According to Plato’s Laws, men ages thirty to sixty should sing and dance for Dionysus, an ancient Greek god of festivity and fecundity. To help old men overcome the stiffness of age and performance anxiety, the Laws allows old men to drink much wine:
When a man has matured to forty years of age, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus above all other gods. He may invite Dionysus’s presence at the rite, which is also the recreation of the elders, by which Dionysus bestowed on humans wine as a medicine potent against the bodily distortions of old age. We might thereby renew our youth. Through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls might lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, just as does iron when it has been forged in fire. Will not this softer disposition primarily make each person more willing and less ashamed to dance and sing chants and incantations, as we have often called them, in the presence of a small number of close friends, not before a large crowd of strangers?
Defending the consul-designate Lucius Licinius Murena against the charge of electoral bribery, Cicero about the year 63 BGC declared that the respectable Murena was not associated with the sort of circumstances in which an old man would dance:
No sober man would dance, except perhaps if he’s insane, not even dance in solitude, nor at a restrained and respectable banquet.
{ Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit, neque in solitudine neque in convivio moderato atque honesto. }[2]
Cicero might have been alluding to Plato’s idea of wine prompting old to men to dance. In any case, Cicero surely was exaggerating for rhetorical effect. In ancient Greek and Roman cultures, men danced. Even old men danced.
Old men dancing indicated a well-ordered cosmos in ancient Greek and Roman culture. In traditional Roman religion, a religious ritual, once begun, must be completed or dire effects would ensue. A story circulating in Rome no later than about two millennia ago recounts the heroic dancing of an old man:
When the circus games for Apollo were being celebrated, it was reported that Hannibal was attacking the city near the Colline Gate. All the men grabbed their weapons and ran there. Later, when they returned and were afraid about the broken propitiatory sacrifice, they found a certain old man dancing in the circus. When asked, he told them that he had not stopped dancing. So is said the proverb: “All is well in heaven and on earth — the old man is dancing.”
{ cum ludi circenses Apollini celebrarentur et Hannibal nuntiatus esset circa portam Collinam urbi ingruere, omnes raptis armis concurrerunt. reversi postea cum piaculum formidarent, invenerunt saltantem in circo senem quendam. qui cum interrogatus dixisset se non interrupisse saltationem, dictum est hoc proverbium “salva res est, saltat senex.” }[3]
A form of the proverb “all is well in heaven and on earth — the old man is dancing {salva res est, saltat senex}” apparent was known in classical Athens. In his play Peace {Εἰρήνη / Pax}, the comic playwright Aristophanes has a domestic slave announce to his master: “The servant girl has had a bath, and all is well with her buttocks {ἡ παῖς λέλουται καὶ τὰ τῆς πυγῆς καλά}.”[4] That’s probably a lewd parody of the proverb about an old man dancing. In Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus the King / Oedipus Tyrannus {Οἰδίπους Τύραννος}, a chorus of old men lament lack of punishment for humans who violate divine law. They collectively declare:
For if such practices are respected, why should I continue dancing?
[1] Plato, Laws {Νόμοι} 666B-C (Book 2), ancient Greek Text and English translation (modified slightly) from Bury (1926). See also Νόμοι 665B. Subsequent quotes from Plato’s Laws are similarly sourced. On the mistake of narrowly interpreting in Plato poetry, singing, and music not to include dance, Scott (2023).
In Plato’s hypothetical city Magnesia, men older than sixty, called “myth-tellers {μυθολόγοι},” participate in a Nocturnal Council and chant didactic myths. Νόμοι 951D, 961B–962C. Alcohol, dance, and poetry were foundations of ancient Greek society. Murray (2013) p. 120.
Plato regarded old men as inferior to young men in dancing. The Athenian stranger declares:
Now while our young men are fitted for actually dancing themselves, don’t we regard as suitable for us elders to spend our time looking upon them and taking pleasure in their sport and merry-making, now that our former nimbleness is leaving us? And our yearning regret for this causes us to set up such dance contests for those who are best able to awaken us to youth through recollection.
Plato, Νόμοι 967D, ancient Greek text from Bury (1926), English translation (modified slightly) from Yu (2021) p. 618. While old men dance in honor of Dionysus, young men dance in honor of Apollo Paian, an ancient Greek god associated with good order and beauty.
Plato associates old men with infants. Old men experience a “second childhood {ὁ γέρων δὶς παῖς γίγνοιτ’ ἄν}.” Νόμοι 646A. Neither old men nor infants can control well their bodies, and hence both old men and infants honor the disorderly god Dionysus. On the ideological demographics of dance in Plato’s Νόμοι, Yu (2021).
[2] Cicero, For Murena {Pro Murena} 6.13, Latin text from Clark (1909), my English translation. With Cicero’s help, Lucius Licinius Murena was acquitted of electoral bribery and became Consul of the Roman Republic (the highest elected public office) in 62 BGC. On Cicero’s “rhetorical exaggeration” in this passage, Schlapbach (2022) p. 12.
[3] Servius the Grammarian (also questionably called Maurus Servius Honoratus), Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil {In Vergilii Aeneidem Commentarii} 8.110, Latin text from Thilo (1881-1902), my English translation. The phrase “salva res est” could be translated as “all is well” or “everything is fine.” However, that simple translation obscures the contextual religious significance of the word “salvus” in “salva res est, saltat senex.” Servius elsewhere provides a slightly different version:
It is indeed known that it was customary to celebrate games after a wrong had been committed. When the Romans were laboring to appease the anger of the mother goddess, neither sacrifices nor games could please her. A certain old man danced at the established circus games. That was the sole cause of appeasing the goddess. Hence originated the proverb: “All is properly ordered — the old man is dancing.”
{ sciendum sane moris fuisse, ut piaculo commisso ludi celebrarentur: nam cum Romani iracundia matris deum laborarent et eam nec sacrificiis nec ludis placare possent, quidam senex statutis ludis circensibus saltavit, quae sola fuit causa placationis: unde et natum proverbium est “omnia secunda, saltat senex.” }
Servius, In Vergilii Aeneidem Commentarii 3.279, sourced as previously. In the version, “All is properly ordered — the old man is dancing {omnia secunda, saltat senex},” the religious significance is more obscure.
The Roman grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus compiled in the middle of the second century GC an epitome of Verrius Flaccus’s Latin dictionary About the Meaning of Words {De verborum significatu}. Verrius Flaccus himself worked under the Roman Emperors Augustus and Tiberius at the start of the first millennium GC. Festus’s dictionary testifies to earlier existence of the proverb:
“All is well in heaven and earth — the old man is dancing.” The reason why the Parasites of Apollo recite this formula on the stage was given by Verrius in the fifth book of those entries which begin with the letter P. He said it was because, in the consulship of C. Sulpicius and C. Fulvius, while M. Calpurnius Piso as praetor urbanus was celebrating the games, those present suddenly ran out to arms on the news of the enemy’s approach. They returned to the theater victorious. They worried that the interruption of the games might require atonement and that the games would have to be repeated. However, they found there the freedman C. Pomponius, a mime of great age, who was dancing to the flute. And so this remark was uttered in delight that the ritual had not been interrupted, and it is still commonly used today.
But in this book he quotes the words of Sinnius Capito, in which he says that those games of Apollo were celebrated in the consulship of Claudius and Fulvius. He says the games were established in accordance with the instructions of the Sibylline books and the prophecy of the seer Marcius. There is no mention of any Pomponius. Ridiculously enough, he gives here the reason for the title “Parasites of Apollo,” although in the other place he had passed over it. He says that they are so called, because C. Volumnius, the man who danced to the flute, was a “second-part actor” — an actor who in almost all mimes plays the role of a parasite. I have not recorded this inconsistency in our Verrius without blushing.
{ “Salva res [est dum cantat] senex,” quare parasiti Apollonis in scaena dictitent, causam Verrius in lib. V, quorum prima est p littera, reddidit, quod C. Sulpicio, C. Fulvio cos., M. Calpurnio Pisone praetore urb. faciente ludos, subito ad arma exierint, nuntiatio adventus hostium, victoresque in theatrum redierint solliciti, ne intermissi religionem adferrent, instaurati qui essent: inventum esse ibi C. Pomponium, libertinum mimum magno natu, qui ad tibicinem saltaret. Itaque gaudio non interruptae religionis editam vocem nunc quoque celebrari.
At in hoc libro refert Sinni Capitonis verba, quibus eos ludos Apollinares Claudio et Fulvio cos. factos dicit ex libris Sibyllinis et vaticinio Marci vatis institutos, nec nominatur ullus Pomponius. Ridiculeque de ipsa appellatione parasitorum Apollinis hic causam reddit, cum in eo praeterisset. Ait enim ita appellari, quod C. Volumnius, qui ad tibicinem saltarit, secundarum partium fuerit, qui fere omnibus mimis parasitus inducatur. Quam inconstantiam Verrii nostri non sine rubore rettuli. }
Sextus Pompeius Festus, About the Meaning of Words {De verborum significatu}, Letter S, entry “Salva res [est dum cantat] senex,” Latin text (slightly simplified editorial presentation) from Lindsay (1913), English translation (modified slightly) from Reynolds (1943) pp. 56-7.
These etymologies of the proverb “salva res est, saltat senex” are “self-evidently unhistorical.” Slater (2001) p. 118. Similarly, Reynolds (1943). They do, however, attest to the importance and influence of the proverb and old men dancing.
[4] Aristophanes, Peace {Εἰρήνη / Pax} v. 868, ancient Greek text from Henderson (1998), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. On this verse parodying an ancient Greek form of the proverb “salva res est, saltat senex,” Slater (2001) p. 119.
The context in Aristophanes’s Εἰρήνη is clearly sexual. The domestic slave further announces:
The cake’s baked, the sesame buns are being rolled into shape, and everything else is done. All that we need is the cock!
According to a scholion to Aristophanes’s Birds {Ὄρνιθες / Aves} v. 988, the late fifth-century BGC Attic comic playwright Phrynichus wrote in his play Chronos {Κρονοσ}: “The man dances in the chorus and the matters of the gods are well {ἀνὴρ χορεύει καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καλά}.” Ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Storey (2011). For analysis, Slater (2001) pp. 118-9.
Slater further suggests as related to the proverb “salva res est, saltat senex” a verse from Aristophanes’s Wealth {Πλοῦτος / Plutus}. That verse describes old men happily escorting the god Wealth into Athens:
old men’s shoes beat out a good rhythm for the parade
{ ἐμβὰς γερόντων εὐρύθμοις προβήμασιν }
Πλοῦτος v. 759, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Henderson (2002). The old men here are more likely marching than dancing. Nooter (2023) p. 66. Cf. Slater (2001) p. 120, n. 34. Marching and dancing are closely related historically.
[6] Anacreonta 39.3-5, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Campbell (1988). The first two verses of this lyric are:
I love a pleasant old man, I love a young dancer.
{ φιλῶ γέροντα τερπνόν, φιλῶ νέον χορευτάν· }
Anacreonta 39.1-2, sourced as previously. This poem was once attributed to Anacreon, an eminent Greek lyric poet who lived in the sixth century BGC. Anacreon is know for erotic, sympotic lyrics. The Anacreonta are now generally thought to have been written about the beginning of the first millennium GC.
[7] In the joyful return of the remnant of Israel to Zion, old men dance with both young men and young women: “Then the young women shall rejoice in the dance, and both old and young men together { אָז תִּשְׂמַח בְּתוּלָה בְּמָחוֹל וּבַחֻרִים וּזְקֵנִים יַחְדָּו }.” Jeremiah 31:13, via Blue Letter Bible. Disparagement of old men has tended to be projected inappropriately onto biblical history.
[images] (1) Dance procession in honor of Dionysus. From the left, the figures are Dionysus, with panther, skin, and thyrsus (giant fennel staff); a satyr playing the aulos (dual pipes); and a woman, probably a maenad (female follower of Dionysus), playing a tambourine. Roman marble relief made about 100 GC and found in Herculaneum. Preserved as inv. 6726 in Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Napoli, Italy). Source image via Wikimedia Commons. The British Museum holds a similar relief (item 1805,0703.128) excavated at the Via Appia of ancient Rome. A second-century marble sarcophagus held in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology Art & Artifact Collection, University of Michigan, is decorated with a relief similarly showing a Dionysian / Bacchic procession (item id. 1981.03.0001). (2) Old man dancing in honor of the goddess of love Venus. Illustration for the month of April. Apparently from the Chronograph of 354 / Calendar of Filocalus. Inked pen drawing made by Lucas Cranach in Vienna about 1500 on folio 5v of manuscript preserved as Vindobonensis MS. 3416, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. Here’s an alternate copy. On this ancient calendar, Salzman (1991). The calendar is just one part of the Chronograph of 354. On the whole manuscript and its complex history of transmission, Burgess (2012).
Campbell, David A., ed and trans. 1988. Greek Lyric, Volume II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Loeb Classical Library 143. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, ed. and trans. 1994. Sophocles. Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus. Loeb Classical Library 20. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Murray, Oswyn. 2013. “The chorus of Dionysus: alcohol and old age in the Laws.” Chapter 5 (pp. 109–22) in Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, ed. Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Nooter, Sarah. 2023. Greek Poetry in the Age of Ephemerality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reynolds, R. W. 1943. “Verrius Flaccus and the Early Mime at Rome.” Hermathena. 61: 56–62.
Salzman, Michele Renee. 1991. On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Scott, Gregory L. 2023. Dance Theory of Plato and Aristotle: 3 Essays. New York, NY: ExistencePS Press.
Slater, William J. 2001. “Gnomology and Criticism.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. 41: 99–121.
Storey, Ian C., ed. and trans. 2011. Fragments of Old Comedy, Volume III: Philonicus to Xenophon. Adespota. Loeb Classical Library 515. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ancient Greek poetry associated men’s physical vitality in dancing with pleasures of love, banqueting, singing, and bodily comfort such as warm baths and clean clothes. Men’s physical vitality, however, also implies men’s instrumental value in violence against men. In ancient Greek poetry, men dancing to express and provide pleasure shows a communal alternative to valuing men as warriors. Men dancing for pleasure indicates men valued intrinsically as human beings.
Well I myself know how to fight and kill men in battle. I know well how to turn to the right, how to turn to the left the ox-hide seasoned into a sturdy shield for me to wield in the fight. I know how to charge into clamorous, clashing chariots led by plunging horses. I know in close fight how to tread the measure of the furious war god Ares.
After describing generally what might be called dancing in battle, Hector explicitly referred to a war dance of Ares. Ancient warfare required from men agility like that in dancing. In response to the Greek warrior Meriones ducking under Aeneas’s flying spear, Aeneas taunted him:
Meriones, although you’re also a dancer, my spear would have made you stop forever, if only I could have hit you.
In taunting Meriones for being a dancer as well as a warrior, Aeneas shows how readily men could be disparaged for dancing.
Dancing has been a figure for ridiculing men’s bodily activity in war and sex. Writing about a millennium after the Iliad referred to the war dance of Ares, the eminent satirist Lucian of Samosata imagined the history of the Roman war dance:
Rightly we should not forget the Roman dance that the best born among Romans, those called Salii, the name of a priesthood, perform in honor of Ares, the most bellicose of the gods. It’s a dance that’s both very majestic and very sacred. Moreover, a Bithynian story not very different from those current in Italy tells that Priapus, a warlike deity, one of the Titans, I suppose, or one of the Idaean Dactyls who made a business of giving lessons in fencing, had Ares put into his charge by Hera. This occurred while Ares was still a boy, although he was hard-muscled and immoderately virile. Priapus didn’t teach Ares how to handle weapons until he had made him a perfect dancer. Indeed, Priapus even got a pension from Hera for this. He was assigned to receive from Ares in perpetuity a tenth of all the spoils that accrued to Ares through war.
According to other ancient sources, Salii, chosen from among aristocratic Roman young men, processed around Rome every March. They sang and danced while dressed as archaic Roman warriors. Priapus, in contrast, was a crude, rustic, minor divinity who adorned personal gardens and came to represent disparagement of men’s sexuality. In associating the starkly status-contrasting Salii priests with Priapus in an utterly implausible myth, Lucian ridiculed men’s bodily activity in war and sex.
Both dancers and warriors tended to be regarded as not highly intelligent. In the Iliad, the Trojan military leader Polydamas was wise enough to advise the Trojans to return Helen to the Greeks. Polydamas chided his friend the eminent Trojan warrior Hector:
Just because the god granted that you excel in deeds of war, you also wish to excel in counsel by knowing more than others. But there’s no way you can get everything all to yourself. The god Zeus grants that one man excel in deeds of war, and another in dancing, and another in playing the lyre and singing. And for yet another man, far-seeing Zeus places in his breast thought, genuine thought, and many men benefit from such a man. That man saves many of them, and he himself has the greatest powers of understanding.
Polydamas regarded himself as thoughtful. He prudently advised that the Trojans pull back from a battle going badly for them. The fierce Hector, in contrast, wanted to keep fighting. Polydamas aligned the thoughtlessness of Hector the determined warrior with the thoughtlessness of dancers, musicians, and singers. Polydamas thus implicitly contrasted the bodily activity of warriors, dancers, musicians, and singers with activity of the mind.
Of all things there is satiety — of sleep and sex and sweet celebration and blameless dancing. A man certainly hopes to have these desires sated, more so than desire for war. The Trojans, however, continually seek battle.
Ancient Greek men desired war as well as sleep, sex, celebrating, and dancing. War and dancing were communal activities with normal limits such as the bounds implicit in “blameless dancing {ἀμύμων ὀρχηθμός}.”[6] In contrast to other desired activities such as sex and dancing, a man would not hope to have so much war that he no longer desired war. No longer desiring war implies defeat, and perhaps even death. Menelaus blamed the Trojans for having unlimited desire for war. Trojan men sought war to their deaths. Put differently, Trojan men didn’t regard their lives as having intrinsic value.
For most men in archaic Greece, war wasn’t pleasurable like dancing. With Hector leading the Trojan forces in an attempt to burn the Argive ships, the Argive leader Ajax implored his men:
Shame, you Argives! Now decides whether we perish or will be saved by beating back ruin from our ships. Do you expect, if our ships fall to gleaming-helmeted Hector, you each will go by foot to the land of your fathers? Do you not hear the Trojan army urged on by Hector, raging to set fire to our ships? Surely he invites you not to a dance, but to battle!
Battle entails risk of grievous suffering and death, but it wards off peril. Dancing, in contrast, involves no threat to life and implicitly brings forth pleasure. Hector’s gleaming helmet and the associated Greek foot movement ironically evoke men dancing pleasurably.[8] Apart from necessity, most men in ancient Greece evidently preferred pleasurable dance to battle.
