Classics Midterm

Pandora

Date: Archaic Greece; described in Hesiod's Theogony c. 8th century BCE

Definition: Pandora is the first woman, created by Zeus as punishment for Prometheus' theft of fire. She unleashes all suffering in the world. She is created as beautiful and desirable but also deceptive and dangerous.

Significance: Pandora embodies the archaic Greek conception of women as deceptive burdens (ex: draining men’s money). She is one of the earliest examples of how patriarchal ideas are embedded in Greek myths and used as explanations for the perceived dangers associated with women.

Joan Scott

Date: Modern scholar; best known for her work "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" 1986.

Definition: A historian who argued that gender is both a dimension of identity and a way of signifying power structures; “man” and “woman” are not fixed categories, so it’s worth studying these concepts over time.

Significance: Scott pioneered the field of gender history, which studies what it was like to live as each gender at different times, how people defined gender across periods, and why we associate certain terms with certain genders.

Kroisos Kouros

Date: c. 540-515 BCE, Attica

Identification: Grave marker for Kroisos, an Athenian warrior that died in battle. Full-body, undressed male marble statue.

Significance: He represents the transience of human perfection, the archaic Greek ideal of masculine beauty, and is meant to be a perfect object of male desire, both beautiful and potentially homoerotically arousing. Thus, he is eternally youthful, at the peak of his capacities, late teens, sexually mature but unbearded, muscular, proportional, symmetrical, desirable but untouchable (detached from the sexual gaze upon him), an aspirational aristocratic ideal of masculinity.

Pederasty

Date: Especially prominent in Classical Athens, 5th- 4th centuries BCE

Identification: Socially recognized asymmetrical relationship between an adult male (erastes) and an adolescent male (eromenos). The erastes is driven by sexual desire and, in turn, provides mentorship for the eromenos.

Significance: Central hyper-masculine practice in Classical Athens. Reinforces the idea that men can desire who they want as long as they are the one dominating (penetrating) the object of their desire. Also reinforces the idea that the idea/most desireable male is the eromenos; on the cusp of masculinity, beardless, 14-15 yrs, sexually mature.

Image: Harmodios and Aristogeiton

Date: 477 BCE

Identification: Harmodios and Aristogeiton, marble copy, first secular monument to living men.

Significance: They represent the new masculine ideal in a newly democratic Athens, centred around pederasty, which is an asymmetrical relationship where an older adult male (Erastes) provides an adolescent boy (Eromenos) with mentorship in exchange for sex. Harmodios (Eromenos, right, unbearded, sexually mature, muscular) and Aristogeiton (Erastes, left, bearded, also muscular) represent the ideal beauty standard for each age.

Image: Doryphoros

Date: c. 440 BCE

Identification: Doryphoros (“spear-bearer”), marble statue by Polykleitos

Significance: Represents the new ideal male body of a citizen-warrior in Classical Athens: the warrior’s physique. He is the epitome of balance (age, sexual maturity, musculature, weight, movement vs. action, self-discipline, etc.). He is the symbol of ultimate masculinity in this period because he has self-control, shown through his musculature as masculinity.

Andreia

Date: 5th century

Identification: Classical virtue that means “courage/manliness”

Significance: In Classical Athens, “andreia” is expected of a citizen hoplite fighting against a common external enemy for state stability. It involves balanced self-control, adaptability, self-sufficiency, bodily devotion to the demos. It also involves the idea of being the erastes of Athens/the demos as eromenos, eroticized belonging.

Image: Kore of Phrasikleia

Date: c. 550-540 BCE

Identification: Kore of Phrasikleia, funerary statue of a kore (“maiden” or “unmarried woman”) called Phrasikleia, a young girl who died before she could get married

Significance: Unlike her male counterpart (the kouros), the kore is not naked or striding. Her stiff clothing cloaks her body and hides her female body, illustrating the idea that women need to be modest and protected from others’ gaze; women are seen as precious objects that need to be protected. She is also holding a closed flower, symbolizing her immaturity/virginity, and the fact that she died before she could become a full woman by getting married (to be a woman was to be a wife).

Sophrosyne

Date: Central to classical femininity

Identification: Means “soundness of mind, wise moderation, decorum, self-control”

Significance: Both men and women are expected to have sophrosyne (self-control). However, for women in classical Athens, sophrosyne meant letting men lead them because they were not seen as self-disciplined.

The Panathenaea

Identification: Annual festival honouring Athena, procession of all of Athen’s polis to the acropolis, where the Parthenon is.

