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Gender Regimes and Classical Greek Antiquity in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Violaine Sebillotte Cuchet
Violaine Sebillotte Cuchet*
Affiliation:
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / UMR 8210 ANHIMA
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Abstract

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Gender studies use gender to characterize behavioral norms, personality traits, and the relative importance given to differences between the sexes in individual relationships. In the field of Classical studies, these three definitions usually converge to isolate a single gender system: the polarity between anēr (male citizen) and gunē (wife and mother), which is strictly articulated as a division between male/female. Nonetheless, a number of studies, particularly those dealing with sexuality, have demonstrated that ancient Greek societies were not systematically organized according to gender differences. These conclusions encourage researchers to examine the various points of view expressed in documents elaborated by the Greeks living on the shores of the ancient Mediterranean. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the male/female division often seems secondary to that opposing members of the community to foreigners, Greeks to Barbarians or mortals to immortals.

Type
Gender Regimes
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 401 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2012

References

1. See the accounts collected in Bach, Françoise et al., eds., Vingt-cinq ans d’études féministes. L’expérience Jussieu (Paris: Publications universitaires Denis-Diderot-Paris 7, 2001)Google Scholar.

2. Duby, Georges and Perrot, Michelle, eds., Histoire des femmes en Occident, 5 vols. (Paris: Perrin, 1990-1992; repr. 2002)Google Scholar.

3. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, La cité au banquet. Histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques (Diss., École française de Rome, 1992 Google Scholar; republished with a new introduction in 2011). Her work in the area of cultural and political history continues in Hommes illustres. Mœurs et politique à Athènes au Ve siècle (Paris: Aubier, 2009).

4. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, “La différence des sexes. Histoire, anthropologie et cité grecque dans les années 1980,” in Aithra et Pandora. Femmes, genre et cité dans la Grèce antique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 27.Google Scholar

5. For example, Herfst, Pieter, Le travail de la femme dans la Grèce ancienne (New York: Arno Press, 1922; repr. 1979)Google Scholar, remains a useful source of information.

6. Duby, Georges and Perrot, Michelle, “Écrire l’histoire des femmes,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident, vol. I, L’Antiquité, eds. Duby, Georges and Perrot, Michelle (Paris: Perrin, 1990-1992; repr. 2002) 8–18 Google Scholar. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot write: “We shall acknowledge the existence of male domination—and therefore of female subordination and subjection—as far as the eye can see in history ... This male domination comes in a great many forms. These forms are what matter to us.” They conclude: “This history aims to be the history of relations between the sexes rather than the history of women.” A similar approach is developed in German-language historiography by Wagner-Hasel, Beate and Späth, Thomas, “Neue Fragen an ein altes Thema: Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte in den Altertumswissenschaften,” in Frauenwelten in der Antike. Geschlechterordnung und weibliche Lebenspraxis, eds. Wagner-Hasel, Beate and Späth, Thomas (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006), IX-XXVI, particularly p. XXI Google Scholar.

7. Dover, Kenneth J., Greek Homosexuality (New York: Vintage Books, 1978)Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, L’Histoire de la sexualité, vol. II, L’usage des plaisirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)Google Scholar. Paul Veyne writes: “Love in itself had not yet become a sin but was a pleasure to partake in, with rules governing its use and abuse.” Paul Veyne also writes in L’élégie érotique romaine. L’amour, la poésie et l’Occident (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1983), 179. Veyne’s statement recalls the works of Michel Foucault and the title of volume 2 of L’Histoire de la sexualité.

8. Loraux, Nicole, “De quelques illustres inconnues,” in La Grèce au féminin, ed. Loraux, Nicole (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2003), XVI Google Scholar. This work was originally published in Italian in 1993 under the title Grecia al femminile. Pauline Schmitt Pantel shares the same opinion: “The corollary of this male gaze is the dearth of specific information about the lives of women and the special focus given to representations.” Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, “Un fil d’Ariane,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident, 1:25 Google Scholar. See also Arrigoni, Giampiera, “Le donne dei ‘margini’ e le donne ‘speciali,’” in Le donne in Grecia, ed. Arrigoni, Giampiera (Rome: Laterza, 1985; repr. 2008), XI-XXX, particularly p. XVIII Google Scholar. The distinction between a history of men, which would be a social history, and a history of women, which could only depict exceptional women, is very clear from the nineteenth century onward: see Blok, Josine, “Sexual Asymmetry: A Historiographical Essay,” in Sexual Asymmetry: Studies in Ancient Society, eds. Blok, Josine and Mason, Peter (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1987), 1–57 Google Scholar.

9. Loraux, Nicole, Les enfants d’Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la division des sexes (Paris: La Découverte, 1981; repr. 1984)Google Scholar.

