#classics

[songforten]

the thing about the doctor and clara is that they think they're orpheus and eurydice when in reality they're alkestis and hercules

[uncleclaudius]

Marble statue of an old woman, Julio-Claudian period. Probably a Roman copy of the Greek original.

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

honestly my mother was a huge champ about her eight-year-old asking to be bought an unabridged edition of the Odyssey for a birthday present, and then she was an equally huge champ about reading her eight-year-old the unabridged Odyssey as a bedtime story and pausing every four lines to define something for me, and let me just say that I have fucking TREASURED the opportunity to reverse that old tradition by more or less forcing her to sit on my couch and listen to Epic and pause it every four lines for my dissertation

[burningvelvet]

writers in the 1800s be like

[jeannereames]

I was wondering if it’s possible that many romantic/friendly relationships with women (whether involving Philip or Alexander) were not recorded in our sources because they were not politically significant. Could it be that both had such relationships that we are simply unaware of? The erasure of women in history is a recurring issue, and I wonder if this is why we tend to think that women were completely excluded from the social life of the time, and that relationships between male companions were considered more worthy of mention by earlier sources. Sorry for the long question!

Women in the Life of Philip and Alexander (and other ancient Greek men)

This is an excellent question, and one that shows good attention to how our ancient sources work. The short answer to your question is, “Absolutely,” and “Almost certainly.” Several scholars of women’s (Greek) history have noted that women traditionally would have operated at home (their sphere) and thus, out of the public eye. But we’d all be fools if we didn’t assume mothers and wives and sisters and even daughters didn’t have an impact on men.

However patriarchal a society, and however terrible the oppression of the women in it, the simple truth (imo) is that more men are decent human beings than not. It’s just that the ones who aren’t suck all the air out of the room. That’s hardly to say systemic oppression is “okay” because some men, maybe even the majority of them, don’t beat their wives even when they’re legally allowed to. Yet I think it’s still an important point to make, because it allows women in history to get out from under the “victim” label.*

One of the points I make in my history classes is that there’s a huge difference between women’s legal rights and female AGENCY. So, deeply patriarchal societies such as ancient Athens and Macedon can produce an Aspasia and an Olympias. Or Han China can produce a Lü Zhi. But for each one of them who land in our history books (even if villainized by the male historians), a hundred more quietly manage their families from the shadows. (Below: funeral stele of Theano, c. 400 BCE; while reading multi-figured grave stele is not an exact science, she's probably the deceased figure, and her husband (Ktesilaos) made it for her, although it could possibly be for them both.)

So, the longer answer is that the presence of such women in the lives of public men depends (as always) on context. E.g., what venues allowed women to be present (to influence men), and which did not. Ergo, we must ask where the women are, and are allowed to be, in order to get a grasp of which women would be doing the influencing. In Greek (and Macedonian) politics “at home,” women are everywhere, albeit they may not be permitted to speak in PUBLIC spaces. Or at least, their public-facing actions are limited, usually to acts of eurgetism, which in turn is limited to elite women (with money). (Eurgetism = public donations.) But these women may have a great deal of influence at home.

Aristophanes’s play, Lysistrata, gets at this in a humorous way. The women go on a sex strike until their husbands agree to end the (Peloponnesian) war. It doesn’t work because the women wind up wanting sex just as much as the men, so they can’t keep their own resolve. It’s funny in an upside-down way not only for the raunchy subject matter, but because Aristophanes does give women a lot more agency—and foibles—than they’re often allowed in literature. The very fact the women have trouble sticking to their decisions echoes their husband’s inability to get out of a war that’s destroying them. Even though Aristophanes was conservative politically (we think), it’s a surprisingly sympathetic (to women) play. And it makes me suspect that he had a strong woman at home. He did have three sons (all later Middle Comedy authors although none in their dad’s class), so he obviously had a wife.

Women had their own means of influencing events around them, which weren’t always visible. Yet their capacity for influence depended on the willingness of their men to listen.

In venues more purely male space, such as warfare, the presence, and influence, of women would have been curtailed. Yes, there were certainly women in a military camp, but many fewer, and they were mostly in low positions: slaves and prostitutes, not wives and mothers and sisters. Men who might respect their mothers were conditioned not to respect or listen to slaves, even if they didn’t abuse them—and assuming they could even understand them. Most would have been prisoners of war who didn’t necessarily speak the language of their captors.

