Transcript No Slide Title

Love and Marriage?
Pseudo-Demosthenes’ Against
Neaera
7/21/2015
1
“We [Athenian men] have
prostitutes for the sake of
pleasure, concubines for meeting
our bodily needs day-to-day, but
wives for having legitimate
children”
(Against Neaera p. 191)
Agenda

Unfinished Business


Athenian Women


Women’s eros?…
A Quote Dissected…
Against Neaera

7/21/2015
Ideologies and Rhetoric
3
Unfinished Business
Women’s eros?…
7/21/2015
4
“Essentialism … seems to create
homogeneous and ahistorical ideas about
what it means to be a woman. It also
reinforces the sexist idea of a naturalized
womanhood. The poststructuralist alternative,
however, eliminates the possibility of any
positive conceptions upon which to base a
politics.” (Nicholson The Second Wave)
from Alcman Partheneion
“Desired Ianthemis,” erata te Wianthemis.
Women’s eros —
essentialist? (Do we
see such here?)
Sappho poem 1
Women’s eros — Essentialist?

inner feelings s



[…]
al removed
s deep relationships

s challenges
assumptions in pl
sym
s hyper (very) –
emotional
 s defeats idea of
diotima’s feminine

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Athenian Women
A Quote Dissected…
7/21/2015
8
“We [Athenian men] have
prostitutes for the sake of
pleasure, concubines for meeting
our bodily needs day-to-day, but
wives for having legitimate
children”
(Against Neaera p. 191)
Order of Approach…
Wives (and others)
 Prostitutes
 Concubines

Women at the well. Athenian, c. 525-520 BCE
7/21/2015
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Biblio Note
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.
---. Women in Classical Athens. London: Bristol Classical
Press, 1998.
Cohen, David. Law, Sexuality and Society: The
Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991
Hamel, Debra. Trying Neaira: The True Story of a
Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003
7/21/2015
11
Athenian Wives et al.
Marriage
 Adultery (moikheia)
 Divorce
 Seclusion/segregation?

ideology v. actuality
 oikia, andronitis,
gunaikonitis

Funeral monument (300s BCE):
parents & daughter??
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Athenian Wives et al. (cont.)

Guardianship
kurios and oikos
 court representation


Property
dowry
 inheritance

epikleros
 ankhisteia
 testamentary law

Funeral monument (300s BCE):
parents & daughter??
7/21/2015
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Prostitutes, Concubines

Hetaira (plur. hetairai)
expense
 relationship


Porne (plur. pornai)
publicity
 commodification


Pallake (plur. pallakai)

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“kept” slave woman
Old man & hetaira. Athenian, c.500-490
(Inscription reads Panaitios kalos,
“Panaetius” [man’s name] is beautiful.”)
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Against Neaera
Ideologies and Rhetoric
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Allegations, Ideologies, Rhetoric

Fraudulent…
citizen-marriage
 citizen-offspring

Impiety
 Cheapened
enfranchisement
 Jury shaming

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Bread-making, phallus-bird, c. 500
BCE. Athenian
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The Quote: Ideological “stretch”?…
Three Quotes: Do They “Jive”?
1.
“We [Athenian men] have prostitutes (hetairai) for the sake
of pleasure, concubines (pallakai) for meeting our bodily
needs day-to-day, but wives (gunaikes) for having
legitimate children” (Against Neaera p. 191)
2.
“This Candaules, then, fell in love with (erasthe) his own
wife, so much so that he believed her to be by far the most
beautiful woman in the world; and believing this, he praised
her beauty beyond measure to Gyges son of Dascylus”
(Herodotus 1.8)
3.
“Niceratus too, so I am told, is in love with (erai) his wife
and finds his love reciprocated (she anterai him)” (Xenophon
Symposium 8.3)
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Three Quotes: Do They “Jive”?

wife-love dangerous


eros-women
dangerous
last one only throws
wrench if absolute
category

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
number 2 and 3
outline sharply
drawn matrimonial
dichotomy
varieties of
marriage
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