10. Regarding this point of view, see the following articles on Nicole Loraux: Annick Jaulin’s “L’imaginaire comme pratique politique”; Catherine Marand-Fouquet’s “Ce que guerre civile veut dire”; Michèle Riot-Sarcey’s “Distinguer ce qui se confond”; and Éléni Varikas’s “Inscrire les expériences du genre dans le passé,” all of which are included in a special issue entitled “Les voies traversières de Nicole Loraux. Une helléniste à la croisée des sciences sociales,” Espaces TempsLes Cahiers 87-88 (2005). See also the essays collected in “Les femmes, le féminin et le politique après Nicole Loraux,” classics@ 7 (2011): http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=3369 .

11. The book edited by Winkler, John J. and Zeitlin, Froma I., Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar brings together Hellenists from both America and Paris. These exchanges were very much promoted by Nicole Loraux herself and, more broadly, by the issues studied at the Centre Louis-Gernet under the guidance of Jean-Pierre Vernant (particularly the reading of Greek vases suggested by François Lissarrague).

12. By way of example, see Munteanu, Dana Lacourse et al., eds. Emotion, Genre and Gender in Classical Antiquity (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011)Google Scholar. The book examines the relationship between genders (masculine and feminine) and certain literary genres (such as epic poems, tragedies, comedies, and descriptions of artwork) on the basis of the expression of emotions (anger, pity, fear, etc.).

13. For an overview of this argument, see Bard, Christine, “Une préférence pour l’histoire des femmes,” in Le genre comme catégorie d’analyse. Sociologie, histoire, littérature, eds. Fougeyrollas-Schwebel, Dominique et al. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 99–105 Google Scholar.

14. Schmitt Pantel declares: “We first and foremost decided to directly address what has come down to us through ancient documents: male discourse on women and, generally speaking, the difference between the sexes, or ‘gender.’” Schmitt Pantel, “Un fil d’Ariane,” 25.

15. Boehringer, Sandra and Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, “Introduction,” in Hommes et femmes dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. Le genre, méthode et documents, eds. Boehringer, Sandra and Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte (Paris: A. Colin, 2011), 14 Google Scholar. Sandra Boehringer, to whom I would like to express my gratitude for the rich discussions we have had, will no doubt easily identify aspects of our exchange in the ideas presented here.

16. In an innovative article written in 1982, Pauline Schmitt Pantel borrowed the term “gender difference” from Geneviève Fraisse and, defining it differently from how I currently define it, undertook research on the topic without adopting a feminist approach: “The threshold is perhaps crossed if it can be demonstrated that what I have called ‘gender difference’ (i.e., the existence of two different genders and the relationship between them) is a fundamental aspect of Greek society and imagination, whether one describes the impact such a social and ideological structure has on all areas of civic life or whether one turns it into a political reading within the context of the city.” Schmitt Pantel, “La différence des sexes,” 36-37. The research currently being conducted at UMR 8210 Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques (ANHIMA) owes a great deal to the trail blazed by Schmitt Pantel.

17. While Paul Veyne noted the heuristic interest of invariants in history, by taking the class struggle as his example he also demonstrated its highly historical character. See Veyne, Paul, L’inventaire des différences. Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1976), 22–23 and 44Google Scholar.

18. As early as 1935, anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote in her preface to Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies: “In expecting simple reversals—that if an aspect of social life is not specifically sacred, it must be specifically secular; that if men are strong, women must be weak—we ignore the fact that cultures exercise far greater licence than this in selecting the possible aspects of human life which they will minimize, overemphasize, or ignore.” Mead, Margaret, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (London: William Morrow, 1935; repr. 1963), xix Google Scholar. Her statement stresses that gender was often insignificant, a fact all too often overlooked by research on the history of women and gender.

19. See the introduction by Lett, Didier, “Gender Regimes in Western Societies from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century,” Annales HSS 67-3 (2012): 393–94 Google Scholar.

20. See Brulé, Pierre, La fille d’Athènes. La religion des filles à Athènes à l’époque classique : mythes, cultes et société (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987)Google Scholar. Brulé’s book provides a perfect description of this habitus for Athenian women, which became part of divinely-sanctioned behavior comprising the repetition of ritual gestures and acts of storytelling invoking heroines.

21. Aeschines, Against Timarchus 28-32.

22. Cartledge, Paul, Millet, Paul, and Reden, Sitta Von, Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

23. On the politics of sexuality, the creation of state brothels to protect the virtue of the daughters of citizens’ households and the attribution of this policy to Solon, see Halperin, David M., “The Democratic Body: Prostitution and Citizenship in Classical Athens,” in One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar. None of the sources cited predate the end of the fourth century.

24. Marchiandi, Daniela, I periboli funerari nell’Attica classica: lo specchio di una “borghesi” (Athens: Pandemos, 2011)Google Scholar.

25. Herodotus, , The History, trans. Godley, A. D. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920; rev. and repr. 1990), 1.155 Google Scholar.

26. Like the enemy, the coward is usually described as a woman. See: Herodotus, The History 1.37, 3.134, 9.22, and 9.107; Chaniotis, Angelos, War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 102–14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Aeschines, Against Timarchus 111.