In Phaeacia in the Odyssey, just as princess Nausicaa offers Odysseus an alternative to his wife Penelope, King Alcinous presents excellence in dancing as an alternative to glory in war and combative sports. Alcinous was willing to have his men take Odysseus home by sea, however far Odysseus’s home was. Alcinous bragged that his men had carried the wise demigod Rhadamanthys to the island Euboea, the farthest place they knew, in a single day “without toil {ἄτερ καμάτοιο}.” Alcinous then told Odysseus:
You too will know for yourself and understand that the best in churning through the salty sea are my ships and my young men.
Speed and endurance in rowing and sailing were important in naval voyages and naval battles. At the subsequent send-off banquet for Odysseus, Alcinous declared:
Hear me, Phaeacian leaders and counselors. Already we’ve satisfied our hearts with the shared feast and with the lyre, companion to a bounteous feast. Now let’s go out and compete in all sorts of contests, so that this stranger can tell his friends, when he returns home, how far we surpass other men in boxing, wrestling, jumping, and running.
Boxing and wrestling are fighting arts. Jumping and running are activities of men in war. The Phaeacians engaged in such martial contests at the send-off banquet for Odysseus.
Odysseus prompted Alcinous to redirect his claim about Phaeacian excellence. Alcinous’s son, the boxing champion Laodama, urged Odysseus to participate in the contests. Odysseus at first declined, mentioning the hard struggles he had already endured. The wrestling champion Halius, who was another of Alcinous’s sons, then taunted Odysseus for being a merchant rather than a “combatant {ἀθλητήρ}.” Halius was ignorant of Odysseus’s long, arduous fighting in the Trojan War. His ignorant taunt nonetheless aroused Odysseus’s fighting spirit. Odysseus told him:
You’ve aroused the spirit in my chest by speaking improperly. I’m not unknowing of contests, as you say. To the contrary, I think I used to be among the best, as long as I trusted in my youthful vigor and my hands. But now I’m bound by suffering and pains, for I’ve endured much, slicing through wars among men and grievous waves. Even so, though I’ve suffered much, I’ll compete in the contests, for your words bite at my heart. You’ve incited me with your speech.
The contests, though games, were struggles like war. Odysseus picked up a discus and threw it much farther than any Phaeacian had. He then challenged any Phaeacian man to a contest “in boxing, wrestling, or even running {ἢ πὺξ ἠὲ πάλῃ ἢ καὶ ποσίν}”:
Indeed, I’m not bad in all — in any contests among men. I know well how to handle a polished bow. Always I’d be first to shoot and strike a man in the throng of enemy men, even though many comrades stood close by and were shooting at the men. Philoctetes alone surpassed me with the bow in the Trojan kingdom where we Achaeans fought. I declare that I’m the best by far of all the others, of the mortals who now live on earth and eat bread.
Odysseus convincingly established his identity as an eminent warrior. He had the physical skills that an eminent warrior needed. He also showed his combative, courageous spirit.
King Alcinous quickly pivoted to boasting of the Phaeacians’ skills in dancing and singing. He tempered his previous claim about the Phaeacians fighting skills and instead indicated their love for pleasurable activities:
Indeed, we’re not flawless boxers or wrestlers, but we run swiftly by foot and are the best seamen. Always beloved to us are dinner, the lyre, and dances, fresh clothes, hot baths, and beds. But come, you who are the best Phaeacian dancers, beat upon the floor, so the stranger can tell his loved ones upon his return home how much we surpass others in sailing, running, dancing, and singing.
Sailing and running, which are less aggressively martial than boxing and wrestling, matter less than dancing and singing in King Alcinous’s new boast. The context of Alcinous’s appeal is pleasurable activities. Rather than beating upon other men, Phaeacian men excel in beating upon the dance floor:
The herald came near, bringing the clear-toned lyre to Demodocus, who then went into their midst. Around him stood men in youth’s prime, deities experienced in dancing. They beat the divinely inspired dance with their feet. Odysseus beheld with wonder the gleaming of their feet and marveled in his heart.
Odysseus didn’t respond with competitive self-assertion to this display. With a receptive heart, he appreciated the dancing of these beautiful men — “men in youth’s prime {κοῦροι πρωθῆβαι}.” Demodocus subsequently sang about the love of Ares and Aphrodite.[13] Odysseus similarly relished the singer’s performance. Then came more dancing:
Alcinous urged Halius and Laodamas to dance individually, since no one could rival them. They took into their hands a beautiful ball, glittering purple, which skilled Polybus had made for them. One of them, bending far backwards, would throw it toward the shadowy clouds, and leaping high above the earth, the other would easily catch it before his feet returned to the ground. After they had tried it with the ball straight upwards, they danced upon the earth that feeds many, interchanging positions rapidly as other young men standing throughout the contest place beat time. A great clamor arose.
This dance occurred in the contest arena and involved the champion wrestler Halius and the champion boxer Laodamas. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a contest, but a performance. Despite being a boxer, Laodamas was the most beautiful of the Phaeacian men.[14] Odysseus again responded with wondrous appreciation:
Godlike Odysseus indeed called out to Alcinous, “Your majesty Alcinous, most exalted above all men, you boasted that your dancers are the best, and now your words have been fulfilled. Wonder holds me as I watch them.”
In the ancient Greek world, violence against men was socially constructed as a means for men to gain approbation — “glory {κλέος}.” Men couldn’t become heroes on the dance floor. However, the warrior-hero Odysseus in Phaeacia recognized a different form of manly excellence. In dancing, men could create amazed appreciation for their bodies in exquisite motion. These men weren’t serving some instrumental need. They were amazing in themselves, amazing in their very being. Like Socrates’s “city of sows {ὑῶν πόλις},” Phaeacia with its amazing men-dancers and its lovely, courageous princess Nausicaa offered an alternative to glorifying violence against men.[15]
In the Iliad, the shield of Achilles tells the tale of two cities. Appreciating men dancing comes first in characterizing the first city:
In one of the cities were weddings and feasts. With blazing torches brides were led from their chambers throughout the city, and much wedding song arose. Young men were whirling in dance. Among them sounded flutes and lyres. The women standing, each on her own threshold, marveled at them.
Persons in this city resolved their disputes with words spoken before wise judges. The other city, besieged like Troy, was the site of horrific violence against men:
That city’s army set their battle array beside the riverbanks and fought. The two armies were striking one another with bronze-tipped spears. Strife and Tumult entered among them, and destructive Fate, too. It grasped one living man with a new wound and another one unhurt, and it dragged a dead man by his feet through the carnage. The clothing upon Fate’s shoulders was red with men’s blood. Strife, Tumult, and Fate clashed like living men and fought with each other, and dragged away corpses of men that others had killed.
In one city was the best of times; in the other city, the worst of times. Appreciating men intrinsically in dance or instrumentally in war represent ancient alternatives in valuing men.
The problem of men dancing has been socially constructed in women-dominated culture as a concern about effeminacy or unmanliness. In the second century, Lucian of Samosata satirized such concern in a sophisticated dialogue. The dialogue’s primary character, the rhetorician Lycinus, responds to his counterpart Crato’s indictment against “dance and all pertaining to dance itself {ὄρχησις τε καὶ αὐτός ὀρχηστικός}.” According to Crato, dance is “vulgar and effeminate {φαῦλος καὶ γυναικεῖος}.” Crato declares:
Lycinus, anyone who is a man at all, moreover a life-long friend of letters and moderately conversant with philosophy — can he abandon his interest in all that is better and his association with the ancients to sit enthralled by the flute while watching a womanly man in soft clothing, a man making himself delicate in singing licentious songs and imitating love-sick little women? … May I never reach a mature age if I ever endure anything of that kind, as long as my legs are hairy and my beard unplucked!
That’s a humorous caricature of the ancient Greek social construction of masculinity: men honor reason and historical learning, have hard muscles, endure rough clothing, and are unemotional and hairy. Young men dancing lack such a self-presentation.
Men dancing pleasurably implicates a more fundamental aspect of the social construction of masculinity. Crato condemns dance audiences for “crying out very shameful praises to a noxious man bending himself downward for nothing necessary {ἐπαίνους ἀπρεπεστάτους ἐπιβοῶντα ὀλέθρῳ τινὶ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐς οὐδὲν δέον κατακλωμένῳ}.” Crato regards men’s bodily movement as worthy only if instrumental. Moreover, Crato understands men’s instrumental use of their bodies to be obligatory. Lycinus, in contrast, declares:
It’s so much more delightful to see young men dancing than to see them boxing, awash with blood, or wrestling in the dust. Indeed, dance often presents young men in a way less risky to them and also more shapely and pleasurable.
The gender trouble with men dancing centers on institutionalized violence against men. In the Iliad, the shield of the preeminent warrior Achilles depicts men and women dancing on a dance floor like that in the grand, archaic court at Minoan Knossos:
And the very famous, bent-limbed one embellished it with a dance floor, like that which once in wide Knossos Daedalus built for lovely haired Ariadne. Young men were dancing on it, and young women, sought with gifts of oxen. They were holding each other’s hands at the wrists. The young women wore light linen robes, and the men, tunics fine-spun and shining softly with olive oil. The young women had beautiful crowns, and the young men, short golden swords that hung from silver baldrics. At times they would run very smoothly on their skilled feet, as when a potter, crouching, tries his wheel, holding it close in his hands, to see if it will run straight. At other times they ran in rows moving toward each other. And around the lovely chorus stood a great multitude, delighting in it. Among them, two tumblers, leading the song and dance, whirled in the middle.
This scene depicts the ancient past relative to the Iliad, which itself was composed about 2700 years ago. The god Hephaestus, a blacksmith, made this scene and the whole shield of Achilles. He is called the “very famous, bent-limbed one {περικλυτὸς ἀμφιγυήεις}.” He was famous in part for being a cuckold: his wife Aphrodite repeatedly had sex with the war god Ares. Hephaestus being bent-limbed perhaps hints at one reason Aphrodite turned elsewhere for sex. As the ancients knew well, men’s impotence makes for epic disaster. Nonetheless, the classical circle of castration and cuckolding was deeply embedded in ancient Greek society, just as it is in many societies today.
The dance scene as Knossos shows the gender trouble in men dancing. The young women and young men are partners in dance. The women, however, have intrinsic value. They dance on a dance floor like the one that the man Daedalus built for the woman Ariadne. Moreover, to marry one of the women, a man must give oxen. A woman need not give oxen to marry a man. The women wear “crowns {στέφᾰνοι},” a term associated with a conqueror’s wreath, and more generally, a prize or laurel. The men, in contrast, carry “short swords {μάχαιραι}” — weapons associated with violence against men, and also figures brutalizing men’s penises. In short, the women are grand prizes, and the men are brutal tools of merely instrumental value. Onlookers delight in seeing both women and men dance. The men’s dancing, however, isn’t enough to overcome the gender oppression encoded in their attire and in how they are valued.
While men surely have expressed and created pleasure with their dancing throughout history, men dancing pleasurably contradicts men’s instrumental gender position. In ancient Greek cultures, choruses of non-professional men singing and dancing at festivals for gods and cities were a central aspect of communal life. Men and women undoubtedly took pleasure in men’s dancing at these and other occasions such as wedding and banquets.[20] At the same time, men dancing for pleasure tended to be disparaged as effeminate and licentious. That disparagement shows gender ideology seeking to preserve women’s gender privilege as intrinsically valued persons and buttress use of men as social tools for violence against men. Pleasure in men dancing, like the beauty of men’s bodies, cannot be socially acknowledged without undermining men’s instrumental gender position.
[1] Homer, Iliad 7.237-43, ancient Greek text and my English translation, benefiting from those of Murray (1924), Lattimore (1951), and Johnston (2002). “There is nothing else like this in the whole of Homer, despite the typical nature of the warrior’s boast as such.” Kirk (1978) p. 28. Subsequent quotes from the Iliad are similarly sourced.
In distinguishing war dances from peaceful dances, Plato described a Pyrrhic war dance like Hector’s dance for Ares:
The warlike dance division, being distinct from the peaceful, one may rightly call Pyrrhic. It represents modes of eluding all kinds of blows and shots by swerving and ducking and side-leaps upward or crouching. It also represents the opposite kinds of motion, which lead to active postures of offense, when it strives to represent the movements involved in shooting with bows or darts, and blows of every description.
Plato, Laws {Νόμοι} 815A (Book 7), ancient Greek Text and English translation (modified slightly) from Bury (1926). Subsequent quotes from Plato’s Laws are similarly sourced. On “Pyrrhic {πυρρίχιος / πυρρίχη}” dance, see Lucian of Samosata, About Dance {De Saltatione / Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως} 9, available in Harmon (1936), and Carvajal (2024).
[2] Iliad 16.617-8. Dancers and warriors in the early Roman Empire had similar physical training. Slater (1994) pp. 131-40.
[3] Lucian of Samosata, About Dance {De Saltatione / Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως} 21, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Harmon (1936). For an alternate English translation, Fowler & Fowler (1905). Costa (2005) regrettable doesn’t include Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως. Early in the twentieth century, some authorities doubted that Lucian composed this work. Robertson (1913) dispelled most doubts. Subsequent quotes from Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως are similarly sourced.
Harmon apparently interpreted this passage as literally descriptive and noted:
This Bithynian myth of Priapus is not recorded elsewhere, but as it is known that Priapus was held in high honour there, it may well be that he was associated with Ares and that armed dances played a part in the cult.
Harmon (1936) p. 235, note 1. Since Lucian is a satirical writer, how to interpret passages in his work might not be obvious. But it in this case, it seems to me clear that Lucian is engaged in outrageous satire.
Lucian seems to have been attempting to do what pantomime dancers themselves were unable to do: establish pantomime as a worthy art in the eyes of the intellectual elite. In the eastern Roman Empire of Lucian’s time, the intellectual elite mainly consisted of verbally sophisticated performers such as Lucian himself. Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως is a sophisticated verbal performance, not a factual account of pantomime dance. Lada-Richards (2007), Schlapbach (2008). The modern development of ballet into an elite art is a historical culmination of Lucian’s endeavor. On the incorporation of ancient pantomime into ballet in eighteenth-century England and France, Lada-Richards (2010a), and more generally, Macintosh’s Oxford bibliography and Toepfer (2019).
The most important ancient literary works concerning dance are Plato, Laws (composed around 367 BGC); Lucian, About Dance (composed mid-second century GC); Aelius Aristides, oration attacking pantomimes (composed mid-second century GC, now lost); and Libanius, Oration 64, Reply to Aristides on Behalf of the Dancers (composed about 361 GC). Aristides seems to have resented the inclusion of pantomime in Greek intellectual and athletic competitions. Bowersock ((2008). On pantomime competitions, Webb (2012). For a translation and study of Libanius’s oration on dance, Molloy (1996). For a massive study of pantomime throughout history, Toepfer (2019). On dancing in late antiquity, Webb (2008).
[4] Iliad 13.727-34. The ancient Greek grammarian and influential Homeric editor Aristarchus of Samothrace rejected Iliad 13.731, “and another in dancing, and another in playing the lyre and singing {ἄλλῳ δ’ ὀρχηστύν, ἐτέρῳ κίθαριν καὶ ἀοιδήν}” as spurious. This verse doesn’t occur in the best ancient manuscripts. Murray (1924) p. 56, note 27. Leaf and Bayfield’s late Victorian Iliad commentary described that verse as a “tasteless interpolation.” Hall (2010) p. 22. However, Lucian in Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως 23 quotes Iliad 13.730-1. For “to another man the lyre and singing {ἐτέρῳ κίθαριν καὶ ἀοιδήν},” Lucian substitutes “delightful song {ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδὴν}.” Cf. Odyssey 1.421.
The Iliad’s ancient Greek audience almost surely wouldn’t have regarded as inappropriate Polydamas’s inclusion of dancing and singing as gifts of the gods. Polydamas himself engaged in battle alongside Hector in the Trojan War. Bodily activity and mental activity aren’t necessarily exclusive.
[5] Iliad 13.636-9. In order to entrap and kill Penelope’s suitors, Odysseus in the Odyssey arranges his household as if Penelope is being married. Odyssey 23.142-8. That arrangement features similar pleasures subordinate to violence.
In Iliad 24.2621, the Trojan king Priam disparages some of his sons as being merely “dancers {ὀρχησταί}.” The Trojan prince Paris / Alexander is more extensively figured as a dancer. See, e.g. Iliad 3.390-4. Trojans thus could be both insatiable warriors and dancers. Cf. Hall (2010) p. 19, Ransom (2011) p. 47. The eminent ancient Greek poet Sappho appreciated men as dancers.
[6] Iliad 13.637. This phrase also occurs in Odyssey 23.145 in describing the action of a divine singer: “and he raised among them desire / for sweet song and blameless dancing {ἐν δέ σφισιν ἵμερον ὦρσε / μολπῆς τε γλυκερῆς καὶ ἀμύμονος ὀρχηθμοῖο}.”
Translations have blunted the moral distinction implicit in “blameless dancing {ἀμύμων ὀρχηθμός}.” For example, in Iliad 13.637, consider “incomparable dance” in Harmon (1936), “innocent dance” in Lattimore (1951), and “gorgeous dancing” in Johnston (2002); in Odyssey 23.145, “pleasant dance” in Murray (1919).
Writing in Attic Greek rather than epic Greek, Plato distinguished between “questionable dancing {ἀμφισβητέω ὄρχησις}” and “unquestionable / blameless dancing {ἀναμφισβητέω ὄρχησις}”:
So, in the first place, we must draw a line between questionable dancing and dancing that is above question. All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in drunken imitations of Fans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they call them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation — all this class of dancing cannot easily be defined either as peaceful or warlike, or any one distinct kind. The most correct way of defining it seems to me to be this — to separate it off both from peaceful and warlike dancing, and to pronounce this kind of dancing to be improper for our citizens. Having thus disposed of it and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and peaceful types which do unquestionably belong to us.
Plato, Laws 815B-D (Book 7). Plato’s distinction here seems to me to provide the best guide to understanding the meaning of “ἀμύμων ὀρχηθμός.” Plato also distinguished dance propriety by age categories. Yu (2021).
In Plato’s scheme, warlike dancing is also blameless dancing. Menelaus’s distinction between the Trojan’s war desire and blameless desire centers on respect for limits. Menelaus doesn’t praise dancing itself. Cf. Hall (2010) p. 22, and p. 29, note 55.
[7] Iliad 15.502-8.
[8] For analysis of two hexameter passages that “emphasize the flashing, shining, scintillating qualities of dancers in motion,” Kurke (2012) p. 228. One such passage is at the court of Queen Arete and King Alcinous in Odyssey 8.264-5:
the Phaiakian chorus, at the moment that their feet in motion shimmer and glint like metal, are beating out a “divine” or “divinely inspired” dance.
Id. Hector dances in battle with his glinting metal helmet and his feet in rapid motion. Violence against men, however, isn’t dance like that of the Phaeacian men.
