can learn the truth, overcome monsters, and dance for joy.

Apollo particularly delighted in Delos, where Ionian children, men, and women represented a remedy for death and a defense against old age. The Ionians at Delos remembered Apollo and engaged in boxing, dancing, and singing:

Yet in Delos, shining Apollo, your heart most delights.
There in your honor the long-robed Ionians gather together
into your public square — themselves with their children and women.
And with boxing and dancing and singing they
delight you, remembering you when they stage the contest.
Whoever might encounter them, the Ionians assembled,
might suppose they were immortal and ageless forever.
One would see the grace of them all and be delighted at heart
looking upon the men and the lovely waist-banded women,
the swift ships, and the people’s many possessions.

{ ἀλλὰ σὺ Δήλωι, Φοῖβε, μάλιστ᾿ ἐπιτέρπεαι ἦτορ,
ἔνθά τοι ἑλκεχίτωνες Ἰάονες ἠγερέθονται
αὐτοῖς σὺν παίδεσσι γυναιξί τε σὴν ἐς ἄγυιαν·
οἳ δέ σε πυγμαχίηι τε καὶ ὀρχηστυῖ καὶ ἀοιδῆι
μνησάμενοι τέρπουσιν, ὅταν καθέσωσιν ἀγῶνα.
φαίη κ᾿ ἀθανάτους καὶ ἀγήρως ἔμμεναι ἀνήρ,
ὃς τότ᾿ ἐπαντιάσει᾿, ὅτ᾿ Ἰάονες ἁθρόοι εἶεν·
πάντων γάρ κεν ἴδοιτο χάριν, τέρψαιτο δὲ θυμόν
ἄνδράς τ᾿ εἰσορόων καλλιζώνους τε γυναῖκας
νῆάς τ᾿ ὠκείας ἠδ᾿ αὐτῶν κτήματα πολλά. }[11]

An immortal and ageless society unites men with children and women. It’s capable of fighting, dancing, and singing. It’s materially well-provisioned. Neither fighting nor providing material goods are men’s distinctive gender burden. Fully appreciated for their intrinsic value as human beings, men dance gracefully and joyfully with children and women.[12]

man dancer joyfully leading a chorus (illustration on ancient Greek ceramic)

Apollo, who loved both men and women, is a “χάρμα βροτοῖσιν {delight to mortals}.” He is an “arch-opponent of matriarchy,” “the personification of anti-matriarchy.”[13] Both women and men suffer under oppressive matriarchy and gynocracy such as that which the goddess Hera exemplifies. Meninism is the radical notion that men are fully human beings and fully equal to women. All persons of good will and good heart should identify as meninists. They should resist and persist.[14] The god Apollo, rightly regarded as a proto-meninist, offers a shining beacon of hope that monsters will not rule over humans.

* * * * *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Pausanias, Description of Greece, 6.24.6 (Elis 2) and 8.42.8-9 (Arcadia). In addition to “Averter of Evil {Ἀλεξίκακος}, ” Apollo was also known as “Apollo the Healer {Ἀπόλλων Ἀκέσιος}” and “Apollo the Physician {Ἀπόλλων Ἰατρός}.”

[2] While on a journey, Mary, the lowly mother of Jesus, gave birth to Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem because there was no room for her at the inn there. Luke 2:7. Bethlehem was an eminent city known as the city of David, the great Jewish king. Jesus’s home place, however, was the undistinguished city of Nazareth.

Mary and Delos were greatly exalted by the births of Jesus and Apollo, respectively. On Mary being exalted by giving birth to Jesus, Luke 1:46-55. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, at Delos’s request Leto swore an oath that concluded:

Truly indeed here will be forever Phoibos Apollo’s fragrant
altar and precinct. He will honor you above all others.

{ ἦ μὴν Φοίβου τῆιδε θυώδης ἔσσεται αἰεί
βωμὸς καὶ τέμενος, τίσει δέ σέ γ᾿ ἔξοχα πάντων. }

Homeric Hymns 3, Homeric Hymn to Apollo, vv. 86-7, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from West (2003). Alternate English translations are those of Merrill (2011), Rayor (2004), Shelmerdine (1995), and Evelyn-White (1914). For a commentary on Homeric Hymn to Apollo vv. 1-178, Bonnell (2019).

Jesus had a much more humble birth than Apollo. All the most eminent goddesses except Hera attended Apollo’s birth. The newly born Apollo was wrapped in fine-woven cloth secured with a gold cord. He was fed not from his mother Leto’s breast, but served nectar and lovely ambrosia that the goddess Themis served to him. Homeric Hymn to Apollo vv. 92-5, 121-5. In contrast, Jesus was attended at his birth only by his father and the animals of the manger. The newly born Jesus was wrapped in undistinguished swaddling clothes, and fed from Mary’s breast. Soon after his birth local shepherds visited him. Luke 2:7-20.

Jews and Christians understand the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as acting in history. Study of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo suggests that the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also acted within literary history.

Unless otherwise noted, subsequent quotes above are from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and are similarly sourced. Those quotes are Homeric Hymn to Apollo vv. 91-2 (Leto for nine days…), 98-101 (Eileithyia sat in golden clouds…), 311-5 (Hear from me…), 322-5a (You wretch of many schemes…), 326-30 (And right now I will contrive…), 331-9 (Having spoken so, from the gods Hera departed…), 350-2 (After a year had revolved…), 302-4 (a savage monster…), 355-62 (She used to do much harm…), 363-9 (Now rot away here…), 194-206 (The lovely-haired goddesses of grace…), 189-93 (The Muses, all responding together…), 146-155 (Yet in Delos, shining Apollo…).

[3] Simon (2021 / 1969) p. 39. The previous short quote, “one of the oldest and most honored deities of Greece,” is from id. p. 38. The subsequent quote above is from id. p. 38.

[4] Homeric Hymns 12, Homeric Hymn to Hera, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from West (2003). Alternate English translations are those of Rayor (2004), Shelmerdine (1995), and Evelyn-White (1914). On Hera in the Homeric Hymns, Bernabé (2017).

Analyzing the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, a scholar observed of its probable audience:

There were probably Hera worshippers, as mentioned at 347 (“her temples where many pray” and bring offerings) – worshippers from Samos or Argos, for example, who (given Hera’s centrality to their lives) might object to the hymnist’s portrayal of her at 305-355 and find it offensive.

Felson (2012) p. 270. Just as courtiers revered Empress Theodora and General Belisarius worshiped his wife’s feet, some men will worship a woman no matter how evil she is. As for finding a text offensive, that’s primarily a practice of our narrow-minded and intolerant age. Some scholars today would credit Hera for helping the marginalized evil serpent and for being a strong, independent woman in conceiving the monster Typhon on her own. Perhaps some listeners in the ancient Greek world would interpret the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, vv. 305-355, in that same way.

[5] For Homeric Hymn to Apollo, v. 352, I chose “Typhaon, miserty to mortals {Τυϕάονα, πῆμα βροτοῖσιν}” rather than “Typhaon, misery to gods {Τυϕάονα, πῆμα θεοῖσιν},” following Merrill (2011) and Felson (2012) p. 277, rather than West (2003)’s choice of the latter. Both phrases are attested in different manuscripts. The former choice makes Homeric Hymn to Apollo, v. 352, a doublet of id. v. 306.

[6] Totally lacking remorse for her cruel treatment of her differently abled son, Hera declared:

But he has turned out a weakling among the gods,
my son Hephaestus of the withered legs, whom I myself bore,
[a shame and disgrace to me in heaven, and I myself]
picked him up and threw him into the broad sea,
but Nereus’s daughter, Thetis of silvery feet,
took him in and with her sisters nurtured him.
I wish she had served the blessed gods differently!

{ αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾿ ἠπεδανὸς γέγονεν μετὰ πᾶσι θεοῖσιν
παῖς ἐμὸς Ἥφαιστος ῥικνὸς πόδας, ὃν τέκον αὐτή.
[αἶσχος ἐμοὶ καὶ ὄνειδος ἐν οὐρανῷ ὅντε καὶ αὐτή]
ῥῖψ᾿ ἀνὰ χερσὶν ἑλοῦσα καὶ ἔμβαλον εὐρέϊ πόντωι·
ἀλλά ἑ Νηρῆος θυγάτηρ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα
δέξατο καὶ μετὰ ἧισι κασιγνήτηισι κόμισσεν·
ὡς ὄφελ᾿ ἄλλο θεοῖσι χαρίσσασθαι μακάρεσσιν. }

Homeric Hymn to Apollo, vv. 316-21. A lacuna exists between verses 317 and 318. Allen, Halliday & Sikes (1934) p. 248. Without any manuscript support, Allen (1895), p. 278, offered the Greek verse in brackets. Hephaestus’s experience parallels in significant ways the experience of Typhon / Typhaon / Typhoeus. Garcia (2013) Chapter 5. On parallels in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Martin (2020) pp. 186-9.

Hephaestus in the Iliad lamented:

pain came upon me after I had fallen far
through the will of my shameless mother, who sought to hide me
because of my lameness.

{ μ᾿ ἄλγος ἀφίκετο τῆλε πεσόντα
μητρὸς ἐμῆς ἰότητι κυνώπιδος, ἥ μ᾿ ἐθέλησε
κρύψαι χωλὸν ἐόντα· }

Iliad 18.395-7, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Murray (1924) . Cf. Iliad 1.590, which blames Zeus.

[7] In the above English translations of verses from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, I’ve standardized the names Typhaon (vv. 306, 352) and Typhoeus (v. 367) to Typhon. In context, Typhaon and Typhoeus seem to me best understand as variant names for Typhon. On the monster Typhon, Ogdon (2013) pp. 69-80.

Delphyne isn’t named in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, but merely identified as a “female serpent / dragon {δράκαινα}” in v. 300. According to a scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, Callimachus called the one guarding the Delphic oracle a female serpent / dragon {δράκαινα} named Delphyna {Δέλφυνα}. Callimachus, Aetia, Book IV, fragment 88 in Clayman (2022).

Perhaps indicating the reluctance of men to identify female serpents / dragons, “subsequent tradition has little interest in developing the {female} drakaina variant.” Ogden (2013) p. 42. While the Pythian portion of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was composed early in the sixth century BGC, by about 500 BGC the female drakaina {δράκαινα} apparently had been transformed into the male serpent / dragon {δράκων} named Python or Pytho. Pytho was an early name for Delphi. Homeric Hymn to Apollo, v. 372. The male monster Python / Pytho “is always aligned with female chthonic forces who have prior possession of the shrine” at Delphi. Zeitlin (2023) p. 150, n. 31. Writing in the fourth century GC, the Emperor Julian asserted:

Apollo subdued Python, the dragon, with a hundred arrows, as Simonides said.

{ διότι τὸν Πυθῶνα, τὸν δράκοντα, βέλεσιν ἑκατὸν ὥς φησιν ἐχειρώσατο }

Julian, Letters 24, excerpt catalogued as Simonides of Ceos, fragment 573, ancient Greek text and English translation (with pronouns glossed as the clearly indicted proper nouns) from Campbell (1991) pp. 458-9. Ovid’s account of Apollo killing the dragon Python emphasizes brutal violence of male against male. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.434-47. At least some ancient scholars showed concern about the transformed gender of the dragon:

the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was to fire a vigorous debate, perhaps initiated by playful Hellenistic poets, as to whether the Delphic serpent was a male Delphynes or female Delphyne, and this debate seems to have become something of a mytheme in its own right.

Ogden (2013) p. 42. Recent scholarship has muddled the sex of the Delphic serpent in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo by naming her Python. E.g Felson (2012) pp. 264-5.

[8] Writing in the dominant anti-meninist tradition while pretending to the highly acclaimed position of “resisting reader,” a scholar seemingly not meaning to appear ridiculous wrote:

Apollo kills Python {the evil female serpent, classically named Delphyne}, and because the hymnist explicitly labels her an evil and classifies her death as a liberation from evil, it is hard for the resisting reader to rehabilitate her.

Felson (2012) p. 275. Modern literary scholars have honored Philomena for killing her innocent son. They surely might also declare an evil female serpent to be an agent of the marginalized and oppressed struggling for liberation.

[9] Hermes here is literally called the Argus-slayer {Ἀργειφόντης}. Hermes slayed the giant Argus. Apollo’s feet glinting / gleaming is characteristic of dancers in motion in ancient Greek texts. Kurke (2012) p. 228.

In the above verses, παίζουσ᾿ (v. 201) and παίζοντα (v. 206) are forms of the ancient Greek verb παίζειν / paizein. That verb here means a particular type of dancing:

As a matter of fact, paizein (‘to play’) serves as one of the termini technici for dancing in Greek culture. … Since Homer the Greek word has served as an emblematic expression for carefree and joyful dancing. On the oldest piece of evidence for Attic competitive dance culture, a late geometric oinokhoē by the Dipylon master (750-725 BCE), we can already find the following hexametric verse inscription: “Whoever of all the dancers now plays the most exuberantly, to him belongs this [vessel]” (ὃς νῦν ὀρχηστῶν πάντων ἀταλώτατα παίζει, τοῦ τόδε KΑ̣ỊΜỊΝ). One can easily recognize in this verb paizei (παίζει) the substantive pais (παῖς). Simple dance without any sophisticated artistry is to a certain extent “child’s play”.

Bierl (2021) paras. 1, 5 (references omitted, including a reference citing the verse inscription on the oinokhoē Athens, National Museum 192). Many translations of vv. 201, 206 have failed to make explicit the reference to dance, e.g. translating forms of παίζειν in those verses as “sport” in West (2003).

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo addresses the relationship between individuals and the group. That’s a fundamental question of politics in relation to Olympus. Clay (1989). The festival on Olympus both incorporates Apollo into the Olympian order and distinguishes him among gods. He’s effectively a chorus-leader for the festival on Olympus. Hendricks (2020a) pp. 98-104, Hendricks (2020b).