28. Winkler, John J., “Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men’s Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens,” in The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), 45–70 Google Scholar. Aeschines addresses Demosthenes, asking him what respectable Athenians would prefer: “ten thousand hoplites (hoplitas) like Philōn, with bodies as well-made (diakeimenous) as his and souls so disciplined (sōphronas), or thirty thousand depraved men (kinaidoi) exactly like you?” Aeschines, On the Embassy 151; translated and cited by Winkler, “Laying Down the Law,” 47 (translation slightly modified by the author of this article).

29. Aeschines accused Demosthenes of cowardice before Philip of Macedon: “But if you, Demosthenes, shall be convicted of lying, let this be your penalty—to confess in this presence that you are a mere girl (androgunos) and no free man (eleutherios).” Aeschines, On the Embassy, trans. Charles D. Adams (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 127 (translation slightly modified by the author of this article). Athenaeus, XII, provides an example, speaking of the malakia of the Medes, which is linked to wearing the stolē, luxurious banqueting, and a feminine way of life (gunaikōn bion).

30. The notion of excess meant going too far and ranged from insults or visible departures from the rules of conduct in the assembly to rape or murder, typical manifestations of hubris. There is an appropriate and different response to each offence. See: Aeschines, Against Timarchus 35 and 16 (in which excess was called hubris); Cohen, David, Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cohen, David, Law, Violence, and Community in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Herodotus, The History 7.147.

32. For the way in which Herodotus composed The History and the role played by the oral traditions preserved in family or city memory, see: Hornblower, Simon, “Herodotus and his Sources of Information,” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, eds. Bakker, Egbert J., Jong, Irene de, and Wees, Hans van (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 373–86 Google Scholar; Forsdyke, Sara, “Greek History c. 525-480 BC,” in Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, eds. Bakker, Egbert J., Jong, Irene de, and Wees, Hans van (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 520–49 Google Scholar, particularly p. 548 (on the role of civic traditions in western Greece, which Herodotus encountered upon settling in the city of Thourioi).

33. Herodotus, , The History, trans. Godley, A. D. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1922; repr. 1982), 7.151–53 Google Scholar. On this passage, see: Luraghi, Nino, Tirannidi arcaiche in Sicilia e Magna Grecia. Da Panezio di Leontini alla caduta dei Dinomenidi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1994), 120–26 Google Scholar; Cataldi, Silvio, “Tradizioni e attualità nel dialogo dei messaggeri greci con Gelone,” in Erodoteo e il “modello erodoteo”. Formazione e trasmissione delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia, ed. Giangiulio, Maurizio (Trento: Università degli studi di Trento, 2005), 123–71 Google Scholar, particularly p. 129.

34. Compare with Solon, frag. 6 West = Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 12.2; Loraux, Nicole, “Solon au milieu de la lice,” Aux origines de l’hellénisme. La Crète et la Grèce. Hommages à Henri van Effenterre (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1984), 199–214 Google Scholar. Solon also derived his authority from his closeness to a goddess—the Mother of the Olympians, or the Black Earth—, which allows for different interpretations. See: L’Homme-Wéry, Louise-Marie, “Solon, libérateur d’Eleusis dans les Histoires d’Hérodote,” Revue des études grecques 107 (1994): 362–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blaise, Fabienne, “Solon. Fragment 36 W. Pratique et fondation des normes politiques,” Revue des études grecques 108 (1995): 24–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Herodotus, The History 7.153.

36. Before becoming a tyrant, Aristodemus of Cumae was both malakos and the bravest in war: see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 7:2.4. See also Harrell, Sarah E., “Marvelous andreia: Politics, Geography, and Ethnicity in Herodotus’ Histories ,” in Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, eds. Rosen, Ralph M. and Sluiter, Ineke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 90 Google Scholar. On pages 91-92, Harrell points out that the notion of Greek heroism allowed for the co-existence of masculine and feminine and explains the feminine characterization of Telines in terms of his eastern origins (Asia Minor).

37. Ctesias of Cnidus, The Complete Fragments, trans. Andrew Nichols (2008), The Persika, frag. 6b* (3), http://teaching.shca.ed.ac.uk/classics/persica/documents/nichols_aCTESIAS . pdf.

38. For recent analysis of this story, see: Boehringer, Sandra and Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, eds., Hommes et femmes dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine, 64–66 Google Scholar; Azoulay, Vincent and Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, “Sexe, genre et politique. Le vêtement comme opérateur dans les Persica de Ctésias,” in Parures et artifices. Le corps exposé dans l’Antiquité, Bodiou, Lydie et al. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011), 25–48 Google Scholar.