[9] Odyssey 7.327-8, ancient Greek text of Murray (1919) via Perseus, and my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Fagles (1996), and Lombardo (2000). Subsequent quotes from the Odyssey are similarly sourced. The subsequent quote above is Odyssey 8.97-103.
Fleeing from Calypso, Odysseus came ashore on the island of Scherie (Phaeacia). The lovely princess Nausicaa took him to the court of her mother, Queen Arete. She questioned him and investigated his suitability to be a husband for her daughter Nausicaa. After a banquet for Odysseus, Queen Arete’s husband Alcinous invited him to participate in contests with the Phaeacian men.
[10] Odyssey 8.178-85. Just before this declaration of his warrior skills, Odysseus called Halius a “reckless man {ἀτάσθαλος ἀνήρ}.” Odysseus then spoke of the gods differing gifts, just as Polydamas had to Hector in Iliad 13.727-34. According to Odysseus, Halius (“Of the Sea {Ἅλιός}”) had received from the gods a beautiful appearance, but a deformed mind. That’s not a characterization that the wrestling champion Halius would welcome.
The subsequent quote above is from Odyssey 8.214-22
[11] Odyssey 8.246-53. Horace disparaged unwise persons like Alcinous’s men:
We are merely numbers, born to consume earth’s fruits, like Penelope’s good-for-nothing suitors, like Alcinous’s young courtiers, unduly concerned to keep sleek skin. Their pride was to sleep until mid-day and lead diligence to rest to the sound of lutes.
{ nos numerus sumus et fruges consumere nati, sponsi Penelopae nebulones, Alcinoique in cute curanda plus aequo operata iuventus, cui pulchrum fuit in medios dormire dies et ad strepitum citharae cessatum ducere curam }
Horace, Epistles 1.2.27-31, Latin text from Fairclough (1926), my English translation, benefiting from that of id.
Alcinous’s boast to Odysseus in Odyssey 8.248 seems to recast Achilles chiding Agamemnon, and Zeus chiding Ares: “Always beloved to you is strife and wars and battles {αἰεὶ γάρ τοι ἔρις τε φίλη πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε}.” Iliad 1.177 and 5.891. Heubeck, West & Hainsworth (1988) p. 361. Aristarchus of Samothrace rejected these lines in his ancient edition of the Iliad. Murray (1924) p. 26, n. 20. The insightful contrast with Odyssey 8.248 suggests that Iliad 1.177 and 5.891 aren’t spurious.
The Old Babylonian version of the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Enkidu and Gilgamesh includes a passage urging a life with the pleasures that Alcinous described. Gilgamesh, grieving the death of his beloved friend Enkidu, journeys in search of immortality. He meets the alewife Siduri. She advises him:
You, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full. Keep enjoying yourself, day and night. Every day make merry, and dance and play day and night. Let your clothes be clean, and let your head be washed. May you be bathed in water. Gaze on the little one who holds your hand. Let a wife enjoy your repeated embrace!
{ attā gilgāmeš lū mali karaška urrī u mūšī ḫitattu attā ūmišam šukun ḫidûtam urrī u mūšī sūr u mēlil lū ubbubū ṣubātūka qaqqadka lū mesi mê lū ramkāta ṣubbi ṣeḫram ṣābitu qātīka marḫītum liḫtaddâm ina sūnīka }
[12] Odyssey.8. 261-5. On the sense of wonder in this distinctive passage, Kurke (20212) p. 228. The subsequent two quotes above are from Odyssey 8.370-80 (Alcinous urged Halius and Laodamas…) and 8.381-4 (Godlike Odysseus indeed called out…).
[13] In his dialogue in support of pantomime dance, Lucian has a pantomime dancer triumph in telling the story of Aphrodite and Ares’s adulterous affair. According to Lucian, Demetrius the Cynic denounced dancers as adding nothing to the telling of a story. The leading pantomime under Nero, probably a pantomime with the stage name Paris, proved that a dancer could tell a story apart from music and singers like Demodocus:
Enjoining silence upon the stampers and flute-players and upon the chorus itself, and thus quite unsupported he danced the love of Aphrodite and Ares. He danced Helius tattling, Hephaestus laying his plot and trapping both of them with his entangling bonds, individually portrayed gods who came in on them, Aphrodite ashamed, Ares seeking cover and begging for mercy, and everything that belongs to this story. He did it in in such a way that Demetrius was delighted beyond measure with what was taking place and paid the highest possible tribute to the dancer. He raised his voice and shouted at the top of his lungs: “I hear the story that you are acting, man. I don’t just see it. You seem to me to be talking with your very hands!”
Odyssey 8.115-7. This appreciation for men’s beauty, an intrinsic personal quality, contrasts with the men competing in contests for glory.
[15] In ancient Greek culture, men could not become “heroes of the dance floor” in the sense that they could become heroes in institutionalized violence against men (war). Men could, however, inspire amazement for their dancing and be valued for their dancing. Cf. Hall (2010).
[16] Iliad 18.490p-6. The subsequent quote above is Iliad 18.533-40.
[17] Lucian, Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως 2 and 5. The prior short quotes above are from Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως 1, and the subsequent two quotes above are from Περὶ Ὀρχήσεως 5 and 71.
[18] Hall (2010) p. 3 (first part), pp. 2-3 (second part). With awesome bombast, Lada-Richards opined:
Lada-Richards (2010b) paras. 25-6 (footnotes omitted). One has to be very well educated to take such writing seriously.
[19] Iliad 18.590-606. The epithet “ἀμφιγυήεις,” as applied to the master craftsman and iron smith Hephaestus, isn’t well-understood. Its literal meaning apparently is “both-limbs” or “both-(curved plow wood).” It has been interpreted as “lame-legged” or “strong-armed.” Hephaestus’s wife Aphrodite had adulterous sexual relations with Ares. In the context of that well-known affair, ἀμφιγυήεις plausibly alludes erectile failure.
Furthermore, in discussing war dance / Pyrrhic dance, Plato highlighted the importance of straight limbs:
In all these cases, the action and the tension of the sinews are correct when there is a representation of fair bodies and souls in which most of the limbs of the body are extended straight. This kind of representation is right, but the opposite kind we pronounce to be wrong.
Plato, Laws 815A-B. Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days {Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι} vv. 248–64, advising princes to make straight, not crooked, judgments. Via the epithet ἀμφιγυήεις, understood as “bent-limbed,” Hephaestus is characterized as inferior to Ares in sexual “fighting.”
Having space to dance was a favorable aspect of a location. That’s a plausible interpretation of describing Mycalessus {Μυκαλησσός} as “having a broad dancing space {εὐρύχορος}” in Iliad 2.498.
The metaphor of the potter testing his wheel should inform interpretation of the dancing in Iliad 18.590-606. The potter apparently is testing if his wheel runs true, meaning evenly between his hands. That metaphor supports a contrast between the dancers running smoothing and their rows moving into each other.
The verse numbering for Iliad 18.604-5 is abnormal, with one verse numbered 18.604-5. Some editions use an alternate text that includes a separate v. 605:
And around the lovely chorus stood a great multitude, delighting in it. And among them, a divine singer sang and played on the lyre, and two tumblers among them whirled in the middle, with the singer leading the song and dance.
Iliad 18.403-6 (as corrected by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 180c-181f). A singer leading dancers is consistent with later, well-known Greek choral practice. On this textual variant, Olsen (2016) pp. 43-5, and Dué (2018) Chapter 3.
they had what may be called a dance culture, in which much of their dancing contributed to processes needed for the coordination, survival, reproduction and prosperity of the community.
Zarifi (2007) p. 228. On the role of dance in ancient Greek culture, Kowalzig (2007) and Wilson (2000).
The earliest known Greek inscription praises a man’s dancing:
He who dances now most gracefully of all the dancers, for him this…
Inscription on Dipylon oenochoe (wine jug), dated c. 740 BGC and preserved as inv. 192 in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The ancient Greek text is via Wikipedia, Dipylon inscription entry, and the English translation mainly from D’Angour (2021). The Dipylon oenochoe apparently was a prize in a men’s dancing competition. On later dance competitions, Webb (2012).
Plato referred to the Emmeleiai, a peaceful, pleasurable type of dancing that men do:
Many of the names bestowed in ancient times are deserving of notice and praise for their excellence and descriptiveness. One is the name given to the dances of men who are in a prosperous state and indulge in pleasures of a moderate kind. How true and how musical was the name so rationally bestowed on those dances by the man, whoever he was, who first called them all Emmeleiai.
The extent to which Plato and Aristotle were concerned with dance has been under-appreciated. In Plato and Aristotle, ποίησις / poiesis is best understood not as “poetry” but as “music-dance and verbal verse.” Scott (2023). In Plato’s Laws, dance has fundamental importance: “choral dance proves to be the ideal means to educate somebody with respect to pleasure and pain.” Pfefferkorn (2021) p. 345. See also Spaltro (2011). In the Laws, Cleinias of Crete readily assents to the Athenian stranger’s query: “Shall we assume that the uneducated man is without choir-training, and the educated man fully choir-trained { Οὐκοῦν ὁ μὲν ἀπαίδευτος ἀχόρευτος ἡμῖν Bἔσται, τὸν δὲ πεπαιδευμένον ἱκανῶς κεχορευκότα θετέον}?” They then quickly agree upon the related proposition, “The well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well {Ὁ καλῶς ἄρα πεπαιδευμένος ᾄδειν τε καὶ ὀρχεῖσθαι δυνατὸς ἂν εἴη καλῶς}.” Laws 654B (Book 2).
[images] (1) Relief (detail, color enhanced) depicting Athenian men dancing with shields and swords (probably Pyrrhic dance). Relief made in the first half of the first century BGC, probably imitating an Athenian relief from the second half of the fourth century BGC. The dancers probably aren’t meant to represent Corybantes {Κορύβαντες}, castrated men serving the mother goddess Cybele. Relief preserved as Inv. 321 in the Pius-Clementine Museum, Room of the Muses, Vatican Museum (Rome). Source image thanks to Rabax63 and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s a plaster cast of four of the men dancers from the relief. (2) Greek men dancers performing Pontian Serra dance (Pyrrhic {Πυρρίχιος} dance) at the closing ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics at Athens, August 29, 2004. Video via YouTube. (3) Three Corybantes dancing a war dance around the mother goddess Cybele and her consort Attis, who are riding in a quadriga pulled by four lions. Detail from the Parabiago Plate, a late fourth-century silver plate found in 1907 at an ancient Roman cemetery near present-day Milan. Preserved in the Museum of Archeology (Milan, Italy). Source image via Europeana. Many images are also on Wikimedia Commons. (4) Fresco of Etruscan man and woman dancing from the Tomb of the Triclinium in the Necropolis of Monterozzi (Lazio, Italy). Made about 470 BGC. Preserved in the National Etruscan Museum (Tarquinia, Italy). Image via Yorck Project and Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Bowersock, Glen W. 2008. “Aristides and the pantomimes.” Chapter 4 (69–77) in William V. Harris and Brooke Holmes, eds. Aelius Aristides between Greece, Rome, and the Gods. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition. Leiden / Boston: Brill. Volume review by Carl O’Brien and by Anne Gangloff.
Fagles, Robert, trans. 1996. Homer. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.
Fairclough, H. Rushton, trans. 1926. Horace. Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry. Loeb Classical Library 194. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harmon, A. M., ed. and trans. 1936. Lucian. The Passing of Peregrinus. The Runaways. Toxaris or Friendship. The Dance. Lexiphanes. The Eunuch. Astrology. The Mistaken Critic. The Parliament of the Gods. The Tyrannicide. Disowned. Loeb Classical Library 302. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Heubeck, Alfred, Stephanie West, and J. B. Hainsworth, eds. 1988. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. 1: Introduction and Books I-VIII. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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.
Lada-Richards, Ismene. 2010a. “Dead but not Extinct: On Reinventing Pantomime Dancing in Eighteenth-Century England and France.” Chapter 1 (pp. 19 – 38) in Macintosh (2010).
Macintosh, Fiona, ed. 2010. The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World: Responses to Greek and Roman Dance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Review by Grace Ledbetter, by Dana Mills, and by Rosella Simonari.
Molloy, Margaret E. 1996. Libanius and the Dancers. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann.
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 105. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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.
Robertson, D. S. 1914. “The Authenticity and Date of Lucian De Saltatione.” Pp. 180-185 in Quiggin, Edmund Crosby, ed. Essays and Studies Presented to William Ridgeway On His Sixtieth Birthday – 6th August 1913. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schlapbach, Karin. 2008. “Lucian’s On Dancing and the Models for a Discourse on Pantomime.” Chapter 14 (pp. 314-337) in Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles, eds. New Directions in Ancient Pantomime. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scott, Gregory L. 2023. Dance Theory of Plato and Aristotle: 3 Essays. New York, NY: ExistencePS Press.
Slater, W. J. 1994. “Pantomime Riots.” Classical Antiquity. 13(1): 120–44.
Spaltro, Frances L. 2011. Why Should I Dance for Athena? Pyrrhic Dance and the Choral World of Plato’s Laws. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Classical Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago.
Webb, Ruth. 2011. “The nature and representation of competition in pantomime and mime.” Chapter 6 (pp. 221-260) in Johannes Nollé, Kathleen Coleman, Jocelyne Nelis-Clément, and Pierre Ducrey, eds. L’organisation des spectacles dans le monde Romain: huit exposés suivis de discussions. Geneva: Vandœuvres.
Zarifi, Yana. 2007. “Chorus and Dance in the Ancient World.” Chapter 7 (pp. 227-248) in Marianne McDonald and Michael Walton, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In the ancient Greek Iliad, men seek glory in brutal, gender-structured violence against men. Much different from Iliadic heroesare the eminent Lesbian poet Sappho’s brothers Charaxos and Larichos. Sappho criticized them and praised them with gender-defying love for them as human beings in female-dominated culture. She valued her brothers and men generally as sexually distinctive persons who love passionately and dance worthily just as she and her women friends did.
O divine sea-daughters of Nereus, let my brother return here unharmed and let whatever his heart desires be fulfilled.
And may he undo all past mistakes and so become a joy to friends, a sorrow to enemies — may none ever trouble us.
Sappho’s brother Charaxos loved a woman named Rhodopis. Raised with Sappho in a prosperous, aristocratic family on Lesbos, Charaxos became a wealthy merchant, probably a wine trader. He traveled for trade to Naucratis in ancient Egypt. Rhodopis was a slave there. Enamored with her, he spent “a huge amount of money {χρημάτων μεγάλων}” to purchase freedom for her.[2] She used her freedom and her sexual allure to establish herself as a famous and wealthy courtesan at Naucratis. That surely wasn’t Charaxos’s hope for her. Because he understood that freedom is an essential aspect of love as a complete gift of self, he didn’t purchase her as his slave.
Charaxos, however, apparently never received complete and necessarily exclusive love from Rhodopis. He returned without her to Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos. “There he was roundly mocked by Sappho in one of her poems {ἐν μέλεϊ Σαπφὼ πολλὰ κατεκερτόμησέ μιν}.” Sappho apparently regarded her brother as a foolish believer in Cinderella stories and wholly innocent, pure women.[3] In her love for Charaxos, Sappho sought to free him from gyno-idolatry and enable him to fulfill truly his heart’s desire.
Sappho’s brother Larichos poured wine for the rulers of Lesbos in its largest city, Mytilene. Larichos thus held an eminent position for a young man:
The lovely Sappho repeatedly praises her brother Larichos for pouring wine in the governing hall for the Mytileneans.
Sappho described Hermes as pouring wine for the gods. However, the most prominent wine-pourer for rulers is Ganymede. Zeus abducted Ganymede and made him forever a cup-bearer, wine-pourer, and sexual toy. Sappho wouldn’t have wanted her brother Larichos to become an immortal, ageless wine-pourer for the Mytileneans, nor even one for the gods like Ganymede. Sappho was devoted to Aphrodite. Just as Aphrodite loved the mortal, aging man Anchises, Sappho loved her brother Larichos as a mortal man who surely would age beyond being a wine-pourer.[5]
Crossing gender, Sappho explicitly associated herself with the aged Tithonus. Just as Zeus abducted Ganymede, the dawn goddess Eos abducted the mortal man Tithonus to serve her sexually. Eos had Zeus make Tithonus immortal, but neglected to request that Tithonus be ageless. Aphrodite offered the example of Tithonus in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Sappho similarly invoked the aged Tithonus, whom she associated with herself. Sappho advised young persons:
You, young persons, pursue the violet-laden Muses’ lovely gifts, and the clear-toned lyre so dear to song,
but for me — old age has now seized my once tender body, and my hair has become white instead of black. My breath has grown labored, and my knees offer no support, knees once fleet for the dance like little fawns.
How often I lament these things. But what to do? As a human, one cannot escape old age. Yes, people used to say that rose-armed Dawn, overtaken by love, took Tithonus, handsome and young then, and carried him off to the world’s end. Yet in time grey age still seized him, though he having an immortal wife.
The metaphorical parallel to the immortal but aged Tithonus is Sappho’s knees “once fleet for the dance like little fawns.” Her knees function as a metonym for her legs and her physical capabilities generally. The aged Sappho regretted her loss of bodily capabilities. She urged young persons, both women and men, to sing and dance. Her advice applies to her young brother Larichos.[7]
Sappho appreciated men’s supple limbs apart from prowess in fighting. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite used the incapacity of Tithonus’s limbs to characterize his disability as a lover for the goddess Eos:
When hateful old age was pressing fully hard on Tithonus and he couldn’t move his limbs, much less lift them up, in her heart Eos decided the best way indeed to be this: she put him in a room and closed the shining doors upon him. From there his voice endlessly pours out, but he has no vigor at all, none like he formerly had in his supple limbs.
The aged Tithonus is brother to the aged Sappho in having an immortal voice and physical disability associated with limbs.[9] The penis is commonly regarded as one of a man’s members / limbs. Impotent limbs encompass sexual disability distinctive to men. Sappho, however, also understood limbs apart from sexual distinctiveness. The young Tithonus was brother to the young Sappho in having supple limbs. Both women and men need supple limbs for dancing.
For men, dancing contrasts with the heroic ethic of the Iliad. After Achilles killed Hector, King Priam of Troy lamented the disgraceful character of his remaining sons:
Woe is me, oh my evil destiny. I have had the most noble of sons in Troy, but I say not one of them is left to me — not godlike Mestor, not Troilos the warrior charioteer, nor Hector, who was a god among men, for he did not seem like the son of a mortal man, but of a god. All these Ares has slain, and all that are left to me are disgraces — liars and dancers, most noble in pounding the floor in choral dance, robbers of lambs and young goats in their own land.
