Pseudo-Demosthenes Against Neaera

Love and Marriage? Pseudo-Demosthenes’ Against Neaera

Agenda 

Academic Honesty 

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Butler or Foucault? 

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A Quote Dissected…

Apollodorus’ Against Neaera 

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Women’s eros in Sappho fr. 31

Athenian Women 

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Angelique Jenks-Brown, BU Libraries

Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric, Realities

Will the Real Neaera Please Stand up?

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Butler or Foucault? Women’s eros in Sappho fr. 31

Butler or Foucault? The man seems to me strong as a god, the man who sits across from you and listens to your sweet talk nearby and your lovely laughter — which, when I hear it, strikes fear in the heart in my breast. For whenever I glance at you, it seems that I can say nothing at all but my tongue is broken in silence, and that instant a light fire rushes beneath my skin, I can no longer see anything in my eyes and my ears are thundering, and cold sweat pours down me, and shuddering grasps me all over, and I am greener than grass, and I seem to myself to be little short of death But all is endurable, since even a poor man ... (Sappho fr. 31)

“Sexual-Social Isomorphism” male ~ female masculine ~ feminine penetrator active dominant senior (in status)

~ ~ ~ ~

penetrated passive submissive junior (in status)

moderate (sōphrōn) ~ immoderate (akolastos) free ~ slave aka “asymmetry hypothesis”

Butler on Social Construction “To publish one’s act in language is in some sense the completion of the act” (Butler AC)  "... gender [but maybe sexuality too?] is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script … requires individual actors” (“Performative 

Acts,” in Performing Feminisms 1990)

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformativity.html

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Discussion Butler?  sappho seems to be performing feminine gender 

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the how of her reactions seeming performed

Foucault?  f’s asymmetry  

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anti-butler 

s born that way 

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man and strength sappho exhibits passivity

poem a speech restricted by dichotomy laid out by fouc, thereby confining her sex etc. in the fictive reality self-control

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Biblio Note: Theory Butler, Judith. Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life & Death. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Print. ---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Thinking Gender. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print. ---. The Judith Butler Reader. Ed. Sara Salih. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print. Felluga, Dino. Introduction to Theories of Gender and Sex. Purdue University. 2 October 2013 (2002): Web site. Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity. Eds. David H. J. Larmour, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. 122–37. Print. 2013-10-03

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Biblio Note: Women, Neaera 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

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Biblio Note: Gender (& masculinity) Bassi, Karen. Acting like Men: Gender, Drama, and Nostalgia in Ancient Greece. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Print. Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. Key Themes in Ancient History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print. Foxhall, Lin and J. B. Salmon, eds. When Men were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.

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Athenian Women A Quote Dissected…

“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)

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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Apollodorus’ Against Neaera Charges, Ideologies, Rhetoric, Realities

Charges, 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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Realities: Athenian Wives et al. Marriage  Adultery (moikheia)  Divorce  Seclusion? 

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Guardianship  

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Property 

ideology v. actuality oikia, andronitis, gunaikonitis

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kurios and oikos court representation

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dowry inheritance 

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epikleros, ankhisteia

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Realities: Prostitutes, Concubines 

Hetaira (plur. hetairai) expense  relationship 

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Porne (plur. pornai) publicity  commodification 

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Pallake (plur. pallakai) 

“kept” slave woman

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Old man & hetaira. Athenian, c.500-490 (Inscription reads Panaitios kalos, “Panaetius” [man’s name] is beautiful.”)

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Will the Real Neaera Please Stand up? Whore? Courtesan? Concubine? Wife?

“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)

Was Neaera a… - porne? - hetaira? - pallake? - citizen wife? -

Discussion

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