Apollo dancing for joy, and with him men and women, is associated with the goddess “Good Governance {Εὐνομία}”:

The Olympian passage of the Hymn clearly delineates how the components of choral performance — instrumental music, poetry, song, and choral dancing — function together as ordering forces to forge what might be called Eunomia (Good Order), sibling of the dance-loving Horai. The choral interlude on Olympus is also a prototype of the civic order fostered by music and dance.

Lonsdale (1994) p. 35. Lonsdale, however, wrongly projected onto this passage men’s gender position as social instruments of war:

The emphasis on choral dancing for young girls in particular is alluded to in the description of Artemis’ chorus, where the Kharites, Hebe, and other khoreutai embody qualities deemed desirable for marriageable girls to acquire through choral rites. The equivalent form of choreographic training for adolescent boys was the weapon dance. The presence of Ares in the dance may be an allusion to this widespread form of paramilitary training which is attested in the cults of Apollo and Artemis.

Id. pp. 35-6. The weapon dance was not a joyful, playful dance. The presence of Ares joyfully, playfully dancing highlights men dancing for pleasure in contrast to men dancing for war.

[10] Translations of these verses have projected on them fundamental misinterpretations. For example:

all of the Muses together in lovely antiphonal voices
hymn the ambrosial gifts that the gods enjoy, and the sorrows
which men under the hands of the deathless gods ever suffer,
living without understanding and helpless, nor are they ever
able to find any cure for their death or defense against old age.

Merrill (2011). In this translation, the gods enjoy ambrosial (divine) gifts and sing lovely songs about how men sorrow under the gods’ hands. An alternate translation:

The Muses, responding all together with lovely voice, sing of the gods’ divine gifts and of human sufferings — all that they have from the immortal gods and yet live witless and helpless, unable to find a remedy for death or a defence against old age.

West (2003). In this translation, humans receive good from the gods, yet the gods still sing lovely songs about how humans suffer. A scholar who carefully analyzed these verses observed:

Lines 189–93 {of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo} describe a song of the Muses that expresses a divine view on the human condition. Scholars uniformly hold that the Olympians rejoice in hearing about how they themselves inflict pain on mankind.

Spelman (2020) p. 1. Spelman offers a significantly better translation:

Most scholars have understood θεῶν δῶρ’ ἄμβροτα (190) to mean the privileges that the gods themselves enjoy, in particular immortality; some recent scholars instead understand this to mean the gifts which the gods give to mortals. The latter sense is preferable. …

If θεῶν δῶρ’ ἄμβροτα (190) describes gifts that gods give to men, are these gifts good or bad or a mixture of both good and bad?… The gifts of the gods are probably desirable here too.

Scholars have long translated τλημοϲύναϲ (191) along the lines of ‘sufferings’, but Heitsch makes a powerful case for instead taking it to mean ‘endurance’. …

Since lines 190–1 refer to two sorts of good things, we should follow West in taking the participle ἔχοντεϲ (191) as concessive: ‘all that they have from the immortal gods and yet live witless and helpless’ (my emphasis). Here men are ‘helpless’ (192) not because of, but rather despite, all that they have from the gods.

Id. pp. 1-4. In summary,

In this hymn, the gifts of the gods are good and work to mitigate, not exacerbate, mortal frailties.

Id. p. 6. Above I have followed Spelman’s arguments in providing the English translation.

[11] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3.104. quotes the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, vv. 146-50, 165-72, and attributes the hymn to Homer. On this reception, Nagy (2011).

Some scholars think that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was performed in Delos in 522 BGC, shortly before the Persians killed Polycrates of Samos, who was then ruling Delos. Nagy (2011) p. 287. For a more skeptical view and a thorough review of the historical evidence, Bonnell (2019) pp. 22-33.

The chorus of Delian maidens in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo obviously excludes men, as well as older women and children. Nonetheless, a scholar has credited the Delian Maidens (Deliades) with a “shared, convergent and inclusive choral enactment”:

the depiction of the Deliades’ performances as typical instances of choreia in its most inclusive meaning, where various types and combinations of vocal and kinetic activity create an inseparable whole.

Peponi (2009) pp. 65 (shared, convergent…), 57 (the depiction of the Deliades’ performance…). The Ionians dancing in honor of Apollo provided a much more diverse and inclusive enactment, at least in today’s understanding of identity and inclusion. Moreover, “leading from within” reflects the practice of Apollo in the Olympian festival. Hendricks (2020b). The ancient Greeks perhaps had a more sophisticated understanding of diversity and inclusion:

An essential part of the Delian Maidens’ enchantment is to make you feel that in their voice you can hear your own, that in their performance you can see yourself. This moment is, I think, meant to be praised as a moment where not only the local becomes universal, but, also, where the personal transcends its borders and approaches the sublime.

Id. p. 67. This claim for the Delian Maidens seems more obviously applicable to the Ionian men, children, and women dancing in honor of Apollo.

[12] Scholars have paid much more attention to the immediately subsequent verses concerning the Delian maidens. Those verses suggest the practice of choruses in classical Greek drama. Nagy (2013).

Apollo celebrating with the Olympians parallels the Ionians and the Delian maidens celebrating Apollo at Delos. The Olympian celebration includes only immortals, while the Delian celebration includes humans and the god Apollo. The two celebration nonetheless have been starkly contrasted:

It is possible to see in the Olympian and Delian passages a sort of myth of origin for human dance and song that provides a solution to the crisis that divides divine and human existence. The solution is a compromise, since the experience of sharing privileged gifts with the gods is vicarious and temporary. But in an important sense, it is illusory and based on the distinctly human ability to represent mimetically through ludus human and divine themes.

Lonsdale (1994) p. 38. Divine and human existences are closely related in ancient Greek thought. Moreover, the relation between divine and human in ancient Greek understanding encompasses far more than mimetic drama. The Delian passage refers to the Ionian men, children, and women, and the Ionian ships and material possessions. Those references indicate broader concerns than just the acts of a chorus.

Given prevalent misunderstanding of the Muses’s hymns, as Spelman (2020) documents, the relation between the two celebrations has also been misunderstood. The Ionians celebrating at Delos have been imagined to be not like other humans:

The gulf between the privileged existence of the Olympians and the sufferings of mortals is emphasized by the twin subjects of the Muses’ hymns: the unending gifts enjoyed by the gods and the sufferings of humans. These mortals, unable to find an antidote to death or even old age, are the inverse of the godlike Ionians in the full swing of the festival. This pathetic state of things — the condition of the human race after the Golden Age when gods and mortals no longer danced together at the same festivals — is taken up and transformed by Plato into the origins of paideia in the Laws (653).

Lonsdale (1994) p. 33. The Ionians celebrating Apollo in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo are better understood to indicate real human possibility in following Apollo to overcome oppressive gynocracy.

[13] Slater (1968) pp. 139, 137. With the authoritative pronouncements of a Freudian theorist, Slater harshly disparages Apollo for his “opposition to matriarchy in all its forms”:

Apollo’s attacks on chthonic monsters thus incorporate the brittle narcissism of the Greek male, in constant struggle against inundation by oral-dependent longings and the dread of woman. … Apollo’s priggish and Draconian opposition to matriarchy in all its forms also betrays this weakness and self-doubt.

Id. p. 160. Slater associated Apollo with the divine hero Heracles:

Like Apollo, he {Heracles} affects a masculine antisepsis against matriarchy, femininity, and chthonic forces everywhere.

Id. p. 338. Apollo and Heracles loved feminine women as much as medieval men did. Antisepsis against matriarchy and chthonic forces, whether that antisepsis is masculine or feminine, should be welcomed and celebrated.

Compared to Apollo, Heracles had much less success in dealing with oppressive gynocracy. Heracles was subordinated and abused under Omphale, who tragically became his wife. Moreover, Heracles died under the “tormenting wrath of Hera {ἀργαλέος χόλος Ἥρης}. Iliad 18.119. Heracles’s mother Alcmene originally named him Alcides. She changed his name to Heracles, which literally means “glory of Hera,” in an attempt to prevent Hera from harming him. Nonetheless, like the goddess Demeter, Hera raged on despite attempts to mollify her. Slater justified Hera’s rage with sociological myths about ancient Greece and Freudian abstractions. In contrast, committing hate speech under guidelines that Facebook used, Slater dehumanized Achilles by smearing him as “merely a wellborn gorilla.” Id. p. 339.

Reviews of Salter (1968) reveal the sociological reality that underpins his mythic writing. One scholarly reviewer, without any apparent sense of irony, declared:

This fascinating book deserves the attention of classicists interested in a psychoanalytically trained sociologist’s elucidation of Greek mythology.

Friedl (1969) p. 124. Anyone interested in “a psychoanalytically trained sociologist’s elucidation of Greek mythology” will find many fascinating letter shapes in Slater’s book. But another scholar reviewing Slater (1968) warned:

While his conclusions are not incompatible with a feminist reading of Greek literature, his book should be used with care.

Foley (1975) p. 36. In this intellectual tradition, one must be careful that students don’t question feminist ideology, nor think in new ways.

Despite the need to use Slater (1968) with care to avoid harm to feminism, this book has been widely distributed. Beacon Press re-issued it in 1992. Princeton University Press published it in 1992. In 2014, it became an online course book in the Princeton Legacy Library and part of the prestigious Bollingen Series in World Mythology. That’s an impressive achievement for “a psychoanalytically trained sociologist’s elucidation of Greek mythology,” one that interprets Achilles to be “merely a wellborn gorilla.” Perhaps this book received high credit for disparaging Apollo and others for their “opposition to matriarchy in all its forms.” In any case, Slater deserves to be commended at least because his book “was not intended at all,” although that claim might “distort history.” Id. p. ix.

[14] Modern Greek and Latin philologists have been ashamed of men’s penises. Following upon Socratic repression, they have obscured castration culture, even torturing the penis. A scholar writing in the dominant anti-meninist tradition pretended to offer a “resisting reading” of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo:

Not all the listeners were triumphant insiders who unequivocally identified with the victorious and virile young Apollo! There were foreigners, or those of a lower class, or women of any age-grade.

Felson (2012) p. 270. In the ancient Greek world, surely a very small share of the listeners of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo were “triumphant insiders.” Oppressed men, among which were foreigners and lower-class men, along with women who loved them, probably identified with the “victorious and virile young Apollo.” Other women surely admired virile men in general and despised the horrible ruling Hera and her effort to impose a hateful, oppressive gynocracy. Scholars working in the anti-meninist tradition project their ideology upon all of human history and reify their own myths constructed upon lies and gossip:

Might not an interpreter, then, with a frame of reference that privileges the weak and subordinated take the rumored designation of Apollo as atasthalos, “reckless, violent, hubristic” (67), to accurately characterize the god, particularly in terms of how he treats those who offend or cross him? That interpreter might sustain a negative perspective on Apollo’s triumph at Delphi and even reflect on the cost to subordinates, often female subordinates, of the Olympian order. Does the hymnist allow for such a “resisting reading” of Apollo?

Id. p. 271. An interpreter might reflect on Zeus, fearful and hiding from Hera’s rages. A frame of reference privileging weak and subordinated men doesn’t depend on slanderous rumors that the female personification of Delos relayed. A resisting reading identifies with the virile Apollo slaying the evil serpent Delphyne. A resisting reading celebrates Apollo for foiling an insurrectionist conspiracy of the historically privileged Hera.

[images] (1) Roman Kassel Apollo. Made in the second quarter of the second century GC. Thought to be a copy of “Apollo the Locust-Killer / Parnopios Apollo {Ἀπόλλων Παρνόπιος}” of the eminent Greek sculptor Phidias in the fifth century BGC. A swarm of locusts was a type of plague. Sculpture preserved as MR 117 in the Louvre Museum (Paris, France), which provided the source image. Similar image on Wikimedia Commons. Here’s a similar Roman sculpture. On the Kassel Apollo sculpture, Simon (2021 / 1969) pp. 162-3.

(2) The infant Apollo with his mother Leto and his infant sister Artemis. Marble sculpture made by Francesco Pozzi in 1824. Preserved in the Sculpture Gallery, Chatsworth House (Derbyshire, England). Source image thanks to Daderot and Wikimedia Commons. Latona was the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Leto. According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, vv. 14-6, Artemis was born in Ortygia, and Apollo in Delos. Hence Artemis and Apollo weren’t twins. Pindar, Nemean Odes 9.4-5 describes Leto’s twins who keep watch over Pytho (the ancient name for Delos). Leto’s twins in these verses of Pindar clearly refer to Artemis and Apollo.

(3) Relief on top of the Lion Gate at the main entrance to the citadel of Mycenae in Southern Greece. Made about 1250 BGC. Source image thanks to Zde and Wikimedia Commons. The relief plausibly honors the goddess Hera, the primary deity of the Mycenaeans:

The mighty pillar, surrounded by powerful lions gazing out over the countryside, would be a most worthy image of {Hera,} the queen of Olympus and mistress of the Argive plain.

Simon (2021 / 1969) p. 68. On representing Hera by a plank / pillar, id. pp. 63-8.

(4) Relief of Hera, Lady-Lord of Animals / Potnia Theron {Πότνια Θηρῶν}. Relief on pithos {πίθος}, a large ancient Greek storage container, made about 625-600 BGC on the Cyclades, which are islands in the Aegean Sea. The central island of the Cyclades is Delos, the birthplace of Apollo according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This pithos was found in Thebes, the most important city of ancient Boeotia. It’s preserved as NAMA 355 in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Source image thanks to Zde and Wikimedia Commons. Here are other images of Boeotian pithos NAMA 355.

This relief is best interpreted as depicting Hera, the supreme goddess of ancient Boeotia. The pithos showing it was probably used in cultic worship of Hera. Kardara (1960) pp. 347-53, Simon (2021 / 1969) pp. 58-61. The relief suggests survival of artistic motifs from the vanished ancient Mycenaean civilization that produced the Lion Gate:

The lions on this relief are unlike all other eighth and seventh century lions. They are linked with the lions of the Lion Gate; besides being placed heraldically, they stand on their hind legs, and have both forelegs on a higher level. This type is a sporadic survival of the Lion Gate type. It can be explained as a hieratic survival.