Sappho herself sang for choral dances and apparently taught women dancers. Devoted to Aphrodite, Sappho appreciated dance as did the goddess of love Aphrodite. Aphrodite summoned Helen to have sex with her husband Paris even after her former husband Menelaus shamed him on the battlefield of Troy:
Helen, come this way. Paris calls you to come home. He’s there in the marital bedroom, on the bed with inlaid rings. He’s gleaming with his beauty and robes. You wouldn’t say he came from fighting a foe, but rather he was going to a dance, or from a dance having recently returned, he was resting.
Like Aphrodite, Sappho would have appreciated her brothers more as dancers than as warriors.[11]
In the ancient Mediterranean world, men’s status in women’s eyes typically centered on men’s material wealth and skill in violence against men. Sappho, in contrast, cared most about beauty:
Some say an army of horsemen, others say foot soldiers, still others a fleet of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. I say it is whatever one loves.
Helen left behind the great warrior and Greek king Menelaus to elope with the Trojan prince Paris, known for his beauty and dancing. Anaktoria’s “lovely step {ἐρατὸν βᾶμα}” suggests her dancing. Paris, not the warrior-hero Hector, was a manly ideal in Sappho’s eyes.
In her “Brothers Poem,” Sappho challenged her mother not to think about her sons Charaxos and Larichos according to men’s traditional gender burdens. Men traditionally have been burdened with providing material goods to their families. In a poem plausibly addressed to her mother, Sappho urged concern not for the goods her brother Charaxos was to bring, but for his personal safety:
You keep on saying that Charaxos must come with his ship full of goods. Zeus knows this, I believe, as do all the gods. Don’t think about it.
Instead send me, yes command me to keep praying to Queen Hera that Charaxos return here guiding his ship safely
and find us steadfast. Everything else we should turn over to the gods, since harsh gales to fair winds soon give way.
At an annual festival to Hera on Lesbo, Sappho apparently led the dancing associated with the very expensive sacrifice of 100 cattle, a “hecatomb {ἑκατόμβη}.” Moreover, in ancient Greek myth, two brothers Kleobis and Biton, working in the place of oxen, pulled their mother atop her wagon to a festival of Hera. Kleobis and Biton then happily died in Hera’s temple.[14] Their mother honored her two sons as praiseworthy instruments, yet they perished as human beings. Sappho praying to Hera for Charaxos’s safe return doesn’t require an expensive sacrifice. Moreover, Sappho explicitly orients her prayer away from instrumental valuation of Charaxos and towards his safety. Sappho’s conventional invocation of the gods plays between Zeus and Hera while undermining the instrumentalizing of men as a gender.[15]
Sappho’s gender-defying love for her brother Larichos subverts Iliadic characterization of the warrior man-hero. Sappho associated Larichos with her and their mother. She thus gave him domestic importance that many men lack:
And us? If Larichos lifts his head high and some day becomes a man, our hearts might be swiftly freed from such heavy aches.
In the Iliad, a man lifting his head high and acting like a man means being steadfast in massive violence against men. Sappho’s manly ideal, however, was Paris, not Hector. An insightful scholar observed of the last two verses of the “Brothers Poem”:
with their sisterly exhortation to Larichos to go and play a Telemachos-like role and show himself “a man”, while the heavy and rare word βαρυθυμία – “weightiness of spirit”, “depression”, raising the stylistic level, correlates with the devastating erotic love we find elsewhere in Sappho. Here she is the devoted sister, worrying about her younger brother, as in other poems she does about girls, one of whom (after all), if he lifts his head, Larichos will grow up to marry.[17]
In ancient Greek, the root of Larichos, “laros {λαρός},” meaning “sweet,” is used to characterize wine. Sappho is concerned about Larichos not as a warrior, but as a lover and potential husband. In this context, lifting his head alludes to Larichos’s sexual arousal. Being a man means acting as a sexually mature man. To lift heavy heart-aches, a marriage celebration is best of all. In ancient Greek, the root of Charaxos, “chara {χαρά},” means “exuberant joy.” Sappho in ending the “Brothers Poem” imagines Charaxos having returned home, Larichos getting married, and all joyfully dancing.[18]
Although she wrote exquisite poetry in love for women, Sappho also loved men. She apparently married and had at least one child. She sang and played music for men’s symposia. A tradition going back to no later than the ancient comic Greek poet Menander describes her as having fallen madly in love with Phaon, a boatman of Lesbos. He was reputed to be once regarded as an ugly man, at least superficially. The first-century scholar Pliny the Elder reported that Sappho appreciated men’s typically covered genitals:
Marvelous is the characteristic reported of the erynge, that its root grows into the likeness of the organs of one sex or the other. Although rarely found in the male form, if that form comes into the possession of men, they become lovable in the eyes of women. It is said that this is how Phaon of Lesbos himself won the love of Sappho.
{ portentosum est, quod de ea traditur, radicem eius alterutrius sexus similitudinem referre, raro inuento, sed si uiris contigerit mas, amabiles fieri; ob hoc et Phaonem Lesbium dilectum a Sappho }[19]
Like Dido for Aeneas, Sappho reportedly committed suicide through her extravagant passion for Phaon. Ovid’s fictional letter of Sappho to Phaon, a letter now rightly regarded as “uniquely Sapphic,” depicts Sappho’s orgasm in dreaming of Phaon:
You, Phaon, are my care. My dreams bring you back to me — dreams brighter than beautiful day. There I find you, even though you’re absent from this region. But joys that sleep brings aren’t sufficiently long. Often I seem to burden your arms with my neck, often I seem to have placed mine beneath yours. I know the kisses that you would have united with your tongue, that you devised as suitable to receive, suitable to give. Sometimes I entice you and speak words similar to the truth, and my lips keep watch with my senses. I’m ashamed to tell further, but all happens, and it delights, and it’s not possible for me to stay dry.
{ Tu mihi cura, Phaon; te somnia nostra reducunt — somnia formoso candidiora die. illic te invenio, quamvis regionibus absis; sed non longa satis gaudia somnus habet saepe tuos nostra cervice onerare lacertos, saepe tuae videor supposuisse meos; oscula cognosco, quae tu committere lingua aptaque consueras accipere, apta dare. blandior interdum verisque simillima verba eloquor, et vigilant sensibus ora meis. ulteriora pudet narrare, sed omnia fiunt, et iuvat, et siccae non licet esse mihi. }[20]
Phaon wasn’t anyone like an Iliadic heroic. He was simply a beautiful man, a man with beauty sexually distinctive to men. Sappho wouldn’t have loved her brothers Charaxos and Larichos as instruments of commerce or violence against men. She would have loved them as beautiful human beings.
Many modern scholars have failed to appreciate Sappho’s love for her brothers. In the “Brothers Poem,” Sappho’s distinctive concern for Charaxos’s safety, rather than his ship’s cargo, has scarcely been noticed. That’s consistent with modern complacency about men’s gender burdens and the large gender protrusion in human mortality.
Scholars have projected contempt for men upon Sappho’s view of Larichos. One learned classical philologist translated the final stanza of the “Brothers Poem” to have Sappho hoping that Larichos “finally mans up.”[21] That diction constitutes a classic call for men to gender-conform. Another scholar imagined Sappho depicting Larichos as a “feckless brother” in contrast to an Iliadic hero. This scholar imagined Sappho insulting and ridiculing her brother: “That he is not an ἀνήρ (‘man’) in the Iliadic sense is her crowning insult.”[22] This scholar’s interpretation bizarrely makes Sappho’s feminine values contrast starkly with Sappho’s valuing of her brothers. Sappho was not a gender-bigoted feminist.
Modern disparagement of men has heavily colored translations of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem.” One translation absurdly imagines Sappho wanting Larichos to “whistle Dixie”:
As for us — if lazyboy Larichos ever lifts his head and turns into a man who can whistle Dixie goodbye family gloom! We’ll run our fingers through his beard and laugh.[23]
Dixie was the traditional anthem of the secessionist U.S. states seeking to keep blacks enslaved. To “whistle Dixie” means to engage in idle talk of unrealistically optimistic fantasies. Sappho surely didn’t want Larichos to help his family revel in fantasies of white supremacy. Nonetheless, Oxford students in a student literary periodical called this translation “the most alluring from a sea of seven sassy Sapphos.”[24] Their imagined “sassy Sappho” is a singer of a morally obtuse, childish cartoon.
Another translation provides additional cultural insight. Unlike Sappho, many intellectuals today inhabit a reeking sewer:
…. As for Larichos,
that lay-a-bed lives for the pillow. If for once he’d get off his ass, he might make something of himself. Then from that reeking sewer of my life I might haul up a bucket of spring water.[25]
Even just the surviving fragments of her poetry and the surviving testimonies about her life indicate that Sappho led a vibrant life — a life filled with social interaction, intellectual and artistic activities, and passionate love. The “reeking sewer of my life” is the here-and-now experience of this learned translator. He perceptively described those serving Hera, Zeus, and other traditional Greek gods as “those idiots in the Iliad.” Most of the idiots killed in the foolish Trojan War over Helen were men. Sappho surely wanted her brother Larichos to make of himself something other than being “gloriously” killed in battle. She would have preferred for him to lay in bed as Paris did for awhile during the Trojan War with the help of Aphrodite.
Like mothers’ love for their sons, sisters’ love for their brothers is vitally important to promoting social justice and gender equality. Sappho loved her brothers Charaxos and Larichos with gender-defying love, with humane and forgiving love, and with love affirming her brothers’ essential goodness as men. The name Sappho apparently arose as an affectionate term for sister — a term like “best-friend-forever sister.”[26] If all sisters loved their brothers as Sappho did, men would not aspire merely to acquiring wealth or dying in glory as warriors. Men would finally be liberated to flourish like Sappho as fully human beings.
Sappho wrote about 600 BGC on the island of Lesbos near the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea. Even in antiquity she was widely regarded as an eminent poet:
Some say the Muses are nine, but how carelessly! Look at the tenth, Sappho from Lesbos.
The Greek Anthology {Anthologia Palatina} 9.506, verses attributed to Plato, from Thorsen & Berge (2019). Scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria compiled at least eight books of Sappho’s poetry, but most of her poems have been lost. Digital Sappho provides Greek texts and commentary for all the surviving fragments of Sappho’s poetry. English translations of these fragments are available from Barnstone (2005), Carson (2002), Nagy (2018), Rayor & Lardinois (2023), the Sappho page of Poetry in Translation, and the Divine Sappho. Today as an artist Sappho is even more famous than the pioneering Greek painter Kora of Sicyon.
[2] Herodotus recounted:
Rhodopis arrived in Egypt, brought by Xanthes of Samos. On arrival she was freed for a huge amount of money in order to work. A man from Mytilene, Charaxos son of Scamandronymus, and brother of Sappho the poet, did this. Thus Rhodopis was freed and lived in Egypt. Since she was extremely lovely, she gained much wealth for such a Rhodopis.
Herodotus, Histories 2.135, ancient Greek text from Wilson (2015) via Thorsen & Berge (2019), English translation (modified slightly) from id. The English translation of Godley (1920) brings out more explicitly Herodotus’s wry allusion to Rhodopis’s profession as a hetaera (high-class prostitute). Rhodopis {Ῥοδῶπις} means literally “rosy cheeks.” Other sources call her Doricha {Δωρίχα}. That may have been her real name. In her fragment 15, Sappho apparently refers to Doricha and Charaxos’s love for her.
Later sources recount similarly about Rhodopis / Doricha. Writing sometime between 7 BGC and 24 GC, Strabo described a large, expensive pyramid thought to be her tomb:
It is called “Tomb of the Courtesan,” having been built by her lovers. This courtesan was the one whom Sappho the poetess of melic songs calls Doricha, the beloved of Sapphoʼs brother Charaxos. He was engaged in transporting Lesbian wine to Naucratis for sale. Others give her the name Rhodopis.
Strabo, Geographica {Γεωγραφικά} 17.1.33, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). Writing early in the third century GC, Athenaeus commented:
Naucratis also produced famous and exceptionally beautiful courtesans, including Doricha. She was a lover of Sapphoʼs brother Charaxos, who sailed to Naucratis on a trading journey. In her poems the lovely Sappho abuses Doricha for extracting a substantial amount of money from Charaxos.
Whether Charaxos, Rhodopis / Doricha, and Larichos are historical persons or literary personas created in Sappho’s poems has little significance to the presentation here. For simplicity, I assume that they are historical persons. With the same justification, I equate Sappho and the first-person voice of Sappho’s poems.
[3] For Sappho mocking Charaxos, Herodotus, Histories 2.135, ancient Greek text from Wilson (2015) via Thorsen & Berge (2019), English translation (modified slightly) from id. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.596bc has Sappho disparaging Doricha / Rhodopis rather than Charaxos.
Sappho perhaps chided her brother Charaxos for believing on meager evidence that he had discovered a highly desirable, goddess-like woman who would love him truly and faithfully. Made in this context, truthful, frank criticism indicates love, not contempt. Ovid perceptively depicted Sappho’s loyal love for her brother Charaxos:
Because I often warned him well and very faithfully, he hates me. This my free-speaking, this my loyal tongue, has bestowed on me.
{ me quoque, quod monui bene multa fideliter, odit; hoc mihi libertas, hoc pia lingua dedit. }
Ovid, Heroides 15 (Sappho to Phaon {Sappho Phaoni}) vv. 67-8, Latin text of Ehwald (1907) Teubner via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from that of James Hunter. Just before Sappho laments Charaxos hating her for her loyal tongue, she suggests that Charaxos now roams the seas as a pirate. That sensational claim seems to be a literary device intending to highlight Sappho’s continuing love for her brother. On Ovid’s depiction of Charaxos in Heroides 15 in relation to Sappho’s poetry, Thorsen (2014) pp. 58-63 and Thorsen (2019).
In fragment 57, Sappho derides an addressee for loving an ignorant countrywoman. Athenaeus specified Sappho’s addressee in fragment 57 as her woman associate Andromeda. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.46 = 1.21b. In fragments 68(a), 131, and 133, Sappho refers explicitly to Andromeda. The addressee of fragment 57 could grammatically be a woman or man. Fragment 57 thus might have been addressed to Charaxos.
They tell the fabulous story that, when Doricha was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis. While the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, when it arrived above his head, flung the sandal into his lap. The king, stirred both by the beautiful shape of the sandal and by the strangeness of the occurrence, sent men in all directions into the country in quest of the woman who wore the sandal. When she was found in the city of Naucratis, she was brought up to Memphis. She became the wife of the king. When she died was honored with the above-mentioned tomb.
[4] Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae {Δειπνοσοφισταί} 10.24 = 10.425a, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). On Sappho having Hermes pour wine for the gods, Deipnosophistae 5.19 = 5.192c, also available in Thorsen & Berge (2019).
[5] On Ganymede’s relevance to Larichos in Sappho’s “Brothers Poem”:
Larichos’ activity as a cupbearer in the aristocratic symposium more than adumbrates his deep involvement in love as well. Around 600 BC the Greek aristocracy began to install beautiful boys as wine-bearers more for leisure, prestige, and erotic amusement than for education as in former times. It became fashionable in Sappho’s time to have these boys as objects of an idealized and passionate love. Ganymede modeled this new male homoerotic practice of the élite. .. Thus Larichos’ behavior leads us to believe he also has fallen prey to Eros who somehow personifies these idealized boys in their duty as wine-pourers in the new symposium. While the bonds of heterosexual love bind Charaxos, Larichos is engaged in homosexual affairs. His bowed head signifies his lack of personal freedom. He has become a slave of desire, the object of lust for adult males.
Bierl (2016) pp. 321-2.
[6] Sappho, Fragment 58c, vv. 1-12 (The Cologne Papyrus, P.Köln inv. 21351), ancient Greek text from Digital Sappho, English translation (modified) from Greene (2009). Tithonos {Τιθωνός} is the standard transliteration, but Tithonos is commonly written as Tithonus. For v. 5, Greene has “my heart has grown heavy” for “βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμο̣ς̣ πεπόηται.” That translation, and others similar to it, seem too abstract in the context of body, hair, and knees. My translation, “my breath has grown labored,” is within the semantic range of the ancient Greek.
Fragment 58c, known as Sappho’s “Old Age Poem” or “Tithonus Poem,” was recovered in a new manuscript in 2004 and first published in West (2005). The new manuscript complements an earlier source, the Oxford Papyrus, P.Oxy. 1787 fr. 1. For textual commentary, Annis (2005), Harris, and Obbink (2009). For alternate translations, West (2005) p. 5, Carson (2005), Gutman (ND), Obbink (2009), Janko (2017) p. 270, Harris (2018), Nagy (2018), and Rayor & Lardinois (2023).
The textual conclusion of this poem is a matter of considerable scholarly debate. Archaic Greek poetry wasn’t likely to conclude with an exemplum. Lowell (2009). But this poem might be especially subtle. Janko (2017). Moreover, it might have existed in antiquity in shorter and longer versions. Lardinois (2009), Nagy (2009).
Sappho’s “Old Age Poem” is resolutely gender-ambiguous. Translations have commonly assumed a gender not marked in the text:
Nowhere does the speaker signal her gender; this ode is unisex. Even though Greek is a highly inflected language, with a separate feminine gender in nouns and adjectives (but not in verbs, unlike Semitic languages), nowhere, in the text as it is plausibly reconstructed, does the speaker indicate her sexual identity, nowhere does she even indicate the sexual identity of the young people whom she is addressing, and nowhere does she signal whether the speaker’s and the addressees’ desires incline towards others belonging to the same sex, to the opposite sex, or to both. This poem could be performed by a man as easily as by a woman, and addressed to boys or both boys and girls just as easily as to girls. Not even the ‘fawns’ to which the speaker is compared in line 6 are gendered: the word is a neuter diminutive.
Janko (2017) p. 275.
[7] With regard to the “Old Age Poem,” Greene insightfully observed:
the speaker’s urgent entreaty of the paides {παῖδες / young persons} in the first line of the poem may be read not only as a powerful call to embrace song and dance while one can, but also as an invocation to future generations to keep her songs alive in the only way they can live, through performance.
Greene (2009). This call to embrace song and dance encompasses young men as well as young women.
Alcman, a Greek lyric poet who was probably active late in the seventh century BGC, pleaded to young women when he was too old to dance with them:
Honey-toned, divine-voiced young women, no longer can my limbs carry me. If only, if only I were a cerylus, who flies with the halcyons over the flower of the wave with resolute heart, a strong, sea-blue bird.
Alcman, Fragment 26 (preserved in Antigonus of Carystus, Marvels), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Campbell (1988). For alternate translations and notes, see posts by Chris Childers and by Michael Gilleland. Alcman’s plea to young women suggests their concern for him and other older men.
[8] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Homeric Hymns 5, To Aphrodite {Εἲς Ἀφροδίτην}), vv. 1-6, ancient Greek text from West (2003), my English translation, benefiting from a variety of available translations.
