Constraints of desire ; the anthropology of sex and gender in ancient Greece

141 Pages·1990·15.7 MB·English

by  Winkler, John j.

The
V ,
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF SEX AND
SENDER IN ANCIENT GREECE
SOHN I WINK HR
Sec hovv they grow. Vornan watcrs phalloi. Attic rcd-fignrc pciihe in rhc British Museum, ES 19.
(CouM'sy ofthe British Museum.)
ROUTLEDGE
N ew York · Loxdox
Published In 1990 by Contents
Routledge
An Imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hail, Inc.
29 West 35 Street
New York, NY 10001
Published In Great Britain by
Routledge Preface
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE Abbreviations
Copyright © 1990 by Routledge, Chapman and Hail, ine.
Introducrion
Priııted in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized Part One: Andres
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopyîng and recording, or in any Information storage or
retrieval System, without permission in writing front the publishers. Chapter 1. Unnatural Acts; Erotic Protocols in
Library of Congress Cataloging in PuHieatiotı Data Artcmidoros’ Drearn Analysis.
Winkler, John J. Chapter 2. Laying Down the Law; The Oversight of Men’s
The constraints of desire: the anthropology of sex and geader in
Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens.
ancient Greece / John j. Winkler.
p, cm. — (New ancient world series)
Chapter 3. The Constraints of Desire; Erotic Magical Spells.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-415-90122-7; ISBN 0-415-90123-5 (pbk.)
1. Sex customs—Greece—History. 2. Women—Greece—Soda!
Interlude: Reading Against the Grain
conditions. I. Title. II. Series.
DF93.W56 1989
392.6'0938—dc20
Chapter 4. The Education of Chloe: Hiddeti Injurics of Sex
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Winkler, John j. 1943-
Constraints of desire ; the anthropology of sex and Part Two: Gunaikes
gender in ancient Greece.
1. Greece. Man. Sexuality ancient period.
Sociological perspectives Chapter 5. Penelope’s Cunning and Homer’s.
I. Title
306.7Ό938 Chapter 6. Double Consdousness in Sappho’s Lyncs.
ISBN 0-415-90122-7 Chapter 7. The Laughter of the Oppressed: Demeter and
0-415-90123-5 (Pb) the Gardens of Adonis.
vi / Contents
Appendix One. Translation of Artemidoros 1.78-80. 210
Appendix Two.P husis and Natura Mcaning “Genitals.” 217
Notes. 221 Preface
Bibliography. 237
Index of Passages Discussed. 255
General Index. 261
This book is dedicated to the two people who made it happen: to my
sister, Cathy Winkler, and to David M. Halperin. It was Catfay Winkler’s
questions and insights froni her work as a feminist anthropologist that
shaped much of the inquiry undertaken here, and she has been a source of
constant Inspiration and help. Her wide-ranging knowledge of the relevant
bibliography on women’s issues, in particular, has been invaluable to me,
and her acadernic activism sets an example that I would like to be able to
live up to. David Halperin first pointed out to me that a number of social
and literary essays I had been writing over the years wert* unified by a
common methodology, style, and set of interests—unified enough to be a
book. That, as well as his own extremely stimulating work on related areas,
has deeply influenced the shape and quality of this project. He has marked
almost every page with crisper and more elegant formulations and has
probed the substance of the arguments to make them more profound. I owe
both Cathy and David an unrcpayable debt for their love, support, and
generosity.
Many others have read or listened to these pieces in one form or another.
Helene P. Foley heads the list, as will be obvious from my reliance on her
work in several essays. Fm sure I have absorbed advice from sonie people
whose names I have now forgotten: they should add themselves to this list
of those I can remember, and whom I here thank for their advice and
criticism: Marilyn P. Arthur, Kenneth j, Dover, Page duBois, N. Gregson
Davis, Mark W. Edwards, Christopher A. Faraone, Mark Golden, Michael
Herzfeld, Michael Jameson, Ludwig Koenen, Sheila Murnaghan, Dirk Ob-
bink, Josiah Ober, Amy Richlin, Nancy Felson-Rubin, Daniel Seiden, Eva
Stehle, Susan Stephens, Barry Strauss, and Froma I. Zeitlin.