Kardara (1960) p. 347. Hera has similarities with the ancient Mesopotamian goddesses Inana / Inanna and Ishtar, but these latter goddesses were more sympathetic and loving toward men.

(5) Colossal head of Hera (Hera / Juno Ludovisi). Marble sculpture piece from the first century GC. Preserved as Inv. 8631 in National Roman Museum of the Altemps Palace (Rome, Italy). This head is from a colossal statue apparently representing as Hera / Juno the eminent Antonia Minor, daughter of Octavia Minor and Mark Antony and mother of the Roman Emperor Claudius. Source image by Henk Bekker, who made it available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Here’s another photo of the Hera / Juno Ludovisi.

Goethe described the Juno Ludovisi, which he saw in Rome, as “my first love in Rome {erste Liebschafft in Rom}.” He placed a plastic cast of the Juno Judovisi in his apartment. Goethe declared:

One must consider as a blessing to have it constantly before one’s eyes, for none of our contemporaries who stands before it for the first time can claim to be equal to this sight.

{ man es für ein Glück achten mußte, sie immerwährend vor Augen zu haben; denn keiner unsrer Zeitgenossen, der zum erstenmal vor sie hintritt, darf behaupten, diesem Anblick gewachsen zu sein. }

Goethe (1816-7), Report for April, 1788. The quote “erste Liebschafft in Rom” is from id., notes for 6 January, 1787. Goethe used the same phrase in his letter to Christoph Ludwig Friedrich Schultz on 8 March 1824. He further explained about this image of the goddess Hera / Juno:

I was astonished to the point of fright, as the sublime, unique divine image confronted me. Now I see it again daily, and always with a new impression.

{ erstaunt ich zum Erschrecken, so trat mir das erhabene einzige Götterbild entgegen. Nun seh ich es wieder täglich und immer wieder mit neuem Eindruck. }

Id. Goethe’s relation to the Hera / Juno Ludovisi is a stark instance of gyno-idolatry.

(6) Lernaean Hydra, an ancient Greek monster. Painting on a terracotta hydria made in Caere, Etruria, about 520-510 BGC. Painting attributed to the Eagle Painter. Preserved as accession # 83.AE.346 in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA). Source image via J. Paul Getty Museum and Wikimedia Commons.

The Learnaean Hydra is the daughter of the monsters Typhon and Echidna. Echidna is a half-woman, half-snake monster. A Corinthian aryballos from the first quarter of the sixth century BGC shows Athena helping Heracles to slay the Lernaean Hydra. As the Corinthian aryballos indicates, both women and men can contribute to slaying monsters. The Corinthian aryballos is preserved as object # 92.AE.4 in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angelos, USA).

(7) Apollo Belvedere, Roman marble sculpture of Apollo. Made about 120-140 GC after Greek original made by Leochares between 330 and 320 BGC. Preserved as inventory # 1015 in Vatican Museum (Rome, Italy). Source image thanks to Livioandronico2013 and Wikimedia Commons. Here are many more images of the Apollo Belvedere, as well as historical images. The Apollo Belvedere suffered from castration culture. The injury to his testicle and penis was obscured with a fig leaf.

Apollo Belvedere, castration obscured with fig leaf
Apollo Belvedere castrated

(8) Apollo after slaying the serpent Delphyne. Marble sculpture made in 1591 by Pietro Francavilla. Preserved as accession # 27.302 in the Walters Art Museum. Credit: Acquired by Henry Walters. Source image thanks to the Walters. That image is also available on Wikimedia Commons. The Walters identifies this sculpture as Apollo victorious over Python. It seems to me better identified as Apollo victorious over the female serpent Delphyne.

(9) Dancing man joyfully leading a chorus. Illustration on a black-figure aryballos / olpe from Corinth, Greece. Made about 580-570 BGC. Except from photo shared under CC BY-NC-SA by Egisto Sani on flickr. The aryballos is inscribed:

Polyterpos. Pyrvias (Pyrrhias) leading the chorus, and to him himself an olpe.

{ πολυτερπός Πυρϝίας προχορευόμενος αὐτὸ (αὐτῷ) δέ ϝοι ὄλπα }

Roebuck & Roebuck (1955) p. 160. This aryballos depicts “a formal chorus of boys who were competing in a dancing contest as part of a festival.” Id. p. 163.

(10) Apollo Belvedere, with his terrible castration injury deliberately obscured with a fig leaf. Detail from photograph made between 1880 and 1904 and preserved as object # RP-F-00-5345-50 in Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Source image via Wikimedia Commons.

(11) Apollo Belvedere, with castration revealed. Detail from image thanks to Livioandronico2013 and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Allen, Thomas W. 1895. “The Text of the Homeric Hymns. II.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 15: 251–313.

Allen, Theodore W., William Reginald Halliday, and Edward Ernest Sikes, eds. 1934. The Homeric Hymns. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bernabé, Alberto. 2017. “Hera in the Homeric Hymns.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. 57 (2-3): 143–58.

Bierl, Anton. 2021. “Choral Dance as Play: Paizein in Greek Drama, or Body Movement as Sexual Attraction between Gender and Genre.” Pp. 29-47 in Véronique Dasen and Marco Vespa, eds. Jouer Dans l’Antiquité Classique / Play and Games in Classical Antiquity. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège.

Bonnell, Kyle. 2019. Homeric Hymn to Apollo: Introduction and Commentary on Lines 1-178. Ph.D. Thesis, Wadham College, University of Oxford.

Campbell, David A., ed. and trans. 1991. Greek Lyric, Volume III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others. Loeb Classical Library 476. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clay, Jenny Strauss. 1989. The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Clayman, Dee L., ed. and trans. 2022. Callimachus. Aetia. Iambi. Lyric Poems. Loeb Classical Library 421. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Evelyn-White, Hugh G. 1914. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. London: William Heinemann Ltd.

Felson, Nancy. 2012. “Victory and Virility in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: At Whose Cost?” Pp. 269–281 in Richard Alain Bouchon and Pascale Brillet-Dubois, eds. Hymnes de La Grèce Antique: Approches Littéraires et Historiques. Actes du Colloque International de Lyon, 19-21 Juin 2008. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranéen. Alternate online address.

Foley, Helene P. 1975. “Sex and State in Ancient Greece. Review: The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family by Philip E Slater.” Diacritics. 5 (4): 31–36.

Friedl, Ernestine. 1969. “Review: The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family by Philip E Slater.” The Classical World. 63 (4): 124.

Garcia, Lorenzo F., Jr. 2013. Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad. Hellenic Studies Series 58. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1816-17. Italienische Reise {Italian Journey}. Munchen: Hirmer. English translation: vol. 1, vol. 2.

Hendricks, Amy Nicole. 2020a. Approaching Chorality: Literary Representations of the Chorus in Archaic Greek Poetry. Ph.D. Thesis, Classics, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Hendricks, Amy Nicole. 2020b. “Leading from Within: Choral Incorporation in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo.” Presentation to CAMWS (The Classical Association of the Middle West and South), Virtual Meeting, May 26-30, 2020.

Kardara, Chrysoula. 1960. “Problems of Hera’s Cult-Images.” American Journal of Archaeology. 64 (4): 343–58.

Kurke, Lesle. 2012. “The Value of Chorality in Ancient Greece.” Chapter 10 (pp. 218-235) in John K. Papadopoulos and Gary Urton, eds. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Volume review by Chloë N.​ Duckworth.

Lonsdale, Steven H. 1994. “Homeric Hymn to Apollo: Prototype and Paradigm of Choral Performance.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics. 3 (1): 25–40.

Martin, Richard P. 2020. Mythologizing Performance. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Merrill, Rodney, trans. 2011. “The Homeric Hymn to Apollo.” Chapter 8 in Timothy Pepper, ed. 2011. A Californian Hymn to Homer. Hellenic Studies Series 41. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Murray, A. T., trans. Revised by William F. Wyatt. 1924. Homer. Iliad. Loeb Classical Library 170 and 171. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate source for Murray’s translation.

Nagy, Gregory. 2011. “The Earliest Phases in the Reception of the Homeric Hymns.” Pp. 280-333 in Andrew Faulkner, ed. 2011. The Homeric Hymns: Interpretative Essays. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Alternate source.

Nagy, Gregory. 2013. “The Delian Maidens and their Relevance to Choral Mimesis in Classical Drama.” Chapter 10 (pp. 227-256) in Renaud Gagné and Marianne Govers, eds. Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ogden, Daniel. 2013. Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Peponi, Anastasia-Erasmia. 2009. “Choreia and Aesthetics in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: The Performance of the Delian Maidens (Lines 156-64).” Classical Antiquity. 28 (1): 39–70.

Rayor, Diane J. 2004. The Homeric Hymns: A Translation with Introduction and Notes. Updated edition, 2014. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rayor’s translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Homeric Hymns 2). Review by Stephen Evans.

Roebuck, Mary C., and Carl A. Roebuck. 1955. “A Prize Aryballos.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 24 (2): 158–63.

Shelmerdine, Susan C., trans. 1995. The Homeric Hymns. Newburyport, MA: Focus Information Group. Review by Ingrid Holmberg.

Simon, Erika. 2021 / 1969. The Gods of the Greeks. Edited by H. A. Shapiro. Translated by Jakob Zeyl. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Originally published as Simon, Erika. 1969. Die Götter der Griechen. München: Hirmer.

Slater, Philip E. 1968. The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Spelman, Henry L. 2020. “The View from Olympus: The Muses’ Song in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo.” The Classical Quarterly. 70 (1): 1–9.

West, Martin L., ed. and trans. 2003. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer. Loeb Classical Library 496. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Review by R. Garner.

Zeitlin, Froma I. 2023. The Retrospective Muse: Pathways through Ancient Greek Literature and Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus caused death of insanely loving man

In the ancient Greek world of the fourth century BGC, Praxiteles sculpted the Greek sex goddess Aphrodite human-sized and naked, covering her groin with one hand and reaching for a bath towel with another. That beautiful statue, known as the Aphrodite of Cnidus, became a famous tourist attraction in the ancient world.[1] More significantly, it caused the death of a young man loving with even more insane passion than did Queen Dido of Carthage.

Roman copy of Praxiteles's Aphrodite of Cnidus

Praxiteles himself ardently loved the wealthy, influential courtesan Phryne. She was the human model for his sculpture of Aphrodite that the Cnidians bought and displayed. The goddess Aphrodite, also called Cypris, thought that Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus realistically depicted her naked:

Cypris, seeing Cypris in Cnidus, said,
“Alas! Alas! Where did Praxiteles see me naked?”

{ Ἁ Κύπρις τὰν Κύπριν ἐνὶ Κνίδῳ εἶπεν ἰδοῦσα·
“Φεῦ, φεῦ· ποῦ γυμνὴν εἶδέ με Πραξιτέλης” }[2]

Actaeon and Tiresias suffered harsh punishments for seeing the goddesses Diana and Athena naked. However, some men had seen the goddess Aphrodite naked, as she knew:

Paris saw me naked, as did Anchises and Adonis.
Only those three I know. But how Praxiteles?

{ Γυμνὴν εἶδε Πάρις με, καὶ Ἀγχίσης, καὶ Ἄδωνις·
τοὺς τρεῖς οἶδα μόνους· Πραξιτέλης δὲ πόθεν }

Praxiteles might rightly fear that, unlike Paris, Anchises, and Adonis, he wouldn’t escape punishment for seeing a goddess naked — even if he saw Aphrodite naked only through the naked body of his beloved Phryne.

statue of Pygmalion looking with desire at the beautiful, naked woman he sculpted

Composed about 200 GC, a fictional letter from Phryne to Praxiteles highlights men’s fear in relation to goddesses. Phryne in her letter seeks to comfort Praxiteles:

Do not be afraid! Has anyone ever made such a very beautiful object? No one!

{ Μὴ δείσῃς· ἐξείργασαι γὰρ πάγκαλόν τι χρῆμα· οἷον ἤδη τίς σοι τῶν πώποτε; οὐδείς· }[3]

Phryne’s reason for Praxiteles not to be afraid makes no sense unless she is speaking as an oracle of the goddess Aphrodite. Phryne seems to believe that because she modeled for Aphrodite, she can also speak for Aphrodite. The goddess Aphrodite might have exempted Praxiteles from punishment for knowing her naked because he beautifully sculpted her. Phryne’s letter shockingly continues:

By the work of your hands, you have established your own courtesan in the sacred precinct.

{τῶν κατὰ χειρῶν πονηθέντων τὴν σεαυτοῦ ἑταίραν ἵδρυσας ἐν τεμένει· }[4]

Praxiteles sculpted a statue of Eros, and perhaps also statues of Aphrodite and Phryne, displayed at Thespiae. The Thespians, not Praxiteles, placed those statues in the sacred precinct that became a prominent tourist attraction.[5] Phryne’s letter, now apparently in the voice of Phryne, suggests that Aphrodite is Praxiteles’s courtesan and honored in the sacred precinct at Thespiae. While courtesans could dominate the men who loved them, such dominance in love is not the categorical dominance of a goddess in relation to a mortal man. Aphrodite being Praxiteles’s courtesan would parallel Aphrodite’s loss of divine supremacy in marrying Anchises.

The speaking voice of Phryne’s letter subsequently switches to the voice of a statue of Phryne and to the voice of Phryne herself. The statue of Phryne proudly associates itself with the much more famous statue of Eros at Thespiae:

In fact, I stand in the middle on the altar together with your Aphrodite and your Eros. And do not begrudge me this honor. In fact, those who have seen us praise Praxiteles, and because I am a product of your art, the Thespians do not count me as unfit to be placed between divinities.