[9] Desire for poetic immortality pervades Sappho’s poems. West (2005) pp. 2-3. Some ancient sources indicate that in old age Tithonus became a cicada. Janko associates the Tithonus exemplum with the cicada’s immortal singing and Sappho’s singing through her old age. Janko (2017) pp. 288-9. Some add to the Tithonus poem verses following it in the Oxford Papyrus (P.Oxy. 1787 fr. 1):
Yet I love the finer things. Know that love has obtained for me the brightness and beauty of the sun.
Sappho, Fragment 58c, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Campbell (1982). The sun is associated with the immortality of the god Helios {Ἠέλιος} in ancient Greek culture. An alternate translation of these these verses affirms earthly life:
Yet I love the finer things. Know that love of the sun has obtained for me brightness and beauty.
English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Athenaeus quotes these verses and interprets “love of the sun {ἔρος τὠελίω}” to mean love for life. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 15.687b. Sappho might have intended both these meanings:
I believe the ambiguity to be deliberate and that one should construct τὠελίω both with ἔρος and with τὸ λάμπρον καὶ τὸ κάλον: “love of the sun / life has obtained for me the brightness and beauty [of the sun / life]”. Constructing τὠελίω both with ἔρος and with τὸ λάμπρον καὶ τὸ κάλον would agree with the idea expressed in the opening priamel of Sappho fr. 16, namely that the most beautiful thing on earth is whatever one loves: the speaker’s love of life makes it for her an object of beauty.
Lardinois (2009), omitted footnote points to a similar grammatical ambiguity in Sappho, Fragment 96.15–17.
[10] Homer, Iliad 24.255-62, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Murray (1924). The subsequent quote above, “Helen, come this way…,” is similarly from Iliad 3.390-4.
[11] Stehle described Paris in the Iliad as a better Homeric parallel for Larichos than Telemachos in the Odyssey. Stehle (2016) pp. 289-90. However, her narrow-minded interpretation of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem” imagines Sappho disparaging Larichos for being like Paris. On sexual politics shaping readings of Sappho, Prins (1999).
[12] Sappho, Fragment 16.1-12, 15-20, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Sappho, Fragment 16, has tended to be read to have Sappho assimilating love and war. Papadimitropoulos (2016). However, Sappho’s concluding comparison with the massive army of Lydians seems to me best understood as Sappho rejecting heroic glory associated with the Trojan War. The literary legacy of Gallus has inappropriately colored reading of Sappho’s Fragment 16.
[13] Sappho, Fragment 10 (“Brothers Poem”), vv. 1-12, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, English translation (modified slightly) from Rayor & Lardinois (2023). In v. 1, Rayor translated the instance of the rather rare verb θρυλεῖν as “keep on saying.” That has a note of insistence, without necessarily the belittling connotations of chattering or babbling. Rayor’s choice here seems to me the best choice in light of the analysis of Stehle (2016) pp. 272-4. In v. 9, for ἀρτ̣έ̣μεας Rayor translated “secure.” I used “steadfast” following the analysis of Stehle (2016) pp. 274-7. In v. 2, I added the gloss that the ship is full “of goods.” The close translation of Nagy (2015a) includes this gloss.
For Sappho’s “Brothers Poem,” here are helpful vocabulary and notes. For other commentary and translations, Obbink (2014a) pp. 39-40, Christopher Pelling in Obbin (2014b), TLS (2014a), TLS (2014b), Gribble (2016), Logan (2016), and Obbink (2016a) pp. 39-40 (slightly revised translation).
The person to whom the poem is addressed is a matter of scholarly controversy. Sappho’s mother is the likeliest addressee. Obbink (2014a) pp. 41-2, West (2014) p. 8. The addressee being Larichos himself seems highly improbable. Cf. Stehle (2016). Larichos as addressee wasn’t even considered a possibility in Obbink (2014a) p. 41. A rigidly gendered reading of the “Brothers Poem” also seems to favor Sappho’s mother as the addressee. Kurke (2016). But in my view, Sappho rejected aspects of masculine gender in the “Brothers Poem.”
Charaxos coming with a full ship plausibly includes an allusion to his sexual affair with Rhodopis / Doricha. Wright (2015), Obbink (2016b) pp. 209-11. Specifics of such an allusion aren’t clear. It could include a physical reference to Charaxos’s sexual frustration. Sappho would thus be alluding to men’s seminal load as a human good contrasting with material goods.
[14] A seasonally recurring festival for Hera apparently took place at Messon (currently known as Mesa) in the middle of Lesbos and centered on the hecatomb, the sacrifice of one hundred cattle. The festival for Hera on Lesbos was probably similar to the one for Hera at Argos. Nagy (2016) §§35-38, 41-49, 64. On the festival for Hera at Argos, Nagy (2015b). For the story of the mother (named Cydippe in Plutarch) and her two sons Kleobis and Biton, Herodotus, Histories 1.31.1–5. For a different interpretation of the relevance of Kleobis and Biton to Sappho, Nagy (2016) §91.
Hera perhaps was associated in her sanctuary at Messon with Zeus and Dionysos. Those three deities constituted the Lesbian triad. On Hera’s sanctuary and the Lesbian triad, Boedeker (2016) pp. 196-200, Jiménez San Cristóbal (2017).
[15] Although Sappho’s poetry shows much more concern for Hera than Zeus, Hera doesn’t dominate Zeus in the “Brothers Poem”:
I find most striking the complementary differences in the roles Sappho assigns to the two gods; both are ‘sovereign’, but within very different parameters.
Boedeker (2016) p. 206, with detailed analysis of their relationship in id. pp. 203-7. Sappho similarly rejects gender hierarchy constraining the lives and devaluing the intrinsic goodness of Larichos and Charaxos.
[16] Sappho, Fragment 10 (“Brothers Poem”), vv. 17-20, ancient Greek text from Campbell (1982) via Digital Sappho, my English translation, benefitting from that of Rayor & Lardinois (2023). Following comments from Obbink (2014b) about the concluding verses, “hearts … heavy aches” seemed to me the best translation in vv. 19-20.
[17] Obbink (2014b). Obbink subsequently associated the “Brothers Poem” with the song type “prayer for safe return.” In the context of the “Brothers Poem”:
The prayer for safe return, introduced as a matter of concern, then expands to envisage what such a return would mean for the family — wealth, and an enhanced social position in the community. The emphasis shifts almost imperceptibly from the envisaged distress that sparks the prayer to the envisaged happiness that comes with the prayer’s fulfilment, as happens in the erotic sphere in Sappho fr. 1, except that here the desired good becomes more specific or personal in the end, and may in each of the cases include or imply marriage. … The point is not that Larichos should survive and grow up: he should become an ἄνηρ in all senses. Presumably this would include marriage and the production of legitimate offspring.
Obbink (2016b) pp. 212-3. Sappho’s fragments 6B, 27, 30, 103-117B are probably from wedding songs.
[18] On the roots “laros {λαρός}” and “chara {χαρά},” Bierl (2016) pp. 319, 321; Obbink (2016b) p. 213. Sappho inverting Iliadic language in the “Brothers Poem” is consistent with her practice in fragment 31:
As extensively documented by scholars, Sappho’s use of Homeric imagery, inverted from military or battlefield death scenes to an erotic context, has been at the forefront of analyses of fragment 31.
Johnson (2009). Singing and dancing was central to who Sappho was:
The poetics of Sappho, as I have been arguing since 1990, reveal her to be a choral personality, that is, someone who performs as a leader in a dancing as well as singing group known as a khoros ‘chorus’.
Nagy (2017) §21. Kurke, with her rigid gender scheme, seems unable to imagine Larichos dancing:
Thus in our song, if Larichos ‘raise his head and become a man’, mother and daughter both might return to the proper activities of choral dance and festival celebration.
Kurke (2016) p. 249, n. 32. Sappho surely regarded dancing as proper activity for men, including Larichos.
[19] Pliny the Elder, Natural History {Naturalis historia} 22.20, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Thorsen & Berge (2019). The erynge to which Pliny refers is thought to be the sea holly (Eryngium maritimum).
Pliny associating the erynge with Sappho probably derives from perceptions of Sappho’s ardent sexual love for men. The first-person speaker in Sappho’s poems is typically identified with Sappho. In Sappho’s fragments 121and 138, Sappho speaks about her sexual desire for men. Sappho apparently also sexually desired women.
According to the tenth-century Suda (Σ 107), Sappho “was married to a very wealthy man called Cercylas, who traded from Andros {ἐγαμήθη δὲ ἀνδρὶ Κερκύλᾳ πλουσιωτάτῳ, ὁρμωμένῳ ἀπὸ Ἄνδρου}.” Thorsen & Berge (2019). Cercylas / Kercylas of Andros literally means “Little Prick from the Isle of Man.” Rayor & Lardinois (2023) p. 4. Ancient Greek comic poets may have invented this punning name for jokes about Sappho’s vigorous sexuality. Cf. Campbell (1982) p. 5, note 4.
Sappho had a daughter named Kleïs / Cleis. Sappho refers to her beautiful daughter Kleïs in fragment 132. In fragment 98, Sappho refers to her mother and a woman named Kleïs. That’s probably Sappho’s daughter as well.
Scholars now generally consider Sappho’s love for Phaon to be a literary creation dating to well after Sappho’s death. Fourth-century BC authors refer to Sappho’s love for Phaon. Palaephatus, Incredible Tales {De incredibilibus} 48; Menander, via Strabo, Geography {Geographica} 10.2.9, source texts and English translations in Thorsen & Berge (2019). Ovid’s Heroides 15 is by far now the most well-known text concerning Sappho’s love for Phaon.
[20] Ovid, Heroides 15 (Sappho to Phaon {Sappho Phaoni}) vv. 123-36, Latin text of Ehwald (1907) Teubner via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from that of James Hunter. In Heroides 15.135, “I’m ashamed to tell further, but all happens {ulteriora pudet narrare, sed omnia fiunt},” Ovid seems to be recasting Sappho, Fragment 137, vv. 1-2: “I want to tell you something, but shame prevents me {θέλω τί τ᾽ εἴπην, ἀλλά με κωλύει / αἴδως}.” Aristotle spuriously attributed these Sapphic verses to Alcaeus addressing Sappho. Alcaeus is thought to have loved Sappho. In short, Ovid apparently engaged with Sappho’s poems in a sophisticated and humorous way. On intertextuality with Sappho’s poems in relation to Ovid depicting Sappho’s orgasm, Hunter (2019) pp. 49-50.
Recognizing Ovid’s letter from Sappho to Phaon as “uniquely Sapphic,” Thorsen perceptively declared:
thanks to the newest Sappho we now know that Heroides 15 is among the most rare and most precious examples of Sappho’s Roman reception that we possess today.
Thorsen (2019) pp. 262-4. Ovid also refers to Sappho in The Art of Love {Ars amatoria} 3.329-32, The Remedies for Love {Remedia amoris} 757-62, and Tristia 2.361-6, 3.7.19-20.
[21] Nagy (2015a).
[22] Stehle (2016) p. 290. For Larichos as “feckless brother,” id. p. 291. In assuming that Sappho’s attitude toward her brother Larichos reflects Iliadic values, scholars make Sappho as anti-meninist as themselves:
I interpret the line ‘If he lifts his head and indeed ever becomes a man’ to be an insulting swipe. He is of age, but he will not take the responsibility to rescue Sappho and her interlocutor from whatever baruthumiai are oppressing them. Transpose the situation to epic terms, and we can imagine Eurykleia in the Odyssey privately telling Penelope what she thinks of the latter’s laggard twenty-something slacker son. Larichos, like Telemachos, has got to man-up. … As for the derogatory wish that Larichos ‘be a man’, we might compare the frequent injunction in the Iliad to ‘be men’ — as when Agamemnon roams about urging on his troops (Il.5.528; cf. 6.112, 8.174, 11.287, 15.487, 561)
Martin (2016) pp. 121, 122.
[23] Anne Carson’s translation of the final stanza of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem” in TLS (2014a). Obbink (2016a), p. 208, reprints Carson’s translation without any specific, substantive comment and even uses a phrase from it for the title of his scholarly article.
[24] Alpern et al. (2020).
[25] Logan (2016). Logan used the phrase “those idiots in the Iliad” in the penultimate stanza of his translation of Sappho’s “Brothers Poem.”
[26] Nagy (2016) §§166-72.
[images] (1) Sappho and Erinna in a garden at Mytilene. Painted by Simeon Solomon in 1864. Preserved as accession # T03063 at the Tate (London). Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Geras {Γῆρας}, ancient Greek god of old age. Painting on an Attic red-figure pelike (container, probably for wine). Made c. 480-470 BGC. Preserved as accession # G 234 (Doria Collection, 1882) in the Louvre Museum (Paris). Source image thanks to Jastrow (2006) and Wikimedia Commons. (3) Kleobis and Biton dying in the temple of Hera after carrying their mother Cydippe there. Painted by Adam Müller in 1830. Via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Sappho gazing at Alcaeus. Each holds a barbitos {βάρβιτος}, an ancient musical instrument similar to the lyre. Painting on an Attic red-figure kalathos (basket-shaped vase). Made c. 470 BGC and found in Akragas (Sicily). Preserved as accession # Inv. 2416 in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Berlin). Source image thanks to Bibi Saint-Pol and Wikipedia Commons. Here are a fuller image of Sappho on this kalathos and a fuller image of the whole vase. More images of the vase. On Attic images of Sappho, Yatromanolakis (2007) Chapter 2. (5) Sappho reading. Painting on an Attic red-figure hydria (water jar). Made c. 450 BGC and found in Kimissalla, Rhodes. Preserved as accession # 1885,1213.18 in the British Museum, which supplied the source image. Here’s another ancient Greek image of Sappho reading.
Campbell, David A., ed. and trans. 1982. Greek Lyric, Volume I: Sappho and Alcaeus. Loeb Classical Library 142. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Campbell, David A., ed and trans. 1988. Greek Lyric, Volume II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Loeb Classical Library 143. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carson, Anne. 2002. If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Carson, Anne. 2005. “The Beat Goes On.” The New York Review. October 20, 2005.
Castle, Terry. 1999. “Always the Bridesmaid.” London Review of Books. 21:19 (September 30, 1999).
Godley, A. D. 1920. Herodotus. London: William Heinemann.
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.
Papadimitropoulos, Loukas. 2016. “Sappho Fr. 16: Love and War.” Classical Journal 112 (2): 129–38.
Prins, Yopie, 1999. Victorian Sappho. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press. Reviews by Lisa George and Castle (1999).
Rayor, Diane J., trans., and André Lardinois, intro. and notes. 2023. Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works. Second edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Reviews of first edition (2014) by P. J. Finglass and by Siobhan Hodge.
Thorsen, Thea S. 2019. “The Newest Sappho (2016) and Ovid’s Heroides 15.” Chapter 13 (pp. 249-264) in Thorsen & Harrison (2019).
Thorsen, Thea S. and Robert Emil Berge. 2019. “Receiving Receptions Received: A New Collection of testimonia Sapphica c.600 BC – AD 1000.” Chapter 15 (pp. 289-402) in Thorsen & Harrison (2019).
Thorsen, Thea S. and Stephen Harrison, eds. 2019. Roman Receptions of Sappho. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Review by Antonio Ramírez de Verger.
TLS. 2014a. “The Brothers Poem by Sappho — Versions by Richard Janko, Anne Carson, Peter McDonald and A. E. Stallings.” TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (London), March 28, 2014, p. 22.
TLS. 2014b. “The Brothers Poem by Sappho — Three versions.” Translations by Alistair Elliot, Andrew McNeillie, Rachel Hadas. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement (London), May 2, 2014, p. 23. Here’s the translation by Rachel Hadas.
Men are prone to gyno-idolatry — to loving mortal women as if they were goddesses. How can men be equal to women if women are goddesses and men are merely mortals? Hey now, all you readers, put your lights on, put your lights on. Hey now, all you lovers, put your lights on, put your lights on. Hey now, all you thinkers, turn to classics, learn the ancients. So … imagine she’s a goddess. It’s easy if you try. No matter whether woke or hick, student or free, female or male or non-binary, immerse yourself in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. You be Anchises, and she, Aphrodite.
Muse, tell me the deeds of golden Aphrodite, the Cyprian, who arouses sweet desire in gods, who subdues the nations of mortals, and all birds flying in the sky, all beasts, all those nurtured on dry land and the seas. All these know deeds of the beautifully garlanded goddess from Cythera.
Aphrodite gazed upon the manly beauty of Anchises, who was herding cattle on the slopes of Mount Ida near Troy. By the design of Zeus, the nominal head god in charge of the cosmos, intense sexual desire for Anchises conquered Aphrodite’s mind and loins. More sophisticated than a high-status man who feels impelled to beg a shepherd girl for love, she returned to her home temple to arm herself to subdue Anchises. She had herself anointed with alluringly fragrant oil. She clothed herself in beautiful dress. She adorned herself with golden jewelry. Then she felt prepared to accost him.
In the name of Athena, Artemis, and Hestia, deliver us from gyno-idolatry! According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, only these three goddesses of ancient Greek myth could withstand the power of Aphrodite. No one today believes in Athena, Artemis, and Hestia. Men, however, still sometimes feel like Anchises encountering the goddess Aphrodite.
Like men throughout history, Anchises was sexually bestialized in his encounter with Aphrodite. Consider her approaching him:
She hurried toward Troy, leaving behind fragrant Cyprus. High among the clouds, she made her way most easily and arrived at Mount Ida, mother of wild beasts, famous for springs. She headed for Anchises’s homestead on the mountain. Following her came gray wolves, fierce-looking lions fawning about her, bears also, and swift leopards insatiable in devouring deer. Delighted in her mind and loins in seeing them, she put desire in their hearts. So all the beasts went in pairs to sleep together in shaded vales. She meanwhile came to the finely constructed huts and found left behind, alone at the homestead, Anchises, the hero possessing the beauty of the gods.
The wild beasts that meet Aphrodite on Mount Ida prefigure the amorous man Anchises. Although he might possess divine beauty and construct huts skillfully, the man in a sexual engagement tends to be associated with beasts. The woman, in contrast, flies high among the clouds. Meninism is the radical notion that men are human beings, even in their sexuality human like women.
Men scarcely distinguish between beautiful young women and goddesses. So it was for Anchises seeing Aphrodite:
Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus, stood before him, in form and size transformed to resemble an unwed young woman, so that when his eyes saw her, he would not fear. As Anchises observed her, he felt awe at her beauty, her stature, her splendid clothes, and her robe that blazed more brightly than fire. She had twisted brooches and shiny earrings in the shape of flowers, and around her tender neck were hanging the most beautiful necklaces. Her robe was beautiful, golden, crafted with every type of design. Like the moon it glowed around her soft breasts, a marvel to see.