39. Polignac, François de, “Sexe et genre dans les rites funéraires grecs: quelques aperçus,” in Pratiques funéraires et sociétés. Nouvelles approches en archéologie et en anthropologie sociale, eds. Baray, Luc, Brun, Patrice, and Testard, Alain (Dijon: Éd. universitaires de Dijon, 2007), 349–56 Google Scholar; Delamard, Julie and Mariaud, Olivier, “Le silence des tombes ? Masculin et féminin en Grèce géométrique et archaïque d’après la documentation archéologique funéraire,” in Problèmes du genre en Grèce ancienne, eds. Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte and Ernoult, Nathalie (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007), 65–82 Google Scholar.

40. Cuozzo, Mariassunta, Reinventando la tradizione. Immaginario sociale, ideologie e rap-presentazione nelle necropoli orientalizzanti di Pontecagnano (Paestum: Pandemos, 2003)Google Scholar; Cuozzo, Mariassunta, “Interpretazione delle necropoli e questioni di genere nell’archeologia italiana: il caso di Pontecagnano,” in Arqueología del género. 1er Encuentro Internacional en la UAM Google Scholar, eds. Torreira, Lourdes Prados and Lopez, Clara Ruiz (Madrid: UAM Ediciones, 2008), 105–38 Google Scholar.

41. Reference may also be made to studies in the history of science. See Gardey, Delphine and Löwy, Ilana, eds., L’invention du naturel. Les sciences et la fabrication du féminin et du masculin (Paris: Éd. des archives contemporaines, 2000)Google Scholar; Fausto-Sterling, Anne, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000)Google Scholar.

42. Cantarella, Eva, Bisexuality in the Ancient World, trans. Cuilleanain, Cormac O (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Winkler, The Constraints of Desire; Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality; and Boehringer, Sandra, L’homosexualité féminine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007)Google Scholar. The following works are also relevant, even though questions about sex cede to a study of the multifaceted representations of Eros: Calame, Claude, L’Éros dans la Grèce antique (Paris: Belin, 1996; repr. 2009)Google Scholar; Dupont, Florence and Éloi, Thierry, L’érotisme masculin dans la Rome antique (Paris: Belin, 2001)Google Scholar, on sexuality in the Roman world.

43. For the complexity and circulation of the active/passive categories in relations that are controlled by Eros, see Calame, L’Éros dans la Grèce antique, 31-52.

44. Foucault, Michel, Histoire de la sexualité, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976; repr. 1984)Google Scholar; Davidson, James, “Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex,” Past and Present 170 (2001): 3–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Calame, L’Éros dans la Grèce antique; Boehringer, Sandra, “La sexualité a-t-elle un passé? De l’érôs grec à la sexualité contemporaine : questions modernes au monde antique,” Recherches en Psychanalyse 10 (2010): http://recherchespsychanalyse.revues.org/index1696.html Google Scholar. For relations between women and the specificity of the discourse they create, see Boehringer, L’homosexualité féminine, 91-119.

46. Hesiod, , Hesiodi Theogonia; Opera et Dies; Scutum; Fragmenta Selecta, eds. Merkelbach, Reinhold and West, Martin L. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), frag. 275 Google Scholar; Brisson, Luc, Le mythe de Tirésias. Essai d’analyse structurale (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 12 Google Scholar.

47. Winkler, “Laying Down the Law,” 45-71.

48. While studying the representation of men and women in images of banquets, Schmitt Pantel unsurprisingly rediscovered a classic distinction between individuals according to the double criterion of status and age in works on sexuality from antiquity onward. “Hierarchy is certainly a feature at banquets,” she writes, “but to my mind it separates the adult men who conduct the game from the others, young men and women.” Schmitt Pantel, Aithra et Pandora, 145-57, particularly p. 157. Studying the gestures made at shrines, she observed that men and women washed, dressed, and decorated the statues of the gods in the same way, leading her to conclude: “When clues are available, no rule or division can be discerned between men and women.” Ibid., 112-22, particularly p. 121. Similarly, looking at the division of spaces, she noted that they had been too hastily divided into “masculine” and “feminine” by male and female historians alike. In a review article entitled “Shared Spaces,” Pauline Schmitt Pantel lists other recent studies that also find a need to link the question of gender difference to other social characteristics, such as status in the family and/or in blood relationships: see ibid., 105-9.

49. Laqueur, Thomas, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

50. These two definitions are given in the Dictionnaire Littré and remain relevant today. The third, “the handsome sex ... women,” is less so: see Littré, Émile, “Sexe,” in Dictionnaire de la langue française (Paris: Hachette, 1873), vol. 4 Google Scholar.

51. On the uses of phusis and natura with a sexual meaning (in popular usage), see Winkler, John J., “Phusis and Natura Meaning ‘Genitals,’” in The Constraints of Desire, 217–20 Google Scholar.

52. Bourriot, Félix, Recherches sur la nature du “génos”. Étude d’histoire sociale athénienne, périodes archaïque et classique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1976), 205–9 Google Scholar.

53. Hesiod, Theogony 590. See also to thēlu genos, or the “race of women,” which Herodotus used to describe Egyptian women in The History 2.85.

