Blessed Is He Who Has Seen

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Helios

Volume 40 Spring/Fall 2013 Numbers 1–2

Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece

Sue Blundell, Douglas Cairns, and Nancy Rabinowitz, Guest Editors

Preface 1 Introduction 3 Sue Blundell, Douglas Cairns, Elizabeth Craik, and Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

I. Art and Text

Swallow This: A Pelike within Late Archaic Song and Visual Culture 41 Deborah Steiner

Framing a View of the Unviewable: Architecture, Aphrodite, and Erotic Looking in the Lucianic Erôtes 71 Melissa Haynes

Apparitions Apparent: Ekphrasis and the Parameters of Vision in the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines 97 Michael Squire

II. Narrative

Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 143 Helen Lovatt ‘Empire of the Gaze’: Despotism and Seraglio Fantasies à la grecque in Chariton’s Callirhoe 167 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

III. Performance

Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 195 Nancy Rabinowitz

Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 223 Chiara Thumiger

Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 247 Ian Ruffell

IV. Enlightenment

Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 281 Fritz-Gregor Herrmann

‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’: The Power of Ritual Viewing and Ritual Framing in Eleusis 309 Georgia Petridou

Notes on Contributors 343 HELIOS EDITOR Steven M. Oberhelman

editorial board Helene Foley Mary-Kay Gamel Barbara K. Gold Barnard California, Santa Cruz Hamilton S. C. Humphreys W. R. Johnson Richard P. Martin Michigan Chicago Stanford Sheila Murnaghan Martha Nussbaum C. Robert Phillips III Pennsylvania Chicago Lehigh Brent Shaw Marilyn Skinner Victoria Wohl Princeton Arizona Toronto

H e l i o s publishes articles that explore innovative approaches to the study of classical culture, literature, and society. Especially welcome are articles that embrace contemporary critical methodolo- gies, such as anthropological, deconstructive, feminist, reader response, social history, and text theory. To be considered for publication, all material must be typed on 8½ by 11-inch paper and double spaced throughout, including indented quotations and notes. Authors are encouraged to send an electronic copy of their paper (preferably as a PDF file) to the editor. An abstract of at least 150 words should accompany the article. All manuscripts must be anonymous, with no reference to the author appearing in the text or notes, and will be refereed by experts in the field. For standard titles and abbreviations of ancient sources, the author should consult LSJ9, OLD, and OCD3. For bibliographical citations, the author must follow the author-date format; the format may be found in the style-sheet in TAPA. Please address all editorial correspondence to Steven M. Oberhelman, Editor, Dept. of Interna- tional Studies, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843–4215; email: s-oberhelman@ tamu.edu. Subscriptions are $44.00 for individuals ($64.00 outside the U.S.) and $88.00 for institutions ($124.00 outside the U.S.). Payment in U.S. currency, check, money order, or bank draft drawn on a U.S. bank should be made payable to Texas Tech University Press.

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Preface

Most of the papers published in this volume were presented as part of the panel “Vision and Power,” which formed one of the strands at the Celtic Conference in Classics held in Cork in 2008. We are immensely grateful to the 18 people who gave papers, and to the many other attendees who took part in the discussion, over the three-and-a-half-days that the panel lasted. In particular we owe a great debt to the contributors whose papers are published here. Their diligence and patience have been considerable. We would also like to express our gratitude to Helen Morales, the outside reader, and to Steve Oberhelman, for their hard work and invaluable editorial suggestions. Douglas Cairns wishes to thank the Leverhulme Trust, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the European Research Council for funding the research that has informed his contribution to the Introduction. He would also like to thank Professor Richard Smith (University of Kentucky) for help with psychological bibliography. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz would like to thank Emily Del- bridge, who provided research assistance, and the Deans of Faculty at Hamilton College, David Paris and Joe Urgo, who furnished vital support for research and writing.

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 1

Introduction

Sue Blundell, Douglas Cairns, Elizabeth Craik, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

This volume explores the ways in which vision and viewing were depicted and conceptualized by writers and artists in the ancient Greek world. Since the 1960s, a substantial amount of scholarship has appeared on diverse aspects of the subject of vision, some of it purely theoretical, and some seeking to apply the theory in specific contexts such as art history or film studies. Central to much of this work is the idea that the way in which we view the world is relative both to the cognitive processes of the individual viewer, and to the culture in which the viewer exists. This notion has given rise to the widely employed concept of visuality, the idea that cultural patterns and social discourses constitute a kind of screen through which people necessarily look at the outside world (e.g., Elsner 2007, xvi–xvii, following Bryson 1988, 91–2). Scientific studies of visual perception carried out since the early 1960s have provided a firm foundation for this approach. The idea that information received via the senses furnishes us with ambiguous or incomplete evidence for external reality is widely accepted among cognitive scientists. Richard Gregory, for example, developed the theory that sense perceptions are similar to the predictive hypotheses of science—mental constructs devised to explain the available sensory evidence, which are then psychologically projected into external space and accepted as reality. For Gregory, visual perception is not a straightforward outcome of patterns of light that enter the eye, but rather a product of information based on our accumulated experiences, knowledge, and expectations about the world (Gregory 1977, 10–4). “[T]he senses do not give us a picture of the world directly; rather they provide evidence for the checking of hypotheses about what lies before us. Indeed we may say that the perception of an object is a hypothesis, suggested and tested by the sensory data” (Gregory 1977, 13–4). The conclusions of cognitive scientists were at the same time being matched by the speculations of art historians. In the early 1970s, Michael Baxandall developed the notion of “the period eye,” arguing that the skills that people employ in processing visual information are to a large extent culturally determined. Within any culture, Baxandall argues, shared experiences and ways of thinking, and the sup- plementary knowledge brought to any act of viewing, will help to determine which visual characteristics will most appeal to the beholders of an image:

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 3 4 Helios

We enjoy our own exercise of skill, and we particularly enjoy the playful exercise of skills which we use in normal life very earnestly. If a painting gives us opportunity for exercising a valued skill and rewards our virtuosity with a sense of worthwhile insights about that painting’s organization, we tend to enjoy it: it is to our taste. (Baxandall 1988, 34)

To one degree or another artists will respond to these socially constructed tastes when creating art objects. “The beholder must use on the painting such visual skills as he has . . . and he is likely to use those skills his society esteems highly. The painter responds to this: his public’s visual capacity must be his medium” (Baxan- dall 1988, 40). The cultural relativism underlying Baxandall’s analysis was echoed in many contemporary studies. At the root of this thinking lay the age-old question (notably explored by both Greek and Enlightenment philosophers) about the extent to which we are justified in relying on our senses for our knowledge of external reality. If we are indeed compelled to turn to sense-perception for at least a part of our knowledge of the world, then which of the senses is the most useful? Is the eye necessarily our most valuable organ? In the 1980s Martin Jay coined the term ocularcentrism to describe the primacy that had been accorded to vision in modernist culture (Jay 1988a and 1988b). This privileging of sight had generated as its late twentieth-century antithesis a suspicion of the visual, which was expressed particularly strongly by French writers and thinkers in the post-war period. Critics such as Sartre, Lacan, Althusser, and Derrida challenged from various standpoints the supposed superior ability of the eye to provide us with knowledge of an objective reality (Jay 1993, 211–594). In this postmodern retreat from positivist values, “what is perceived by the senses and what makes sense are split asunder” (Jay 1993, 585–6). The distrust aroused by vision’s failure to access the outside world was compounded by its deemed complicity in systems of oppression: Debord (1970) and Foucault (1977) have highlighted spectacle and surveillance as two long-term elements in the historical intensification of political and social control. This reaction against the cultural dominance of vision occurred during a period when the defining media of the late twentieth century—photography, film, television, video, and the internet—were exponentially increasing our society’s capacity for creating and disseminating images. At the same time, viewing was becoming a much more distanced activity. The question of agency—the degree of control the viewer has over the viewing process—has always been significant for theorists of vision, involving as it does a debate about whether the eye is a passive recipient of images or is more actively engaged in their construction. Ancient Greek optical theories, examined later in this chapter, had tackled this question on both the popular and the scientific level. Intersecting with this discussion was the issue of power Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 5 relations: the notion that viewers were capable of exercizing a sometimes damaging amount of power over the people whom they viewed had likewise been a feature of the debate since the Greek era. But in the late twentieth century the physical distance between viewers and viewed objects created by the new media had the effect of greatly multiplying our opportunities for voyeurism, for seeing and potentially controlling others without being seen ourselves. “The physical distance between subject and object, and the agency afforded the viewer in the visual process, makes viewing a process of subjectification (of the viewer) and objectification (of the viewed). This leads to mastery, not mutuality” (Morales 2004, 30). This issue of objectification was a particularly urgent one for feminist thinkers who were concerned about the proliferation of images of women in the visual media. In the United Kingdom, John Berger’s television series and book Ways of Seeing (1972) explored on several levels how ideology and photographic reproduction determine what we see when we look at images. The section dealing with the issue of gender—where it was famously claimed that “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at” (Berger 1972, 47)—was to have a long-lasting impact, and fostered many discussions about the role played by viewing in perpetuating existing gender hierarchies. The notion of ‘the gaze’ had already been brought into play by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who linked it to the “mirror stage” of development, when a child first experiences herself as a visible object. In his later work Lacan extended his treatment of the topic to include the idea that any object of the gaze (even one that is inanimate) can have an alienating effect on the viewer, because it compels subjects to be aware of themselves as objects (Lacan 1977, 74–90). Michel Foucault has also used the term in analyzing the power dynamic that arises under systems of surveillance (Foucault 1977, 200–7). But in the context of gender relations one of the most influential discussions is to be found in an article by Laura Mulvey (2010), who introduced the expression “the male gaze” into her application of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to the study of cinema spectatorship. Mulvey maintains that narrative films in the Hollywood tradition involve a form of voyeurism that objectifies female characters. Not only do such films focus on male protagonists, they also assume a male audience:

As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. (Mulvey 2010, 204)

Thus, men are presented in these films as active, controlling subjects, while women are converted into passive objects of desire for both the men in the story and the men in the audience. 6 Helios