Goddesses typically are taller than humans and have domineering appearances. According to ancient common sense now usually disregarded, an unwed woman hoping to marry should at least pretend to be demure rather than domineering. Nonetheless, even if she isn’t the daughter of the chief god Zeus, a beautiful woman is enough to inspire awe in men. Upon seeing this beautiful woman, Anchises regarded her as a goddess. He offered to build for her an altar on a prominent peak and honor her with sacrifices there every year. He begged her for blessings, not including a sexual relationship. As least he didn’t seek to become her serf.
Aphrodite lied to Anchises. She declared:
Anchises, most glorious of earth-born men, I am no goddess. Why do you liken me to the female immortals? I am just a mortal. The mother that birthed me is a woman. My father is Otreus, whose name is famed. Perhaps you have heard of him.
Aphrodite was actually the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Dione, or perhaps she arose from the castrated genitals of the god Uranus. She further claimed that the god Hermes had abducted her and led her to Anchises:
Hermes said that, in the bed of Anchises, I would be your duly wedded wife, that I would give you splendid children.
Aphrodite begged Anchises to marry her. Was she really interested in marriage, or did she just want to have sex with him?
Most men would delight at the thought of marrying a woman who looks like a goddess, or relish even just having sex with her. Yet men, inferior in guile to women and subject to harsh penal regulation, must be wary. Anchises thus said to Aphrodite:
If you are mortal, and if a woman gave you birth, and if Otreus, whose name is famed, is your father, as you say, and if the will of the immortal conductor Hermes has brought you here, and if you are to be called my wife for all days to come, then it is impossible for any god or any mortal to hold me back from joining in love with you right here, right now — not even if the one who shoots from afar, Apollo himself, aims from his silver bow arrows that bring me misery. O Lady who looks like the divine beings, once I have climbed into your bed, I would willingly go down to Hades’s palace below.
Anchises showed men’s ardent love for women beyond trappings of status and riches. Underscoring the physical risks that gender disproportionately imposes on men, Anchises had as bed-coverings the skins of bears and lions that he had killed in the mountains. Killing bears and lions, and sometimes even spiders, is dangerous work. Such work should not be imposed exclusively on men, nor is such work indicative of men’s sexuality. Anchises loved Aphrodite with the natural love that many men feel for women:
When they went upon the finely crafted bed, first he removed the jewelry shining on her body’s surface — the twisted brooches and the shiny, flower-shaped earrings. Then he undid her waistband and her splendid clothes — slipped them off and put them on a silver-studded chair. Anchises by divine will and destiny then lay with the immortal goddess, he a mortal not knowingly clearly.
Men with their loving gaze delight in seeing nothing more than a woman’s face and her naked body. Anchises knew Aphrodite intimately. He loved her as an equal — as a human being like himself. He didn’t know that he was merely a plaything in a power game among divine beings.
The next morning, Aphrodite asserted her superiority relative to Anchises. Distancing herself from him, she arose while he still slept.[3] She put on her splendid clothes and re-assumed her form as a goddess. Her head reached to the ceiling of the bedroom. That emphasizes her superior status as an immortal woman relative to a merely mortal man. Instead of warmly appreciating Anchises’s sexual work, she rudely woke him and taunted him:
Rise up, son of Dardanos! Why do you sleep without waking? See now if I seem as what you knew when you first set eyes on me.
Demanding that he rise up is no way to get sex in the morning from a beloved man. Aphrodite suggested Anchises’s impotence while simultaneously promoting it. In short, she acted like a female supremacist emasculating men.
Anchises awoke. He was afraid. He turned his eyes away from her and hid his face in his cloak. He felt that he was in the presence of a superior being. He begged her:
When I first set eyes on you, goddess, I knew you were a deity, but you didn’t tell the truth. Touching your knees, I now beg you by Zeus the aegis-bearer, don’t let me become sexually impotent and live so among humans. Please, take pity! I know that a man’s life ceases to have vital vigor if he lies in bed with an immortal goddess.
He prioritized what she said, which wasn’t true, over what he knew. After these self-abasing words, Anchises is silent for the rest of the hymn. The next hundred hymn verses are all descriptions of Aphrodite’s behavior and words she speaks. Men in intimate relation with women too often have no voice amid their internalized, socially constructed gender inferiority.
Anchises believed that men’s sexuality cannot withstand a sexual relationship with a goddess. Given the power differential between a goddess and a mortal man, vigorous sex with a goddess could drain a man of all his life force if he lacked seminal abundance. Before Odysseus had sex with the goddess Circe, he worried that “when you have me stripped, you would make me vile and unmanly {ὄφρα με γυμνωθέντα κακὸν καὶ ἀνήνορα θήῃς}.”[6] Men serving the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele were castrated. Mortal men who have sex with goddesses must be confident that they are equal to goddesses in their sexuality.
Mortal men of course lack the immortality of goddesses. Aphrodite described two Trojan men made immortal for their divine lovers. One beloved man made immortal was the young, beautiful Ganymede. Zeus abducted him to be his cupbearer and boy-toy like Earinus was to the Roman Emperor Domitian. Ganymede remained perpetually a young man subservient to Zeus. That’s not a full, manly life.
Another beloved man made immortal was the young, beautiful Tithonus. The dawn goddess Eos abducted him to be her sexual servant. She procured for Tithonus immortality, but forget to secure for him agelessness. She loved his physical beauty while it lasted:
But when strands of gray hair started growing from his beautiful head and noble chin, Lady Eos stopped coming to his bed. Instead, keeping him in her palace, she nourished him with grain and ambrosia and gave him beautiful clothes. When hateful old age was pressing fully hard on him and he couldn’t move his limbs, much less lift them up, in her heart she decided the best way to be indeed this: she put him in a room and closed the shining doors upon him. From there his voice endlessly pours out, but he has no vigor at all, none like he formerly had in his supple limbs.
Words honoring a man might make his glory immortal. Nonetheless, they are still merely words. Words are much less than a man in his full physical being.[7]
Aphrodite implicitly recognized that the statuses of the immortal Ganymede and the immortal Tithonus were inferior to her beloved mortal man Anchises. She didn’t seek for Anchises to be made immortal, or to be made immortal and ageless. As Zeus’s daughter, Aphrodite could get whatever she desired from her father, including immortality and agelessness for Anchises. Aphrodite, however, desired nothing other than the mortal man Anchises. She conceived with him their son Aeneas. According to later literature, she married Anchises and had at least one more child with him.[8]
Aphrodite understood that her ardent love for Anchises undermined female superiority and men’s worshiping of goddesses. She stated that she felt “terrible grief {αἰνὸν ἄχος}” that she fell in love with him. She grieved that her desire for him overcame her sense of superiority as a goddess to a mortal man. Speaking to him, she rationalized her love for him:
Of all mortal men, the closest to the gods in both appearance and build are always those from your family line.
Although closest to the gods, Anchises’s appearance and build nonetheless were those of a mortal man. For mortal men, sexual relations with women go beyond physical pleasure, relational intrigue, and social status-jockeying. A mortal man provides his seminal blessing to a woman or goddess with awareness of his impending death. Because sexual reproduction is the only means for mortal men to extend their flesh beyond death, mortal men have higher stakes in sex than do gods. Women and goddesses sense mortal men’s higher sexual stakes — their more ardent earnestness — as an aspect of their appearance and build. No prayer to Zeus could preserve Anchises’s appearance and build while making him immortal. Mortality is an aspect of men’s beauty in sexual relations.[9]
Aphrodite grieved that she as a female divinity could no longer claim to be superior to male divinities. She complained to Anchises:
I’ll suffer huge disgrace among the male immortal gods, disgrace forever, without end, all because of you. They used to fear my intrigues and wiles by which I would get all the male immortals coupling with mortal women. My power of mind used to subdue them all. But now my mouth can never again boast about this among the male immortals. I’ve been led far astray, terribly and unspeakably. I’ve gone out of my mind — gotten a child under my waistband after bedding with a mortal man.
Working in support of women’s dominance, modern classicists have refused to appreciate these verses’ distinctive gendering.[10] The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite signals the end to female supremacy among divinities. Female supremacy must end among mortals as well.
To maintain her ability to subdue male divinities, Aphrodite sought to suppress the truth that she had sex with Anchises. Displaying her understanding that she controls Zeus and the other gods, she threatened Anchises:
And if any mortal asks you who was the mother that got your beloved son under her waistband, be of mind to tell him as I command you. Say that he is the child of a nymph with eyes like flower-buds, one of them whom live on this beautiful, forest-covered mountain. But if you speak out and boast with foolish heart that you united in love with richly garlanded Aphrodite, Zeus in his anger will strike you with a smoking thunderbolt. So now, I have told you everything. Take note of it mindfully and refrain from mentioning me. Fear the wrath of the gods.
Hard-hearted are you, you gods, and quick to envy above all others. You begrudge goddesses that they would mate with men openly if one would take a mortal man as her own bedfellow. When rosy-fingered Eos took to herself Orion, long you gods that live at ease begrudged her, until in Οrtygia chaste Artemis of the golden throne assailed Orion with her gentle shafts and killed him. When fair-haired Demeter yielded to her passion, with Iason she lay in love in the thrice-plowed fallow land. Not long being without knowledge of that affair, Zeus with his bright thunderbolt struck Iason and killed him.
Whether it’s the goddess Eos and the mortal man Orion, or the goddess Demeter and the mortal man Iason, the one punished for an affair is the man. For revealing his sexual relationship with Aphrodite, Anchises potentially faced punishment like that inflicted upon Iason.
In a heroic step forward for gender equality, Anchises nonetheless revealed the affair of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. The existence of this hymn implicitly testifies that Anchises defied Aphrodite’s threat and overcame the power of obscured female rule. Ancient Greek wisdom taught men their inferiority to goddesses:
Let no man fly to heaven, nor attempt to marry Aphrodite.
Anchises defied this ancient counsel that men should remain in their inferior status. He established that men can have sex with a goddess and still retain vital vigor.
Ancient Greek divinities honored Anchises. Helenus, a prophet of the god Apollo, addressed Anchises with deep respect:
You, worthy in marriage to the most superior, Venus herself, Anchises, beloved of the gods, twice they saved you from the ruins of Troy.
Anchises’s son Aeneas addressed him as “the best father {pater optimus}.” To his son Aeneas, Anchises was “solace in every anxiety and misfortune {omnis curae casusque levamen}.” Anchises led the Trojans fleeing from the destruction of Troy, prayed to the gods on the Trojans’ behalf, and helped his desperate son as best as he could. All men and women need vigorous, vital fathers like Anchises.
Sexual desire, which need not be a means by which goddesses dominate men, is vitally important to the cosmos. The great Roman thinker Lucretius lacked sufficient appreciation for men’s personal sexual work of banging and bodily penetration. He nonetheless honored Aphrodite, whom the Romans knew as Venus:
Mother of Aeneas and his progeny, delight of humans and deities, Venus the nurturing, you under the wheeling signs of heaven permeate the ship-plowed sea, the fruit-bearing earth, since through you all of the kind that breathe life are conceived and rise up to look upon the sun’s light.
{ Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animantum concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis }[15]
Lucretius represents Venus as female, but as an abstraction rather than a person superior to male persons. In ancient thought, the sun with its joy-bringing light was both a male god and a male abstraction. Lucretius’s female Venus orients all life toward the male sun: “to look upon the sun’s light {visit … limina solis}.” Yet Venus herself has fundamental importance. She is necessary for life to encounter the male light: “without you nothing comes forth into the divine borders of light {nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras / exoritur}.” Lucretius’s hymn to Venus shows the harmony and fruitfulness that comes from overturning Aphrodite’s female supremacy.
[1] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (Homeric Hymns 5, To Aphrodite {Εἲς Ἀφροδίτην}), vv. 1-6, ancient Greek text from West (2003), my English translation, benefiting from those of Nagy (2018), Rayor (2004), West (2003), Crudden (2001), Shelmerdine (1995), and Evelyn-White (1914).
The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, probably the oldest of the long Homeric hymns, is closest to the Iliad and the Odyssey in form and diction. West (2003) p. 14. West dates it to “the last third of the seventh century” BGC. Id. p. 16. Shelmerdine (1995) has many helpful notes on this poem for the non-specialist reader. Two important scholarly commentaries on it are Olson (2012) and Faulkner (2008a).
Zeus, the nominal head god in the charge of the cosmos, would become any beast and do anything in pursuit of his extra-marital amorous passions.
Subsequent quotes from the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite are similarly sourced. Those quotes above are from vv. 66-77 (She hurried toward Troy…), 81-90 (Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus…), 108-11 (Anchises, most glorious of earth-born men…), 126-7 (Hermes said that, in the bed of Anchises…), 145-54 (If you are mortal…), 161-7 (When they went up upon the finely crafted bed…), 177-9 (Rise up, son of Dardanos!…), 185-90 (When I first set eyes on you, goddess…), 228-38 (But when strands of gray hair…), 200-1 (Of all mortal men, the closest to the gods…), 247-55 (I’ll suffer huge disgrace…), 281-90 (And if any mortal asks you…).
[2] The name Anchises {Ἀγχίσης} could be interpreted as a conflation of the first syllable of “near to the gods {ἀγχίθεος}” and the first syllable of “equal to the gods {ἰσόθεος}.” Nagy (2018), note 19. Anchises was nearly equal to the gods, but nonetheless a mortal man. Cf. Psalm 8:3-5.
[4] Displaying once again philologists’ penis problem, translations tend to obscure the contextual meaning of Anchises becoming “feeble {ἀμενηνός}”:
The situation in which Anchises finds himself in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is one of a number of situations in which μένος could be lost. Its loss might manifest itself in a variety of ways: sexual activity implies sexual manifestation. When Anchises asks Aphrodite not to leave him living ἀμενηνός among men, therefore, he is voicing a fear of lifelong impotence.
Giacomelli (1980) p. 16.
In the ancient Greek festival Adonia {Ἀδώνια}, women mourned the death of Adonis, another mortal man who coupled in love with Aphrodite. The ancient gardens of Adonis, in which lettuce quickly withered, plausibly reflected concern about men becoming impotent. For a poor-dears interpretation of women celebrating the Adonia, Reed (1995).
From the perspective of an Anchises – of any man whom Aphrodite and eros deceive – the inside of the woman, her truth, remains impenetrable even to intercourse. In its desire to tame, the phallus is blinded.
Id. p. 16. Men with their penises don’t desire to “tame” women. Even when deceived by eros, a man can know a woman through conversation and sexual intercourse with her. Eros nor more blinds the penis than it blinds the vagina.
Modern scholars have interpreted men’s gender burdens so as to bestialize men’s sexuality. Men historically have been responsible for hunting, a dangerous but important task. The burden of that task has come to include sexual disparagement of men:
Anchises’ masculinity is also expressed in the description of his bedspread, which consists of the “skins of bears and deep-roaring lions / which he himself had killed in the high mountains” (158-159). Hunting involves the domination of nature in a manner analogous to the sexual domination of a female and is a culturally widespread feature of male coming-of-age rituals.
Schein (2012) p. 301, n. 21. Hunting involves killing animals. Men having sex with women involves mutual pleasure. Schein’s absurd analogy seems merely to signal support for dominant, oppressive gender ideology.
[6] Homer (attributed), Odyssey, 10.341, Greek text of Murray (1919) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Fagles (1996), and Lombardo (2000). See similarly Odyssey 10.301. Here are relevant textual notes.
[7] Aphrodite surely appreciated men’s physical bodies. Hesiod in his Theogony interpreted a traditional epithet of Aphrodite, “smile-loving {φιλομμειδής},” as “genital-loving”:
Hesiod interprets the first half of the name Ἀφροδίτη as though it were derived from ἀφρός (foam), and the second half of the traditional epithet φιλομμειδής (“smile-loving,” here translated as “genial” for the sake of the pun) as though it were derived from μῆδος (genitals).
Most (2018) p. 19, note 10, commenting on Theogony, v. 200: “and genital-loving because she came forth from the genitals {ἠδὲ φιλομμειδέα, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη}” (my English translation).
Aphrodite’s mythic exempla (paradeigmata) show immortalized men living lives inferior to those of Anchises. Aphrodite seems to be attempting to convince Anchises that he shouldn’t wish to become an immortal. Cf. Maravela (2018), which interprets the paradeigmata to be implicitly about Zeus. The issue, however, is not about Zeus’s superiority to Aphrodite, but about Aphrodite’s superiority to Zeus.
[8] On Aphrodite conceiving Aeneas with Anchises, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 198-9, 255-79. That conception is also recounted in Iliad 2.819-21, 5.311-3 and Hesiod, Theogony, vv. 1008-10.
Other than the hymnist’s coda, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite ends with Aphrodite flying off into the windy sky. This departure doesn’t mean that Aphrodite abandoned Anchises forever. Cf. Maravela (2014) p. 25. Aphrodite promised to return to Anchises on the fifth anniversary of Aeneas’s birth. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite v. 277. Aeneid 3.475 suggests that Aphrodite married Anchises. In Iliad 5.311-3, Aphrodite intervenes to save her beloved adult son Aeneas. Moreover, Apollodorus recorded Aphrodite and Anchises having another child, Lyrus:
Assaracus had by his wife Hieromneme, daughter of Simoeis, a son Capys, who had by his wife Themiste, daughter of Ilus, a son Anchises, whom Aphrodite met in love’s dalliance, and to whom she bore Aeneas and Lyrus, who died childless.
[9] Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 200-1, are subsequently echoed in Aphrodite’s lament about Anchises:
If only you could stay the way you are in appearance and form, living and being called my husband, then grief would not envelop me with my cunning mind.
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, vv. 241-3. On the epic phrases “in appearance and form {εἶδός τε δέμας τε}” and “in appearance and build {εἶδός τε φυήν τε},” Shakeshaft (2019) pp. 15-6. Homeric beauty is closely associated with affects, not all of which are attractive. In the Iliad, Achilles preparing to kill Hector appears “godlike, terrifying and beautiful.” Id. p. 21. On the idea of beauty more generally, Konstan (2015).
Scholars have struggled to understand why Aphrodite doesn’t seek to have Anchises be made immortal and ageless. One scholar wondered about Aphrodite:
And why does she not at least mention to Anchises the possibility of appealing to Zeus, if only to insist upon its futility? It is a question of the rhetoric of silence.
Bergren (1989) p. 35. Bergren then offered an intricate explanation that obscures women’s rule and Aphrodite’s desire for a mortal man with his mortal sexual distinctiveness:
Without the goddess’s silence in the face of her own stated wish, without her failure to ask for what her own story implies she can and must ask for, Zeus cannot demonstrate absolute sovereignty over the goddess’s desire. She must be allowed to voice her wish so that we can know what she wants.