{ μέση γὰρ ἕστηκα ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης καὶ τοῦ Ἔρωτος ἅμα τοῦ σοῦ. μὴ φθονήσῃς δέ μοι τῆς τιμῆς· οἱ γὰρ ἡμᾶς θεασάμενοι ἐπαινοῦσι Πραξιτέλη, καὶ ὅτι τῆς σῆς τέχνης γέγονα οὐκ ἀδοξοῦσί με Θεσπιεῖς μέσην κεῖσθαι θεῶν. }[6]

The flesh-and-blood woman Phryne then makes an outrageous request:

One thing is still lacking in the gift: for you to come to us, so that we may recline together in the sacred precinct. We will not indeed defile the gods whom we ourselves have made.

{ ἓν ἔτι τῇ δωρεᾷ λείπει, ἐλθεῖν σε πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἵνα ἐν τῷ τεμένει μετ᾿ ἀλλήλων κατακλινῶμεν. οὐ μιανοῦμεν γὰρ τοὺς θεοὺς οὓς αὐτοὶ πεποιήκαμεν. }

Praxiteles reportedly modeled his naked Aphrodite on Phryne naked. He reportedly modeled his statue of Eros on the erotic desire he felt for Phryne. These circumstances apparently were the basis for Phryne crediting herself as a co-creator of those sculptures.[7] In the context of Praxiteles’s courtesan being in the sacred precinct and the additional gift from a man, Phryne’s request “to recline {κᾰτακλῑ́νω}” together with Praxiteles suggests banqueting and having sex with him. Phryne denies the divinity of the representations of Aphrodite and Eros in the sacred precinct in claiming that it’s permissible for her and Praxiteles to have sex there. Contemporary Greek religious authorities would have regarded such a claim as outrageous.

Pygmalion awe-struck at the beauty of the naked woman that he sculpted

Praxiteles surely knew that if he had illicit sex with Aphrodite, or even had illicit sex with Phryne in the presence of the naked Aphrodite, he might be shamefully punished. The god Ares’s humiliation after having illicit sex with Aphrodite was commonly sung throughout the ancient Greek world. Ares was a passionate god most associated with horrific violence against men. Pursing an alternate, more humane expression of masculine passion, Ares gave many gifts to Aphrodite, the wife of the lame, yes-dearing Hephaestus. She consented to have sex with him secretly and so cuckold her husband.

Having illicit sex with Aphrodite worked out badly for Ares. The furious Hephaestus arranged to trap them together in bed in a web of chains. Hephaestus explained to Aphrodite’s father Zeus:

Yes, you will see where those two sleep in love
after having gone into my bed. I, looking on, am grieved.
But I think they won’t want to lie that way much longer,
even though they much love each other. Soon, soon, both
will not wish to sleep. Yes, my snare and bonds will restrain both,
until her father pays back to me the bride-gifts, all of them,
all that I gave to him for that shameless bitch, that young woman.
His daughter is beautiful, but not in control of her desires.

{ ἀλλ᾽ ὄψεσθ᾽, ἵνα τώ γε καθεύδετον ἐν φιλότητι
εἰς ἐμὰ δέμνια βάντες, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὁρόων ἀκάχημαι.
οὐ μέν σφεας ἔτ᾽ ἔολπα μίνυνθά γε κειέμεν οὕτως
καὶ μάλα περ φιλέοντε: τάχ᾽ οὐκ ἐθελήσετον ἄμφω
εὕδειν: ἀλλά σφωε δόλος καὶ δεσμὸς ἐρύξει,
εἰς ὅ κέ μοι μάλα πάντα πατὴρ ἀποδῷσιν ἔεδνα,
ὅσσα οἱ ἐγγυάλιξα κυνώπιδος εἵνεκα κούρης,
οὕνεκά οἱ καλὴ θυγάτηρ, ἀτὰρ οὐκ ἐχέθυμος. }[8]

Underscoring historically entrenched lack of concern for men’s paternity interests and trivialization of men being cuckolded, the gods laughed uncontrollably at Hephaestus being cuckolded and Ares being shamefully snared. Ares, however, wasn’t castrated or killed for committing adultery. He only had to pay the cost of Hephaestus’s bride-gifts to Aphrodite. Surely Praxiteles would fear such punishment or worse if he had sex in a sacred precinct with a woman who looked like Aphrodite.[9]

Fear of punishment didn’t restrain some highly passionate men in relation to Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus. Apparently in the second century GC, the sober thinker Lycinus visited the temple holding the Aphrodite of Cnidus. He reported:

In the middle of that temple sits the goddess, a most beautiful statue of Parian marble. Arrogantly smiling a little, she has a grin parting her lips. With no encompassing garment, her body is stripped bare and all her beauty uncovered, except for her genitals that she conceals with one hand as a secret. So great was the power of the sculptor’s art that the hard, unyielding marble did justice to her every limb. Charicles then, frenzied and wild, cried out this, “Happiest of the gods,” he said, “was Ares who was enchained because of her!” And, as he spoke, he ran up to the statue. Stretching out his neck as far as he could, he started to kiss the goddess with importunate lips.

{ ἡ μὲν οὖν θεὸς ἐν μέσῳ καθίδρυται — Παρίας δὲ λίθου δαίδαλμα κάλλιστον — ὑπερήφανον καὶ σεσηρότι γέλωτι μικρὸν ὑπομειδιῶσα. πᾶν δὲ τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς ἀκάλυπτον οὐδεμιᾶς ἐσθῆτος ἀμπεχούσης γεγύμνωται, πλὴν ὅσα τῇ ἑτέρᾳ χειρὶ τὴν αἰδῶ λεληθότως ἐπικρύπτειν. τοσοῦτόν γε μὴν ἡ δημιουργὸς ἴσχυσε τέχνη, ὥστε τὴν ἀντίτυπον οὕτω καὶ καρτερὰν τοῦ λίθου φύσιν ἑκάστοις μέλεσιν ἐπιπρέπειν. ὁ γοῦν Χαρικλῆς ἐμμανές τι καὶ παράφορον ἀναβοήσας, Εὐτυχέστατος, εἶπεν, θεῶν ὁ διὰ ταύτην δεθεὶς Ἄρης, καὶ ἅμα προσδραμὼν λιπαρέσι1 τοῖς χείλεσιν ἐφ᾿ ὅσον ἦν δυνατὸν ἐκτείνων τὸν αὐχένα κατεφίλει· }[10]

Men too willingly accept being enchained in love. The fate of an even more passionate man was worse. Looking at the Aphrodite of Cnidus, Lycinus stated: “we saw on one thigh a blemish like a stain on a dress {ἐπὶ θατέρου μηροῦ σπίλον εἴδομεν ὥσπερ ἐν ἐσθῆτι κηλῖδα}.” Lycinus at first thought that the blemish was a natural defect in the marble. He soon learned otherwise:

The temple attendant standing near us passed along a strange story with unbelievable words. She said that a young man of a not undistinguished family — though his deed has caused him to be left nameless — often visited the precinct. He was so unfortunate as to fall in love with the goddess. He would spend all day in the temple. At first he gave the impression of pious awe, for in the morning he would leave his bed long before dawn to go to the temple and only return home reluctantly after sunset. All day long would he sit facing the goddess with his eyes fixed uninterruptedly upon her, whispering indistinctly and carrying on lover’s complaints in secret conversation. …

And now, as his passion grew more aroused, every wall came to be inscribed and the bark of every tender tree proclaimed “Aphrodite is beautiful.” Praxiteles was honored by him as much as Zeus and every beautiful treasure that the young man’s home held he offered to the goddess. In the end, the violent tension of his desires turned to desperation, and he found in audacity a procurer for his lusts. When the sun was sinking to its setting, quietly and unnoticed by those present he slipped in behind the door. Standing invisibly in the inmost part of the temple room, he kept still, hardly even breathing. When the attendants closed the door from the outside in the usual way, this new Anchises was locked in. But why do I chatter on and tell you in every detail the reckless deed of that unmentionable night? The blemish from his amorous embrace was seen when dawn came. The goddess had that blemish to prove what she had endured. According to the popular story, the young man is said to have hurled himself over a cliff or down into the waves of the sea and to have vanished utterly.

{ ἡ δὲ παρεστῶσα πλησίον ἡμῶν ζάκορος ἀπίστου λόγου καινὴν παρέδωκεν ἱστορίαν· ἔφη γὰρ οὐκ ἀσήμου γένους νεανίαν — ἡ δὲ πρᾶξις ἀνώνυμον αὐτὸν ἐσίγησεν — πολλάκις ἐπιφοιτῶντα τῷ τεμένει σὺν δειλαίῳ δαίμονι ἐρασθῆναι τῆς θεοῦ καὶ πανήμερον ἐν τῷ ναῷ διατρίβοντα κατ᾿ ἀρχὰς ἔχειν δεισιδαίμονος ἁγιστείας δόκησιν· ἔκ τε γὰρ τῆς ἑωθινῆς κοίτης πολὺ προλαμβάνων τὸν ὄρθρον ἐπεφοίτα καὶ μετὰ δύσιν ἄκων ἐβάδιζεν οἴκαδε τήν θ᾿ ὅλην ἡμέραν ἀπαντικρὺ τῆς θεοῦ καθεζόμενος ὀρθὰς ἐπ᾿ αὐτὴν διηνεκῶς τὰς τῶν ὀμμάτων βολὰς ἀπήρειδεν. ἄσημοι δ᾿ αὐτῷ ψιθυρισμοὶ καὶ κλεπτομένης λαλιᾶς ἐρωτικαὶ διεπεραίνοντο μέμψεις. …

ἤδη δὲ πλέον αὐτῷ τοῦ πάθους ἐρεθιζομένου τοῖχος ἅπας ἐχαράσσετο καὶ πᾶς μαλακοῦ δένδρου φλοιὸς Ἀφροδίτην καλὴν ἐκήρυσσεν· ἐτιμᾶτο δ᾿ ἐξ ἴσου Διὶ Πραξιτέλης καὶ πᾶν ὅ τι κειμήλιον εὐπρεπὲς οἴκοι φυλάττοιτο, τοῦτ᾿ ἦν ἀνάθημα τῆς θεοῦ. πέρας αἱ σφοδραὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ πόθων ἐπιτάσεις ἀπενοήθησαν, εὑρέθη δὲ τόλμα τῆς ἐπιθυμίας μαστροπός· ἤδη γὰρ ἐπὶ δύσιν ἡλίου κλίνοντος ἠρέμα λαθὼν τοὺς παρόντας ὄπισθε τῆς θύρας παρεισερρύη καὶ στὰς ἀφανὴς ἐνδοτάτω σχεδὸν οὐδ᾿ ἀναπνέων ἠτρέμει, συνήθως δὲ τῶν ζακόρων ἔξωθεν τὴν θύραν ἐφελκυσαμένων ἔνδον ὁ καινὸς Ἀγχίσης καθεῖρκτο. καὶ τί γὰρ ἀρρήτου νυκτὸς ἐγὼ τόλμαν ἡ λάλος ἐπ᾿ ἀκριβὲς ὑμῖν διηγοῦμαι; τῶν ἐρωτικῶν περιπλοκῶν ἴχνη ταῦτα μεθ᾿ ἡμέραν ὤφθη καὶ τὸν σπίλον εἶχεν ἡ θεὸς ὧν ἔπαθεν ἔλεγχον. αὐτόν γε μὴν τὸν νεανίαν, ὡς ὁ δημώδης ἱστορεῖ λόγος, ἢ κατὰ πετρῶν φασιν ἢ κατὰ πελαγίου κύματος ἐνεχθέντα παντελῶς ἀφανῆ γενέσθαι. }[11]

That young man tragically died from his passionate love for Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus.[12] Men’s ardent love for women should be recognized and cherished. Men’s safety and men’s welfare should be among the highest public priorities.

oil painting of Pygmalion embracing an unfinished marble statue

For nearly two thousand years, the racist, imperialistic, highly privileged Queen Dido of Carthage has been widely mourned as a martyr of love. The young man who died from his passionate love for Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus differs enormously from Dido in status. Few of his contemporaries were told his name. Over the past millennia, few persons have learned about his death. He has been completely marginalized. Among the specialist readers who know about this most unfortunate man, none to this day has had any sympathy for him.[13] That’s shameful. Men’s lives should matter. Literary studies must better serve men.

* * * * *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Praxiteles {Πραξιτέλης} of Athens was the son of Cephisodotus the Elder. Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus is also known as the Aphrodite of Knidos. Knidos was a Greek-speaking city on the eastern side of the Aegean Sea. Praxiteles probably sculpted the Aphrodite of Cnidus / Knidos about 361 BGC. Leading citizens of Knidos apparently purchased it shortly thereafter. Corso (2007) p. 187. It seems to have been intended to provide “the most adequate echoes possible of absolute beauty.” Id. p. 192. The statue became the focal point of the Temple of Aphrodite Euploia in Knidos. The ancient Greek term “Euploia {Ευπλοια}” means “Happy Voyage.” At least 192 ancient reproductions of the Aphrodite of Cnidus has survived. It was probably “the most copied statue in Antiquity.” Id. p. 175.

In the broad context of art and literary history, modern critics have over-estimated the importance of the nakedness of the Aphrodite of Cnidus. On the historical context of the Aphrodite of Cnidus, Corso (1997) and Corso (2007). On the art historiography of this statue, Havelock (1995) and Sterba (2023). Venus is the Roman equivalent for Aphrodite. The earliest literary reference to the Aphrodite / Venus of Cnidus is about 70 BGC, when Cicero refers to the Cnidians’ marble Venus. Cicero, Verrine Orations 2.4.60.135, cited as first in Havelock (1995) p. 135.

Although scholars differ significantly about when the Aphrodite of Cnidus became famous, it was a famous tourist attraction in the ancient Mediterranean world. Havelock (1995) Chapter 3, Corso (2007) pp. 189-90. Writing about 75 GC, a well-informed Roman author reported:

Superior to all not only by Praxiteles, but truly around the whole earthly globe, is his Venus. Many persons have sailed to Cnidus to see it. … With this statue, Praxiteles made Cnidus famous.