The cinematic dominance of this “controlling male gaze” (Mulvey 2010, 206) means that women in film are constituted by their “to-be-looked-at-ness” and are prevented from being seen as desiring sexual subjects in their own right. Later critics have challenged certain aspects of Mulvey’s argument, in particular its denial of an active role to the female spectator, and its assumption that the male gaze is always a heterosexual one (Silverman 1980, Kaplan 1983, de Lauretis 1984, hooks 1992, Evans and Gamman 1995). In her subsequent work (1981), Mulvey herself has modified some of her assertions to take account of a greater range of spectatorial positions. Mulvey’s discussion of the male gaze remains fundamental, however, and may be seen as one of the most persuasive products of the anti-visual discourse of the 1970s. In its identification of vision with asymmetrical relationships and power dynamics, it can be compared with Luce Irigaray’s contention that sight is inher- ently and essentially a phallic sense: “The predominance of the visual . . . is particularly foreign to female eroticism. Woman takes pleasure more from touching than from looking, and her entry into a dominant scopic economy signifies, again, her consignment to passivity: she is to be the beautiful object of contemplation” (Irigaray 1985, 25–6). Later writers have taken the penetrative character of the gaze further, interpreting it as not just controlling but as positively assaultive (Clover, 1992). Clover also builds on Mulvey’s work by introducing the notion of “the reactive gaze.” While for Mulvey voyeurism is essentially sadistic, Clover explores the idea that masochism can be an element in a spectator’s response to “the horrified gaze of the victim” featured in horror films. In this context the spectator may identify with a victim because the latter acts as a surrogate “for one’s own past victimized self” (Clover 1992, 175). In other studies, both geographical and architectural spaces have been identified as factors in the construction of the gendered gaze (Colomina 1992, Bell and Valentine 1995, Rendell et al. 2000). Other arenas for objectification have also been addressed, and “the imperial gaze” and its late twentieth- century adjunct “the tourist gaze” have both been analyzed in the context of the politics of race and of development (e.g., Kaplan 1997 and Urry 2002). Gender, however, continues to be the area where the concept of the gaze is most frequently deployed, and its overall relevance to studies of the visual media and of face-to-face communication is not generally disputed. The work of Mulvey and of those who have enlarged on her ideas provides material for a number of the discussions in this volume (Lovatt, Rabinowitz, Ruffell). “Ocularcentrism” (Jay 1988a and 1988b), however, is not solely a feature of modernism. Ancient Greek ideas about vision have been regarded by many theorists as marking the starting point for the long-term privileging of sight in Western thought. Jay himself, for example, argues (1993, 28–9) that “the Greek celebration of sight,” while not unchallenged in its own day, nevertheless played an important Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 7 role in elevating the status of the visual in later Western culture. Writers such as Ludolf Malten (1961) and Walther Luther (1966), on the other hand, draw a sharp distinction in this respect between the Greeks and the modern West. On their view, the Greeks are the quintessential Augenmenschen, whose privileging of vision and the visual is to be contrasted both with the primacy of the word in biblical Judaism and with the priority of reason over vision in the Western, post-Cartesian tradition. There are, however, good reasons to be skeptical about claims of this sort. Gen- uinely cross-cultural studies (such as Deonna 1965) demonstrate the importance of the eye as a symbol in a wide range of ancient and modern cultures. More fundamentally, the special importance of the eye as both instrument and target of visual attention in human social interaction is demonstrated by the unique evolution of the human eyeball, in which the whiteness of the sclera alerts conspecifics to the direction of the viewer’s gaze to a degree that is not possible in other species (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 241 and Boyd 2009, 96). The ability to share visual attention to which this feature attests is fundamental to human sociality; and the importance of the eyes in the very earliest stages of the development of the capacities that underpin sociality is very great indeed. The eyes of the new-born infant are the immediate focus of its mother’s attention (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 195), and this interest is reciprocated: experiments have shown that neonates of an average age of 43 minutes look for much longer at patterns that resemble the configuration of a human face than they do at others that configure the same elements in a different way (Johnson et al. 1991). By two days old, babies are able to distinguish between the faces of their mothers (which they look at for longer) and those of strangers (Bushnell et al. 1989). This pre-organized capacity to respond to others’ faces undergoes constant reinforcement from the behavior of the mother and others from the beginning; remarkably, studies demonstrating the capacity of infants of two to three weeks old to imitate the facial gestures of other people (Meltzoff and Moore 1977) were replicated in neonates as young as 42 minutes old (Meltzoff and Moore 1983). This indicates, as Bruce and Young (1998, 251) observe, that “The baby must have some kind of ‘map’ to indicate which of its own facial muscles corresponds to those of another human being.”1 By the age of two months, babies are adept at reciprocating visual contact, and at three months they are able to use eye contact and other visual cues to initiate contact with other people. Very shortly after that, infants begin to use eye contact to regulate their own arousal in interactions: infants five to ten months old exhibit increased pulse rate on making visual contact with others, especially strangers, and control this by looking away.2 The way that the infant makes, withdraws, then re-establishes eye contact with others is the origin of the characteristic ambivalence in human interaction between contact- seeking and contact-avoidance. This pattern remains with us for the rest of our 8 Helios lives; it is especially obvious in those situations, typical of many interactions, in which contact-initiative is accompanied by self-consciousness (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 170–84, 335–7). What emerges from this research is that the development of the human visual system, of gaze and mutual gaze, is from the outset (i.e., from birth) implicated in human sociality and intersubjectivity.3 The new-born child is not an empty vessel or a blank slate, but comes equipped with innate social capacities that underpin the development of self-other understanding. Recent studies (Meltzoff and Decety 2003 and Decety and Meltzoff 2011) suggest that the capacity for imitation established by the experiments of Meltzoff and Moore 1977 is linked to the existence of the “mirror neurons” that have been identified in macaque monkeys and postulated (on the basis of analogous phenomena uncovered by fMRI scans) for human beings. Much current research focuses on the search for neurobiological underpinnings of a wide range of phenomena from emotional contagion and the spontane- ous and even sometimes unconscious mimicry of others’ gestures and facial expressions to the imaginative capacities of ‘folk psychology’ which allow us to represent to ourselves the mental states of others.4 Mirror neuron research is suggestive not only because it provides a model for understanding at least the roots and neural substrate of intersubjectivity, but also because the model that it provides has so much to do with vision and visualization. Observing another perform an action seems to activate the same regions of the brain as would be involved in performing that action oneself: “A similar neural network is reliably activated during imagining of one’s own action, imagining another’s action, and imitating actions performed by a model” (Decety and Meltzoff 2011, 70; cf. Preston and Hofelich 2012, 29). Much work remains to be done on the relation between “mirroring” at the neural and somatic levels (e.g., mimicry of facial expressions), emotional contagion, and more developed forms of self-other understanding;5 but it is at least clear that against this general background of research and scholarship, the capacity of imagination has re-emerged as a central focus of research into our interest in and understanding of the minds and lives of others and our responses to verbal and visual narratives. We shall return to this topic below. If the importance of gaze and mutual gaze in social interaction depends on innate capacities, it will not be an entirely culturally specific phenomenon, though protocols of ocular interaction will of course be subject to contextual and cultural modification. It is not difficult to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the many differences between our societies in terms of how social status is performed and acknowledged, vision and visuality are as deeply implicated in the strategies and rituals of ancient Greek social interaction as they are in our own cultures. But a complete overview of the role of the gaze in ancient Greek interaction is a broader topic than this volume can aspire to address;6 much less can we attempt a compre- Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 9 hensive account of the general importance of vision in Greek life and thought. Our purpose instead is to explore the conceptualization of vision and viewing in Greek art and literature, both in its own terms and against the background of the influential modern approaches discussed above, and to establish the extent to which this theoretical and interpretive tradition does and does not furnish useful models for the interpretation of our ancient Greek data. To take the influential Mulveyan paradigm of the “male gaze” as a starting point: it is clear that opportunities for structured forms of viewing and spectacle that exposed women (or artistic representations of women, or equally of boys and youths as the objects of the desire of older males) to an objectifying male gaze were not by any means lacking in ancient Greek societies. Girls and women, as well as boys, youths, and men, appeared and performed in a variety of religious festivals (see, e.g., Calame 1997; Stehle 1997, 71–118; Dillon 2002); if ‘respectable’ female bodies were largely hidden from view, there were plenty of easily accessible coun- terparts among slaves, prostitutes, and kept women of various sorts. At Sparta girls as well as males took part in sports and exercise naked or at least partly unclothed (Pomeroy 2002, 25–7), while female as well as male bodies were represented and displayed in a variety of art forms, from vase painting to sculpture. These phenomena have already been the subject of studies by Hellenists influenced by the later twentieth-century theories outlined above (e.g., Frontisi-Ducroux 1996; Elsner 1996; Osborne 1994, 1996, 2011; Stehle and Day 1996; Stewart 1997). There are, however, limitations and restrictions to the application of such approaches. No classical Greek form of drama, for example, permits the kind of viewing that Mulvey has identified as characteristic of the aesthetics of Hollywood cinema, for the reason that although tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play are full of female characters, female parts were played by men.7 The forms of scopophilia and voyeurism postulated by Mulvey and others for Hollywood cinema have no direct analogue in the ancient theater; however male actors performed their female roles,8 the knowledge that they were men must have made a difference in the eyes of the male spectator (Zeitlin 1990, 65 and Hall 2006, 123). Yet this does not rule out legitimate questions about the association between classical forms of performance and the eroticization and objectification of the female body in Athenian society. Indeed we learn something significant about the potential for and dangers of such eroticization and objectification from the very fact that the display of actual female bodies was not practiced. The visible ‘woman’ on the tragic stage is a woman in the mind’s eye; and the male body that, behind mask and costume, supports that representation tells us something very significant about Athenian ideology regarding the display of women before the eyes of men. But if the onstage female character is a woman at least in ideation, this is even more true of the offstage woman, the woman represented as the object of others’ 10 Helios visual attention in diegetic rather than mimetic space. Polyxena, for example, will have been represented by a male performer for her onstage role in Euripides’ Hecuba. But Talthybius’s report of her death, offstage, as a sacrifice to the dead Achilles makes it clear how, in many cases, it is the offstage, ideational woman rather than her onstage, male-represented surrogate who is more truly the object of the male gaze. In this case, as Polyxena tears her garments to the navel and invites her executioner to strike her breast or her neck (Hec. 558–65), she is both a young female object of the desire of internal and external spectators (her breasts are “as beautiful as a statue’s,” 560–1) and a fantasized, heroized object of male admiration (579–81).9 Talthybius was an eyewitness of this offstage spectacle; the narrative of his messenger-speech re-creates what he saw for the imagination of an audience that sees it at second hand. This is a function not merely of the tragic messenger-speech (de Jong 1991, Goward 1999, Barrett 2002, Dickin 2009), but of narrative more generally: the words of a narrator, enhanced as they often are by the focalization of viewers internal to the narrative as well as by the reported speech of the characters whose actions are narrated, perform in narrative functions analogous to the selection of detail and direction of audience response that are performed in film by all the various aspects of the film’s design (lighting, coloring, composition, shot selection, focus on the faces of protagonist and observers, cutting and editing, etc.), which depend, ultimately, on the filmmaker’s deployment of the camera. One might even think of the camera in its medium taking