54. As a category of classification, genos could refer to humanity as a whole (in opposition to the immortals: genos anthropō n) or a specific family (including men and women). Plato, The Statesman 262c-d.

55. Aristotle, Metaphysics A 5.986a 22ff; Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 16 Google Scholar.

56. Ibid., 9-10.

57. This division was made very clear by King, Helen, Hippocrate’s Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar. She does not, however, sufficiently indicate that this was only valid in treatises seeking to precisely describe how bodies work when observed in pursuit of a single goal: reproduction. For mammalian reproduction as an analogy for describing living things, see Bretin-Chabrol, Marine, “Le sexe des plantes. Analogie et catégories du genre chez les agronomes romains,” in Le corps dans les cultures méditerranéennes, ed. Veyne, Paul (Perpignan: Presses universitaires de Perpignan, 2007), 15–28 Google Scholar.

58. Hall, Edith, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Hall, Jonathan M., Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Malkin, Irad, A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. The Stranger explains that in Athens “they separate the Hellenic race (to hellēnikon genos) from all the rest as one, and to all the other races (tois allois genesin), which are countless in number and have no relation in blood or language to one another, they give the single name ‘barbarian’; then because of this single name, they think it is a single species (genos).” Plato, , The Statesman, trans. Fowler, Harold N., in Plato, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925; repr. 1990), 262dGoogle Scholar.

60. Plato, The Statesman 262c-d.

61. Chantraine, Pierre, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968; repr. 1999)Google Scholar.

62. Plato, The Statesman 264d-265c.

63. Pending new discoveries, no reference to the Amazons has been found in documents in Mycenaean Greek: see Chadwick, John, Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956; repr. 1973)Google Scholar.

64. “For I, too, being their ally, was numbered among them on the day when the Amazons came, the peers of men (amazones antianeirai),” Priam tells Helen, who is identifying the Achaean heroes grouped along the walls of Troy for the elderly king. Homer, , Iliad, trans. Murray, A. T. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924; repr. 1988), 3.189 Google Scholar. In Book 6, Glaucus talks of his ancestor Bellerophon, who “slew the Amazons, women the peers of men (amazones antianeras).” Ibid., 6.186. In Book 2, the tomb of Myrine, who was sometimes regarded as an Amazon, is said to be a meeting place for the Trojan army and its allies.

65. “Hē theos initially indicates a divine being, which is additionally given a feminine marker.” Loraux, Nicole, “Qu’est-ce qu’une déesse?” in Histoire des femmes en Occident I:36.Google Scholar

66. “The prefix [anti] is never used in the sense of ‘(fighting) against’ in epic diction. The figurative use ‘equivalent to’ is based on the image of a pair of scales in equilibrium: what lies on one side is ‘against’ [anti] what lies on the other side, and is thus equivalent. The local sense of [anti] as ‘opposite’ is not found in Homeric epic. The closest English equivalent is thus ‘equivalent to’. Things are [anti] one another if one is equivalent to the other, such as exchange, revenge, penalty. People are [anti] one another if they can be regarded as equals.” Blok, Josine H., The Early Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 169–70 Google Scholar. For the heroic, not civic, value of the term anē r in the epic, see Bassi, Karen, “The Semantics of Manliness in Ancient Greece,” in Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, eds. Rosen, Ralph M. and Sluiter, Ineke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 25–58 Google Scholar.

67. Severyns, Albert, Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclos (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1938), IX Google Scholar; Severyns, Albert, Texte et apparat. Histoire critique d’une tradition imprimée (Bruxelles: Palais des Académies, 1962), 11–12 Google Scholar. For the text, see Davies, Malcolm, ed., “Aethiopis”, in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Göttingen: Vandehoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 47 Google Scholar.

68. In Book 24 of the Odyssey, which no doubt corresponds to a later version of the epic, Agamemnon’s shade, awakened in the underworld, recounts the funeral of Achilles on the banks of the Hellespont (verses 80-84). An Achilleion is mentioned as a site that belonged to the Mytilenians in Herodotus, The History 5.94.

69. According to Proclos, Thersites mocked Achilles because of the erō s that connected him to Penthisilea. This is supposedly why Achilles slayed Thersites, which allegedly led to a stasis (uprising) in the Achaean camp: see Proclos, Aethiopis.

70. Blok discusses this particular dating, revealing contradictions between the sources. Hegias is sometimes described as an author of the Nostoi, an epic dating back to the sixth century BC. However, the Nostoi makes no mention of the Amazons. Hegias is not referred to as the author of the Nostoi until the fourth century BC. See Blok, The Early Amazons, 151-52.

71. Pausanias, Description of Greece, book 1, Attica 2.1.

72. In the 450s, Aeschylus writes in the Eumenides about how the Aereopagus took its name from the camp set up by the Amazons when they passed through Attica, where they made a sacrifice to Ares. See Eumenides 685-90.