Significance: Rare time when women are celebrated; everyone honours a female goddess and maidens weave a peplos (dress) for Athena’s statue in the Parthenon, meaning their skills are on display,

Image: Parthenon Frieze

Date: c. 447-432 BCE

Identification: Sculptural decoration of the Parthenon that depicts the Panathenaea procession

Significance: The frieze idealizes the entire citizen body; the only mortal women depicted are the maidens that weave the peplos, they are wearing heavy drapery so their body is hidden (“protection cloak”), whereas the men are riding horses naked, the only cloathing being decorative instead of modest, clothes frame the body instead of hiding it, celebration male hyper sexuality (eroticism) and musculature. Despite the cloaking, the maidens holding the peplos are the pinnacle of the frieze, demonstrating how the Panathenaea is a rare time women are celebrated. In contrast to their heavy drapery, Athena is shown extremely feminized with skin showing (clothing as framing).

The Oikos

Identification: “oikos” is the greek word for “household”, which includes the nuclear family, animals, weath, property and enslaved people.

Significance: The oikos is a microcosm of Athen’s social arena. Oikoi form the building blocks for the polis as a whole. It is also where gender is constituted and acted out. The husbands “nature” is to lead the household and so outside work while the wife is meant to manage the household, stay inside and perform “feminine tasks” like weaving. This shows how segregated women were supposed to be from the outside world/public space (even windows).

The Andron

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Highly decorated rooms in greek households dedicated to adult males for their drinking parties (symposia), where they hosted/dined with other males and often had female entertainment like hetairai (female courtesans), and sometimes pederastic courtship.

Significance: Demonstrates gender segregation in the household; elite men had this semi-public space to gather that constructed masculinity where wives were excluded, and the only women present did not have bodily autonomy (hetairai).

Xenophon's Oeconomicus

Date: c. 360 BCE

Identification: Philosophical and didactic treatise about household management and agriculture through dialogue between Socrates and Critobulus where Socrates speaks of Isomachus, the ideal gentleman.

Significance: This piece of literature helps us learn about greek mariage at the time; there was often a big age gap between the husband (~30) and the wife (14-15) where the husband took on a teaching role. Husbands worked outdoors and wives stayed indoors to manage the household , and a marriage is bringing these two natural capabilities together. Shows us that the wife was somewhat respected in the household since her leadership of goods, enslaved people and managing the wealth was seen as a different duty but of equal importance. Pretty progressive for the time, mentions women having equal self-control and that women could possibly have more expertise than men in certain areas.

Image: Aphrodite of Knidos

Date: 4th century BCE

Identification: Aphrodite of Knidos

Significance: Revolutionary for depicting a goddess naked in a cult statue. Shows the balance of trying to protect a woman’s modesty while still eroticizing her; she is both subject (goddess) and a sex object. Her modesty remains because she is depicted as being caught about to take a bath instead of voluntarily naked, and her vulva is not shown. Yet, she is placed on the rotunda so the viewer is able to see her naked from all angles. She also represents the pinnacle of the female form; symmetrical, proportional, soft lines, slight smile, pale skin.

The Athenian Funeral

Date: Classical Athens

Identification: Multi-stage process including prothesis (women’s cleaning and display of the body in the oikos, gendered lamenting), ekphora (separated male and female lamenting at the burial site), burial (cremation or incineration performed by men), and rites at the tomb.

Significance: Women’s participation is central to funerals, and its a rare time where they get to be out of the house in public. Women are meant to be publically lamenting and be in public out-of-control distress. It was a way to show you had a proper household where women behaved properly in the face of death, to show off your household, and for women to share family history.

Image: Athenian Pinax Depicting Funeral

Date: 500 BCE

Identification: Athenian Pinax Depicting Funeral

Significance: The Athenian funeral pinax shows that mourning was a gendered activity. Women were expected to express grief publicly, reinforcing ideas about female emotionality, but funeral rituals also gave women authority within the oikos. Through mourning, women helped preserve family memory, display household status, and affirm kinship ties that could support inheritance claims.

The Priestess of Athena Polias

Date: Classical Athens

Identification: Highest-ranking priestess in Athens.

Significance: Demonstrates that women could attain significant status and authority through religion. She is a uniquely visible woman; she is celebrated with public statues, which is rare for women, has some political sway (knows what Athena wants for the polis), and has public memorials.