over, at least to some extent, tasks traditionally performed by the focusing devices of verbal narrative. At the least, it is unarguable that both cinematic and verbal narratives ask and require us to look. Accordingly, both in this volume and elsewhere in the wider body of existing scholarship on ancient Greek viewing, 10 much of the evidence that must be taken into account is to be found in texts that were not scripts for the performance of acts of seeing and being seen, looking and being looked at, but which rather describe and evoke such acts. The secondary seeing of readers and hearers is as important a topic as the direct viewing of the spectator; the language, and indeed the concept of vision and viewing, are not restricted to what is actually visual and visible. The capacity to visualize unseen objects is also an element of our pan-cultural, pan-human heritage. The integration of vision and cognition in the human mind has endowed us all with the capacity to form mental images (even if these are images of objects that one has never seen, or even of objects that no one has ever seen). But it is vision that is our primary source of information about the world, which explains why knowledge is regularly spoken of in terms of sight rather than sight in terms of knowledge. The mechanism is one of cognitive metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), a process that typically maps the more immediate onto the more mysterious, the concrete onto the abstract, the physical onto the psychologi- Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 11 cal, and the seen onto the unseen. The metaphor that knowing is seeing passes almost without notice in our modern languages and is clearly not unique to ancient Greek (Johnson 1987, 107–9). In ancient Greek, however, the difference between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ amounts to no more than a shift in aspect of a single verbal root (albeit one that is then enmeshed in different patterns of usage and semantics). The cognitive metaphor that understanding is seeing is encoded in the forms of the verb itself. The metaphor is not uniquely Greek, but it may still be quintes- sentially so. However that may be, the capacity to visualize what one does not see but merely hears or reads about, is exploited and developed from the earliest stages of Greek literature onwards. The Homeric poems were celebrated in antiquity and are still admired today for their enargeia, the quality of presenting a narrative in such a way as to engage the audience’s capacity for visualization. Enargeia remained an aspira- tion of wordsmiths and a core term of the literary and rhetorical critic’s art throughout antiquity.11 A scholium on the famous passage of Iliad 6 in which Hec- tor reaches out towards his baby son, only for the boy to shrink back in fear at his helmet, is a typical example: “Children do cling to their nurses and are hard to wrench away from them. But in this case the sight frightens him too. These lines are so full of enargeia that you don’t just hear what’s happening, you see it as well” (dusapospavstw~ me;n e[cousi tw`n trofw`n. tou`ton de; kai; hJ o[yi~ fobei`. tau`ta de; ta; e[ph ou{tw~ ejsti;n ejnargeiva~ mestav, w{ste [Wilamowitz; o{ti codd.] ouj movnon ajkouvetai ta; pravgmata, ajlla; kai; oJra`tai, Σ bT Il. 6.467).12 The fit between Homeric criticism and the poems’ own implicit poetics is suggested by the presentation of song as something that derives from (Il. 2.484–7) or at least resembles (Od. 8.491) eyewitness knowledge: Homer’s Demodocus was not present at Troy, and neither witnessed the events he narrates nor heard about them from someone who did; but someone who was present, Odysseus, is able to offer a unique guarantee of the bard’s powers of enargeia (de Jong 2001, 214–5; Serra 2007, 34; Halliwell 2011, 85–6). That both audiences and authors reveled in such capabilities is demonstrated by the pervasive tradition of ekphrasis, the vivid, quasi-pictorial representation of a scene, person, animal, or object (not just a work of art) that appears already as a deliberate tour de force in the Shield of Achilles in Iliad 18. Parallel to the theorization of enargeia (and related terms such as saphê- neia and emphasis) in aesthetics, literary criticism, and rhetoric is that of phantasia (the faculty of imagination) in philosophy and psychology, as well as aesthetics;13 and as Herrmann has shown us, in his 2007 monograph as well as in his contribution to this collection, it was ancient Greek that gave us the language of ideas, invisible objects of the mind’s insight. Gorgias and Plato vie for the honor of being the first author we know of to deploy the explicit image of “the mind’s eye” (toi`~ th`~ dovxh~ o[mmasin, Hel. 13; th`~ dianoiva~ o[yi~: Plato, Symp. 219A; to; th`~ yuch`~ 12 Helios o[mma, Resp. 533D; th`~ yuch`~ o[mmata, Soph. 254A), but the metaphor of cognition as vision is much older. For all these reasons and more, the concentration of some of our contributors on reported seeing, ‘as if’ seeing, on the verbal representation of sights, and on the notion of sight as insight is entirely legitimate in a volume of this nature—a book on ancient Greek viewing could not leave these themes out. Ancient Greek authors regularly comment on the greater power and persua- siveness of what one sees with one’s own eyes by comparison with what one merely hears about (Heraclitus B 101a DK; Herodotus 1.8.1; Xenophon, Mem. 3.11.1), but it seems to have been an implicit ideal of Greek narrative to efface the distinction as far as possible. There is thus ample room for verbal narratives to exploit in their audiences the scopophilia and voyeurism that drive the gaze of Mulvey’s hypo- thetical male viewer, as we have already noted in the case of Euripides’ presentation of the sacrifice of Polyxena; in fact, two of the three passages just cited use the trope of the superiority of autopsy over hearsay to elicit via a verbal narrative a visualization of the primary viewing experienced by a figure in the narrative.14 But if the legitimate extension of the notion of ‘viewing’ to include the phantasia exercized by the hearers and readers of verbal narratives extends the scope (to use another visual metaphor) of the ‘male gaze’ from primary viewing to secondary visualization, it also throws into higher relief the extent to which the forms of viewing and visualization suggested by that approach represent simply one possible mode among many. It must, surely, be beyond contestation that, in a wide variety of everyday scenarios, the male gaze can have the characteristics that are typically ascribed to it. Undeniably, too, such a mode of viewing is not only a possible response of the male cinema-goer, but also clearly exploited and explored in numerous products of mainstream cinema.15 But it cannot be the only mode of viewing in which even heterosexual male cinema-goers actually engage. A wholly different (though not necessarily incompatible) approach to cinema’s construction of the audience’s visual attention emerges, for example, from David Bordwell’s brilliant exposition of the way that the ‘convention’ of shot/reverse shot is both an invention of early cinematic technique and a non-arbitrary way of incorporating aspects of everyday ocular interaction which do not replicate either the interactants’ or the observers’ perspective (Bordwell 2008, 57–82). Empirical research into actual responses of cinema audiences—even among viewers of such prime Mul- veyan suspects as Hitchcock’s Vertigo—appears to reveal a wider range of reac- tions.16 Films like Vertigo or (even more so) Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom do clearly thematize the relation between cinema and voyeurism, but even in the case of Peeping Tom an audience will be (as audiences surely are) disturbed by its implication in the murderer’s voyeurism and objectification of his female victims only if it also sympathizes with his victims in a way that he does not. The tension between scopophilia and deeper forms of interest in cinematic characters is further probed Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 13 in works such as Michael Haneke’s Caché or Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen. In the latter, the invasive, objectifying surveillance of the Stasi operative, spying on a playwright whose loyalty to the SED regime has become suspect, certainly implicates the audience. The tables are turned, however, when the Stasi operative himself comes to empathize with the targets of his surveillance in the way that a cinematic audience might (cf. Smith 2011, 114); detached, voyeuristic observation gives way to a more profound interest in the lives of others. In this regard, cinematic and literary fiction appear to coalesce in the ways in which their narratives engage the imaginative and affective capacities of their audiences. The imagination, the capacity of phantasia, that allows us to enter vicariously into the minds and worlds of fictional characters appears to draw on very much the same capacities as allow us to imagine the minds and experiences of other flesh and blood human beings in everyday life. The phantasia that is engaged by the enargeia of ancient Greek narratives is equally diverse, both in theory and in practice; but its character, as emphasized by the author of On the Sublime 15.1–2, is typically emotional: one feels something like what a participant or an eyewitness would feel.17 Josephus’s narrative of the cannibalism of Mary (BJ 6.201–19) is a good example. During the siege of Jerusalem, a starving woman cooks and eats her own son in a desperate attempt to avenge herself upon the Jewish guards whose depredations have reduced her to this level. The guards who see what she has done are transfixed with horror at the sight (tou;~ d j eujqevw~ frivkh kai; parevkstasi~ h{/rei kai; para; th;n o[yin ejpephvgesan, 210),18 but as the news spreads through the city, all visualize and shudder at the event as if they had committed it themselves (kai; pro; ojmmavtwn e{kasto~ to; pavqo~ lambavnwn w{sper aujtw`/ tolmhqe;n e[fritte, 213). The horror of the eyewitness is recapitulated in the response of an internal, listening audience that not only visualizes the act but also in some sense re-creates the horror of perpetrating such an act; both perspectives are available to guide the emotions of the reader (cf. Chapman 2007).19 There is no absolute distinction here, in Greek literary and rhetorical theory, between the forms of viewing encouraged by direct visual spectacle and the visualization that verbal narratives excite in their audiences. Gorgias, for example, insists on the compulsive, emotive power of both logos (Hel. 8–14) and opsis (15–9), drawing a clear parallelism between the mental images created by speech (§13, cited above) and those created by the objects of vision (§17: ou{tw~ eijkovna~ tw`n oJrwmevnwn pragmavtwn hJ o[yi~ ejnevgrayen ejn tw`/ fronhvmati). For Aristotle (Poet. 14, 1453b1–12), the emotions that are characteristic of the audience’s response to tragedy can be aroused by opsis, but should properly arise from the plot itself, and thus might be aroused just as effectively if not more effectively by a purely verbal narrative. Modern cognitive approaches to fiction similarly group audience response to visual and verbal narrative under the same head, and emphasize the link between both of these and the 14 Helios capacities for imagination, mind reading, and empathy that are activated in real social interaction and part of our mental equipment as a social species.20 Modern critical accounts of the fallibility and subjectivities of vision and of vision’s implication in ideologies of gender, status, and power clearly stand in some relation to scientific or pseudoscientific theory; but ancient Greek constructions of vision and visuality also interact, at least in some cases and to some extent, with the folk and scientific models of the societies in which they developed. It is a legitimate exercise, undertaken by several of our contributors, to bring modern theoretical perspectives to bear on the ancient evidence as it relates, for example, to the erotics of seeing and to anxieties about the implication of vision in relations of dominance, hierarchy, and power. Yet many of these phenomena can also be illuminated by investigating their relation to ancient theory, a procedure that has the added advantage of highlighting what is distinctive about ancient cultural models, both of vision itself and of the other aspects of social and cultural values (e.g., those centered on sex, gender, and status) in which vision is implicated. The Hippocratic treatise Peri; o[yio~ (De videndi acie or On Sight) is not, as might have been expected, on the subject of anatomy or sense perception, but on eye surgery (see Craik 2006).21 Cutting, cautery, and scarification are extensively prescribed for conditions that include cataract, trachoma, and (vaguely all- embracing) ‘ophthalmia.’ From these therapeutic and surgical procedures, which aim to dissipate or evacuate peccant matter, the anatomical, physiological, and pathological presuppositions of the author can readily be reconstructed. These are seen to be in accord with views expressed or implicit in other texts from the Hip- pocratic Corpus, as well as in Aristotle and to a large extent in the later medical tradition of antiquity, extending even to Paul of Aegina. Alcmaeon of Croton (cf. below) had put forward theories of sense perception and formulated concepts of psychophysiology on the basis of the existence of “ducts” (doubtless the optic nerves) observed to lead from brain to eye.22 But anatomical knowledge in the classical period remained rudimentary, based primarily on dissection of animals. Physicians supplemented their limited anatomical knowledge with theoretical postulates, thinking primarily in terms of the flux and fixation of bodily fluids. The related theories of physiology—that optical wellbeing depended on the proper functioning of ducts that conveyed pure moisture to the healthy eye—and pathology—that the sight was affected if these ducts became blocked or flooded or conveyed peccant moisture to the diseased eye—can be seen pervasively in Greek medical texts of all eras. Such ophthalmological theories were allied with the common general theory in antiquity of a downward flux from the head to various parts of the body through various channels, including not only the superficial blood vessels but also deep conduits between the head and the lower body.23 Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 15