73. This interpretation is usually the only one retained with regard to the Amazons. It originates at the end of the sixth century in the Theseid, an epic depicting the latest Athenian Amazonomachy: the battle in Attica that enabled the victorious Athenians to claim collective glory. Plutarch was aware that this account existed: see the Life of Theseus, 28. See, for example, Tyrrell, William Blake, Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984; repr. 1989)Google Scholar. For the argument about men’s physical superiority, see Lysias, Funeral Oration 17-20, which elaborates on the topic of the struggle that opposes men and women, a theme already made clear in Aristophanes, Lysistrata 672-81.

74. Blok, Josine, “A Tale of Many Cities: Amazons in the Mythical Past of Greek Cities in Asia Minor,” in Proof and Persuasion: Essays on Authority, Objectivity, and Evidence, eds. Lunbeck, Elizabeth and Marchand, Shelby (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 81–99 Google Scholar. Blok cites examples of when the Amazons were politically appropriated, which scarcely go further back than the end of the sixth century. On the theme of the Amazon as a symbol of resistance to Athenian domination, see Tonio Hölscher’s analysis of the group of statues erected in Ephesus in the 430s: “Die Amazonen von Ephesos: ein Monument der Selbstbehauptung,” in Agathos daimôn. Mythes et cultes. Études d’iconographie en l’honneur de Lilly Kahil, ed. Pascale de Linant de Bellefonds (Athens: École française d’Athènes, 2000), 205-18; “Images and Political Identity: The Case of Athens,” in Democracy, Empire and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, eds. Deborah Boedeker and Kurt Raaflaub (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 153-183.

75. This dual aspect of the imagination has been the focus of research done over the last ten years by Florence Dupont at Denis-Diderot University (Paris 7) and Claude Calame at the EHESS, particularly in their “Antiquité au Présent” seminar. See: Dupont, Florence, L’invention de la littérature. De l’ivresse grecque au texte latin (Paris: La Découverte, 1998)Google Scholar; Calame, Claude, Le récit en Grèce ancienne. Énonciations et représentations de poètes (Paris: Belin, 1986; repr. 2000)Google Scholar; and Valette-Cagnac, Emmanuelle, La lecture à Rome. Rites et pratiques (Paris: Belin, 1997)Google Scholar.

76. Blok, The Early Amazons, no. 7.

77. Ibid., no. 3 and no. 2; “Achilles,” in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC), vol. II, Aphrodisias-Athena (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1981-1999).

78. Lissarrague, François and Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, “Amazones entre peur et rêve,” in Réalités et représentations des Amazones, ed. Leduc, Guyonne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 43–46 Google Scholar.

79. Loraux, Nicole, “Sur la race des femmes et quelques-unes de ses tribus,” in Les enfants d’Athéna, 78 Google Scholar. In “Qu’est-ce qu’une déesse ?” Nicole Loraux considers the comment by Jean Rudhardt, which introduces the idea that it may only concern the ancestry of “certain” women, without accepting the implications regarding the representation of gender difference. See: Rudhardt, Jean, “Pandora: Hésiode et les femmes,” Museum Helveticum 43 (1946): 237–39 Google Scholar; Loraux, Nicole, “Qu’est-ce qu’une déesse ?” in Histoire des femmes en Occident I:40 Google Scholar.

80. Hesiod, Theogony 551-616; Hesiod, Works and Days 42-105. For a detailed biography see Schmitt Pantel, Aithra et Pandora, 195-215.

81. “Pandora, because all they who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift (dōron), a plague (edōrēsan pēma) to men who eat bread.” Hesiod, , Works and Days, trans. Evelyn, Hugh G. White, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914; repr. 1982), 80–82 Google Scholar.

82. Hesiod, , Theogony, trans. Evelyn, Hugh G. White, in The Homeric Hyms and Homerica (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914; repr. 1982), 590 Google Scholar.

83. See the comments by Rudhardt, Jean, “Reflets de la féminité dans le miroir de la mythologie grecque,” in Les dieux, le féminin, le pouvoir. Enquêtes d’un historien des religions, eds. Borgeaud, Philippe and Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 2006), 41–72 and 69–71 Google Scholar.

84. Loraux, “Sur la race des femmes,” 83-86.

85. Euripides, Erechtheus, frag. 22, v. 64.

86. Aesop, Fables; Desclos, Marie-Laurence, “Les origines de l’homme dans le corpus ésopique,” in Les origines de l’homme d’après Les Anciens, eds. Galy, Jean-Michel and Thivel, Antoine (Nice: Université de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, 1998), 71–88 Google Scholar. See also Lissarrague, François, “Le portrait d’Ésope, une fable archéologique,” in Biographie des hommes, biographie des dieux, ed. Desclos, Marie-Laurence (Grenoble: Université Pierre Mendès France, 2000), 129–44 Google Scholar.

87. Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, “La sexualité et le genre. Une histoire problématique pour les hellénistes. Détour par la ‘virginité’ des filles sacrifiées pour la patrie,” Mètis, 2 (2004): 137–61 Google Scholar.