The Thesmophoria

Identification: Female rite to Demeter and Persephone during the autumn harvest, celebrated across multiple poleis. It was seen as religiously vital to the health of the city/crops. Involved weird mocking rituals, fasting, and phallic cakes (entertaining, connecting to and embodying Demeter?)

Significance: Represents a rare time when women can gather together outside the house and have a “secret” ritual (no men participated). This was a space for women to socialize with each other and form bonds.

Hetaira

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Can be free foreign women, formerly enslaved and now freed women or enslaved women. “Hetaira” means companion. These women are expected to have intellectual training, artistic talent and beauty. They provide entertainment at the symposium and are offered gifts in exchange for sex and quality time.

Significance: Occupied a social role distinct from citizen wives and prostitutes; often participated in elite male culture. Rare case where women had independent control of their money and did not need a male owner. They were the wealthiest independent women. However, even if they had certain social rights most women did not, they still did not have rights over their own body.

Porne

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Low-status prostitutes who worked in brothels and were paid for sex (by the act). They often worked under pimps/madams and were enslaved when young. They are also expected to do textile work during “downtime”.

Significance: Pornai highlight how women were categorized according to status, citizenship, and sexual function. The existence of pornai may represent how sex was not seen as a shameful act in classical Athens, since prostitution was generally accepted as long as men didn’t overspend (self-control). Even though these women were commodified/objectified by the patriarchy, raped, and reduced to their bodies, some freed pornai continued to practice prostitution because it provided them with more rights than being a wife (access to male spaces like the symposium, for example).

The Symposium

Date: Archaic and Classical Greece

Identification: Elite male drinking party.

Significance: Important setting for masculinity, social bonding, intellectual discussion, and erotic relationships.

Aspasia

Date: c. 470-425 BCE

Identification: The most famous woman in 5th-century Athens. Companion of Pericles (political leader) and prominent intellectual figure. Only woman we have a labelled image of from this time.

Significance: A rare case where a woman shown being able to talk about philosophy and rhetoric, and building a network of educated intellectual women in a highly patriarchal society. Many called her Pericle’s hetaira, presumably to bring her down and allege that the only reason a woman could be in the public sphere was if she provided some sort of sex work.

Ps.-Demosthenes, Against Neaera

Date: c. 340 BCE

Identification: Forensic speech prosecuting Neaera for allegedly claiming Athenian citizenship illegally.

Significance: The main issue of the prosecution is whether a hetaira is acting like an Athenian citizen and passing off her child as an Athenian citizen. Raises questions about women’s rights in court, marriage, citizenship, and sex work: how much agency should Neara have, how different is she from a citizen wife, and how is she stereotyped in the speech? In the text, she is said to have her own property, but she does not have ownership of her own body or voice. She is not even allowed to defend herself in court and still needs a patron to support her.

Poetry of Theognis

Date: c. 600-550 BCE

Identification: Poetry of Theognis, illustrating the dynamics of a pederastic relationship.

Significance: Reveals how pederastic relationships resemble teaching a child, “boy” as a bit derogatory, being taught how to act as an eromenos from your erastes, then you can pass it on (a cycle); a deceptive power dynamic; the erastes trying to give the eromenos a sense of control but the erastes has full control in power, dynamic, and age-gap.

The Gymnasion

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Space for general athletic training where erastes go to observe naked youths exercising and pursue pederastic relationships. Eromenos compete with each other, and the erastes compete for their attention.

Significance: Highlights the link between athletics and the eroticized gaze, praise for the naked male body and musculature, also shows the link between pederasty and atheltics and highlights the dynamics of a pederastic relationship, the “competing” aspect of it.

Image: Psykter (Getty Museum)

Date: c. 510 BCE

Identification: Psykter (Getty Museum). Drinking vessel associated with symposium culture. Depicts homosexual practice between two unbearded men the same way pederastic relationships were shown.

Significance: Since both men have no beards, it suggests they are around the same age. This could either be evidence of homosexual relationships outside of pederasty, or could show the age of ambiguity between being an eromenos and erastes.

Plato, Symposium

Date: c. 384-379 BCE

Identification: Literary text where Apollodorus is talking about his friend Aristodemus that went to a symposium with Socrates. Dramatic setting: Agathon, just won a tragedy competition which is the reason for the symposium celebration. The men then proceed to have a philosophical dialogue on the nature of love (eros). They mostly talk about pederastic love and erotic love from multiple sides.