In ophthalmology a distinction was postulated between noxious stuff (related especially to phlegm) localized in and flowing from the scalp above the skull and noxious stuff (related to vital fluids) localized in and flowing from the brain below the skull. Whereas the former was viewed as common and amenable to treatment by cutting or burning the flesh of the vertex or the vessels of the temples, the latter was thought serious and intractable, dangerously inaccessible in its course from brain to eye. Diseases presenting at other points in the body, especially at the arthra (joints), were similarly thought to be particularly difficult to treat when the causal flux was associated with deep inner pathways, rather than with more shallow outer passages in or from the head. The most important deep route was via the spinal fluid. Diseases where this was implicated were commonly associated with excess of sexual activity, semen and cerebrospinal fluid being seen as allied. An encephalo- myelogenic theory of seminal fluid underlies the belief that infertility (not always impotence) would result if an incision were made behind the ears.24 Such an incision was a recognized treatment for diseases of the hip joint, caused by a flux of peccant matter by the same route.25 In women, this flux of peccant matter might affect the same joints as in men; in addition it might attack the genitalia and so, as in men, have an effect on fertility (Mul. 2.114 [= vol. 8, p. 246 Littré]). Fluids in the eye and fluids associated with fertility are viewed in the same way. The supposition is made that in sex the eyes and genitals alike “sink” and are drained, contraction of the eyes forcing out stuff from the brain; the proof is that anointing the eyes is a treatment for infertity in women ([Aristotle], Pr. 4.2, 876a–b). This is to enhance production of (female) sperm. A related view is that in cases of uterine suffocation, the passages to the eyes are blocked (Mul. 2.201 [= vol. 8, p. 384 Littré]). Supposed signs of pregnancy are noted in the eyes, while a pregnancy test based on the result of applying a red substance to the eyes is recorded.26 It is probable that there was widespread popular knowledge of these medical beliefs. The common literary description of the eyes through the adjective hygros (moist) may refer not (as LSJ) to melting or languishing looks but rather to health, wellbeing, and sexual potency; the same description of limbs may refer not (as LSJ) to their suppleness but rather to similar traits of health and vitality. At both popular and ‘scientific’ levels, ancient Greek optical theories typically presuppose some form of physical contact between the eyes and the object of vision.27 Broadly, there are three categories into which these theories might be sorted: active, in which the eye sees by emitting rays or effluences; passive, in which the eye is the recipient of emanations from the objects of vision; and interactionist, in which the eye both emits and receives. The active (emissionist) theory—that the eyes see by means of the fiery rays which they cast on the external world—is common in early poetry;28 it is apparent also in the notion that the sun is an all- seeing eye,29 and finds expression in some scientific optical theories (e.g., those of 16 Helios