88. Loraux, Les enfants d’Athéna, 40, 45, and 51. Nicole Loraux interprets the myths as discourses constructed and reworked on the basis of older narrative materials by a city that “processed” them so that they expressed its own “imagination,” if not “fantasies.” See Loraux, , “L’imaginaire des autochtones,” in Les enfants d’Athéna, 15 Google Scholar. On the “work of the myth” in the city, a notion that distances myth from an overtly functionalist notion, see Loraux, , “L’autochtonie : une topique athénienne,” in Les enfants d’Athéna, 69–70 Google Scholar.

89. Loraux, Nicole, L’invention d’Athènes. Histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la “cité classique ” (Paris: Mouton, 1981)Google Scholar.

90. Loraux, Les enfants d’Athéna, 66 and 119-53 (quoting Lycurgus and Demosthenes) and 130-31 (quoting Plato, Lysias, and Demosthenes).

91. Ibid., 60-61; Loraux, Nicole, “Et l’on déboutera les mères,” in Les expériences de Tirésias. Le féminin et l’homme grec (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 225 Google Scholar; and Loraux, Nicole, Né de la terre, mythe et politique à Athènes (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1996), 128–68 Google Scholar.

92. Loraux, Les enfants d’Athéna, 131.

93. Loraux, Tirésias, 22.

94. “Study of the one city gave way to reflection on the gender divide and the gender divide surreptitiously introduced the city as divided.” Loraux, Nicole, La cité divisée. L’oubli dans la mémoire d’Athènes (Paris: Payot, 1997), 24 Google Scholar.

95. In France, see, for example, Detienne, Marcel and Sissa, Giulia, La vie quotidienne des dieux grecs (Paris: Hachette, 1989), 235–36 Google Scholar. In the United States, see Cynthia Patterson’s response, “Hai Attikai: The Other Athenians,” in special issue “Rescuing Creusa: New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity,” ed. Marilyn B. Skinner, Helios 13-2 (1987): 49-67. Recently, Anne Jacquemin expressed her puzzlement over the failure to take into account the arguments mentioned by Patterson. See Jacquemin, Anne, “Un autre conte de deux cités ou... Athéniennes et fières de l’être,” Ktema 30 (2005): 337–38 and note 7Google Scholar.

96. See Azoulay, Vincent and Ismard, Paulin, “Les lieux du politique dans l’Athènes classique. Entre structures institutionnelles, idéologie civique et pratiques sociales,” in Athènes et le politique. Dans le sillage de Claude Mossé, eds. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt and Polignac, François de (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007), 271–309 Google Scholar.

97. On the civic importance of the oikos, the rites performed there, and the importance of the family in the city, see: Gherchanoc, Florence, L’oikos en fête. Célébrations familiales et sociabilité en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012)Google Scholar; Damet, Aurélie, La septième porte. Les conflits familiaux dans l’Athènes classique (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012)Google Scholar.

98. “The feminine politis appears in fact to have been coined in Athens at just this time, when politē s was becoming an exclusive male term.” Patterson, “Hai Attikai,” 55.

99. Polignac, François de, La naissance de la cité grecque. Cultes, espace et société, VIIIe-VIIe siècles avant J.-C. (Paris: La Découverte, 1984; repr. 1995)Google Scholar. See also Manville, Philip B., The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

100. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, La Cité au banquet. Histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques (Rome: École française de Rome, 1992), 73 and 90 Google Scholar.

101. “So, the texts highlight the importance of issues of residence, ways of making a living, personal attachment to the community and, ultimately, of services rendered. Military concerns must play their part but they underlie our texts rather than being expressed in them. All in all, this phase of pre-politeia makes the Greek city a subtle and free entity, far removed from the rigid tyranny it eventually brought to bear on its own citizens in classical times” (authors’ italics). Effenterre, Henri van and Ruze, Françoise, eds., Nomima. Recueil d’inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l’archaïsme grec (Rome: École fran-çaise de Rome, 1994), 1:28 Google Scholar.

102. “What constitutes a citizen is therefore clear from these considerations: we now declare that one who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial (archēs bouleutikēs kai kritikē s) office is a citizen (politē s) of the state in which he has that right, and a state is a collection of such persons sufficiently numerous, speaking broadly, to secure independence of life.” Aristotle, , Politics, trans. Rackham, H. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932; repr. 1990), 3.1.8 (1275b)Google Scholar.

103. Over the past few years, Josine Blok’s research has been deconstructing what historians have identified as Greek citizenship (in Aristotle), which included female citizens (their levels of participation carefully differentiated). See Blok, Josine, “Becoming Citizens: Some Notes on the Semantic of ‘Citizen’ in Archaic Greece and Classical Athens,” Klio: Beiträge zur alten Geschichte 87 (2005): 7–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Josine Blok, “Definitions of Citizenship: a Proposal for Revision” (conference held at INHA Paris, France, January 11, 2011); Josine Blok “Practices of Citizenship: Descendance, Timai and Archai” (conference held at INHA Paris, France, January 25, 2011). These conferences herald the forthcoming publication of her book Citizenship, Cult and Community (Cambridge University Press). She is thus continuing a research trend that was initially committed to studying the place of women in civic worship. See also Osborne, Robin, “Women and Sacrifice in Classical Greece,” in Oxford Readings in Greek Religion, ed. Buxton, Richard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 294–313 Google Scholar.