Id. What did Anchises want other than not to be made impotent? The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is also silent about what he wants. Bergren’s silence about Aphrodite’s desire for a mortal men seems necessary to uphold academic devaluation of mortal men.
Scholars have pondered at length Aphrodite’s silence about what she wants, but not Anchises’s silence about what he wants. For a review and analysis of what she wants, but not what he wants, Olson (2012) pp. 243-4. Scholars have similarly failed to consider, with respect to men’s desires, why Odysseus didn’t stay in Phaeacia and marry the lovely and kind-hearted princess Nausicaa.
[10] Scholars assume that Aphrodite will never again prompt mating between immortals and mortals. Bergren (1989) p. 35; Clay (1989) pp. 166-70, 192-3. Schein declared:
By telling how she is forced to stop making male gods mate with mortal women and goddesses with mortal men, the Hymn tells one small part of the story of Zeus’ increasing authority and of the ordering of the cosmos as we mortals know it.
Schein (2012) p. 297. Aphrodite, however, spoke only of limits on her power to induce (immortal) gods to couple with (mortal) women. She said nothing about limits on her power to induce goddesses to couple with (mortal) men. Careful analysis suggests that perhaps gods didn’t stop coupling with mortal women: “the case for the poem narrating the end of unions between gods and mortals has at least been overstated.” Faulkner (2008b) p. 16. In referring to unions between gods and mortals, Faulkner seems to include both gods coupling with mortal women and goddesses coupling with mortal men. His argument largely addresses gods coupling with mortal women. The case for couplings continuing between goddesses and mortal men is even stronger.
[11] As if willfully ignorant of the massive gender protrusion in persons authoritatively punished (incarcerated) today, a scholar naively asked:
But can Anchises be allowed to tell the world that he fathered the child of a goddess with impunity? Aphrodite’s specific threat appears to allude to the tradition that Zeus did indeed punish Anchises for the very union he caused. Anchises does not suffer sterility or death for his love-making with the goddess, but neither does he escape entirely unscathed. Why would Zeus punish the man for what he made the goddess make the man do?
If there are never again to be liaisons between mortals and immortals, if Aphrodite has been stopped from collapsing the cosmos of Zeus into her world of mixture, there is no need to validate the prohibition against divine / human intercourse with punishment of the mortal male. In his blasting of Anchises, Zeus himself proves that he must keep this prohibition alive and thus that the power of Aphrodite has not been completely subordinated to his order of meaningful distractions.
Bergren (1989) p. 40. Aphrodite isn’t actually subordinate to Zeus, nor is Juno to Jove, nor are women to men. Moreover, the Hymn to Aphrodite doesn’t establish that “there are never again to be liaisons between mortals and immortals.” See previous note. The Hymn to Aphrodite clearly shows that men are punished unjustly. Its reception shows that scholars are extraordinarily reluctant to acknowledge the reality that men are punished unjustly.
[12] Homer (attributed), Odyssey 5.118-28, Greek text of Murray (1919) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Fagles (1996), and Lombardo (2000).
[13] Alcman, Fragments 1.16-17 (from 1 P. Louvr. E 3320), ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Campbell (1988) pp. 362-3.
[14] Virgil, Aeneid 3.475-6, Latin text of Greenough (1900), my English translation, benefiting from those of Fagles (2006) and Fairclough & Gould (1999). The subsequent two short quotes above are from Aeneid 3.710 (the best father) and 3.709 (solace in every anxiety and misfortune). Scholars have failed to recognize the importance of Anchises in the Aeneid for reception of the Hymn to Aphrodite. See, e.g. Faulkner, Vergados & Schwab (2016). Anchises’s heroic step forward for gender equality has been marginalized and trivialized under modern oppressive myth.
Some ancient literature indicates that Zeus struck Anchises with a thunderbolt. The thunderbolt made Anchises lame or blind, but didn’t kill him. Schein (2012) p. 296, n. 5 and associated text. The Aeneid provides an alternate, more critically important tradition about Anchises’s fate.
[15] Lucretius, On the nature of things {De rerum natura} 1.1-5, Latin text from Rouse & Smith (2002), my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Esolen (1995). The subsequent two short quotes above are from De rerum natura 1.5 (to look upon the sun’s light) and 1.22-3 (without you nothing comes forth into the divine borders of light).
The Latin verb concelebro (from the textual concelebras) I’ve translated as “permeate.” Other translations of it are “fill with yourself” in Rouse & Smith (2002) and “rouse” in Esolen (1995). This Latin word seems to have been troublesome in English translations historically. Matulis (2022).
Lucretius apparently adapted his hymn to Venus from a lost hymn to Aphrodite that was the proem to Empedocles’s Physics. Lucretius’s hymn to Venus was also influenced by the Stoic Cleanthes’s Hymn to Zeus. Campbell (2014). On the influence of Empedocles’s hymn to Aphrodite on Lucretius’s hymn to Venus, Sedley (1998), chapters 1-2.
[images] (1) A goddess (a Muse) eyes Apollo with her female gaze in a painting on a covered drinking cup (kylix) made about 460 BGC in Athens, Greece. This kylix is preserved as accession # 00.356 in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston. Credit: Henry Lillie Pierce Fund. Source image from the MFA Boston’s website. More information about this kylix. (2) Aphrodite approaching Anchises, as suggested by verses from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Epipsychidion. Painted by William Blake Richmond about 1890. Preserved as accession # WAG 3082 in the National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery. Image via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Statuette of Aphrodite rising from the sea (Anadyomene). Made in the eastern Mediterranean between 100 BGC and 70 GC. Preserved as accession # 1982.286 in the MFA Boston. Credit: Classical Department Exchange Fund. Source image from MFA Boston website. MFA Boston has a rich collection of Aphrodite artifacts. Aphrodite Anadyomene inspired Luxorius’s fine tribute to Saint Marina. (4) Anchises and Aphrodite with their baby Aeneas. Marble panel on the south building of Aphrodisias’s Sebasteion. Made c. 20-60 GC. Preserved in the Aphrodisias Museum (near Geyre, Turkey). Source image thanks to Dosseman and Wikimedia Commons. More information on the sculptures at Aphrodisias. (5) Cypriote terracotta figurine of Aphrodite-Astarte holding her breasts. Made 650–550 BGC. Preserved as accession # 72.157 in the MFA Boston. Source image from MFA Boston.
References:
Bergren, Ann. 1989. “The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Tradition and Rhetoric, Praise and Blame.” Classical Antiquity. 8(1): 1–41. Slightly revised as chapter 7 in Bergren (2008).
Campbell, David A., ed and trans. 1988. Anacreon. Greek Lyric, Volume II: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Loeb Classical Library 143. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Campbell, Gordon. 2014. “Lucretius, Empedocles, and Cleanthes.” Pp. 26-60 in Myrto Garani and David Konstan, eds. The Philosophizing Muse: the Influence of Greek Philosophy on Roman Poetry. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Book review by Francesca Romana Berno.
Clay, Jenny Strauss. 1989. The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Review by Christian Werner.
Crudden, Michael, trans. 2001. The Homeric Hymns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Review by Stephen Evans.
Esolen, Anthony M., trans. 1995. Lucretius. On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Fagles, Robert, trans. 1996. Homer. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.
Fagles, Robert, trans. 2006. Virgil. The Aeneid. New York: Viking.
Fairclough, H. Rushton, revised by G. P. Goold. 1999. Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1-6. Loeb Classical Library 63. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Faulkner. Andrew. 2008a. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Review by Laura Carrara.
Faulkner, Andrew. 2008b. “The Legacy of Aphrodite: Anchises’ Offspring in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” The American Journal of Philology. 129(1): 1–18.
Faulkner, Andrew, Athanassios Vergados, and Andreas Schwab, eds. 2016. The Reception of the Homeric Hymns. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Table of Contents.
Giacomelli, Anne. 1980. “Aphrodite and After.” Phoenix. 34(1): 1–19.
Konstan, David. 2015. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lombardo, Stanley, trans. 2000. Homer. Odyssey. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Most of Lombardo’s translation is in the The Essential Odyssey (2007).
Maravela, Anastasia. 2014. “Tongue-tied Aphrodite: the paradeigmata in the Hymn to Aphrodite.” Pp. 15-27 in Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Anastasia Maravela and Mathilde Skoie, eds. Paradeigmata: Studies in Honour of Øivind Andersen. Papers and Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens Series 4, Volume 2, Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens. Alternate source.
Most, Glenn W., ed. and trans. 2018. Hesiod. Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia. Loeb Classical Library 57. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Murray, A. T., ed. and trans., revised by George E. Dimock. 1919. Homer. Odyssey. Volume I: Books 1-12. Loeb Classical Library 105. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Olson, S. Douglas. 2012. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Related Texts: Text, Translation and Commentary. Texte und Kommentare 39. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Review by Adrian Kelly.
Rouse, W. H. D., and Martin Ferguson Smith, eds. and trans. 2002. Lucretius. De rerum natura. Loeb Classical Library 181. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Schein, Seth L. 2012. “Divine and Human in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” Pp. 295-312 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 Méditerranée.
Women artists in the ancient world didn’t engage only with women. The eminent first-century Roman scholar Pliny the Elder described outstanding women artists learning from men, painting men, and teaching men:
Timarete, the daughter of Micon, painted the very ancient panel picture of Artemis at Ephesus. Irene, daughter and student of the painter Cratinus, painted a young woman at Eleusis. Irene also painted Calypso, Theodorus the Juggler, and Alcisthenes the Dancer. Aristarete, the daughter and student of Nearchus, painted Asclepius. When Marcus Varro was a young man, Iaia of Cyzicus, who remained unmarried, painted in Rome pictures with a brush and also drew with an engraver on ivory. She made mainly portraits of women, as well as a large picture on wood of an old woman at Neapolis. She also made a self-portrait with a mirror. No one else had a quicker hand in painting. Her artistic skill was such that she obtained much higher prices than did the period’s most celebrated portrait painters, that is Sopolis and Dionysius, whose pictures fill the galleries. A certain Olympias also painted. The only fact recorded about her is that Autobulus was her student.
{ Timarete, Miconis filia, Dianam, quae in tabula Ephesi est antiquissimae picturae; Irene, Cratini pictoris filia et discipula, puellam, quae est Eleusine, Calypso et praestigiatorem Theodorum, Alcisthenen saltatorem; Aristarete, Nearchi filia et discipula, Aesculapium. Iaia Cyzicena, perpetua virgo, M. Varronis iuventa Romae et penicillo pinxit et cestro in ebore imagines mulierum maxime et Neapoli anum in grandi tabula, suam quoque imaginem ad speculum. nec ullius velocior in pictura manus fuit, artis vero tantum, ut multum manipretiis antecederet celeberrimos eadem aetate imaginum pictores Sopolim et Dionysium, quorum tabulae pinacothecas inplent. pinxit et quaedam Olympias, de qua hoc solum memoratur, discipulum eius fuisse Autobulum. }[1]
Theodorus the Juggler and Alcisthenes the Dancer probably were celebrities. Asclepius was a god of medicine. Women artists’ paintings of these men probably didn’t express personal love for them. Women artists, like other professionals, understandably made paintings that would sell well.
Artists, however, aren’t necessarily confined to their financial interests. In ancient Corinth, a woman now commonly known as Kora of Sicyon designed the first bas-relief portrait in love for her boyfriend. Pliny explained:
Butades of Sicyon, a potter at Corinth, was the first to invent shaping likenesses from potter’s clay. This work was for his daughter, who was captivated in love for a young man. When the young man was leaving to travel abroad, she inscribed in outline on a wall the shadow of his face from a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a bas-relief. He set it forth with rest of his pottery to harden by fire. This bas-relief reportedly was kept in the Shrine of the Nymphs until Mummius destroyed Corinth.
{ Fingere ex argilla similitudines Butades Sicyonius figulus primus invenit Corinthi filiae opera, quae capta amore iuventis, abeunte illo peregre, umbram ex facie eius ad lucernam in pariete lineis circumscripsit, quibus pater eius inpressa argilla typum fecit et cum ceteris fictilibus induratum igni proposuit, eumque servatum in Nymphaeo, donec Mummius Corinthum everterit, tradunt. }[2]
This women of ancient Corinth has been credited with originating painting.[3] More importantly, this great woman artist pioneered a new way of expressing love for men. She shattered shackles of gynocentrism to expand forms of art.
Expressing love for men has always been a daring endeavor. Consider, for example, the eminent Roman landscape painter Studius:
Examples of his paintings are noble villas accessed across marshes, tottering men with women on their shoulders, trembling with them being carried according to a promise, and many other paintings of such liveliness and very flippant wit.
{ sunt in eius exemplaribus nobiles palustri accessu villae, succollatis sponsione mulieribus labantes, trepidis quae feruntur, plurimae praeterea tales argutiae facetissimi salis. }[4]
Once the Assyrian king was drinking with my son and another of the king’s companions. The other was Gadatas, the son of a man much more powerful than I. The king had Gadatas seized and castrated, only because, as some say, the king’s concubine had praised his companion. She said that Gadatas was handsome and that the woman who was going to be his wife would be happy. But as the king himself now says, it was because his companion had made a sexual advance to his concubine. So now Gadatas is a eunuch, but he is a ruler, for his father died.
By the seventeenth century, the young Corinthian woman’s portrait of her boyfriend became understood as a sincere act of love at the origin of painting. The god of love Cupid guides this woman’s hand in Charles Le Brun and François Chauveau’s engraving printed in Paris in 1668. In Joachim von Sandrart’s engraving printed in Nuremberg in 1683, Cupid hovers above the woman’s head and apparently instructs her. Alexander Runciman’s painting “The Origin of Painting,” made in Scotland about 1772, has Cupid guiding the woman’s hand in tracing her boyfriend’s figure on the wall. To ensure that viewers don’t miss the meaning, on the wall is engraved the text, “behold the Greek woman-inventor, who has love as her master {amore magistro inventrix ecce Graia}.”[6] The English writer William Hayley in 1781 celebrated love, the Corinthian woman, and her sympathetic father:
Oh! LOVE, it was thy glory to impart Its infant being to this magic art! Inspir’d by thee, the soft Corinthian maid Her graceful lover’s sleeping form portray’d: Her boding heart his near departure knew, Yet long’d to keep his image in her view: Pleas’d she beheld the steady shadow fall, By the clear lamp upon the even wall: The line she trac’d with fond precision true, And, drawing, doated on the form she drew; Nor, as she glow’d with no forbidden fire, Conceal’d the simple picture from her sire: His kindred fancy, still to nature just, Copied her line, and form’d the mimic bust.[7]
Between 1770 and 1820, art depicting the young Corinthian woman engraving her boyfriend’s shadow became a common motif broadly described as “the origin of painting.”[8] A woman expressing love for her boyfriend in ancient Corinth thus eventually acquired great significance in art history.
With the development of universal education and well-developed markets for symbolic works, the legacy of the ancient Corinthian woman artist expanded in different ways. Clara Erskine Clement, a member of a prominent and wealthy family in New England, crowned her career as a widely read art historian with her book, Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D., published in 1904. Her book included a lengthy entry on the ancient Corinthian woman artist:
Kora or Callirhoë. It is a well-authenticated fact that in the Greek city of Sicyonia, about the middle of the seventh century before Christ, there lived the first woman artist of whom we have a reliable account.
Her story has been often told, and runs in this wise: Kora, or Callirhoë was much admired by the young men of Sicyonia for her grace and beauty, of which they caught but fleeting glimpses through her veil when they met her in the flower-market. By reason of Kora’s attraction the studio of her father, Dibutades, was frequented by many young Greeks, who watched for a sight of his daughter, while they praised his models in clay.
At length one of these youths begged the modeller to receive him as an apprentice, and, his request being granted, he became the daily companion of both Kora and her father. As the apprentice was skilled in letters, it soon came about that he was the teacher and ere long the lover of the charming maiden, who was duly betrothed to him.
The time for the apprentice to leave his master came all too soon. As he sat with Kora the evening before his departure, she was seized by an ardent wish for a portrait of her lover, and, with a coal from the brazier, she traced upon the wall the outline of the face so dear to her. This likeness her father instantly recognized, and, hastening to bring his clay, he filled in the sketch and thus produced the first portrait in bas-relief! It is a charming thought that from the inspiration of a pure affection so beautiful an art originated, and doubtless Kora’s influence contributed much to the artistic fame which her husband later achieved in Corinth.[9]
Although the only surviving ancient evidence about the ancient Corinthian woman artist essentially consists only of the one passage in Pliny, Clara Erskine Clement documented many additional claims about this woman artist. The Corinthian woman became widely known as Kora (apparently from the ancient Greek for “young woman {κόρη}”), or less commonly, Callirhoë (apparently from the ancient Greek for “beautiful stream {καλλίρρους}”).[10] Her grace and beauty, her modesty, her association with flowers, her many men-admirers, and the amorous young man becoming her teacher and then her husband all reflect ideas of love and gender prevalent among the northeastern American elite late in the nineteenth century.
As ideas of love and gender changed significantly across the twentieth century, so too did representations of the ancient Corinthian woman. Judy Chicago’s iconic Dinner Party, composed from 1974 to 1979, includes the name “Kora” on its Heritage Floor. Associated text explains:
In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (C.E. 77) and other ancient sources, the potter Dibutades of Sicyon and his daughter Kora (also called Callirhoe) are credited with the invention of modeling in relief in the seventh century B.C.E. The story goes that Dibutades had a young apprentice with whom Kora fell in love. On the night that her lover was to complete his apprenticeship and leave, she used a piece of coal to trace his portrait on the wall. Her father saw the drawing and filled it in with clay, thus creating the first relief, which reputedly remained on the wall for 200 years.[11]
The Dinner Party apparently is indebted to Clara Erskine Clement or a closely related source for particular details: the name Callirhoe, the young apprentice preparing to leave after completing his apprenticeship, and the piece of coal. The gendered context, however, differs significantly. The Dinner Party features a dinner table setting for 39 women of noteworthy achievement, with no men. Its Heritage Floor shows the names of 999 women of noteworthy achievement, with no men. Judy Chicago explained that the women’s names on the Heritage Floor convey:
how many women had struggled into prominence or been able to make their ideas known — sometimes in the face of overwhelming obstacles — only (like the women on the table) to have their hard-earned achievements marginalized or erased.[12]
This iconic art of gender inclusion is the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Surely not merely opium for the masses, it influentially signals the health and vitality of public discourse today.
The ancient Corinthian woman who lovingly traced her boyfriend’s shadow exemplifies the artistic woman leadership that can make dying societies fruitful and young. Expressions of women’s love for men too often have been suppressed or marginalized. Not surprisingly, men’s love for women dominates the historical record of expressing heterosexual love. That can change. With appropriate support and encouragement, women can achieve gender equality in love expression and eternally advance human welfare.