Alcmaeon of Croton and Euclid).30 Fire within the eyes also figures in the optical theory of Empedocles, where it coexists with a belief that the eyes receive physical emanations from objects.31 The crucial question here is whether interocular fire is actually emitted from the eyes, or is rather the mechanism by which emanations are perceived once they have reached the eye. The former interpretation would suggest that Empedocles followed an interactionist theory (in which the rays emitted by the eye merge with emanations from the objects of vision) of the sort that appears in Plato’s Timaeus.32 Recent interpreters, however, place more emphasis on the eye’s passive reception of emanations.33 The approach of Democritus and the other atomists has traditionally been regarded as passive, emanationist, in which the eye is the passive recipient of impressions created by “images” (deikela or deikêla, eidôla) derived from the objects of sight;34 but a recent reexamination by K. Rudolph (2011) makes a strong case for the combination of both active (emissionist) and passive (emanationist) elements.35 The theories of the Stoics are clearly interactionist: vision involves a flow of pneuma from the hêgemonikon to the eyes, whereupon a ‘cone’ of stretched air is formed between the eyes and the object through which contact is effected and information transmitted back to the hêgemonikon.36 The apparent exception to the dominant view of vision as involving physical contact between perceiver and perceived was Aristotle, who decisively rejected the materialist, quasi-haptic theories of his predecessors.37 In his view, perception in all its forms is a qualitative change in the subject, involving reception of the form but not the matter of the object. Nonetheless, his theory retains a notion that the object of vision, insofar as it is colored, effects a qualitative but still physical change, both in the transparent medium between object and perceiver and in the eye itself: our perception is of the shape of the apple and its redness, not of the apple itself, but there is still a material change both in the air that is the medium of perception and in the eye that receives it, a change caused by the qualities of the apple. This is suggested, above all, by an example not of vision (of the eye’s undergoing a qualitative change) but of a converse process, the eye’s causing a qualitative change. The reference here is to Aristotle’s acceptance and explanation of the belief that the eye of a menstruating woman can cause discoloration of a mirror: this happens because the change in the transparent medium of the eye (believed to result from menstruation) affects that of the air and the mirror.38 The change in the transparent medium is qualitative (i.e., color), but still material. Thus even Aristotle’s passive and anti-materialist theory of vision can retain an active role for the eye in causing physical changes in the world (albeit not as an aspect of its activity of seeing).39 These folk and scientific models are important because in their different ways they are compatible with beliefs that the eyes may cause or lay one open to a variety of profound and often unwelcome physical changes. Such, for example, is the belief Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 17 that diseases such as eye infections and epilepsy, and physical-cum-spiritual afflic- tions such as miasma (pollution), may be transmitted by sight.40 They are also implicated in various scenarios of social interaction, especially those that involve emotions such as love and envy. For the ancient Greeks, as for us, the degree of intimacy between lovers is typically correlated with increased eye contact, while envy is regularly seen in terms of one’s being the unwanted focus of others’ visual attention.41 The association between envy and the eyes was pervasive in antiquity. The personified figure of Envy (Zelos, Phthonos) is characterized by hateful or terrible looks in authors as widely separated in time as Hesiod (Op. 195–6) and Greg- ory Nazianzenus (Epigr. 8.121.5 = PG 38.25); it is an envious look from afar that Agamemnon fears as he walks to his death on Clytemnestra’s crimson cloths (Aeschylus, Ag. 946–7); and Pindar contrasts the positive regard the victor should achieve with the gaze of the phthoneros who “rolls an empty thought in darkness” (Nem. 4.39–41). The fundamental feature of phthonos is its probing, malicious gaze, whose characteristic and unnerving feature is its tendency to be directed at its target without that person’s perceiving it. The look of phthonos is thus not generally at home in one-to-one, face-to-face interactions; it is much more the reaction of the spectator on the sidelines—often no more than a projection of the subject’s sense that her actions admit of evaluations on the part of their witnesses that differ from those of the subject herself.42 Ancient anxieties about the malicious gaze of the phthoneros no doubt have the deep roots in our pre-human inheritance with which Burkert credits them (1996, 43, 86), but they also take on highly specific forms in theories of the evil eye, physiognomic lore on the identification of the envious, and the provision of spells and apotropaic devices, including eye amulets and other representations of the open eye, to neutralize its effects.43 Ancient Greek scenarios of love and envy, however, can also make use of the various ‘haptic’ theories of vision. In the case of love, the active (emissionist) theory makes its presence felt in frequent references to the fire, rays, or arrows that emanate from the eyes of the beloved.44 This sense that the beloved’s gaze can make her or him an active party to the interaction can be accentuated by imagery that presents the beloved as ‘hunting’ the lover by means of the arrows or snares of the eyes.45 Typically, however, the beloved is not (or not yet) an active party to the relationship; his burning, melting looks incite desire, but do not express it, and indeed they incite desire whether the beloved is actively seeking to ensnare the lover, modestly resisting his advances (e.g., Anth. Pal. 12.99), or entirely unaware of or indifferent to the lover’s intentions (e.g., Pindar, fr. 123.2–6, 10–2 Maehler).46 Though this model of infatuation, in which the lover is affected by rays or glances from the beloved’s eyes, makes transparent use of the active, emissionist model of vision, the stress is on the lover’s helpless, passive experience of erôs. The beloved may be casting rays from his eyes, but the look that is charged with emotion is that 18 Helios of the lover. In the Pindaric fragment just cited, the beloved’s active eye is focalized throughout from the lover’s perspective: rays from the beloved’s eyes make the lover swell with desire (2–3), but to do this they must catch the lover’s own eye. And though the fragment begins with the lover’s susceptibility to looks from the beloved’s eyes, it concludes with the effects of the lover’s own visual attention to the beauty of the youthful male body as a whole (ajll j ejgw; ta`~ e{kati khro;~ w}~ dacqei;~ e{la/ É iJra`n melissa`n tavkomai, eu\t j a]n i[dw É paivdwn neovguion ej~ h{ban [But thanks to Aphrodite, I melt like the wax of holy bees bitten by the sun’s heat, whenever I look on the new-limbed youth of boys, 10–2]). In this way, the ‘active’ model shades into a more passive conception, in which the lover is the passive recipient of emanations that come from the beloved’s entire body and not just from the eyes. The latter is the case in the celebrated account of erôs in Plato’s Phaedrus (251B–C), where the lover’s desire is the result of the effluence (aporrhoê) of particles from the beautiful body that enter the lover’s soul via his eyes. 47 This passive model is also the ‘scientific’ explanation of erôs preferred in the Greek novel, as novelists employ the Empedoclean/Democritean/Platonic terminology of eidôla and aporrho(i)ai and describe the onset of love as a result of the influx through the lover’s eyes of emanations from the object of the gaze.48 The erotic model of vision can thus appropriate the emissionist point of view, but does so in a modified and asymmetric way: the beloved whose flashing rays melt the lover may sometimes intend this effect, but the effect is the same whether he does or not, and the counterpart of the (sometimes) active eye of the beloved is the passive, receptive eye of the lover. Though the lover’s eye is a greedy eye that actively seeks out the beautiful,49 it is at the same time the passive victim of the beloved’s beauty and generally has no power to affect the object of its desires unless that individual happens to be subject to the same passive experience of falling in love. In the novelists, falling in love can be simultaneous and mutual, in the sense that the beauty of person A affects person B and vice versa, but the emotion expressed by person A’s eyes does not excite emotion in person B; instead, each undergoes the same passive experience of being affected by the other’s beauty.50 The beloved’s eye, even when dispas- sionate, is powerful, while the lover’s, despite the ardor it expresses, is typically impotent. Part of the reason for this is lies in the phenomenology of love in general and of erôs in particular. Erotic infatuation, like many other emotions, can be experienced as a loss of control.51 But a further distinguishing mark of Greek erôs is its one- sidedness: the relevant relationships are seen as involving an active erastês and a passive recipient of that person’s attentions, an erômenos or erômenê.52 This does not mean that such relationships can never be mutual (as they are in the heterosexual relationships portrayed in the novel), but only that my erôs is conceived as Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 19 something that happens to me as a result of my interest in another party who need not reciprocate that interest. To this there is a further ideological dimension, especially in pederastic relations between an older and a younger male, insofar as the rhetoric of the (active) lover’s helpless enslavement to the passive erômenos involves méconnaissance of the hierarchical nature of these relationships.53 Though the real power lies with the adult male citizen in pursuit, as an object of pleasure, of a boy who is not yet a citizen, the powerful represent themselves as enslaved to the object of their desires. The power of this model—Konstan’s pederastic paradigm54—and the influence it exerted upon the application of folk and scientific models of vision to the case of erotic seeing, are demonstrated by a further passage in Plato’s Phaedrus.55 In that dialogue, especially in Socrates’ second speech (in which he recants his earlier agreement with Lysias on the superiority of the non-lover over the lover), much is made of the possibility of philia between lover and beloved (see Sheffield 2011). This mutuality, however, does not entirely extend to erôs itself. The feelings of philia that the beloved experiences towards the lover do involve erôs of a sort, but this is not the same as the lover’s erôs. Plato calls it anterôs (255C–E), and its source lies in the erômenos himself: the stream of beauty that emanates from the beloved’s body and so inflames the lover can be so abundant that it flows back into the beloved’s eyes and infects him, just as one is infected with ophthalmia, with a form of erôs that is a reflection (w{sper ejn katovptrw/, 255D) or “image” (eidôlon) of the desire that the lover experiences in a stronger and more regular form. This elaborate image clearly draws on the phenomenon of mutual gaze in intimate relationships—a phenomenon whose existence can be recognized as such in Greek sources56—but theorizes it in line with the dominant contemporary model of erôs. Despite the attribution of erôs, in some form, to both parties to the relationship, the passage still does not encompass a symmetrical relationship between two parties, each of whom loves the other in the same way for the same reason.57 The ideology of erotic attachment exercises a decisive influence upon the ways in which models of erotic vision are deployed. The supposed reality of the physical affections caused and undergone by the eyes in the case of love forms part of an argument used in both Plutarch and Helio- dorus to convince a skeptical audience of the reality of the evil eye (baskania): if the eyes are the medium of a physical affliction in the case of love (which, it is assumed, everyone accepts), then so can they be in malicious emotions like envy.58 Both these passages seek (Plutarch seriously, Heliodorus probably parodically)59 to provide a supposedly scientific rationale for a belief that could be stigmatized as popular superstition but was clearly widespread.60 The argument in both places requires the materiality of the gaze in the case of love to be assimilated as closely as possible to that of the evil eye; and at a certain level of generality there is indeed a parallel, 20 Helios for in both cases we can be affected (via our own eyes) by others’ looks. But there is also a distinct lack of fit betweenerôs and baskania as manifestations of the materiality of the gaze: the latter illustrates the eyes’ supposed ability actively to infect others with the malicious emotional state of their possessor, whereas in the paradigm scenarios of erôs the beloved’s active eye typically does not express the emotion itself, and the lover’s eye, which does express the emotion, is generally ineffective. The preferred optical theory of both Plutarch and Heliodorus is the passive one, but in both there is a tension between an active model (which suits phthonos) and a passive model (which suits erôs): the Plutarch passage begins with the general truth that people can be harmed by being the target of others’ looks (680D–F; cf. 681E). But the passage goes on to explain the harm caused by others’ gaze in terms of a more or less passive optical theory in which the eyes are said to be an especially powerful source of the aporrhoiai that the whole body produces (680F–681A).61 The analogy of erôs is then introduced in a way that initially suggests that it too, like phthonos, involves the active emission of emotion-particles (681A–B): “Of love, too, which is the greatest and most violent passion of the soul, vision provides the beginning; so that the lover, when he looks upon the beautiful, flows and melts, as if pouring himself out towards them.” It immediately becomes clear, however, that it is the vulnerability of the eye of the lover to the melting looks of the beloved which is being used as an argument for the eye’s active ability to cause harm in baskania (681B–C):