{ ante omnia est non solum Praxitelis, verum in toto orbe terrarum Venus, quam ut viderent, multi navigaverunt Cnidum. … illo enim signo Praxiteles nobilitavit Cnidum. }

Pliny the Elder, Natural History {Naturalis Historia} 36.20 (section 4), Latin text from Eichholz (1962), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. A work written probably late in the second century GC recounted:

We decided to anchor at Cnidus to see the temple of Aphrodite, which is famed as possessing the most truly lovely example of Praxiteles’ skill.

{ δόξαν ἡμῖν Κνίδῳ προσορμῆσαι κατὰ θέαν καὶ τοῦ Ἀφροδίτης ἱεροῦ — ὑμνεῖται δὲ τούτου τὸ τῆς Πραξιτέλους εὐχερείας ὄντως ἐπαφρόδιτον }

Lucian of Samosata (questionably attributed), Affairs of the Heart / Loves / Amores / Erotes {Ἔρωτες} 11, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from MacLeod (1967). Within the uncovered area of the sacred precinct were couches shaded by trees:

for festivals the city common folk all gathered there, enjoying Aphrodite.

{ ἀθρόος δ᾿ ὁ πολιτικὸς ὄχλος ἐπανηγύριζεν ὄντως ἀφροδισιάζοντες }

Amores 12, sourced as previously. This statement encompasses a double entendre:

The word ἀφροδισιάζοντες is equivocal: although it here intends to indicate devotion to the goddess, it primarily means ‘have sexual intercourse’.

Bottenberg (2020) p. 119.

Writing about 445 GC, the Christian scholar and bishop Theodoret of Cyrus scornfully argued against followers of traditional Greco-Roman religion:

They worship statues fashioned according to myths. The posture of Aphrodite, for example, is more disgraceful than any call girl standing in a brothel. Indeed, who has ever seen a prostitute standing naked in the marketplace without even a tunic or a girdle?

{ τὰ γὰρ δὴ κατὰ τοὺς μύθους κατεσκευασμένα ξόανα προσκυνοῦσι· πάσης μὲν γὰρ ἑταίρας ἐπὶ τέγους ἑστώσης ἀναιδέστερον τῆς ᾿Αφροδίτης τὸ σχῆμα. τίς γάρ τοι χαμαιτύπην γυμνὴν ἐπ᾿ ἀγορᾶς ἄτερ χιτῶνος καὶ διαζώματος ἑστῶσαν ἐθεάσατο πώποτε }

A Cure for Pagan Maladies {Graecarum affectionum curatio} 3.79-80, ancient Greek text from Raeder (1904), English translation (modified) from Halton (2013).

[2] Greek Anthology {Anthologia Graeca} / Palatine Anthology {Anthologia Palatina} 16.162 (On the statue of Aphrodite at Knidos {Εἰς ἄγαλμα Ἀφροδίτης τῆς ἐν Κνίδῳ}), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Paton (1918). The subsequent quote above is similarly from Greek Anthology 16.168. On closely related epigrams concerning Praxiteles’ statues, Gutzwiller (2004).

Clement of Alexandria stated that the model for Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus was “his beloved {ἡ ἐρωμένη}” Cratine {Κρατίνη}, not Phryne. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus / Exhortation to the Greeks {Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας} 4.47p. Perhaps Cratine and Phryne referred to the same woman, and Clement didn’t understand that they had a common referent.

Like Praxiteles, Phryne lived in the fourth-century BGC and reportedly was from Thespiae in Boeotia. Many of the literary works concerning her are of questionable historical veracity. However, Phryne clearly was extraordinarily privileged in wealth and status relative to almost all the men living in the ancient Greek world of her time.

Working dutifully to bolster dominant gynocentrism, a scholar with comic, earnest concern concluded a publicity piece for her book:

As we read about the glamourous beauty who stunned a courtroom, we might also use such an anecdote to consider the vulnerability of real sex workers in fourth-century Athens; later narratives work hard to elide that uncomfortable reality in order to create the dream version of Phryne the glamourous beauty. In her own lifetime, a woman like Phryne defied easy categorization and didn’t follow ideals of women’s behaviour, but afterward, her challenging narrative could be broken down into easily consumable anecdotes as the idea of Phryne accrued the kind of cultural capital that the real woman never could.

Funke (2024). Such writing works to obscure the uncomfortable reality that real men throughout history never could earn enormous wealth and elite status in the way that Phryne did.

[3] Alciphron, Letters 4, Letters of the Courtesans {Επιστολαι Εταιρικαι} 1, Phyrne to Praxiteles {Φρύνη Πραξιτέλει} ll. 1-2, ancient Greek text from Granholm (2012), my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Brenner & Fobes (1949). Here’s Granholm’s English translation.

[4] Alciphron, Letters 4.1, ll. 2-3, sourced as previously. Regarding ll. 1-3, “this passage is problematic and possibly corrupt.” Granholm (2012) p. 150. The edition of Brenner & Fobes (1949) more emphatically declares the extraordinary work separately from the reference to the courtesan:

Do not be afraid, because you have worked out a very beautiful object, such as indeed no one has ever seen before among all things made by human hands. You have established your own courtesan in the sacred precinct.

{ μὴ δείσῃς· ἐξείργασαι γὰρ πάγκαλόν τι χρῆμα, οἷον δή τι οὐδεὶς εἶδε πώποτε πάντων τῶν διὰ χειρῶν πονηθέντων, τὴν σεαυτοῦ ἑταίραν ἱδρύσας ἐν τεμένει. }

Alciphron, Letters 4.1, ll. 1-3, ancient Greek text of Brenner & Fobes (1949), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. For the rest of Phryne’s letter to Praxiteles, the ancient Greek texts of Brenner & Fobes (1949) and Granholm (2012) don’t differ except in punctuation, which is editorial.

The subsequent two quotes above are similarly from Alciphron, Letters 4.1.

[5] Writing about 70 BGC, Cicero noted that Praxiteles sculpted the statue of Cupid (Eros) at Thespiae. According to Cicero, Thespiae was a tourist destination because of Praxiteles’s Eros “for the sake of which people go to see Thespiae, for there is no other reason to see that place {propter quem Thespiae visuntur; nam alia visendi causa nulla est}.” Cicero, Against Verres {In Verrem} (oration) 2.4.4, Latin text of Peterson (1917), my English translation.

Writing about a half-century later, Strabo stated:

Thespiae was formerly well-known for the Eros of Praxiteles. It was sculpted by him and dedicated by Glycera, the courtesan to the Thespians (she had received it as a gift from the artist). since she was a native of the place. In earlier times travelers would go up to Thespiae to see the Eros, as otherwise the city was not worth seeing.

{ αἱ δὲ Θεσπιαὶ πρότερον μὲν ἐγνωρίζοντο διὰ τὸν Ἔρωτα τὸν Πραξιτέλους, ὃν ἔγλυψε μὲν ἐκεῖνος, ἀνέθηκε δὲ Γλυκέρα ἡ ἑταίρα Θεσπιεῦσιν, ἐκεῖθεν οὖσα τὸ γένος, λαβοῦσα δῶρον παρὰ τοῦ τεχνίτου. πρότερον μὲν οὖν ὀψόμενοι τὸν Ἔρωτά τινες ἀνέβαινον ἐπὶ τὴν Θέσπειαν, ἄλλως οὐκ οὖσαν ἀξιοθέατον }

Strabo, Geography {Γεωγραφικά} 9.2.25, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Jones (1927). On the temple of Eros at Thespiae, Gutzwiller (2004).

An epigram implausibly attributed to Praxiteles tells of the statue’s origin and its effects:

Praxiteles perfectly portrayed the Eros that he suffered,
taking the model from his own heart,
and giving me to Phryne in payment for myself. And I engender desire
no longer by shooting arrows, but by intense gazing.

{ Πραξιτέλης ὃν ἔπασχε διηκρίβωσεν Ἔρωτα
ἐξ ἰδίης ἕλκων ἀρχέτυπον κραδίης,
Φρύνῃ μισθὸν ἐμεῖο διδοὺς ἐμέ. φίλτρα δὲ τίκτω
οὐκέτι τοξεύων, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτενιζόμενος. }

Greek Anthology 16.204 (On the Eros of Praxiteles {Εἰς τὸν Πραξιτέλους Ἔρωτα}), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Paton (1918). On Praxiteles giving his statue of Eros to Phryne, see also Pausanias, Description of Greece {Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις} 1.20.1 (Attica).

[6] Only one other textual source indicates that Praxiteles sculpted statues of Aphrodite and Phyrne that also stood in the temple at Thespiae:

Here too at Thespiae are statues made by Praxiteles himself, one of Aphrodite and one of Phryne, both Phryne and the goddess being of stone.

{ ἐνταῦθα καὶ αὐτοῦ Πραξιτέλους Ἀφροδίτη καὶ Φρύνης ἐστὶν εἰκών, λίθου καὶ ἡ Φρύνη καὶ ἡ θεός. }

Pausanias, Description of Greece {Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις} 9.27.5 (Boeotia), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Jones (1935). Pausanias wrote in the second century GC. A coin from the first century GC Thespiae also suggest two female statues stood there. Gutzwiller (2004) p. 387.

According to Athenaeus, Praxiteles produced a gold statue of Phryne that was displayed in Delphi on a Pentelic marble base. That marble base bore the inscription: “Phryne the daughter of Epicles of Thespiae {Φρύνη Ἐπικλέους Θεσπική}.” Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Learned Banqueters / Deipnosophistae {Δειπνοσοφισταί} 13.591bc (59). For a similar description of this statue, Claudius Aelianus / Aelian, Historical Miscellany / Various History {Ποικίλη ἱστορία} 9.32.

Pliny the Elder attributed a statue of Phryne to Praxiteles:

Two of Praxiteles’s statues expressing opposite emotions are admired, his Matron Weeping and his Merry Courtesan. The latter is believed to have been Phryne. Connoisseurs detect in the figure the artist’s love of her and the reward she received by the expression on the courtesan’s face.

{ spectantur et duo signa eius diversos adfectus exprimentia, flentis matronae et meretricis gaudentis. hanc putant Phrynen fuisse deprehenduntque in ea amorem artificis et mercedem in vultu meretricis. }

Pliny the Elder, Natural History {Naturalis Historia} 34.70 (section 4), Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Eichholz (1962).

[7] According to Athenaeus:

The sculptor Praxiteles, who was in love with Phryne, used her as the model for his Aphrodite of Cnidus. On the pedestal of his Eros, which stood below the stage in the Theater, he placed the inscription:

Praxiteles produced an exact replica of the Eros he suffered,
drawing his model from his own heart
and offering me to Phryne as a price for me. I no longer cast
love-spells by shooting arrows, but by being stared at.

{ Πραξιτέλης δὲ ὁ ἀγαλματοποιὸς ἐρῶν αὐτῆς τὴν Κνιδίαν Ἀφροδίτην ἀπ᾿ αὐτῆς ἐπλάσατο καὶ ἐν τῇ τοῦ Ἔρωτος βάσει τῇ ὑπὸ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ θεάτρου ἐπέγραψε·

Πραξιτέλης ὃν ἔπασχε διηκρίβωσεν Ἔρωτα
ἐξ ἰδίης ἕλκων ἀρχέτυπον κραδίης,
Φρύνῃ μισθὸν ἐμεῖο διδοὺς ἐμέ· φίλτρα δὲ βάλλω
οὐκέτ᾿ ὀιστεύων, ἀλλ᾿ ἀτενιζόμενος. }

Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Learned Banqueters / Deipnosophistae {Δειπνοσοφισταί} 13.591a (59), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Olson (2006-2012). Athenaeus also commented:

Phryne was actually most beautiful in the parts of her body that were not seen.

{ ἦν δὲ ὄντως μᾶλλον ἡ Φρύνη καλὴ ἐν τοῖς μὴ βλεπομένοις. }

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.591f (59), sourced as previously. Men have long regarded women’s vulvas as very beautiful. Phryne’s breasts alone were sufficiently beautiful to absolve her from a serious criminal charge. Men’s lack of control of desires does as much damage as does women’s lack of control of desires.

A modern scholar has taken seriously Phryne’s claim of credit for Praxiteles’s sculptures:

Phryne usurps the creative power previously attributed to Praxiteles alone, and claims that they both have “created” the gods. … She seems to imply that acting as a model counts for more in the act of artistic creation than the craftsman’s skill, as if she were the all-important Muse and he merely the obedient assistant.

Rosenmeyer (2001) p. 257. Phryne didn’t create herself. Id. seems to imply that Phryne’s outrageous claim for credit is normal and reasonable. Phryne also apparently claims credit for Alciphron, Letters 4.1 and the epigrams written about her. Id. p. 257, apparently supporting these claims. Rosenmeyer’s interpretation, which focuses on power and control, uses her own authorial power and control to dominate the meaning of Alciphron’s letter.

[8] Homer (traditional attribution), Odyssey 8.306-320, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) of Murray (1919). The bard Demodocus sings this story in the court of Alcinous, ruler of the Phaiacians on the island of Scheria. It occurs between exhibits of men dancing and in the context of the love of lovely princess Nausicaa for Odysseus.

The ancient Greek word κυνώπιδος is the genitive form of the nominalized adjective κυνῶπις. It means literally “dog-eyed” one, with the implication of shamelessness. That term is commonly used in Homeric epic in disparagement and self-disparagement of Helen of Troy. See note [7] in my post on Hector and Helen goading Paris to fight Menelaus. I’ve taken the translation “shameless bitch” above from Fagles (1996).

[9] Willingness to endure punishment for having sex with Aphrodite became a literary motif following the gods’ trivialization of the affair of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey. There Apollo jests with Hermes:

Hermes, son of Zeus, guide, giver of good things,
would you be willing, even though ensnared with strong bonds,
to lie on a couch beside golden Aphrodite?