An earlier Version of Chapter Six on Sappho was published in Helene P.
Foley, ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York 1981). Abridged
versions of three other chapters will soon appear in other publications:
Chapter Two in David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin,
eds., Beßre Sexuaiity (Princeton 1989), Chapter Three in Christopher A.
vii
viiı / Preface
Faraone and Dirk Obbink, eds., Magika Hiera (New York, forthcoming),
and Chapter Four in Brenda Silver and Lynn Higgins, eds., Rape and Repre­
sentation (New York, forthcoming).
I have used a modified social Science System of reference. Modern authors
are referred to by last name alone; full citation of the work in question will
Abbreviations
be found in the bibliography; first Initials and date of publication are added
when necessary to distinguish between same-named authors or multiple
publications by the same author. Anecdotal or illustrative notes are placed
at the foot of the page; the more technical and bibliographical notes are
placed at the end. I wish to thank Tasha C. Spencer for compiling the
Indices.
This work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Books.
Learned Societies, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Marilyn Yalom
Research Fund of Stanford’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Berlin 1862-)
Half of the author’s proceeds from the sale of this book will be given to DT = A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris 1904).
the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. FGrHist = Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker, ed. Felix Jacoby.
(Leiden).
FVS = Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, cd. Hermann Diels and Walther
Kranz, ed. 14, 3 vols. (Dublin and Zürich).
IG = Inscriptiones Graecae.
PCG = Poetae Comici Graeci, ed. Colin Austin and R. Kassel. (Berlin
1983- ).
PGM = Papyri Graecae Magicae, ed. Karl Preisendanz, 2nd ed. by A.
Henrichs, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1973—4).
RE = Paulys Real-Encyclopaedie, 24 vols., ed. Georg Wissowa. (Stuttgart
1894-1963).
RGW = Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten.
Journals.
AG = L’Antiquité Classique.
AE = American Ethnologist.
AJP = American Journal of Philology.
AM = Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Athenische
Abteilung.
BGH = Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique.
CA = Classical Antiquity.
CI = Critical Inquiry.
CP = Classical Philology.
CQ = Classical Quarterly.
CR = Classical Review.
CSCA = California Studies in Classical Antiquity.
IX
X / Abbreviations
G&R = Greece and Rome.
The
GRBS = Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies.
HSCP = Harvard Studies in Classical Philology.
ÇONSTRA1NTS
HTR = Harvard Theological Review.
JEA = Journal ofEgyptian Archaeology.
JHS = Journal of Hellenic Studies.
PCPS = Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society.
ISfelRE
QUCC = Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Glassica.
RhM = Rheinisches Museum.
RM = Mitteilungen des deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Römische
Abteilung.
SEG = Supplementär» Epigmphicum Graecum.
TAPA = Transactions of the American Philological Association.
ZPE = Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
Iııtroduction
What first attracted me—and many others, I am sure—to the study of
ancient Greece was the glamorous combination of exciting myths and beauti-
ful bodies. But on closer inspection the Greece that was presented to me in
grade school and high school turns out to have been in pari a modern cultural
fantasy developed maiiily by German scholars such as Winckelmann frorn
the eighteenth Century on and in pari a fantasy projected by the ancient
Greeks themselves. It should have been obvious to me that no real place
could have existed where all the men had the bodies of young athletes and
all history was so relentlessly noble, tragic, and exciting, but it only dawned
on me how constructed was this myth-making when I first visited Greece
in 1982. There was, to be sure, youthful beauty aplenty but I also observed
numerous instances of behavior that reminded me of scenes from ancient
literatüre.