104. Aristotle, Politics 1275b17-24.

105. Aristotle, Politics 1280b15-1281a9.

106. See the posthumous collection: Parker, Robert and Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, eds., Athenian Myths and Festivals: Aglauros, Erechtheus, Plynteria, Panathenaia, Dionysia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

107. This question arises when reading Ismard, Paulin, La cité des réseaux. Athènes et ses associations, VIe-Ier siècle av. J.-C. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010)Google Scholar.

108. Schaps, David, “The Women of Greece in Wartime,” Classical Philology 77-3 (1982): 193–213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109. Another example of a clash of gender regimes is provided, although not expressed as such, by Carney, Elizabeth D., “Women and Dunasteia in Caria,” American Journal of Philology 126-1 (2005): 65–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this instance, gender regimes are also the result of discursive regimes: historical documents on the one hand and inscriptions on the other.

110. This is at least likely. See the first page of John L. Myres’s book, which describes the young Herodotus seeing Artemisia’s fleet upon its return from the battle of Salamis. Myres, John L., Herodotus: Father of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953)Google Scholar.

111. Herodotus, The History 7.99 and 8.88-93.

112. For situations involving cultural interaction, especially in the city of Halicarnassus, see: Talamo, Clara, “Greci e Cari a Mileto,” in Il cittadino, lo straniero, il barbaro, fra integrazione ed emarginazione nell’Antichità, eds. Bertinelli, Maria Gabriela Angeli and Donati, Angela (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 2005), 105–14 Google Scholar; Thomas, Rosalind, “Ethnicity, Genealogy, and Hellenism in Herodotus,” in Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, ed. Malkin, Irad (Cambridge: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2001), 213–33 Google Scholar.

113. Plutarch, On the Malice of Herodotus 38 (869F).

114. In this regard, Aretaphilia’s behavior was exemplary. Plutarch, Virtues of Women, 257d. On Plutarch’s heroines, see Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, “À propos des Vertus de femmes de Plutarque ,” in La religion des femmes en Grèce ancienne. Mythes, cultes et société, eds. Bodiou, Lydie and Mehl, Véronique (Rennes: PUR, 2009)Google Scholar; Pantel, Pauline Schmitt, “Les femmes vertueuses sont-elles des héroïnes ? Femmes et tyrans dans les Gunaikon Aretai de Plutarque,” in Paysage et religion en Grèce antique. Mélanges offerts à Madeleine Jost, eds. Carlier, Pierre and Lerouge-Cohen, Charlotte (Paris: De Boccard, 2009)Google Scholar; and Pantel, Schmitt, “Femmes et héroïsme : un manque d’étoffe ?” in Aithra et Pandora, 179–92 Google Scholar.

115. McInerney, Jeremy, “Plutarch’s Manly Women,” in Andreia: Studies in Manliness and Courage in Classical Antiquity, eds. Rosen, Ralph M. and Sluiter, Ineke (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 319–44 Google Scholar.

116. “What Herodotus the Halicarnassian has learnt by inquiry is here set forth: in order that so the memory of the past may not be blotted out from among men (ta genomena ex anthrōpō n) by time, and that great and marvellous deeds (erga) done by Greeks and foreigners and especially the reason why they warred against each other may not lack renown.” Herodotus, The History 1.1. Herodotus’s choice of the word anthrōpoi does not refer to gender identity but instead concerns all mortals a priori.

117. Some of my research on Artemisia and the tradition associated with her was presented in two articles. See: Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, “Hérodote et Artémisia d’Halicarnasse, deux métis face à l’ordre des genres athéniens,” Clio. Histoire, femmes, sociétés 27 (2008): 15–33 Google Scholar; Cuchet, Violaine Sebillotte, “La fabrique d’une héroïne au Ve siècle : Hérodote et Artémise d’Halicarnasse,” in La religion des femmes en Grèce ancienne. Mythes, cultes et société, eds. Bodiou, Lydie and Mehl, Véronique (Rennes: PUR, 2009), 19–32 Google Scholar.

118. Munson, Rosaria V., “Artemisia in Herodotus,” Classical Antiquity 7-1 (1988): 91–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119. Widmer, Marie, “Pourquoi reprendre le dossier des reines hellénistiques : le cas de Laodice V,” in Égypte, Grèce, Rome. Les différents visages des femmes antiques, eds. Bertholet, Florence, Sanchez, Anne Bielman, and Frei-Stolba, Regula (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 63–92 Google Scholar. These studies restore the role of women in the dynasties of antiquity, frequently through the use of epigraphic sources.