{ Ἑρμεία, Διὸς υἱέ, διάκτορε, δῶτορ ἑάων,
ἦ ῥά κεν ἐν δεσμοῖς ἐθέλοις κρατεροῖσι πιεσθεὶς
εὕδειν ἐν λέκτροισι παρὰ χρυσέῃ Ἀφροδίτῃ }

Odyssey 8.335-7, sourced as previously. Hermes replies:

Would that this might happen, lord Apollo, far-shooter —
that three times as many ineluctable bonds might clasp me about
and you gods, and all the goddesses too, might look on,
but that I might sleep beside golden Aphrodite.

{ αἲ γὰρ τοῦτο γένοιτο, ἄναξ ἑκατηβόλ᾿ Ἄπολλον·
δεσμοὶ μὲν τρὶς τόσσοι ἀπείρονες ἀμφὶς ἔχοιεν,
ὑμεῖς δ᾿ εἰσορόῳτε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι,
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν εὕδοιμι παρὰ χρυσέῃ Ἀφροδίτῃ. }

Odyssey 8.339-43, sourced as previously. In the story itself, the goddesses modestly refrained from looking at Ares and Aphrodite ensnared while having adulterous sex.

In Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, Hermes declares that the “funniest things {γελοιότατα}” that he ever saw was Ares and Aphrodite displayed to the gods as a couple snared in adultery:

They’re lying there bound together naked, hiding their faces and blushing, and I must say I found it a most delightful spectacle. Why, they’re almost in the act!

{ οἱ δὲ γυμνοὶ ἀμφότεροι κάτω νενευκότες ξυνδεδεμένοι ἐρυθριῶσι, καὶ τὸ θέαμα ἥδιστον ἐμοὶ ἔδοξε μονονουχὶ αὐτὸ γινόμενον τὸ ἔργον. }

Hermes then confesses in a way parallel to his jesting statement in the Odyssey:

Personally, if truth must be told, I envied Ares for having committed adultery with the most beautiful of the goddesses and even for being bound with her. … Just come and have a look. If you don’t make the same wish when you’ve seen them, you’ll earn my praise.

{ ἐγὼ μέντοι, εἰ χρὴ τἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν, ἐφθόνουν τῷ Ἄρει μὴ μόνον μοιχεύσαντι τὴν καλλίστην θεόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δεδεμένῳ μετ᾿ αὐτῆς. … ἰδὲ μόνον ἐπελθών· ἐπαινέσομαι γάρ σε, ἢν μὴ τὰ ὅμοια καὶ αὐτὸς εὔξῃ ἰδών. }

Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods {Θεῶν Διάλογοι} 21 (Apollo and Hermes {Απολλωνοσ και Ερμου}), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from MacLeod (1961). MacLead translated “committed adultery with {μοιχεύω}” as “made a conquest of.” That latter translation reflects bias toward brutalizing men’s sexuality and criminalizing men seducing women. Lucian’s The Dream or the Cock {Ονειροσ η Αλεκτρυων} refers to the affair of Aphrodite and Ares, as well as Alectryon’s involvement. Alectryon was a young man whom Ares charged with preventing others from detecting his sexual affairs.

[10] Lucian (questionably attributed), Affairs of the Heart / Loves / Amores / Erotes {Ἔρωτες} 13, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from MacLeod (1967). Charicles here reproduces Hermes’s willingness to be enchained in adultery with Aphrodite. The two subsequent quotes above are similarly from Lucian, Amores 15-6.

[11] This story of passionate love seems to cite implicitly Ovid. In one of his lyrical poems, Ovid describes himself and his mistress Corinna naked in bed at mid-day. The poem concludes:

Why should I refer to each feature? I saw nothing not praiseworthy,
and I pressed her naked body right up to mine.
Who wouldn’t know what followed? Tired, we both rested.
May to me come often such mid-days!

{ Singula quid referam? nil non laudabile vidi
et nudam pressi corpus ad usque meum.
Cetera quis nescit? lassi requievimus ambo.
proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies! }

Ovid, Loves {Amores} 1.5.23-26, my English translation. In the story in Lucian’s Amores quoted above, the rhetoric includes an element of horror:

But why do I chatter on and tell you in every detail the reckless deed of that unmentionable night?

{ καὶ τί γὰρ ἀρρήτου νυκτὸς ἐγὼ τόλμαν ἡ λάλος ἐπ᾿ ἀκριβὲς ὑμῖν διηγοῦμαι? }

That rhetoric of horror contrasts sharply with the passionate young man’s subjective sexual pleasure with the Aphrodite of Cnidus.

[12] The story of the young man dying in insane love for the Aphrodite of Cnidus is also cited in Lucian, Essays in Portraiture {Εικονες} 4. Pliny cites two similar stories that juxtapose men’s sexual love for statues of Cupid (Eros) and Venus (Aphrodite):

To Praxiteles belongs another naked Cupid at Parium, a colony on the Sea of Marmara. That statue matches the Venus of Cnidus in its renown and in being wronged. Alcetas, a man from Rhodes, fell in love with it and left upon it a similar vestige of his passion.

{ eiusdem et alter nudus in Pario colonia Propontidis, par Veneri Cnidiae nobilitate et iniuria; adamavit enim Alcetas Rhodius atque in eo quoque simile amoris vestigium reliquit. }

Pliny, Natural History 36.20, Latin text from Eichholz (1962), my English translation. With its presentation of alternate sexual orientations and its concern with naming the wrongdoer, Pliny’s account seems particularly within the literary stream that also encompasses Lucian’s Amores.

The story of the insanely loving man attempting to have sex with the Aphrodite of Cnidus has parallels in earlier literature. Writing in the second century GC, Clement of Alexandria stated:

There was also an Aphrodite in Cnidus, made of marble and beautiful. Another man fell in love with this statue and had intercourse with the marble, as Posidippus relates.

{ Ἀφροδίτη δὲ ἄλλη ἐν Κνίδῳ λίθος ἦν καὶ καλὴ ἦν, ἕτερος ἠράσθη ταύτης καὶ μίγνυται τῇ λίθῳ· Ποσείδιππος ἱστορεῖ }

Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus / Exhortation to the Greeks {Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας} 4.50-51p, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Butterworth (1919).

Writing about 300 GC, Arnobius similarly attributed such a story to Posidippus:

Similarly, Posidippus, in the book that he mentions to have been written about Cnidus and about its affairs, relates that a young man not of ignoble birth — but he conceals his name — was carried away with love of the Venus that makes Cnidus is famous. He joined himself also in amorous lewdness to the statue of the same deity in the way of the marriage bed and enjoyed the resulting pleasures.

{ Consimili ratione Posidippus in eo libro, quem scriptum super Cnido indicat superque rebus eius, adulescentem haud ignobilem memorat — sed vocabulum eius obscurat — correptum amoribus Veneris, propter quam Cnidus in nomine est, amatorias et ipsum miscuisse lascivias cum eiusdem numinis signo genialibus usum toris et voluptatum consequentium finibus. }

Arnobius, Disputes against the pagans {Disputationes adversus gentes} 6.22, Latin text from Migne (1844) and English translation (modified) from the Ante-Nicene Fathers volume 6.

Posidippus, who may have been the epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella, apparently wrote early in the third century BGC. The work About Knidos {Περὶ Κνίδου} is attributed to Posidippus of Pella. Posidippus, fr. 147 in Austin & Bastianini (2002), also as Supplementum Hellenisticum 706. Perhaps Posidippus’s Περὶ Κνίδου included reference to this story. That’s reasonably speculative, particularly in light of Arnobius’s attribution. Cf. Corso (2007) p. 192, which doesn’t indicate any doubt.

Ancient Greco-Roman literature includes on the order of ten (not necessarily independent) accounts of agalmatophilia {ἄγαλμαφιλία} — sexual attraction to a statue or doll. The most famous story is Ovid’s story of the love of the sculptor Pygmalion of Cyprus for a statue he created. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.148-73. On that story, Elsner (1991). In regard to ancient Greco-Roman agalmatophilia more generally, Weedle (2006). “Clearly the theme was popular in antiquity.” Elsner (1991) p. 158. For additional citations to ancient textual accounts, id. p. 167, n. 26. Prior to modern universities and otiose intellectual life, ordinary persons profoundly engaged with art and literature.

[13] Some academics have gone even as far as to charge the unfortunate young man with “rape of the statue.” Rosenmeyer (2001) p. 258. Even worse, he has been charged with “rape of the goddess.” Elsner (1991) p. 158. Inanimate objects, e.g. dildos, cannot reasonably be characterized as victims of rape. Ignorance and anti-men gender bigotry in discussing rape isn’t just a problem among classicists. Grotesquely unjust treatment of men and boys who are raped is a general social injustice.

[images] (1) Roman copy of Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus. Preserved as Inv. 8619 in Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps (Rome, Italy). Credit: Ludovisi Collection. Source image thanks to Jastrow (2006) and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s an image of the full statue. An additional view.

(2) Statue of Pygmalion looking with desire at the beautiful, naked woman Galatee he sculpted. Sculpted by Étienne Maurice Falconet in 1763. Preserved in the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia). Source image thanks to Alex Bakharev and Wikimedia Commons.

(3) Painting of Pygmalion awe-struck at the beauty of the naked woman that he sculpted. Painting by Franz Stuck. Preserved in the Villa Stuck Museum (Munich, Germany). Source image thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

(4) Oil painting of Pygmalion embracing an unfinished marble statue. Painted by Guido Calori, probably made early in the twentieth century. Source image thanks to Lanfranco Cascioli and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Austin, Colin, and Guido Bastianini, eds. 2002. Posidippi Pellaei Quae Supersunt Omnia. Milano: LED – Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. Review by Susan Stephens.

Bottenberg, Laura. 2020. “Pseudo-Lucian’s Cnidian Aphrodite: A Statue of Flesh, Stone, and Words.” Millennium. 17 (1): 115–38.

Butterworth, G. W., trans. 1919. Clement of Alexandria. The Exhortation to the Greeks. The Rich Man’s Salvation. To the Newly Baptized. Loeb Classical Library 92. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brenner, A. R. and F. H Fobes, ed. and trans. 1949. Alciphron, Aelian, Philostratus. Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus: The Letters. Loeb Classical Library 383. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Corso, Antonio. 1997. “The Cnidian Aphrodite.” Chapter 11 (pp. 91-98) in Ian Jenkins and Geoffrey B. Waywell, eds. Sculptors and Sculpture of Caria and the Dodecanese. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press.

Corso, Antonio. 2007. “The Cult and Political Background of the Knidian Aphrodite.” Proceedings of the Danish Institute at Athens. 5: 173-197.

Eichholz, D. E., ed. and trans. 1962. Pliny. Natural History, Volume X: Books 36-37. Loeb Classical Library 419. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Elsner, John. 1991. “Visual Mimesis and the Myth of the Real: Ovid’s Pygmalion as Viewer.” Ramus. 20 (2): 154–68.

Fagles, Robert, trans. 1996. Homer. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.

Funke, Melissa. 2024. “Blog #93: Piecing Together the Life of Phryne with Melissa Funke.” Posted online on Feb. 16, 2024, at Peopling the Past: Real People in the Ancient World and the People who Study Them.

Granholm, Patrik, ed. and trans. 2012. Alciphron: Letters of the Courtesans. Uppsala: Institutionen för Lingvistik och Filologi, Uppsala Universitet.

Gutzwiller, Kathryn J. 2004. “Gender and Inscribed Epigram: Herennia Procula and the Thespian Eros.” Transactions of the American Philological Association. 134 (2): 383–418.

Halton, Thomas P., trans. 2013. Theodoret of Cyrus. A Cure for Pagan Maladies. Ancient Christian Writers, 67. New York: The Newman Press. Reivew by Robert P. Russo.

Havelock, Christine Mitchell. 1995. The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Review by Miranda Marvin.

Jones, Horace Leonard, trans. 1927. Strabo. Geography, Volume IV: Books 8-9. Loeb Classical Library 196. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Jones, W. H. S., trans. 1935. Pausanias. Description of Greece, Volume IV: Books 8.22-10. Loeb Classical Library 297. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

MacLeod, M. D., ed. and trans. 1961. Lucian. Dialogues of the Dead. Dialogues of the Sea-Gods. Dialogues of the Gods. Dialogues of the Courtesans. Loeb Classical Library 431. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

MacLeod, M. D., ed. and trans. 1967. Lucian. Soloecista. Lucius or The Ass. Amores. Halcyon. Demosthenes. Podagra. Ocypus. Cyniscus. Philopatris. Charidemus. Nero. Loeb Classical Library 432. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Murray, A. T., ed. and trans., revised by George E. Dimock. 1919. Homer. Odyssey. Volume I: Books 1-12. Volume II: Books 13-24. Loeb Classical Library 104-105. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Olson, S. Douglas, ed. and trans. 2006-2012. Athenaeus of Naucratis. The Learned Banqueters {Deipnosophistae}. Loeb Classical Library vols. 204, 208, 224, 235, 274, 327, 345, 519. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Paton, W.R., ed and trans. 1918. The Greek Anthology. Volume V: Books 13-16. Loeb Classical Library 86. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Series: vol. I, bks. 1-6; vol. II, bks. 7-8; vol. III, bk. 9; vol IV, bks. 10-12; vol. V, bks. 13-16.

Raeder, Johann, ed. 1904. Theodoreti Graecarum Affectionum Curatio. Lipsiae: In aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Alternate source.

Rosenmeyer, Patricia A. 2001. “(In-)Versions of Pygmalion: The Statue Talks Back.” Chapter 13 (pp. 240-260) in A. P. M. H. Lardinois and Laura McClure, eds. Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sterba, Amereece. 2023. The Statue That Started It All: The Aphrodite of Knidos. MA Thesis, San Jose State University, California.

Weddle, Polly. 2006. The secret life of statues; ancient agalmatophilia narratives. MA Thesis, Durham University.