This is why we should be surprised, I think, that people believe that a person can be affected and harmed through sight, but not that they can act and cause harm. For the reciprocated gaze of the beautiful and that which is emitted by the eye, be it light or a current, melt and dissolve the lovers to the accompaniment of a pleasure that is mixed with pain, which they themselves call bittersweet. For neither by touching or hearing are they so wounded and affected, as by looking and being looked upon. Such is the communication and the inflammation that results from sight that one must consider altogether unacquainted with love those who wonder at Median naphtha when it catches fire at a distance from the flame. For the glances of the beautiful, even if they look back from a great distance, kindle fire in the souls of their lovers.

The disanalogy between phthonos and erôs is highlighted by the fact that in phthonos it is the agent of the gaze who is in the grip of a pathos of the soul (681D–E) while in erôs it is the recipient (681A–C). Heliodorus’s ‘malarial’ account of phthonos is more consistently passive, but the same tension between the active character of phthonos and the passivity of erôs is still apparent: when someone looks with phthonos at what is beautiful, he fills the Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 21 surrounding air with his malign quality (3.7.3); but in erôs the affection enters the soul via the eyes as a result of what the lover has seen, a sign of the eyes’ receptivity to aporrhoiai (3.7.5). The passive model of vision is credited with quasi-active emotional powers in the case of phthonos, but not in that of erôs. The look of a lover is unlikely to transmit the lover’s erôs, and there is an asymmetry between the evil eye (in which others’ eyes can straightforwardly transmit what those individuals are feeling and achieve the desired effect on their target) and erôs (in which neither party straightforwardly uses the eyes to transmit emotion). Although in very general terms similar beliefs in the physical consequences of seeing and being seen can be used in the explanation of both phenomena, the preferred optical theory conditions, but does not determine, the presentation of the two emotions; the independent folk theories of the emotions in question, even when they come into contact with optical theory, remain in different ways resistant to absorption into a single, overarching theory. In the case of these emotions a concept of vision as a process of physical contact is clearly activated, and there genuinely is a sense that the eye has the potential to send or receive emotions that have powerful physical effects on their target. In other cases, however, this potential is very often ignored. The angry can occasion- ally be credited with the power to harm which is more often attributed to the envious (e.g., Apollonius of Rhodes, Arg. 4.661–73), but this potential cannot be generalized.62 There are numerous passages from Homer on in which a character’s eyes express anger.63 Yet while part of the definition of anger (as the Greeks understood it) is that the patient of the emotion desires to inflict retaliatory harm on its target, and the Homeric poems, for example, are full of angry looks, we have no instance in which the scowls, frowns, blazing eyes, or evil looks of the angry individual have any harmful effect on the target of her or his anger.I n fact, a belief in the eye’s power to harm would on occasion be incompatible with typical scenarios of social and ocular interaction; for if there were a consistent and universal belief that looks could kill, no angry individual would use visual cut-off (that is, deliberately look away) as a way of punishing an offender’s lack of respect.64 We cannot, therefore, generalize from the physical efficacy or vulnerability of the eye in some scenarios to an all-encompassing universal belief in the physical effects of seeing and being seen. These models of vision are enlisted in support of cultural models of emotion where they fit, modified where they fit less well, and ignored when they do not fit at all. Though models of vision as a haptic process are doubtless intended to be applied across the board, their intersection with the protocols of ocular interaction in everyday life is limited to a few special cases. The notion of the physicality of the gaze cannot, then, be said to permeate Greek models of ocular, emotional, and social interaction. In the cases of erôs and baskania, where cultural models of vision and emotion 22 Helios intersect, the phenomenology of the emotions concerned (erôs as a passive experience, baskania as a danger posed by the eyes of others) plays a significant role in subordinating the visual to the emotional model; but so too do questions of status, hierarchy, and ideology. In other cases such as the role of the eyes in the expression of anger, the relevant interpretive frame is not the ‘haptic’ model of vision, but specific Greek understandings of the expressive, emotional, and social role of the eyes in ordinary social interaction. These are issues that impinge on the role of the gaze in a much wider range of emotional scenarios and social contexts, for the part played by the eyes in the expression of demeanor and deference in interaction ritual was as fundamental for the Greeks as it is for us. The delicate task of negotiating the balance between respect for self and others, of projecting one’s own status and acknowledging that of others, was, as far as we can tell from the texts and images that ancient Greek communities have left us, as deeply dependent on strategies of the gaze as in our own societies. The role of the eyes in interaction ritual is a large subject that cannot be pursued in detail here, but some pointers may be given. In a wide variety of everyday social scenarios, the degree of looking and eye contact in a face-to-face interaction manifests and defines the status of the interactants. Intense looking can indicate positive regard (examples in Cairns 2005b, 131–2), but it can also be invasive and entail a claim to superiority or a failure of deference (Cairns 2005b, 129–30). Equally, looking away can express a sense of one’s lower status vis-à-vis the other (with primary focus on either the superiority of the other or one’s own inferiority: Cairns 2005b, 134–5) and can deny the other the status of interactant altogether (Cairns 2005b, 135–6). These phenomena entail a delicate balance in the reciprocity of seeing and being seen which is typical of human interaction in general, but also characteristically Greek (cf. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991, 10, 169–70; 1995, 20, 25–6). Looking carries a claim to status that may or may not be validated, and its validation or otherwise is manifested in the gaze of others. Looking away can downplay one’s own claim but also constitute a refusal to validate the claims of the other, since both the right to look and the right to display oneself are part of the definition of status in social interaction. Typically, both rights were denied in Greece to individuals (slaves, boys, women, kinaidoi) defined as inferior to free men and forfeited by free men of impaired status. These patterns, and their implication in strategies of demeanor and deference in everyday social interaction, are familiar in general terms, originating in the ambivalence between contact-seeking and contact-avoidance in early infant development to which we referred above. Yet they are also embedded in a specifically Greek framework of semantic categories, social roles, practices, norms, and values. As the construction of the roles and status of individuals, the protocols and display rules that define those roles, and the nature of the social emotions expressed in these scenarios all differ between Greek Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 23 societies and our own, so the specifics of ancient Greek vision and viewing must be seen in the concrete detail of the norms and practices of Greek societies. Let us now turn to the chapters in this volume. The first three contributions explore from different angles the interface between written texts and the viewing of material objects. Deborah Steiner in her essay, “Swallow This: A Pelike within Late Archaic Song and Visual Culture,” offers a new interpretation of a late sixth-century pelike, a vase that presents an intriguing combination of words and images. Work- ing with two existing sets of readings of the object—one focused on the pederastic element within the first of the vase’s two scenes, the other on the activity of sign making—Steiner’s differently oriented account discusses the role of the pot within the sympotic culture for which it was produced. By drawing on a series of texts concerned with the deciphering of bird signs (the activity shown on one side of the pelike) and on contemporary swallow lore, this reading demonstrates how artist and potter together construct the vase as a riddle that challenges its sympotic audience and invites them to participate competitively in the painted scenes. Critical here are also social relations, both those between the makers of the pot and their elite audience, and those between the symposiasts who view the pelike at their collective gathering. By virtue of the invitation to engage in the images on the pelike, the audience is further prompted to reflect on relations between the visual and verbal spheres and on their respective powers and limitations. In the next two articles, the authors engage with written accounts of the viewing of art objects. Melissa Haynes’s essay, “Framing a View of the Unviewable: Architecture, Aphrodite, and Erotic Looking in the Lucianic Erôtes,” provides a multilayered analysis of a description of the temple of Aphrodite at Cnidus and of the statue of the goddess which it once housed. The debate presented within the Greek text—What is the correct focus for male sexual desire?—is provoked by the bivalent erotic stimulus of the goddess’s body, which hinges on whether the viewer approaches the statue from the front or the back. Whereas other accounts of the sanctuary emphasize the possibility of viewing the figure from all angles, the author of the Erôtes depicts a temple with only two doors: in order to view the goddess from the back, the visitor must be admitted by a guard through a rear door. In her article, Haynes argues that this unique description of the sanctuary is the product of a conscious literary strategy aimed at presenting an architectural map for a dialogue on the eroticized body. For Haynes, the directed viewing in the text pro jects the body, gendered alternatively female and male, onto the experience of the architectural space. This new reading sites the viewing of a celebrated statue firmly within the ancient author’s complex literary approach to architecture, sexuality, and the intersection of the two. Michael Squire, in his “Apparitions Apparent: Ekphrasis and the Parameters of Vision in the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines,” investigates a more conscious writerly 24 Helios perspective on the interface between text and image. It examines “the symbiotic rapport between voice and vision” in a Greek text that bridges the classical and the late antique periods. Philostratus the Elder’s Imagines describes a make-believe collection of 65 paintings in a gallery on the bay of Naples, and poses questions about the way in which texts may function as images, and images as texts. This account taps into a long-running Greek debate about which medium is the more meaningful: ‘pictures for viewing’ or ‘words for reading.’ Squire uses Philostratus’s narrative as a basis for considering the relationship between the theorizing of viewing and the theorizing of the parallel processes of writing and reading. He discusses the impact on contemporary thinking of Greek rhetoricians’ notions of ekphrasis, and relates this to Philostratus’s own complex and self-conscious exercises in “bringing about seeing through hearing.” The problematics of viewing are probed and explored in a section in which issues of visual subjectivity are seen to be intertwined with larger questions about authenticity and falsehood. Finally Squire con- siders how the Imagines fits into a broader cultural history of Greek viewing, and flags up the idea that Philostratus’s games with the mental imagination of his readers may be supplying them with the means to bypass the material world altogether. Ancient Greek narratives that explore the power of the male gaze are the subject of the next two articles. In her essay “Hesiod and the Divine Gaze,” Helen Lovatt compares the handling of the themes of vision and the gaze across the Hesi odic poems, and sets them in the context of their treatment in Homer and later epic poetry. Lovatt demonstrates that in Hesiod’s poetry, in particular the Theog- ony, the monolithic visual power of Zeus holds sway in contrast to the more fractured and complex visual economies of other epic poems. The Titanomachy and the struggle against Typhoeus are both interpreted as battles of the gaze; here Lovatt makes use of the work of Carol J. Clover in arguing that Hesiod’s Zeus possesses the assaultive gaze par excellence. Lovatt believes that in the Works and Days, despite the poem’s different narrative frame, the visual field continues to be dominated by the figure of Zeus. In the Theogony and Shield, Zeus is also shown to be the subject of a predatory erotic gaze; and in the two versions of the story of Pandora that Hesiod produced, the first woman, like other mythological females, is seen to be characterized as a visual object who generates desire. Finally Lovatt argues that Hesiod employs the theme of vision to reflect on poetic functions and practices, adopting Zeus himself as the guarantor of his own visual power. The narrative mode of the Greek novel features in Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s “ ‘Empire of the Gaze’: Despotism and Seraglio Fantasies à la grecque in Chariton’s Callirhoe.” Llewellyn-Jones addresses the complicated relationship between gender, power, and the gaze, in analyzing Chariton’s text in the context of ideas about Ach- aemenid Persia, in particular the invisibility of its aristocratic women. He argues Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 25 that the novel, composed long after the fall of the Persian Empire, was written so as to arouse erotic feelings in its male readers by granting them access to what was not to be seen; but the fantasy of the seraglio was then fed back into historical conceptions of Achaemenid rule. According to Llewellyn-Jones, Chariton works consciously to move his novel ever deeper into Persia, ultimately into the women’s quarters and even the space of a carriage. Throughout the novel the Greek woman Callirhoe is visualized through the eyes of ever more powerful men. This fantasy had an important place in subsequent Greek views of the East, and this is explored by Llewellyn-Jones using the concept of orientalism developed by Grosrichard. The representation of Callirhoe becomes part of the cliché of the erotic and exotic East. The tragic drama of classical Athens drew heavily on mythological narratives, which themselves provided vivid accounts of the processes of looking and being looked at. But performances of tragedy and comedy also furnished opportunities for real-life spectatorship, involving both the internal viewing that the characters engaged in, and the external viewing that Athenian audiences were able to experience. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz in her article, “Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy,” focuses on how the ideology of the gaze is deployed within the plays, rather than on the structure of seeing for the audience. She looks specifically at the ways in which female characters are represented as powerful and/or powerless through their adoption of different viewing positions. In this overview of tragedy Rabinowitz questions Berger’s and Mulvey’s assertions about the ways in which viewing is constructed, with powerful men looking at powerless women; she develops a much more nuanced picture of the different positions that women may occupy in the viewing spectrum. In particular she identifies four different modes of viewing with respect to women in the tragedies: women who are represented as ‘to be looked at’; female characters who are represented as looking; and sacrificial heroines who court the gaze and are represented both as to be looked at and as looking. Rabinowitz concludes by pointing out that possessing the gaze does not grant power to the powerless, and questions how we might learn from these plays today. Chiara Thumiger in “Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy” discusses the viewing position of the audience. She examines the interaction between theatrical viewing and a number of significant elements in classical Athenian culture: the tragic emphasis on knowledge and learning; the relationship of seeing to the theatrical experience; and, most importantly, the epistemological discussion taking place in Athens during the same period. As Thumiger points out, a questioning of the relationship between sense perception and knowledge had been sparked off in the early fifth century by the ideas of the philosopher Parmenides and was still of crucial concern to Plato at the end of the century (Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist); for these thinkers, reaching a secure definition of ‘real knowledge’ and ‘real being’ 26 Helios was primary. Thumiger, examining tragedy in the context of these philosophical debates, maintains that there is a trajectory of ideas from the early to the late plays. She argues, for instance, that when the imagery of light is used in Aeschylus’s Ores- teia the prevailing light/dark binary is not questioned but rather deployed—hence the position of the subject is not at issue; in contrast, later playwrights writing contemporaneously with the Sophistic movement challenge the security of this ideology. Sophocles makes viewing a personal experience of the subject (Ajax and Oedipus Tyrannus) and thus questions the reliability of characters’ perceptions and knowledge. Euripides goes further, in particular problematizing in the Helen the very existence of an objective reality. Ian Ruffell explores in his “Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy” the ways in which the (male) audience of Aristophanes’ plays would have experienced the visual humiliation of some of the characters. Looking at the plays in the context of comic theory, he hypothesizes that comic violence is concerned with political stratification and defamiliarization, as much as with the reinforcement of feelings of superiority in the audience. Using the work of Laura Mulvey and Kaja Silverman, he then addresses the question of whether comedy remasculinizes the audience, or whether it might not rather raise their anxieties. Ruffell observes that the visual elements in comedy sit awkwardly with the “big political issues and self-proclaimed ambitions” that dominate one kind of reading of the plays (Clouds, Acharnians, Wealth, Peace, Birds). Even the sexual humor is treated more often from the perspective of the obscene language than from that of the plays’ action. Ruffell intervenes in those discussions by focusing on the question of spectacle. After arguing that the spectacle of violence is anxiety-producing and is related to the overarching questions about power and authority that the plays raise, he addresses the representation of humiliation as it impacts on masculinity (Frogs, Thesmophoriazusai, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusai). He then connects masculinity back to the issue of political power. The final two articles explore different aspects of vision when it operates as a route to enlightenment. In “ ‘Blessed Is He Who Has Seen’: The Power of Ritual Viewing and Ritual Framing in Eleusis,” Georgia Petridou examines the vital role that viewing played in the Eleusinian Mysteries. She argues that in trying to reconstruct the process of mystic initiation at Eleusis we need to focus not on what the initiates actually saw, but on the nexus of sociopolitical and cultural discourses that shaped their gaze. Here she makes use of Jaś Elsner’s notion of “ritual-centred visuality” in order to reflect on the way in which ritual framing may have enabled the mystai to see sacred visions beyond the constraints of secular visuality. The sources’ emphasis on ‘spectacle’ and ‘experience’ is, Petridou believes, the key to an understanding of how “a culturally nuanced visuality of the sacred” may have provided a framework for the initiates’ encounter with the Other, in this case with the two Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 27 goddesses. Through her sensitive analysis of literary and pictorial evidence Petri- dou leads us to an appreciation of how the cultural conditions of initiation may well have persuaded participants that they were genuinely experiencing a confrontation with the divine. Finally, Fritz-Gregor Herrmann examines the philosophical implications of the language of vision, beauty, and desire in Plato’s dialogues. In the aristocratic, homoerotic world in which dialogues such as Lysis and Charmides are set, much is made of the passivity of vision and the compulsion exercized by physical beauty. Vision generates desire (for the beautiful youths who are the focus in Lysis and Charmides; for looking at naked corpses in the case of Leontius in Republic 4), which leaves its subject a helpless, passive victim. At the same time, these and other dialogues operate with a contrast (explicitly metaphorical in nature) between what is visible to the eye and what is visible to the mind or the soul, between physical and spiritual beauty. Using metaphors of intellectual vision that reveal the influence of the mystic forms of viewing discussed by Petridou (above), the Sympo- sium’s account of the Ascent, the Chariot Myth of the Phaedrus, and the image of the Cave in the Republic all prescribe a move from the apparent beauty of objects in this world to beauty itself as an eternal object of knowledge. In making this move, the philosopher is freed from the compulsion exercized by the sight of visible beauty in this world—but perhaps not from that exercized by the absolute and objective truth: “The greater and more extensive one’s acquaintance with the forms, the less room there is for divergent thought or opinion. Ultimately, all those who see the truth become identical, and identically determined in their thinking.” Hav- ing established this position, Herrmann immediately proceeds to question it, using the Timaeus in particular to suggest “a new understanding of the dynamics of the metaphysics of both intellectual vision and the physical gaze in Plato’s thought.” Beyond the metaphorical language and allegorical stories, there is, Herrmann argues, a notion of the dialectician as one who is capable of giving a rational, mathematical account of the universe and its goodness. “[T]he true philosopher will . . . strive in his mind and with his soul for the vision promised Socrates by Diotima,” but that vision will no longer have “a restricting and determining force. . . . [A] vision and understanding of what is beautiful because it is good enables the human being who is capable of dialectic thinking to make sense of the world in the way exemplified by the demiurge of the Timaeus.”