Furthermore, the brutality of war leads to bifurcation in mental space, and Greek men were already conditioned even at home, never mind on campaign, to assign women to one of two categories: protected/“our”/family women, and unprotected/slave/prostitute women. Just as we, as a species, tend to create “pet” animals and “food” animals, and are unwilling to eat animals we regard as pets, may even spend thousands of dollars on their care and cry bitterly at their loss. War only exaggerated a pre-existing tendency.

Ergo, it’s not that ancient Greek and Macedonian men couldn’t regard women as romantic partners and even friends, but whether female candidates for that position were available where they are. Particularly if where they are is on campaign.

Beth Carney has a chapter on women in warfare in the new Brill's Companion to the Campaigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great, if you can lay hands on it. :-)

On that note, I’ll say watch what I do going forward in Dancing with the Lion, and how I handle figures such as Kampaspe, Kleopatra, Barsine, and Sisygambus (et al.). Or for that matter, how especially Kampaspe and Kleopatra function in Dancing, particularly with regard to Hephaistion.

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* And some women can be just as cruel. When we assume all women are innocent victims, we also fail to recognize female agency, which can include cruelty. We must act for fairness because it’s fair, not because of pity, or because the ones oppressed “deserve” salvation.

[daughter-of-aidoneus]

coffee & ancient greek

[finisconoratopus]

reading on the periklean akropolis :P

today I went to the farmer's market to get ingredients for soup with my flatmates. at midnight, I am going to a jazz club for a dance and a drink.

yes, it's sunday night. I have fun occasionally.

[blondebrainpowered]

Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944

GIF by Supermodelgif (ghost blog)

[meichenxi]

this is a shitpost but also a genuine question. how did the ancient greeks just Forget how to write?

context: so the Very ancient greeks had linear b right. (Very ancient greeks = so ancient that ppl weren't sure they were greek. and then after years of trying to decipher the script and assembling a team of linguists at bletchley park some guy was like 'hey. what if it was actually. just greek' and then it turned it was indeed. just greek)

and then they...didn't. and the dark ages began. and then after the dark ages they got this new-fangled alphabet from the phoenicians and were like hey. what if (consider) we used it to. write things down

can any classicist please weigh in and tell me what the Fuck happened and how an entire society can just Forget writing?? I cannot think of another civilisation, ever, where this has happened

[dilfaeneas]

Indulgent Helenus drawing. Love him so much. Also hands are such a big part of his lore and the treatment of captured archers throughout history. His hands are completely knacked. No clue how to begin to illustrate how Menelaus destroyed his hand in the iliad tho.

On this Menelaus was grieved, and made menacingly towards Helenus, brandishing his spear; but Helenus drew his bow, and the two attacked one another at one and the same moment, the one with his spear, and the other with his bow and arrow. The son of Priam hit the breastplate of Menelaus’s corslet, but the arrow glanced from off it. As black beans or pulse come pattering down on to a threshing-floor from the broad winnowing-shovel, blown by shrill winds and shaken by the shovel—even so did the arrow glance off and recoil from the shield of Menelaus, who in his turn wounded the hand with which Helenus carried his bow; the spear went right through his hand and stuck in the bow itself, so that to his life he retreated under cover of his men, with his hand dragging by his side—for the spear weighed it down till Agenor drew it out and bound the hand carefully up in a woollen sling which his esquire had with him.

- Book 13

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2199/pg2199-images.html

Like a through and through injury to the hand to the point that the bow is damaged. The arm at the least is broken and probably the bones in the hand as well. Spears also aren't small and it goes through his hand. Like yikes

[toprewolf1]

“I found myself in a strange deserted city… underpopulated by war or disease. … [In a glass case was] a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. … History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.

‘I thought I’d find you here’, said a voice at my elbow.’”

[two-bees-poetry]

twenty years across the sea

[myovervieweffect]

Yeah I'd believe that the sister was the most interesting character to ship, ours was the same. Though everyone's favorite character was 1000% the dog, Argus

[mythosphere]

"Blorbo from my shows" no. Blorbo from my BA. Blorbo from my major. Blorbo from my primary source document.