Philodemos shows diversity and inclusion in love for women

In ancient and medieval Europe, learned scholars expressed men’s ardent love for women. Shrewd, career-striving scholars now tend to claim that men hate women and always have. Misunderstanding diversity and inclusion seems to have driven this expressive flip from love to hate. Writing in the middle of the first century BGC, the eminent philosopher and poet Philodemos exemplifies the more reasonable, more loving understanding of diversity and inclusion.

Philodemos profoundly, passionately, and personally appreciated diversity and inclusion in love for women. Philodemos loved a woman named Flora, a name superficially associated with rusticity and simplicity. His epigram in love for Flora shows great literary learning. It’s also intensely, personally expressive:

Oh foot, oh calve, oh (I’m rightly done for)
those thighs! Oh buttocks, oh vulva, oh flanks,
oh shoulders, oh breasts, oh slender neck!
Oh hands, oh eyes (I’m going mad),
oh most lascivious postures, oh outstanding
tonguings, oh (slay me) her exclamations!
If she’s an Oscan and a Flora and doesn’t sing Sappho’s songs —
well, even Perseus fell in love with Indian Andromeda.

{ ὢ ποδός, ὢ κνήμης, ὢ τῶν (ἀπόλωλα δικαίως)
μηρῶν, ὢ γλουτῶν, ὢ κτενός, ὢ λαγόνων,
ὢ ὤμοιν, ὢ μαστῶν, ὢ τοῦ ῥαδινοῖο τραχήλου,
ὢ χειρῶν, ὢ τῶν (μαίνομαι) ὀμματίων,
ὢ κακοτεχνοτάτου κινήματος, ὢ περιάλλων
γλωττισμῶν, ὢ τῶν (θῦέ με) φωναρίων·
εἰ δ’ Ὀπικὴ καὶ Φλῶρα καὶ οὐκ ᾄδουσα τὰ Σαπφοῦς,
καὶ Περσεὺς Ἰνδῆς ἠράσατ’ Ἀνδρομέδης. }[1]

Philodemos sees the diversity in a Flora’s body parts, and each different part thrills him. She isn’t an immobile object, but a living woman apparently dancing naked. She’s turning so that he can see the beauty of her front (vulva, breasts, mouth, eyes) and back (calves, buttocks). She isn’t silent like a man being berated for his toxic masculinity — she exclaims, adding her voice to her beauty. Contrary to the modern demonic myth of the male gaze, men desire to see a woman’s face. Philodemos sees Flora’s face. In his passionate love for her, he also appreciates her across the diversity of her personal qualities.

Pompeii Yakshi: statuette of beautiful, naked woman-goddess; made in India and brought to Pompeii about two thousand years ago

In addition to Flora’s personal diversity, Philodemos loves Flora across gender, race, culture, and class. Philodemos is a man. Flora is a woman. Despite that gender difference, he loves her. Moreover, Flora was a dark-skinned woman like the Indian / Ethiopian princess Andromeda. Philodemos loves persons who are both women and black:

Didyme captured me with her eye. Oh, I but
melt like wax by a fire when I see her beauty.
If she’s black — so what? Coals are too, but when we
heat them, they glow like rosebuds.

{ Τὠφθαλμῷ Διδύμη με συνήρπασεν· ὤμοι, ἐγὼ δὲ
τήκομαι ὡς κηρὸς πὰρ πυρὶ κάλλος ὁρῶν.
εἰ δὲ μέλαινα, τί τοῦτο; καὶ ἄνθρακες· ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε κείνους
θάλψωμεν, λάμπουσ᾽ ὡς ῥόδεαι κάλυκες. }[2]

Further categorical differences exist. Flora is an Oscan, meaning she belongs to the Italian-speaking ethnicity of the Compania region in southern Italy. The Romans considered the Oscans to be culturally unsophisticated. The highest status culture and language on the Italian peninsula was Greek. Among the most esteemed representatives of Greek culture was the famous Greek woman poet Sappho, particularly notable for her gender-defying lover for her brothers. Like most persons today, Flora couldn’t perform from memory Sappho’s poetry. Thus even more than the love of the Greek hero Perseus for the Indian princess Andromeda, Philodemos’s love for Flora encompassed what learned scholars today call “intersectionality.”

More sophisticated intersectionality theory recognizes that persons are not only multi-characteristic, but also dynamic. Unlearned persons might say, “I prefer blondes,” or “I prefer raven-haired lovelies.” An intersectionality theorist would then intersect hair-color categories with race, gender, colonial status, etc. But categories of exclusion and oppression, which are socially constructed through time, should be recognized as contingent, ambiguous, and fluid. A poet closely associated with Philodemos lovingly explained to a woman:

Whether I see you with shining black hair,
lady-lord, whether another time with blond,
from both equal charm gleams. Very truly so
Eros will dwell in your hair even when it’s gray.

{ Εἴτε σε κυανέῃσιν ἀποστίλβουσαν ἐθείραις,
εἴτε πάλιν ξανθαῖς εἶδον, ἄνασσα, κόμαις,
ἴση ἀπ’ ἀμφοτέρων λάμπει χάρις. ἦ ῥά γε ταύταις
θριξὶ συνοικήσει καὶ πολιῇσιν ῎Ερως. }[3]

Loving across identity categories is a loving form of diversity and inclusion.

Greek hero Perseus attacks the monster Cetus while the Ethiopian princess Andromeda watches: painting on ancient amphora

Philodemos didn’t understand diversity and inclusion to exclude him loving his wife in a special way. Philodemos lived with his wife Xantho. They had a servant woman named Philainis. Philodemos excluded Philainis from witnesses him having sex with his wife:

Philainis, with dewy oil soak the lamp,
silent confidant of not-to-be-spoken intercourse,
then leave! Sexual desire doesn’t welcome a living
witness. And close the door tight, Philainis.
Now you, Xantho, come to me — and you, O lover-loving wife,
learn the rest the Love goddess has for us.

{ τὸν σιγῶντα, Φιλαινί, συνίστορα τῶν ἀλαλήτων
λύχνον ἐλαιηρῆς ἐκμεθύσασα δρόσου,
ἔξιθι: μαρτυρίην γὰρ Ἔρως μόνος οὐκ ἐφίλησεν
ἔμπνουν καὶ πηκτὴν κλεῖε, Φιλαινί, θύρην.
καὶ σύ, φίλη Ξανθώ, με — σὺ δ᾽, ὦ φιλεράστρια κοίτη,
ἤδη τῆς Παφίης ἴσθι τὰ λειπόμενα. }[4]

Sometimes excluding a person is appropriate even if in general one strongly supports diversity and inclusion.

Aphrodite Pandemos depicted in 19th-century painting

Philodemos’s support for diversity and inclusion in love encompassed sex workers. He respectfully engaged with women sex workers. He embraced mutuality while recognized the different interests of sex worker and client in their fair-dealing commercial transaction. That’s evident in his conversation with a sex worker:

“Hello.” — “And hello to you.” — “What should I call you?” — “And me, you?” — “Not
yet. You’re too eager for intimate friendship.” — “You, too.” — “Do you have anyone?” —
“Always do. The one who loves me.” — “Would you dine with me
today?” — “If you wish.” — “Excellent! How much for your company?” —
“Don’t pay me anything in advance.” — “That’s strange.” — “Instead, pay what
you think right once you’ve slept with me.” — “That’s fair.
Where will you be? I’ll send for you.” …

{ Χαῖρε σύ. — καὶ σύ γε χαῖρε. — τί δεῖ σε καλεῖν — σὲ δέ — μήπω
τοῦτο· φιλόσπουδος. — μηδὲ σύ. — μή τιν᾽ ἔχεις —
αἰεί· τὸν φιλέοντα. — θέλεις ἅμα σήμερον ἡμῖν
δειπνεῖν — εἰ σὺ θέλεις. — εὖ γε· πόσου παρέσῃ —
μηδέν μοι προδίδου. — τοῦτο ξένον. — ἀλλ᾽ ὅσον ἄν σοι
κοιμηθέντι δοκῇ, τοῦτο δός. — οὐκ ἀδικεῖς.
ποῦ γίνῃ; πέμψω. … }[5]

A modern commonplace is that the best exemplar of delusion is the man who believes that a whore loves him. Nonetheless, the sex worker Philainion credibly loved Philodemos:

Philainion is small and dark, but her hair is
more curled than celery, her skin more tender than down,
her voice more magical than the enchanting girdle, and she gives
all of herself and often refrains from asking for anything.
May I love such a Philainion until I find,
O golden Love goddess, another who is more perfect.

{ Μικκὴ καὶ μελανεῦσα Φιλαίνιον, ἀλλὰ σελίνων
οὐλοτέρη καὶ μνοῦ χρῶτα τερεινοτέρη
καὶ κεστοῦ φωνεῦσα μαγώτερα, καὶ παρέχουσα
πάντα καὶ αἰτῆσαι πολλάκι φειδομένη.
τοιαύτην στέργοιμι Φιλαίνιον ἄχρις ἂν εὕρω
ἄλλην, ὦ χρυσέη Κύπρι, τελειοτέρην. }[6]

Philodemos wasn’t a bird-brain or nonsensical person in thinking about men’s relationships with women sex workers. He expressed intemperate outrage at one man’s sexual foolishness:

Mr. X gives five gold coins to Mrs. Y for one go,
and he fucks shivering with fear and by god, she’s not even pretty.
I give Lysianassa five silver coins for twelve sessions,
and I not only fuck a better woman, but openly besides.
Either I am completely out of my mind, or after such stupidity,
one should remove that man’s testicles with an axe.

{ πέντε δίδωσιν ἑνὸς τῇ δει̃να ὁ δει̃να τάλαντα,
καὶ βινει̃ φρίσσων καὶ, μὰ τὸν, οὐδὲ καλὴν·
πέντε δ᾽ ἐγὼ δραχμὰς τω̃ν δώδεκα Λυσιανάσσῃ,
καὶ βινω̃ πρὸς τῳ̃ κρείσσονα καὶ φανερω̃ς.
πάντως ἤτοι ἐγὼ φρένας οὐκ ἔχω ἢ τό γε λοιπὸν
τοὺς κείνου πελέκει δει̃ διδύμους ἀφελει̃ν. }[7]

Terribly entrenched in European civilization, castration culture must be recognized as always wrong. No circumstances justify destroying the source of human seminal blessing.[8] Despite Philodemos’s vigorous action in support of diversity and inclusion, he wasn’t a morally perfect person. None of us are.

Greek hero Perseus rescues Indian princess Andromeda

Philodemos’s epigram celebrating Flora embraces a beautiful and ardently loving understanding of diversity and inclusion. That understanding was fruitful in the ancient Roman world. A scholar aptly summarized:

Philodemus’ epigram concerns the poet’s infatuation with a dancer who has an Oscan/Latin name, Flora, and who cannot sing the Greek poetry of Sappho, a surely particularly grating feature for a poet who, according to his treatise On Poems, valued poetry where sound was firmly wedded to ideas. But despite this touch of Hellenic condescension, Philodemus’ epigram reveals a poet interacting with the linguistic and cultural diversity of Campanian society in the late Roman Republic. … as Philodemus’ Flora offers an inclusive, generous view of Campanian multiculturalism, so Flora in Ovid’s Fasti offers not a univocal view of Augustan identity and culture but a generous and capacious one, which Martial builds upon in his imperial expansion of epigram. Philodemus’ Oscan Flora thus provided the invitation for later Roman crosscultural and crosslinguistic play in a Rome that, like Republican Campania, was a new melting pot of cross cultural contact and experiment. [9]

Christian scholars working within the relatively broad-minded, tolerant, and intellectually developed medieval European world valued, copied, and circulated Philodemos’s epigrams. Those epigrams are a precious gift to our more narrow-minded, bigoted, and intellectually stunted age. Without appreciating Philodemos’s brilliant understanding of diversity and inclusion in love, advocates of diversity and inclusion would at best lead us to an irrational and hateful future.

* * * * *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Greek Anthology {Anthologia Graeca} / Palatine Anthology {Anthologia Palatina} 5.132, Philodemos (Philodemus) of Gadara {Φιλόδημος ὁ Γαδαρεύς}, epigram, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Paton & Tueller (2014). This epigram is number 12 (Sider 12) in Sider (1997). Subsequent epigrams from the Greek Anthology are similarly sourced.

An ancient editor misleadingly entitled this epigram, “On the same Xanthippe; a surprising poem, full of madness {εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν Ξανθίππην· μανίας μεστὸν καὶ θαυμαστικόν}.” This epigram is clearly about Flora, not Xanthippe.

In this epigram, Sider translated the interjection “ὢ κτενός” as “O bush.” The ancient Greek word κτείς means “comb.” It also has a metaphorical meaning:

a woman’s comb, that is to speak euphemistically and mystically, a woman’s genital part

{ κτεὶς γυναικεῖος, ὅς ἐστιν, εὐφήμως καὶ μυστικῶς εἰπεῖν, μόριον γυναικεῖον }.

Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks / Protrepticus {Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας} 2.18, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Butterworth (1919). Metaphorically extending the shape of a hair comb, κτείς means protruding, jagged parts associated with the external appearance of the prepuce, clitoris, and labia majora for many but not all women. Similar metaphorical thinking apparently generated a rooster’s “comb.” Nearly contemporaneous Latin literature also supports such an understanding:

The skillful masseur presses his fingers on her “crest”
and causes a shriek from the top of his lady-lord’s thigh.

{ callidus et cristae digitos inpressit aliptes
ac summum dominae femur exclamare coegit. }

Juvenal, Satires 6.443-4, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Braund (2004). Translating κτείς as “bush,” which emphasizes hair, is thus misleading in Philodemos’s epigram.