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Notes

1. Or, as Meltzoff and Moore themselves put it: “The hypothesis we favor is that this imitation is based on the neonate’s capacity to represent visually and proprioceptively perceived information in a form common to both modalities. The infant could thus compare the sensory information from his own unseen motor behavior to a ‘supramodal’ representation of the visually perceived gesture and construct the match required.” On the implications of these findings and for further developments, see Meltzoff 2007a and 2007b and Decety and Meltzoff 2011. For an overview, see Bruce and Young 1998, 221, 250–5 and Gregory 1998, 160–7. 2. See Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 173, 205–6, 560 and Pinker 1998, 444–5. On early reciprocal eye contact as an index of the mother-child bond, see Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989, 195–6, 206, 567. 3. On humans’ “innate primary intersubjectivity,” see Trevarthen 1979, 1998; cf. Dissanayake 2000, passim. 4. On mirror neurons, see esp. Iacoboni 2008 and 2011; for doubts about the interpretation of the data in macaques and the investigation of homologous mechanisms in humans, see Dinstein et al. 2008, Jacob 2008, Hickok 2009. 5. The divergent views of contributors to Coplan and Goldie 2011 (e.g., Iacoboni 2011, 46, 51, 56 versus Carroll 2011, 178–80) are indicative; cf. Preston and Hofelich 2012 and Stueber 2012, 57–9. 34 Helios

6. For an attempt at a more general overview, see Cairns 2005b. For more on status, hierarchy, dominance, and deference, see below. 7. This raises an issue about the possibility that women (even naked women: Aristophanes, Vesp. 1326–86) were used for nonspeaking parts in comedy: in favor of this view, see Wilamowitz 1927 ad Lys. 1114; against, MacDowell 1971 on Vesp. 1326. But even if comedy featured the sexualized and exposed female performers that were common in other performance contexts (e.g., symposia), the fact that female speaking parts were played by men presents a complication that does not apply to Hollywood. 8. For a (speculative) reconstruction, with comparative evidence especially from Japanese Kabuki theater, see Llewellyn-Jones 2005. 9. Cf. Zeitlin 1996, 199–201, 205; Hall 2006, 128–31; Rabinowitz, this volume. On the comparison of Polyxena to a statue, see Steiner 2001, 197, 206; on the visual arts and the thematization of spectacle in Euripidean tragedy more generally, see Zeitlin 1994. 10. See, e.g., Zeitlin 1994, Goldhill 1994, 1996, 1998, 2001; Hubbard 2002; Morales 2004 and 2011; Hall 2006, 99–141. 11. See, e.g., Zanker 1981, Otto 2009, and Webb 2009; cf. Squire, this volume, with further references. 12. Cf. Richardson 1980, 277–80, with further examples; Snipes 1988 on similes; Bakker 2005; Slatkin 2007; Graziosi and Haubold 2010, 23–4. 13. On ekphrasis, enargeia, memory, and phantasia, see Webb 2009; cf. also Squire, this volume. On phantasia, see Rosenmeyer 1986, Watson 1988, Manieri 1998, Serra 2007. 14. On the Xenophon passage, cf. Goldhill 1998. 15. Though there do exist numerous studies of the differential arousal of men and women in response to explicitly erotic visual imagery (for recent reviews, see Rupp and Wallen 2009; Chivers 2010; older studies in Murnen and Stockton 1997; cf. Scott and Cortez 2011 on erotic narratives), we have not as yet found an empirical study that tests Mulvey’s hypotheses for male and female viewers of mainstream Hollywood cinema. 16. For accessible references to a number of relevant psychological studies, see Gottschall 2012, 60–4; Oatley 2012, 22, 49, 55, 101–3. 17. For the complex issues regarding how far and in what ways one’s own emotional reaction might at least approximate to that of another human being, see the essays in Coplan and Goldie 2011. 18. Parevkstasi~ (found in one MS and printed by Niese) occurs only here; all other MSS (and testimonia) have frenw`n e[kstasi~. 19. For recent discussion of various forms of emotional contagion, emotion-sharing, and perspective-taking in response to both real and fictional scenarios, see the various articles collected in Coplan and Goldie 2011; for ancient Greek poetic perspectives on the emotional engagement of readers and audiences with poetic texts and performances, see most recently Halliwell 2011; cf. Oatley 2012 on modern fictional narratives. 20. See, e.g., Plantinga 1999; Tooby and Cosmides 2001; Nettle 2005; Boyd 2006, 2007, 2009; Coplan 2006; Zunshine 2006, 2007; Dutton 2009, 103–34; Lopes 2011; Smith 2011; Oatley 2012, esp. 91–103, 154–62, 171–9. 21. The Greek term opsis may connote ‘vision’ or ‘viewing’ and ‘seeing’ or ‘sight’ in the abstract, or alternatively in a concrete sense ‘the organ of sight’ or the eye(s), with particular reference to the central ‘seeing part’ of the eye, that is, the iris with the pupil or the pupil alone (though for the latter the word korê too is available). The term can be used also of a ‘dream,’ a particular ‘vision.’ 22. Alcmaeon of Croton 24 A 5 DK = Theophrastus, Sens. 25. Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 35