For instance, the first Gay Pride Day demonstration in Athens, faeld in the
Zappeion Gardens on June 26, was a surprisingly silent gathering which
after a short time spontaneously broke up into discussion groups between
the demonstrators and the numerous by-standers who were taking their
evening stroll. The conversations reminded me of the formal of a Platonic
dialogue: one person took a stand to defend a proposition and was interro-
gated by a principal challenger, while a circle oflisteners followed the contest
and occasionally commented. Beyond the form of their discourse, I began
to sense other qualities in the discussants’ behavior, particularly a kind of
controlled aggression. This is hard to describe but, impressionistically, I
would say that all the Speakers seemed frank, ironic, guarded, and threaten-
ing in ways that 1 would not expect between strangers.
In the ensuing months I had many similar experiences of the different
cultural rules that governed self-presentation in Athens and the Peloponnese.
I was fortunate to have, as do most anthropologists, a special Informant,
Michael, whom I met at that Gay Pride demonstration and whose family
also became my friends. But I want to stress that it was not any one person.
or event that unlocked for me the classical Greek past; rather I filled my
1
2 / Constraınts of Desire Introductioıı / 3
mind with scenes ofthe presem and they have över the years affected nıy sense concerns and politics into texts and artefacts removed from their social
ofhow to read ancient texts—how to evaluate their intentions, .misdireetions, context. We cannot, of course, do without contemporary cotıcerns: they
and unspoken premises. I hold no particular Brief for the continuity of ancient generate our questions and energize our work. But both feminist and gay
and modem Greece (in this I follow Herzfeld 1982), but nıy experiences in seholarship are now reaching a point wfaere past societies can be studied not
modern Greece have cozied up to my reading of ancient Greek texts, nestled for their value in making a political point about the present but for their
next to them, and set up a fıeld around them that has altered my sense of the sheer and surprising difference. As contemporary anthropology more and
possible meanings of ancient literatüre and life. more incorporates a historical dimension into its analysis, so new techniques
Since sex and gender are the focus of these essays, let me teli one more are being developed that treat the distant past as “real” society, radier than
story. One afternoon, a cousin of Michael’s, a pretty woman in her early as some kind of exotic Never-Never-Land.
twenties, showed up at his apartment. She phoned her father to say that she Unlike modern anthropologists, working as participant observers, we
was spending the afternoon with Michael, and then she abruptly left. As the cannot interview ancient Greek men or women to discover their categories
door closed, Michael made a ferocious gesture: touching his fmger tips and concerns. But the techniques of social and cultural anthropology, parti-
together into a ¥ he made a slashing gesture towards his own groin. He cularly as practiced by feminists, can elicit from those texts and pictures a
explained to me that she was sleeping with a married man and that her richer and more compiex understanding of sex and gender. “Recent work
father was extremely strict, hence the deception. What struck me was the in the anthropology of women does what cultural anthropologists do best—
unresolved interseetion of several fanıiliar themes: the father vigilant about namely, it heads füll tilt at culture-bound assumptions in our own thinking.
his daughter’s chastity, the wonian successfully concealing her affair, the Since the formative years of the discipline, anthropologists have effectively
obvious contempt Michael feit for her promiscuity, and his unwillingness challenged a long list of pre-concetved notions about human nature and
to take responsıbility for the family violence that would ensue if he told her humarı institutions. Mystifıcations ofrace, religion, and nationalism, among
father the truth. The woman herseif was at the çenter of several force-fıelds others have been targets. One reason, perhaps, that feministli and anthropo­
of male violence and passion: dutiful daughter to her father, compliant logy have taken well to eaclı other is that feminist anthropologists have
mistress to her lover, and manipülatör of a cousin who despised her. She condnued this tradition by tackling hitherto unquestioned assumptions
may not have been typical in playing such a dangerous game, but her case about sex and gender” (Atkinson 238).