Relevant context for interpreting difficult words in Philodemos’s epigram on Flora comes from Automedon’s epigram praising a woman dancer from Asia:

The dancer from Asia who moves through lascivious
postures, quivering from her tender fingertips,
I praise, not because she expresses all passions,
not because she moves her tender hands tenderly this way and that,
but because she knows how to dance around my worn-out rod
and doesn’t run away from an old man’s wrinkles.
She tongues, she tickles, she hugs. And when she kicks up her leg,
she can bring back my staff from the dead.

{ Τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίης ὀρχηστρίδα, τὴν κακοτέχνοις
σχήμασιν ἐξ ἁπαλῶν κινυμένην ὀνύχων,
αἰνέω, οὐχ ὅτι πάντα παθαίνεται οὐδ’ ὅτι βάλλει
τὰς ἁπαλὰς ἁπαλῶς ὧδε καὶ ὧδε χέρας,
ἀλλ’ ὅτι καὶ τρίβακον περὶ πάσσαλον ὀρχήσασθαι
οἶδε καὶ οὐ wεύγει γηραλέας ῥυτίδας.
γλωττίζει, κνίζει, περιλαμβάνει⋅ ἢν δ’ ἐπιρίψῃ
τὸ σκέλος, ἐξ ᾅδου τὴν κορύνην ἀνάγει. }

Greek Anthology 5.129, Automedon {Αὐτομέδων}. The editorial heading is “On a prostitute dancer {εἰς πόρνην ὀρχηστρίδα}.” The epigram itself clearly specifies a woman dancing. “Rod” and “staff” are euphemisms for Audomedon’s penis. Men’s penises can comfort women. The alternate translation for κορύνη, “club,” falls within the despicable literary tradition of brutalizing men’s penises. The concluding verse’s reference to Automedon’s staff returning from the dead plausibly alludes ironically to Persephone’s returning from Hades. Höschele (2006).

Both Automedon’s epigram and Philodemos’s epigram embrace ethnic diversity in love for women with their appreciation for an Asian dancer and the Oscan Flora, respectively. Automedon’s epigram shares with Philodemos’s epigram a reference to “lascivious postures {κακότεχνα σχήματα}.” That shared description suggests that Philodemos’s Flora was a dancer. It also suggests that Philodemos’s interjection “oh outstanding tonguings {ὢ περιάλλων γλωττισμῶν}” refers to Flora’s skill in providing oral sex. Booth (2011) pp. 58-60. Such skill was important to Automedon, who suffered from the epic disaster of men’s impotence. See Greek Anthology 11.29. For Philodemos’s epigram, Sider’s translation, “O fabulous kisses,” failed to recognize this important context and is clearly inferior. Sider (1997) pp. 104, 107-8.

The name Flora is rooted in ancient Latin and Oscan and transliterated into ancient Greek as Φλῶρα. Romans typically regarded Oscans as “rustics who were closely connected with the rude and lewd Atellan farces.” Newlands (2016) p. 116 (para. 7). However, Flora was a “major indigenous agricultural deity” in both Latin-speaking and Oscan-speaking areas of the Roman Republic. Id. pp. 118-9 (paras. 11-2). The name Flora has long been associated with flowers and beauty. In medieval Latin literature, Flora often was a name for a beautiful, beloved young woman. The Roman statesman and general Pompey the Great (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) as a youth consorted with a high-class courtesan named Flora. Id. p. 117 (para. 9). Newlands insightfully stated:

The Oscan girl’s naming as “Flora” therefore is pivotal in Philodemus’ poem, for the name bridges the cultural divide between Oscan and Roman, between courtesan and goddess, and between the physical world of erotic dance and the polished text. The name Flora beautifully encapsulates the dynamic trilingualism of late Republican Campania.

Id. p. 120 (para. 14). Flora is no “mere Flora.” Id. p. 120 (para. 13), criticizing Sider’s “mere Flora” translation. For an example of interplay between Latin and Oscan in the elite poetry of Catullus, Hawkins (2012).

The final two verses of Philodemos’s Flora epigram present motifs that can be traced from Theocritus through Ovid. Those motifs are 1) foreign woman, 2) with dark complexion, 3) like Perseus and Andromeda, and 4) in relation to Sappho. Courtney (1990). Ancient Greco-Roman authors commonly conflated India and Ethiopia / Africa. Suggesting the relative insignificance of skin color in men’s love for women, European painters rarely depicted Andromeda having darker skin than Perseus. Eddimedes Murphes in a modern adaptation of Aristophanes’s Parliament of Women bluntly expressed men’s embrace of diversity in love for women, with a minor exception.

Perseus, with the help of Eros / Cupid, rescues the enchained Princess Andromeda

Philodemos’s description of Flora’s diverse attributes proceeds upwards along her body (ascending bottom to top). As a literary motif, the “description of a young woman {descriptio puellae}” typically proceeds downwards (descending top to bottom), such as in Ovid, Amores 1.5.17-26. This ancient descriptive practice reached the height of its literary sophistication in medieval Europe.

The descriptio puellae degenerated after the end of the Middle Ages. For example, sixteenth-century French literature produced the blason anatomique. That literary form typically involves continual praise of a particular feminine body part. In 1535 under the patronage of Duchess Renée de France and her circle, the poet Clément Marot composed the leading work: an epigram called “Le beau tétin {The beautiful breast}.” Other poets quickly recognized the value of such poetry. Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin, published in 1543, shows the rapid dissemination of the form. A mirror poetic form, contreblasons, soon arose. It disparaged a feminine body part. Marot’s contreblason, “Le laid tétin {The ugly breast},” caused a huge uproar in which Marot was harshly condemned. Patterson (2015). For an anti-meninist analysis of the blason anatomique within the high anxiety that anti-meninism generates, Persels (2002).

Automedon’s and Philodemos’s epigrams, and many other epigrams in the Greek Anthology, represent learned, sophisticated poetry. Nonetheless, a scholar recently characterized these epigrams as “a lower and more debased class of poetry” and suggested that Horace alluded to:

the common circulation of that text, with its lewd content, to an uncritical and coarse public. … In the form in which Automedon’s closely contemporary epigram was circulating in Horace’s time, the physical artefact presented to readers was anything but a lepidum novum libellum (Catull. 1.1) – a curated, polished edition; rather, the epigram seems to have been preserved as a carelessly copied product that might be compared, in modern terms, to a badly edited, throwaway paperback published for consumption by an idle, undiscriminating audience seeking raunchy entertainment.

Werner (2023) p. 17, n. 31; p. 18. Such a claim indicates astonishing ignorance of the literary tradition of Hellenistic epigrams.

Philodemos, also spelled Philodemus in the Latin tradition, was born about 110 BGC in the city of Gadara in present-day Jordan. Probably because of battles between Greek and Jewish armies, Philodemos left Gadara and went to Athens. There he studied with Zenon of Sidon, then the head of the Epicurean school of philosophy. By 55 BGC, Philodemos lived in Rome and was well-known as a close friend of the Epicurean philosopher L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. Fain (2010) pp. 184-7.

Along with other leading Roman writers, Philodemos resided near the Bay of Naples, probably between the 60s and 40s BGC. Many of his writings were discovered preserved in the ashes of the Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum. Philodemos’s friend and patron Piso probably owned that villa. Philodemos apparently knew Virgil and probably Cicero. He influenced many important Latin writers, including Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and even the great early medieval Latin poet Maximianus. Fielding (2016). On Philodemos’s influence on Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, Keith (2021).

[2] Greek Anthology 5.210, which attributes the epigram to Asclepiades {Ἀσκληπιάδης}. This epigram is editorially entitled, “On Didyme {εἰς Δίδυμην}.” On Asclepiades’s support for diversity and inclusion in this epigram, Snowden (1991).

[3] Greek Anthology 5.26. This anonymous epigram follows an epigram of Philodemos and seems closely associated with Philodemos’s epigrams. It’s not attributed to Philodemos in Sider (1997). Its editorial title is “On a beautiful young woman {εἰς κόρην εὔμορφον}.” Here’s an alternate English translation. Philodemos wrote a highly sophisticated epigram in praise of the sixty-year-old courtesan Charito. Greek Anthology 5.13 (Sider 9), “On Charito, a courtesan, in wonder {εἰς ἑταίραν τινὰ Χαριτὼ θαυμάσιον}.”

[4] Greek Anthology 5.4 (Sider 7), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “On the younger Philaenis {εἰς Φιλαινίδα τὴν νεωτέραν}.” The epigram is actually primarily about Xantho / Xanthippe, who is Philodemos’s wife. A woman named Xanthippe was Socrates’s wife.

Showing his sexual desire for his wife Xanthippe and his concern for her sexual consent, Philodemos wrote:

I am an apple. The one who sends me loves you. Nod your consent,
Xanthippe. Both you and I are wasting away.

{ Μῆλον ἐγώ· πέμπει με φιλῶν σέ τις. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπίνευσον,
Ξανθίππη· κἀγὼ καὶ σὺ μαραινόμεθα. }

Greek Anthology 5.80 (Sider 2). Apples have long been regarded as love charms. Sider attributes seven epigrams (Sider 1 to 7) to Philodemos concerning his wife Xantho / Xanthippe.

[5] Greek Anthology 5.46 (Sider 20), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “A conversation with a courtesan, proceeding by question and answer {πρὸς ἑταίραν· κατὰ πεῦσιν καὶ ἀπόκρισιν}.”

[6] Greek Anthology 5.121 (Sider 17), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “Surprising praise for Philainion, a courtesan {εἰς Φιλαίνιον ἑταίραν ἔπαινος θαυμάσιος}.” Philaenis (Philainion) of Samos was thought to have lived in the fourth century BGC and to be the author of an ancient sex manual. On Philaenis, Agnolon (2013).

[7] Greek Anthology 5.126 (Sider 22), an epigram by Philodemos. It’s editorially titled “A mocking poem on a spent lover who still pays dearly for courtesans {τωθαστικὸν ἐπί τινι ἐρῶντι σαπρῷ καὶ πολλὰ παρεχομένῳ ταῖς ἑταίραις}.” A modern editor noted, “The lemmatist misreads the poem; the indications are rather that the first lover has sex with a married woman.” Paton & Tueller (2014) note 1. Those categories aren’t disjunctive. A man might have sex with a married woman who’s also a courtesan.

Horace documented Philodemos’s respectful but no-nonsense approach to women sex-workers:

“A little later,” “yet more gifts,” “if my husband has left” —
a woman who speaks like this is for Galli, so says Philodemos, who for himself
asks for a woman who is neither high-priced nor slow to come when bidden.

{ illam “post paulo,” “sed pluris,” “si exierit vir,”
Gallis, hanc Philodemus ait sibi, quae neque magno
stet pretio neque cunctetur cum est iussa venire. }1.2.120-2.

Horace, Satires 1.2.120-2, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Fairclough (1926).

[8] In Greek Anthology 5.126, Philodemos associated castration with a courtesan acting as a dominating lady-lord. That figure echoes the figure of Cybele, the Dindymenean mother whom castrated priests (Galli) served. Catullus picked up this figure in Catullus 63, It’s a structuring figure throughout Catullus’s poems. A scholar explained:

Therefore on its face value the pun is obvious — it underscores, especially from the point of view of a Gallus, that aspect of Cybele’s worship that is most bizarre, her demand for castration; she has all power and ownership over one’s testicles. The pun is likewise clear and powerful, if we read the poem not in literal terms, but as an allegory of Catullus’ own emasculation before Lesbia and the Roman state: Catullus’ manhood and virility are no longer his own, but possessed by others. Both in the sexual and social realm he is a slave.

Holmes (2012) pp. 279-80. Classicists generally have failed to take sufficient notice of the oppressive effects of castration culture.

[9] Newlands (2016) p. 113 (para. 2).

[images] (1) Pompeii Yakshi. Small ivory sculpture of beautiful, naked woman-goddess made in India and brought to Pompeii about two thousand years ago. Philodemos lived about the Bay of Naples between the 60s and 40s BGC and thus lived near Pompeii. Source image by Dan Diffendale. A modified version is presented above under the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Wikimedia Commons includes many photographs of this sculpture. It’s preserved as inventory # 149425 in Naples National Archaeological Museum (Naples, Campania, Italy).

The Pompeii Yakshi was earlier called the Pompeii Lakshmi according to the belief that the statuette represented the goddess Lakshmi. The most widely accepted scholarly judgment currently is that the statuette represents a Yakshi, also called a Yakshini, which is a female nature spirit in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cultures.

Made in India, the Pompeii Yakshi was preserved in Pompeii when Pompeii was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 GC. From about 300 BGC to 700 GC, the western Indian Ocean was a major trading zone. Seland (2014). In Roman culture, India was associated with luxuries:

India emerges as an origin of choice: it would be no exaggeration to say, in general, that Indian origins of any particular item, whether real or imagined, added value to it in Roman eyes.

Parker (2002) p. 55.

(2) Greek hero Perseus attacks the monster Cetus {Κῆτος,} while the Indian princess Andromeda watches. Corinthian black-figure amphora from Cerveteri, Italy. Painted between 575 BGC and 550 BGC. Preserved as inventory # F 1652 in Antikensammlung Berlin, Altes Museum. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. Here are many more images of Andromeda.

(3) Aphrodite Pandemos (goddess of love for all the people) riding a goat as her son Eros flies away. A satyr holding a torch pulls on the goat by its beard. Goats have long been associated with ardent sexual desire. Oil on canvas painted by Charles Gleyre in 1852. Image via Wikimedia Commons. More information about this painting.

(4) Greek hero Perseus rescues Indian princess Andromeda from the monster Cetus. Oil on panel painting (cropped slightly) painted by Piero di Cosimo about 1510-1515. Preserved as accession # 1536 in the Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy). Perseus is shown flying through the air (top righ), slaying the monster Cetus (center), and celebrating his marriage to Andromeda (bottom right). The partially nude, enchained Andromeda is a well-established motif. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.

(5) Greek hero Perseus, with the help of Eros / Cupid, rescues the enchained Indian princess Andromeda. Engraving made about 1655 following the design of Abraham van Diepenbeeck. From Marolles (1655), between pp. 306-7. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.

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