[1] Pliny the Elder, Natural History {Naturalis Historia} 35.147-8 (section 40), Latin text from Rackham (1952), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Following Linderski (2003) pp. 83-7, I’ve amended Calypso, senem to Calypso, where the later is equivalent to the rare accusative variant Calypsonem. Calpyso thus indicates a painting of the goddess Calypso, not a woman painter.
[2] Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35.151 (section 43), sourced as previously. Mummius destroyed Corinth in 146 BGC. Pliny went on to credit Butades with inventing a common form of ancient architectural ornamentation:
Butades invented adding red earth to the material or modeling out of red chalk. He first placed masks as fronts to the outer gutter-tiles on roofs. Initially he called these low-reliefs prostypa. Later he likewise made high-relief ectypa. Ornaments on the pediments of temples originated from these. Because of Butades, these are called plastae.
{ Butadis inventum est rubricam addere aut ex rubra creta fingere, primusque personas tegularum extremis imbricibus inposuit, quae inter initia prostypa vocavit; postea idem ectypa fecit. hinc et fastigia templorum orta. propter hunc plastae appellati. }
Naturalis Historia 35.152 (section 43), Latin text and English translation sourced as previously.
Probably between 177 and 180 GC, Athenagoras of Athens apparently drew upon Pliny’s account of the history of art. Describing the making of idols, Athenagoras declared:
Images were not in use before the discovery of molding, painting, and sculpture. Then came Saurius of Samos, Crato of Sicyon, Cleanthes of Corinth, and the Corinthian maid. Tracing out shadows was discovered by Saurius, who drew the outline of a horse standing in the sun. Painting was discovered by Crato, who colored in the outlines of the shadows of a man and woman on a whitened tablet. Relief modeling was discovered by the Corinthian maid. She fell in love with someone and traced the outline of his shadow on the wall as he slept. Then her father, a potter, delighted with so precise a likeness, made a relief of the outline and filled it with clay. The relief is preserved to this very day in Corinth.
Athenagoras of Athens, Embassy for the Christians {Πρεσβεία περί Χριστιανών / Legatio Pro Christianis} 17.3, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Schoedel (1972). Athenagoras’s Legatio is also called his Apology or Plea for the Christians. On Athenagoras, Williams (2020) Chapter 9.
After Pliny wrote, an entrepreneur in Corinth perhaps put forward a claimed relief of the Corinthian woman. In particular, Pliny’s Naturalis Historia may have generated new fame for her. Athenagoras, who was not highly knowledgeable about painting, perhaps referred to this new Corinthian tourist attraction. Besides Pliny and Athenagoras, no other pre-medieval reference to the pioneering Corinthian woman artist is known.
[3] In a recent book, a well-known art critic declared: “The Roman historian Pliny the Elder … even asserted that the art of painting originated with a woman.” Higgie (2021) p. 3. Pliny himself was hesitant to address the origin of painting and expressed uncertainty about it:
The question as to the origin of the art of painting is uncertain and it does not belong to the plan of this work. The Egyptians declare that it was invented among themselves six thousand years ago before it passed over into Greece — which is clearly an idle assertion. As to the Greeks, some of them say it was discovered at Sicyon, others in Corinth, but all agree that it began with tracing an outline round a man’s shadow and consequently that pictures were originally done in this way, but the second stage when a more elaborate method had been invented was done in a single color and called monochrome, a method still in use at the present day. Line-drawing was invented by the Egyptian Philocles or by the Corinthian Cleanthes, but it was first practiced by the Corinthian Aridices and the Sicyonian Telephanes — these were at that stage not using any color, yet already adding lines here and there to the interior of the outlines
{ De picturae initiis incerta nec instituti operis quaestio est. Aegyptii sex milibus annorum aput ipsos inventam, priusquam in Graeciam transiret, adfirmant, vana praedicatione, ut palam est; Graeci autem alii Sicyone, alii aput Corinthios repertam, omnes umbra hominis lineis circumducta, itaque primam talem, secundam singulis coloribus et monochromaton dictam, postquam operosior inventa erat, duratque talis etiam nunc. inventam liniarem a Philocle Aegyptio vel Cleanthe Corinthio primi exercuere Aridices Corinthius et Telephanes Sicyonius, sine ullo etiamnum hi colore, iam tamen spargentes linias intus. }
Naturalis Historia 35.15-6 (section 5), Latin text and English translation from Rackham (1952). Elsewhere, Pliny states that painting was invented:
by Egyptians, and in Greece by Euchir the kinsman of Daedalus according to Aristotle, but according to Theophrastus by Polygnotus of Athens.
{ Aegypti et in Graecia Euchir Daedali cognatus ut Aristoteli placet, ut Theophrasto Polygnotus Atheniensis. }
Naturalis Historia 7.205 (section 56), Latin text and English translation from id. For classical sources concerning the history of painting in Greece, Reinach (1921) Chapter 3, and Overbeck (1868) pp. 67-9.
[4] Pliny, Naturalis Historia 35.117 (section 37), Latin text from Rackham (1952), my English translation, benefiting from that of id and Ling (1977) p. 1.
[5] Xenophon of Athens, Cyropaedia / The Education of Cyrus {Κύρου παιδεία} 5.2.28, ancient Greek text from Miller (1914), English translation (modified for ease of readability) from Ambler (2001).
[6] On love at the origin of painting and the woman artist of Corinth, Muecke (1999). Charles Le Brun and François Chauveau’s engraving on the origin of painting is shown above. Joachim von Sandrart’s engraving of the origin of painting in the Latin edition of his Teutsche Academie, printed in Nuremberg in 1683, is freely available on Sandrart.net. For a color image of Alexander Runciman’s painting of the origin of painting, Cannady (2006) Figure 22. For Runciman’s preliminary wash and a more detailed monochrome image, MacMillan (1973) Plates 88 and 105. The text engraved on the wall is to the viewer’s left of the boyfriend’s head. For the transcription of the Latin text, Rosenblum (1957) p. 282.
In today’s scholarship, a very important issue is iconography relating to the mythic goddess of love Cupid:
These paintings demonstrate extremes in the representation of the maid of Corinth as an artist: in the one she is merely the chaste cypher of Cupid’s impetus to art; in the other she is the female artist, herself eroticized for a masculine gaze and impelled by her own urges, whose creative act in tracing the shadow is itself a mere echo of her parallel gesture of physical desire. … The popularity of the story of the Corinthian maid is registered through this proliferation of images representing the origin of art, but no single interpretation of the female artist dominated. The maid sometimes appears to be actively motivated by human desire alone, sometimes to be the passive recipient of Cupid’s active direction; the scene is sometimes highly intimate, with only the girl and her lover present, sometimes public, though still within the domestic sphere, with other human figures in attendance. This flexibility in imagining the origin of art equally suggests flexibility in imagining the female artist. The images allow for a range of imagined autonomy, of posited relationships between the woman as artist and her muse, and the woman as desiring lover and her object.
[7] Hayley (1778) Epistle I, vv. 124-137. In note iv to verse 126, Hayley accurate described the ancient source texts. Some manuscripts of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia have the potter-father’s name as Dibutades of Sicyon. Butades of Sicyon is now generally regarded as a better reading. On editions of Hayley’s poem, Rosenblum (1957) p. 284, note 41, which doesn’t mention the 1778 edition or the 1779 edition.
The brief reference to Pliny’s account of the Corinthian woman artist in Hayley (1778) inspired the English author Amelia Opie to write a poem entitled “Epistle supposed to be Addressed by Eudora, The Maid of Corinth, to Her Lover Philemon, Informing him of her having traced his Shadow on the Wall while he was sleeping, the Night before his Departure: Together with the joyful Consequences of this Action.” King (2004) p. 630, and p. 648, n. 3. For a critical edition of the poem, King & Pierce (2009) pp. 63-73 (poem 55). Opie’s Corinthian woman artist, whom she calls Eudora, is understand in today’s scholarship as today’s ideal woman:
In her interpretation, Opie depicts a woman of extraordinary creative power, who is both domestic and political, uniting private elements of erotic desire and domestic satisfaction with public issues of the civic function of art. … Like Eudora’s drawing and sculpture, Opie’s “Maid of Corinth” can be seen as offering an aesthetic venue for the exploration and articulation of female desire and as suggesting the power of art to transform potentially socially transgressive private acts to public artistic benefit.
[8] Rosenblum (1957) pp. 281-2. Affirmed by Levitine (1958) p. 330. A dog, symbolizing loyality, occasionally was included in the compositions. Rosenblum (1957) p. 284, calling the dog Fido.
About 1784, Gilles-Louis Chrétien pioneered a mechanized means for quickly creating multiple silhouette portraits of a sitter. Such machines and their products became known as a physionotraces / physiognotraces. At least thirty profile portraitists using physiognotraces were active in New England between 1790 and 1810. The operator of one physiognotrace reportedly made 8,000 silhouettes about 1802 in the U.S. Bellion (1999). Men were among the operators of physiognotraces.
In myth, women have continued to dominate the origin of painting. The prominent art gallery operator Almine Rech, who runs galleries in Brussels, London, New York, and Shanghai, recounted the myth for her 2023 exhibit “Feeling of Light”:
The most famous myth about the birth of painting is probably the one told by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History c. 75 AD: the story of Dibutade’s daughter, the young woman who drew the outline of her lover’s shadow in charcoal on the wall of her house before he left for a long journey, capturing his silhouette to give his presence the illusion of eternity. This woman, whose first name Pliny omits to mention {sic}, was the first painter in history. Kora of Sicyon — her actual name {sic} — created painting as an antidote to absence and disappearance, and invented an art whose necessity has been continually affirmed ever since.
It is to this woman that we owe the invention of representation, the form we give to the impossibility of forgetting. Kora of Sicyon thus made it possible to offer an ultimate attention, a final light to an image before it disappears, this famous “feeling of light” of which the poet and painter Etel Adnan speaks.
[9] Waters (1904) pp. 200-1. Featuring Kora in the first page of her introduction, Waters underscored the authenticity of the story of Kora:
We have some knowledge of women artists in ancient days. Few stories of that time are so authentic as that of Kora, who made the design for the first bas-relief, in the city of Sicyonia, in the seventh century B.C.
Id. p. xi. Waters provided an account of “Kora or Callirhoë” with a few additional colorful details in Waters (1887), Part II (Sculpture), pp. 20-1.
Clara Erskine was born in 1834 in privileged circumstances among the New England elite. Clara was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where her father, a businessman, had temporarily brought his family. When Clara was two, her family settled in Milford, Massachusetts. Milford was the hometown of Clara’s mother, Harriet Bethiah Erskine. Clara’s family spent much time among the New England elite in Boston and Cambridge. Her family hired private tutors to educate her. She apparently learned to read Greek and Latin, and had speaking, reading, and writing knowledge of German, Italian, and French. Von Lintel (2013) pp. 41, including p. 41, n. 9.
Clara Erskine married the wealthy Boston businessman James Hazen Clement in 1852. She had five children, traveled extensively, including to many countries of Europe, India, China, and Japan. She also developed a career as a professional writer. She became a “talented, respected, and prolific art historian,” and her books achieved “widespread popularity … across American.” Von Lintel (2013) pp. 63, 50. She was a strong, independent professional:
Waters was bargaining with publishers for higher royalties and better contracts, and was willing to drop one firm to establish a relationship with another house where she felt her books would be more effectively “pushed” or marketed. She grew to take pride in the fact that her publishers “knew that [she was] in a position to be independent,” and that she was well versed in the workings of the book business. She even voiced her opinions about the difficulties of working with publishers, whom she called “a cranky and trying race.” Lacking institutional support from a university or museum, Waters drew upon her business acumen and strong personality to promote her position as a published art historian.
Id. p. 45, footnotes omitted. Clara Erskine’s husband James Hazen Clement died in 1881. In 1882 she married the wealthy Edwin Forbes Waters. He was both an author (see, e.g. Waters (1878)) and the owner of the Boston Daily Advertiser.
[10] The Corinthian woman is called “Cora of Sicyon” in Francisco Pecheco’s The Art of Painting {El Arte de la Pintura} (1649). King (2004) p. 651, n. 29. That name, which isn’t in Pliny, seems to be a mistranslation of Athenagoras’s account, which is probably a Greek adaptation of Pliny. See “Corinthian young woman {κόρη Κορῐνθῐ́ᾱ}” translated as “Core” in Athenagoras’s Πρεσβεία περί Χριστιανών 17.3 in Humphreys (1714) p. 173. In the mid-nineteenth century, B. P. Pratten translated that phrase as “Corinthian damsel” and noted “Or, Koré. It is doubtful whether or not this should be regarded as a proper name.” See text in the Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II. Crehan (1956) and Schoedel (1972) both translate that phrase as “Corinthian maid.” The name Callirhoë for the Corinthian woman is a relatively rare tradition with no known ancient textual basis.
The Corinthian woman has also been commonly called Dibutade, Dibutades, and Dibutadis. See, e.g. the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.) teaching resource on the “Greco-Roman myth of Dibutades.” Dibutade and associated names are inferior textual readings of her father’s name in Pliny. Based on surviving manuscript evidence, the best reading in now judged to be Butades. The corresponding name of the Corinthian woman’s father in Athenagoras is Boutades. The modern myth of Dibutades, which is far more extensive than the Greco-Roman myth, surely should be of interest to teachers and students.
Whether Butades of Sicyon and his daughter were actual historical figures in Corinth isn’t clear. The time in which Butades of Sicyon and his daughter reportedly lived in Corinth isn’t stated or known. Minoan frescoes in Crete, which include painted, outlined figures, date to the first half of the second millennium BGC. On the history of Greek painting, Rumpf (1947).
[12] Quote attributed to Judy Chicago in the documentation for the Dinner Party’s Heritage Floor on the website for Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. This grand narrative is now pervasive. For example, it’s featured in the publisher’s blurb for a woman’s book on women’s self-portraits:
Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have — and, of course, continue to do so — often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval.
In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery.
Higgie (2021), publisher’s blurb. Clara Erskine Clement Waters probably would regard this 2021 woman’s book on women’s self-portraits as parochial, juvenile, and ridiculous. For a similar example of current hackneyed rhetoric, McCormack (2021). AI systems now seem to be mass-producing this sort of work across the Internet.
The popularity from 1770 to 1820 of paintings of the Corithinian woman now known as Kora originating the art of painting might be related to gendered sentiment. A leading scholar of this legend stated:
To explain the popularity of this legend (a popularity which even extended to textiles), one should mention still another tendency of the period, expecially in France. This was the prominent role of women painters around 1800, witness such notable examples as Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée-Liebrun, Adélaide Labille-Guiard, Constance Mayer, and David’s now famous pupil, Constance Charpentier. It was only natural that the many women painters of an era which so often disguised itself in antique clothing should be proud that Greek legend held the inventor of their art to be a woman, a fact which is rarely overlooked in the early pages of subsequent histories of women artists
Rosenblum (1957) p. 288. The now vast body of work on gender and art seems not to have explored this point.
[images] (1) The Corinthian woman artist at work. Excerpt from a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. Originally titled “The Origin of Painting,” now commonly titled “The Corinthian Maid.” Wright painted it between 1782 and 1784 for the eminent English potter and businessman Josiah Wedgwood. Preserved as accession # 1983.1.46 in the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Paul Mellon Collection, with the image rightly contributed to the public domain. (2) The Corinthian woman artist at work in a black and brown chalk drawing by Vincenzo Camuccini. He made this drawing, titled “The Invention of Drawing,” about 1816-1820. Preserved as accession # 46283r in the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). Purchased in 2014 with the support of the Friends of the Print Room Trust, National Gallery of Canada Foundation, in honour of Mimi Cazort, Curator of Prints and Drawings from 1970 to 1997. (3) The Corinthian woman artist at work in a painting by David Allan. Allan made this painting, titled “The Origin of Painting” / “The Maid of Corinth” in 1775. Preserved as accession # NG 612 in the National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by Mrs Byres of Tonley 1875. Here’s a print based on the painting. (4) The Corinthian woman artist tracing her boyfriend’s silhouette in an engraving in Charles Perrault’s book The Painting {La peinture} (1668). The composition is based on a painting by Charles Le Brun, and the engraving is by François Chauveau. Image from Muecke (1999) p. 298. Perrault’s La peinture is a poem in praise of Charles Le Brun, the director of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture {Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture} from 1655 until his death in 1690. La peinture concludes with a story of the origin of painting. It tells of a young shepherdess on the island of Paphos tracing the silhouette of her beloved man with Love’s guidance. An engraving by Pieter Schenk in 1693 duplicates that of Charles Le Brun and François Chauveau. Schenk’s engraving was printed in The Cabinet of Fine Arts or Collection of Prints, engraved after the Paintings of a Ceiling where the Fine Arts are Represented {Le Cabinet des Beaux Arts ou Recueil d’Estampes, gravées d’apres les Tableaux d’un ceiling ou les Beaux Arts sont representés / De Schatkamer der Vrye Konsten of Verzameling van verscheidene Printen, gegraveerd na eenige Zolderstukken, in welke deze Konsten vertoond worden}. It’s preserved as accession # BI-1904-39 in the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Image on Wikimedia Commons. (5) The Corinthian woman artist tracing her boyfriend’s silhouette. Excerpt from painting that Joseph-Benoit Suvée painted in 1791. This painting is known by the title “The invention of the Art of Drawing.” Preserved as accession # 0000.GRO0132.I in the Groeningemuseum (Bruges, Belgium). Source image via Wikimedia Commons. Additional resources: collection of art similarly depicting the origin of painting, another curated collection, and a list of works. (6) Minoan bull-leaping fresco from the Knossos Palace, Crete. Made between 1600 and 1450 BGC. Preserved in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Crete. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Ambler, Wayne. 2001. Xenophon of Athens. The Education of Cyrus. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Levitine, George. 1958. ‘Addenda to Robert Rosenblum’s “The Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism.”‘ The Art Bulletin. 40(4): 329–31.
Linderski, J. 2003. “The Paintress Calypso and Other Painters in Pliny.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik. 145: 83–96.
Ling, Roger. 1977. “Studius and the Beginnings of Roman Landscape Painting.” The Journal of Roman Studies 67: 1–16.
MacMillan, John Duncan. 1973. The Earlier Career of Alexander Runciman and the Influences that Shaped His Style. Ph. D. Thesis, University of Edinburgh.
McCormack, Catherine. 2021. Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies. First American ed. New York NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Miller, Walter, ed. and trans. 1914. Cyropaedia, Volume II: Books 5-8. Loeb Classical Library 52. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Muecke, Frances. 1999. ‘”Taught by Love”: The Origin of Painting Again.’ The Art Bulletin. 81(2): 297–302.
Williams, Daniel H. 2020. Defending and Defining the Faith: An Introduction to Early Christian Apologetic Literature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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