shows both the serious constraınts under which wornen lahor and one The successes of this ongoing project have been strotıger in. analyzing the
woman’s success in juggling with dynamite. cultural constructions of gender than those of sex. After the groundbreaking
Turning to ancient Greece, the forms of erotic experience there have long work of Pomeroy and the material collections ofLefkowitz and Fant, several
been a contested area in the Interpretation of our cultural traditions. One important anthologies of essays have established women’s studies as one of
strain of modern thinking has used the vases and luxury literatüre of ancient the most exciting growth points in the fıeld of Classics (Foley 1981b, Cam~
Greece to generate an image ofhedonistic liberation—satyrs chasing nymphs eron and Kuhrt, Peradotto and Sullivan, Skinner 1987a), but only very
över the greensward—often supported by a Nietzschean attack on the blight- recently has serious attention been turned to sex. Sex its elf in the social
ing effect of Christian morality.1 More recently, some feminist seholarship Sciences is generally treated as an unanalyzable given, the province ofbiology
has challenged the innocence of that picture, trying to look at it from the or perhaps psychology, but not subject to cultural investigation. As Rosalind
nymph’s point of view. Considered as a set of rules and practices that Coward puts it, “Why is the study of sexuality when it appears in the social
enforced men’s sexual control över women, the ancient Greek norms have Sciences frequently subsumed under studies of mstitutionalised (social) forms
been attacked as politically oppressive—one more chapter iti patriarchy’s of sexual regulation, like marriage? Why is there no theory of forms of
ongoing war against women (Harrison 1912, Keuls, Lerner, Cantarella). domination and inequality in the dynamic of sexual relations? Why is there
This disagreement about the nature of ancient Greek sex is similar to another xio understanding of the construction of sexual identity or consideration of
longstanding debate about gender: were ancient Greek (which usually means the distribution of power and Status which this identity might entail?” (4).
classical Athenian) women treated as little better than chattel, or did they For ancient Greece the questions about sex itself were very excitingiy
hold an honored, respected, and protected place in society? posed by Michel Foucauk, one of the great thinkers of our age, who
Arguments on both those issues—ancient sex and ancient gender—suffer died of AIDS in 1984. His series title, The History of Sexuality, sounds at
from seleetive uses of evidence, from framing the questions themselves too first rather grand and definitive, but that is a false Impression. 1 once
narrowly, and even more from the methodology of reading contemporary heard htm refuse to sign a copy of one of his books on the gromids that
4 / Constraints of Desire Introduction / 5
one should oniy sign works of art and that his books were to be taken (Congresswomen), in which women take cfaarge of public affairs, was by that
as working papers. As a series of working papers, Foucault’s arguments very fact marked as not a real public world but a fantasy.
have been taken up by a number of Classicists, whose essays have beeil On the otlier hand, androcentrism is an utterly conventional arrangement,
colkcted in Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin. The key Foucauldian thesis not a natural order—an arrangement limited in many ways to the public
is that “sexuality” is a distinctively modern construction, a new nineteenth- realm of business between competing households. Androcentrism func-
and twentieth-century way of speaking about die seif as organized around tioned in some ways like Native American sign language: it allowed public
well-defined (and therefore catalogable) sexual characters and desires. It commumcation between competing households, potential etiemies, enabling
is impossible therefore to have, say, a history of homosexuality, since them to negotiate on terms mutually understood and with continual refer­
neither it nor heterosexuality nor even sexuality are timeless facts of ence to the possibilities of aggression and defense. As such the Convention
hum.an nature (Halperin 1989). Since “sexuality” in this sense is a recent of androcentrism is a limited language of men in certain conditions; it does
invention, Foucault’s first volüme, setting out this thesis about the not adequately represent the eritire social world, as we would like to describe
nineteenth-century’s obsession with speaking about sex, had no reference it, but rather serves to mark off a restricted area of importance (that of public
to the ancient world. The next volumes, however, reflect his growing transactions) and to speak of it in absolute terms as if it were the whole.