Significance: The men discuss the dynamics of pederasty such as whether there must be an age gap. This is also reflected in a lot of the men flirting/praising Socrates, suggesting they are attracted to him even though they are all adult males. They also bring up the misogynistic concept of two different Aphrodites; the one that is created from a woman represents vulagr sexual love, whereas the one that comes from man (the testicles) is the pure love between two men.

Socrates

Date: c. 470-399 BCE

Identification: Athenian philosopher and central figure in Plato's Symposium. In this text, he recounts Diotima’s (female mentor) theory of the ladder of love: love begins as physical attraction to the adolescent male body, but should then become love of the soul, philosophical knowledge, and virtue.

Significance: Socrates challenges sexually driven pederastic dynamics by suggesting that love should be a way to better yourself and pursue beauty. To him, love should involve self-control and moderation and be more intellectual than physical/sexual. Moreover, his mentorship from Diotima (and passing on her speech) is a rare case where women’s intellectual ideas are respected.

Eromenos

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Younger partner in a pederastic relationship.Received education and mentorship from the older erastes by providing sex in return.

Significance: Reinforces the idea of the most desirable male form at the time; unbearded, 14-15, body at the peak of its capabilities, sexually mature, muscular, impulsive. The role also demonstrates how pederasty functioned as a means of socializing young males into adult citizenship and elite masculine values.

Erastes

Date: Classical Greece

Identification: Older partner in a pederastic relationship. Expected to educate, mentor, and court the eromenos. Driven by sexual desire for the eromenos.

Significance: His role is important in socializing the young eromenos into the adult male citizen elite. He also represnts the sexual pinnacle of his age; bearded, controlled, muscular. Also, the fact that the erastes penetrating the eromenos was socially acceptable helps us understand that at the time, it didn’t matter who men desired (what gender) as long as the mature citizen male was the one dominating/in power.

Poetry of Alcman

Date: 7th century BCE

Identification: Archaic Spartan choral lyric poetry. He wrote hymns that were to be performed by choruses of maidens.

Significance: Provides evidence of public female homoerotic sentiments. Even though it was written by a man and performed for a male audience, this could be proof that female homosexuality existed in society. Shown in the hymn’s homoerotic vocabulary of beauty, possession, and desire among unmarried girls of equal age/status.

Sappho, Poems

Date: Late 7th-early 6th century BCE

Identification: Lyric poetry by Sappho from Lesbos

Significance: Sappho’s poems are almost the only evidence we have of female homosexuality from this time. Her poetry is almost entirely fragmentary (from scraps of papyrus). The subject matter is of desire, longing, eroticism, raw destructive love, uncontrolled, eros as a force and a feeling, and the impact of eros on the body. These poems may or may not represent her own internal thoughts, but either way, the subject matter is queer.

Sappho

Date: c. 625-575 BCE

Identification: Lyric poet from Mytilene, Lesbos.

Significance: Her fragmented poems are one of the little evidence/suggestion we have of female homoeroticism in the ancient world.

Eros

Identification: God and/or force of desire/attraction/love.

Significance: Central concept for understanding ancient ideas about sexuality, love, and relationships. This is the term people used to describe love/attraction, and different people interpreted in different ways. Also important to understand how the divine was interlinked with their ideas of desire, the natural order of things, since Eros also refers to a greek god of desire.

Image: Plate from Thera

Date: c. 625 BCE

Identification: Plate from Thera; ceramic plate depicting women touching each other’s chins and hiolding wreaths.

Significance: Frequently discussed as visual evidence for female intimacy and homoeroticism. Touching someone’s chin is a symbol of romantic/erotic attraction and courtship, which is also emphasized by the gifts they have for each other (wreaths). However, it can’t be said for sure if this is affection or romance, even though there are parallels to male homoerotic art.

Aristophanes, Lysistrata

Date: Produced 411 BCE

Identification: Old Comedy in which women withhold sex to force an end to war.

Significance: Uses gender reversal to explore politics, citizenship, and women's relationship to the polis.

Old Comedy

Date: 5th century BCE

Identification: Athenian comedic genre associated with Aristophanes.

Significance: Characterized by satire, obscenity, political commentary, and imaginative social reversals.

Lysistrata (Character)

Date: 411 BCE (Lysistrata)

Identification: Female protagonist who organizes the sex strike and occupation of the Acropolis.

Significance: Challenges conventional gender roles and demonstrates how comedy could imagine female political agency while simultaneously reinforcing existing social structures.