curiosity about how individuals came to inspect their own States of desire A social protocol such as androcentrism is therefore somewhat paradoxi-
as if their desire were a central problem, and about the Greco-Roman cal: its meaning is both never seriously questioned and yet never taken
context in which problems of desire had not yet been seen as problems literally. Mediterranean androcentrism is both an unquestioned tmtli and a
of the seif. The introduction to Halperin, Winkler, and Zeitlin sets out universal fib: each man acknowledges its force, nodding sagely and silently,
many of the critical themes in this new study of ancient sexual behavior, with his fingers crossed behind his back. We must learn to read our texts
above alî the need to suspend our sexual categories (including the frorn several angles, seeing in them both honest pretensions and cover-
importance and centrality of sex) when studying another society, particu- ups, just as informants try to manipulate an anthropological observer by
larly a pre-tnodem one. presenting themselves in the best light. Instead of snipping opinions from
The essays in the present volüme, composed over the last eight years, their context, like the famous remark in the speech Against Neaira, and
take up some of these issues, using methods and observations inspired treating them as objective dogma, we should learn to see the various kinds
by my casual observations of modern Greek behavior and also from my of Spin and misdirection that qualify the meaning of such pronouncements
reading in Contemporary social and cultural anthropology, especially of in their full social context, the unspoken stage directions that are understood
the Mediterranean area. It is clear that posing our questions in terms of but not voiced by the social actor. Not infrequently we can detect in them
the “status” of women is inadequate, and that our knowledge of women’s a simultaneous deiiial and recognition of ideologically inconvenient social
lives is largely refracted through the gnomic utterances of men. The first
realities.
priority, therefore, must be to recover the usually unspoken premises or In studying the limitations of prescriptive Statements concerning sex and
protocols governing the force of public utterances, and it appears that gender, women occupy a central and crucial role. Most of our surviving
much of men’s talk about women and about themselves was a calculated documents simply cannot be taken at face value when they speak of women.
bluff. The study of women in the ancient world cannot proceed very far As long as the discussion is centered on gunaikes, dtizen-wives, there is a
unless it is accompanied by an equally penetrating examination of men large interference in the data from male Speakers’ sense of social propriety.
and how they constructed their practices of sex and gender-identity. even to mention the name of a citizen-wifë in the Company of men. was a
Hence this sequence of essays begins with three on men (Andres) before shame and an insult, implying an intrusion into another man’s symbolic
goiiig on to the lives and representations of women (Gunaikes). privacy (Schaps 1977, Sommerstein, Gould 1980: 45, Bremmer, Skinner
By calling the fundamental conventions “protocols” I mean to avoid 1987b). The Speaker of Demosthenes 57 has been attacked because his mother
two false emphases. On the one hand, like the preliminary defmitions and was a wet nurse. He responds, “You will find many citizen women who at *
agreements within which the terms of a specific treaty are hammered out,
fundamental conventions such as androcentrism in ancient Greece would
* “We have courtessns for our pieasure, concubines for the daily service of our bodies, and
not generally have been regarded as negotiable items. A public world that
wives for bearing legitimate children and keeping faithful watch over the goods in our houses”
was not androcentric, such as that imagined in Aristophanes’ Ekklèsiazomai
([Dem.] 59. 122).
6 / Constraints of Desire Introduction / 7
the present time are wet nurses, and if you like I will actually (fern) mcntion the master gives commands in his own interest and the slaves must obey (S.
them by name” (Dem. 57.35). Clark 184, Smith). The relation of the father to his children is like that of a
The busyness of metic (non-citizen) women, by contrast, can be discussed king to his subjects: the king rules unilaterally in the interests of all. The
without danger of insulting anyone but the wo man herseif: thus, a certain children must, of course, obey his commands but those commands are
Zobia hid Aristogeiton from the poliçe, gave him money, was beaten for intended to be in their interest. The relation of husband to wife, says Aris­
her trouble, and then, “typical meddling woman, she went around to her totle, is like a democracy. In a democracy all citizens are equal in rights and
acquaintances and complained of what he had done.”2 Outside forensic are equally eligible for office. Those elected to office are invested with
contexts, there is a slightly greater likelihood that the responsibilities and insignia marking their temporary and purely conventional difference from
agency of women will receive some acknowledgment. Aristotle appears the rest of the citizens. When the period of office is over, they take off those
to notice the de facto independence of Athenian wives in managing their insignia and return to a state of equality. The only difference, says Aristotle,
households: “The husband mies concerning the things which a husband is that in the case of husband and wife the distinction is permanent. This is
should rule; what is appropriate for a wife he assigns to her.”3 (More on mind-boggling. Given Aristotle’s other conceptions of the inherent, defmi-
Aristotle below.) tional inferiority of the female,5 there was no need for him to compare the
The modern study ofwomen’s place in meiTs ideologies and their perspec­ relation of husband and wife to democratic equality, no need to raise the
tive on men’s ideologies has had an extraordinarily beneficial effect on our thought that wives might, if elected, govern the household in turn with
comprehension of ancient societies. The more we learn about comparable their husbands, and no need to conjure up the paradoxical image of a
gender-segregated, pre-industrial societies, particularly in the Mediterranean democratic System in which the same citizens always hold office.
area, the more it seems that most of men’s observations and moral judgments One way to comprehend what has happened here is to say that Aristotle
about women and sex and so forth have minimal descriptive validity and is caught in the very act of processing descriptive data into his legislative
are best understood as coffeehouse talk, addressed to men themselves.4 System. Women’s work with children, food, and clothing inside the oikos,
Women, we should emphasize, in all their separate groupings by age, neigh- all their contribution to the admmistration and prosperity of the household,
borhood, and dass, may differ widely from each other and from community is a feature that Aristotle almost entirely ignores and notices only to misrep-
to community in the degree to which they obey, resist, or even notice the resent. I suggest that in Aristotlc’s text we momentarily see him off guard,
existente of such palaver as men indulge in when going through their caught in the act of referring obliquely to women’s capacities for administra­
bonding rituals. To know when any such male law-givers—medical, tive independence and not fully digesting that fact into his scheine of social
moral, or marital, whether smart or stupid—are (to put it bluntly) bluffing legislation. We should at least keep our minds open to the possibility, which
or spinning fantasies or justifying their ’druthers is so hard that most histori- studies of some comparable societies have documented, that Athenian wives
ans of ideas—Foucault, for all that he is exceptional, is no exception here *— had a considcrable degree ofpractical independence in managing their house­
never try. holds. If we do entertain the notion that Athenian citizen-wives had at least
Let us take just one example of the revealing gap between prescriptive certain kinds of informal power, we must also be clear that it was socially
discourse and social reality. In Politics 1.12 Aristotle devises a threefold necessary for men not to acknowledge it —to deal with it at most indirectly
comparison ofhousehold authority-relations to forms of political authority. through myths of Amazons and through their cultural fantasies of rebellious
The relation of the patriarchal master to his slaves is like a political tyranny: wives in tragedy or comedy. ’
But if the strength and independence of Athenian women constituted a
Some of the variables—economy, Settlement and residente, inheritance, ritual, associational sort of guilty secret, it might also be alluded to on occasions of indiscretion
life—are surveyed by Rogers 1985 in a study of two French towns, in one of which male as a guilty pleasure. I have in mind here an interchange in Aristophanes’
dominance is a sort of social myth, while in the other it is a reality. For Athens, religious Lysistrata (885-8) where Myrrhinë berates her husband Kinesias for not
ritual seems the strongest candidate as a factor that might have allowed women a sphere of taking proper care of the baby. While she comes down from the fortress to
independence and psychic distance. “While the deme in its narrowly political aspect necessarily
attend to the baby herseif, he remarks, inappropriately, that she seems to *
remained an all-male preserve, the sphere of religion and cult operated under a different, older
set of imperatives, and ‘in the sacred and ritual activities of the community the active presence
of women in the public world [was] not merely tolerated but required’”: Whitehead 79, quoting
*Xenophon describes the honorable role of women as remaining indoors, the shameful role
Gould. See also Dubisch 1983, Cole 1984b, and Chapter Seven below,
for men as staying inside rather than tending to affairs outside: to do otherwise is an unnatural
f As he acknowledges: Foucault 1985: 12. act, literaliy “against what god made natural,” par3 ha ho theos ephuse {Econ. 7.31).