23. For what follows, cf. Craik 2008. 24. Aer. 22 (= vol. 2, p. 76 Littré); Genit. 2 (= vol. 7, p. 472 Littré); Loc. Hom. 3 (= vol. 6, p. 282 Littré); cf. Plato, Tim. 91C. 25. Epid. 6.5.15 (= vol. 5, p. 320 Littré); cf. Epid. 7.122 (= vol. 5, p. 468 Littré). 26. Nat. Mul. 99 (= vol. 7, p. 416 Littré); Superf. 16 (= vol. 8, p. 484 Littré). 27. See Beare 1906, Van Hoorn 1972, Simon 1988. 28. See, e.g., Homer, Od. 4.150, 19.446; Hesiod, Theog. 826–7; Hom. Hymn. Dem. 45, 415; Aeschylus, frr. 99.13, 243 Radt; Sophocles, Aj. 69 (cf. 85), fr. 157 Radt; Euripides, Andr. 1179–80, Hec. 367–8, 1104 (cf. 1035, 1067–9), Heracl. 130–2, Phoen. 1561–4, Rhes. 737. 29. For the sun as an eye that looks with rays, see, e.g., Hom. Hymn. Hel. 31.9–11; Hom. Hymn. Dem. 70; Sophocles, Trach. 606: cf. Mugler 1960, 63, 66–9; Malten 1961, 39–45. For the Sun as a model for the human eye, see Pindar, Pae. 9, fr. 52k.1–2 Snell-Maehler: ajkti;~ ajelivou, tiv poluvskope mhvseai É w\ ma`ter ojmmavtwn (Sun’s shaft, what is your plan, much-seer, ye mother of eyes); Aristo- phanes, Thesm. 17: ojfqalmo;n ajntivmimon hJlivou trocw`/ (the eye that imitates the sun’s disc). 30. Alcmaeon of Croton A 5 DK; Euclid, Frag. Op., introd. On the continuity between poetic and scientific models of vision, see Mugler 1960. We should perhaps beware of assuming that Alcmaeon’s theory was straightforwardly emissionist; see Beare 1906, 11–3. 31. See Empedocles A 86–8, 90, 92, B 84, 89, 109a DK. 32. Plato, Tim. 45B–D (cf. Tht. 156A–B); Aristotle mentions Empedocles and Tim. together at Sens. 2, 437b11–2; for the interactionist interpretation, see Aristotle, Gen. corr. 324b26–35, Theo- phrastus, Sens. 7–8 (perhaps; cf. Beare 1906, 19–20); cf. [Plutarch], Placit. 901B (= Diels, Doxogra- phi graeci p. 403). 33. See Long 1966, 260–4; O’Brien 1970, 140–6 and 1999, 7–10. 34. See Leucippus A 29–30 DK; Democritus A 77, A 135, B 123 DK; cf. Epicurus, Epist. 1.49– 50 and Lucretius 4.26–468. On Theophrastus’s account of Democritus’s theory of vision, see Taylor 1999, 208–11. 35. Unlike, say, Alcmaeon, Democritus is not generally viewed as a ‘doctor,’ but many of his works have titles the same as, or similar to, several which are transmitted in the Hippocratic Cor- pus; it seems Democritus wrote on the nature of man or on flesh, on humors and on dietetics (A 33 DK [= Diogenes Laertius 9.45–9]). Accordingly, there are affinities between his account of visual perception and the medical theories of the physiology of the eyes discussed above. Accord- ing to Theophrastus (Sens. 50 [= A 135 DK]), seeing happens because an image is formed in “moist” eyes, the moisture in the eye itself being “thick and fatty.” In Hippocratic texts the same nexus of descriptive terms is applied to cerebrospinal fluid in its various manifestations (cerebral, spinal, and seminal), and also to the fluid present in the eye. 36. See Chrysippus, SVF 2.836, 856, 861, 863–71; cf. the implicit and explicit criticism of the Stoics in the (still interactionist) account of Galen, PHP 7.5 (= vol. 5, pp. 618–28 Kühn). See Siegel 1970, 37–117, esp. 39, 71–8; cf. Ierodiakonou, forthcoming. 37. Aristotle, De an. 2.7, 418a26–419b3; Sens. 2, 437a19–438b16 and 3, 440a15–20. 38. See Aristotle, De insomn. 459b27–460a26. 39. For the physicality of Aristotle’s “qualitative change in a transparent medium,” cf. Everson 1997, 98–9; contrast, e.g., Johansen 1998, esp. 288. 40. Sophocles, OT 1384–5 (pollution), 1424–9 (pollution); Euripides, Hipp. 1437–8 (“deadly exhalations” threaten the eye of the goddess Artemis); Heracl. 1153–62 (shame and pollution); Or. 512–5 (shame; cf. 459–69); IT 1217–8 (pollution); Theophrastus, Char. 16.14 (the superstitious man spits into his bosom when he sees a madman or an epileptic); Heliodorus 3.7.4 (eye disease and plague); cf. 3.8.1 (on the beneficial gaze of the bird charadrios), 3.8.2 (the harmful gaze of the 36 Helios basilisk); [Alexander of Aphrodisias], Pr. 2.42 (eye disease; cf. and contrast [Aristotle], Pr. 7.8, 887a22–7) and 2.53 (rays from the viewer’s eyes reflected back from corpses affect the viewer’s soul). 41. For more detail and references on both love and envy, see Cairns 2011. 42. For the sign of envy in the eyes, cf. Euripides, fr. 403 Kannicht (Ino); Suda, s.v. ojfqalmiavsai. For the face of the phthoneros, see Lucian, Calumnia 5 (cf. Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 5.7, 681D); Adamantus, 1.12 (= vol. 1, p. 324 Foerster), 1.21 (= vol. 1, p. 344 Foerster); [Polemo] 75 (= vol. 1, p. 428 Foerster); Anonymus Latinus 86 (= vol. 2, p. 116 Foerster). See Dunbabin and Dickie 1983, 7–37; Roscher 1884–1937, vol. 3.2, col. 2472; more generally Rakoczy 1996, passim. 43. On these apotropaic devices, see Malten 1961, 52–8; Deonna 1965, 113, 184–93; Rakoczy 1996, 153–5. 44. E.g., Aeschylus, Ag. 742–3; Sophocles, fr. 157 Radt; Anacreontea 26; Anth. Pal. 5.36.3–4, 5.96, 12.63, 12.72, 12.93.9–10, 12.110, 12.144. On the arrows of love (both generally and as emis- sions from the eyes of the beloved) see Pagán Cánovas 2011. 45. E.g., Anth. Pal. 12.101.1–3, 12.109, 12.113. 46. On which see Hubbard 2002 and Cairns 2011, 42–3. On the emissionist model in Pindar, see Adorjáni 2011. 47. See esp. dexavmeno~ ga;r tou` kavllou~ th;n ajporroh;n dia; tw`n ojmmavtwn ejqermavnqh . . . o{tan me;n oujn blevpousa pro;~ to; tou` paido;~ kavllo~, ejkei`qen mevrh ejpiovnta kai; rJevont j . . . decomevnh a[rdhtaiv te kai; qermaivnhtai (For once he has received the effluence of beauty via his eyes he becomes hot . . . Whenever [the soul] looks towards the boy’s beauty and receives the particles that it emits and that flow from it . . . it is moistened and warmed); cf. Plato, Cra. 420B. It seems that atomist eidôla, like the aporrhoai of the Phaedrus (but probably unlike those of Emped- ocles) could bear an emotional and ethical charge: see Plutarch, De def. or. 17, 419A and Quaest. conv. 5.7.6, 682F–683B and 8.10.2, 735B; Sextus Empiricus, Math. 9.19. 48. E.g., Achilles Tatius 1.9.4 (“efflux from the beautiful”), 5.13.4 and Heliodorus 3.7.5.O n the influence of the Phaedrus model of erotic vision on the novel, see Morales 2004, esp. 50–60, 130–5; Repath 2007; Ní Mheallaigh 2007. 49. Sophocles, Trach. 548–9; Xenophon, Symp. 1.8–10; Anth. Pal. 5.100.2 (the lover hunts with his eyes, but is a slave to Love) and 12.92 (the lover’s eyes actively hunt boys, but are set ablaze by the sight); Heliodorus 1.2.5 (the lover is compelled to look), 7.7.5, 7.7.7. 50. Chariton 1.1.6, Xenophon of Ephesus 1.3.1, and Achilles Tatius 1.9.4. 51. For the fundamental conception of (some, many) emotions as forces to which a person succumbs in the cultural models of a variety of languages, see Kövecses 2000; on the phenomenology of erôs, esp. in the novel, see esp. Maehler 1990, 1–12; Létoublon 1993, 137–48; Morales 2004; Moreno Soldevila 2011; cf. Cairns 2013. 52. See most recently Davidson 2007, 23–32. 53. This can be the case in heterosexual relationships too; but where (as in the novel) both the male and the female become infatuated, the status hierarchy is maintained by the female’s helpless devotion to the male, and disguised only when the male proclaims his passive subordination to the female. 54. See Konstan 1994, 26–30. 55. For a fuller account, see Cairns 2013. 56. See, e.g., Sophocles, fr. 474 Radt (with Pearson 1917 ad loc.); Euripides, IA 584–6; Xeno- phon, Hier. 1.35 (eujqu;~ ga;r para; tou` ajntifilou`nto~ hJdei`ai me;n aiJ ajntiblevyei~); Plut. Quaest. conv. 5.7, 681B–C; Chariton 1.1.6; Xenophon of Ephesus 1.3.1; Achilles Tatius 1.9.4 (with Goldhill 2001, 168–70 and Morales 2004, 130–5); Heliodorus 3.5.5. Blundell, Cairns, Craik, and Rabinowitz—Introduction 37

57. So, rightly, Calame 1999, 189–90; cf. Ferrari 1987, 162, 176 and Price 1989, 86–7. Contrast Halperin 1989, 62–8 and Foley 1998, 49. 58. Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. 5.7, 681A–C and Heliodorus 3.7.5. On the question of the relation between Plutarch and Heliodorus, see Dickie 1991, 17–29 and Rakoczy 1996, 186–212. For the typical explanation of the evil eye in terms of the active expression of a concentration of malign emotion via the eyes, see, e.g., Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 4.1661–73 and [Aristotle], Pr. ined. 3.52 Bussemaker; [Alexander of Aphrodisias], Pr. 2.53 Ideler. 59. See Dickie 1991, 21–4, 26–9. 60. See most recently the comprehensive account of Rakoczy 1996. 61. Note esp. to; sw`ma . . . ejkpevmpei tina;~ ajporroiva~. mavlista de; tou`to givnesqai dia; tw`n ojfqalmw`n eijkov~ ejsti (the body emits aporrhoiai, esp. via the eyes). 62. That the notion of the material power of the gaze to harm is implicitly present in descriptions of angry looks, etc., is the view of Rakoczy 1996, passim (esp. 33, 42–52 on Homer); cf. Lonsdale 1989. 63. See Homer, Il. 12.466, 15.607–8; of anger: Il. 1.101–5 (1.103–4 = Od. 4.661–2), 19.16–8; cf. the expression uJpovdra ijdwvn (looking from under [the brows]): Il. 1.148, 4.349, 4.411, 5.251, 5.888, 10.446, 12.230, 14.82, 15.13, 17.141, 17.169, 18.284, 20.428–9, 22.260, 22.344, 24.559; see further Cairns 2003. 64. For visual cut-off as a strategy of taking offence, see (averted gaze) Il. 3.216–20, 3.426–7, 21.415; Euripides, Phoen. 457–8; (veiling) Hom. Hymn. Dem. 40–2; Herodotus 6.67; Euripides, Med. 1144–5; Aristophanes, Ran. 911–3 (cf. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, s.v. “Achilleus,” nos. 440–2, 444–5, 453, 448, 464; s.v. “Aias 1,” nos. 81, 84; s.v. “Briseis 1,” no. 14). With- drawal is in fact typical of anger (Il. 6.325–31) and is central to Achilles’ strategy of retaliation in the Iliad: 1.306–7, 327–30, 348–50, 488–92; 9.356–63, 428–9, 650–5, 682–92; 16.61–3. See Cairns 2001, 18–32. Cf. the aversion of the gaze as an expression of divine disapproval/rejection: Hesiod, Op. 197–200; Tyrtaeus 11.1–2 West; Aeschylus, Supp. 172, 811, Sept. 664–7, Ag. 776–9; Pindar, Pyth. 4.145–6; Euripides, IT 1163–7.

I. Art and Text

Swallow This: A Pelike within Late Archaic Song and Visual Culture *

Deborah Steiner

Fig. 1: Photo of one side of the Leningrad pelike, Hermitage 615; ARV2 1594.48.

On a well-known pelike in Saint Petersburg associated with the Pioneer Group of vase painters and dated to c. 510–505 BCE, 1 three figures point upwards to a swallow (Fig. 1). Coming from the mouth of the youth seated on the left are the words, “Look, a swallow” [IDÔ XELIDÔN]. The older bearded man responds, Y“ es, by

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 41 42 Helios

Heracles” [NE TON HÊRAKLEA], while the boy to his side adds, “There it is [HAUTÊI].” In between the last two figures the phrase I“ t’s already spring” (EAR ÊDÊ) appears. In recent decades, scholars have offered rich treatments of this pelike, citing it in discussions of the interface between oral and literate cultures, and in treatments of the nuanced relations between words and images on painted pottery. In François Lissarrague’s account, the ‘speaking’ figures offer an instance of a mimêsis that is at once visual and verbal,2 while Richard Neer notes that the vase confronts viewers with three different modes of signification: the painted image, the word, and the oiônos, a term that means simultaneously a bird/bird of prey, a bird of omen, and an omen drawn from a bird.3 In Neer’s subtle analysis, the vase also demonstrates how artists of the late sixth and early fifth centuries—the painters of the Pioneer Group in particular—liked to engage in visual ambiguity, creating riddling scenes that oscillate between different meanings, an effect that Neer styles poikilia.4 According to his reading, the pelike’s artist suggests the potential gap between the sign (the bird) and its referent (the advent of spring); for, as Neer nicely observes, while the swallow does, in a widely-attested belief from Homer and Hesiod on, herald the new season, a familiar Attic proverb warns, “One swallow does not a springtime make” (miva celidw;n e[ar ouj poiei`). If a solitary bird is not an indicator of spring, then at least one statement on the vase fails to correspond to the phenomenon to which it refers. Most recently, Henry Immerwahr has offered an innovatory discussion of the pelike, reading it as an illustration of a piece of love magic first attested in a fragment of Hipponax; following his focus on erotic relations, Immerwahr further calls attention to the cohesion between the swallow scene and the two wrestlers depicted on the vase’s other side (Fig. 2).5 The analysis of the pelike that I offer here develops the suggestions that mimê- sis, sign making, poikilia, and ambiguity are very much the painter’s concerns— and this in ways that Lissarrague’s and Neer’s rich discussions have left still to be explored—while also accommodating these within the pederastic frame common to my and Immerwahr’s analyses. My larger aim, however, distinguishes this reading from existing accounts. So as more thoroughly to reconstruct a late sixth- century viewer’s response to its images, I contextualize the vase in two respects. First, I place its scenes and words within the larger, culturally determined systems of meaning surrounding them; both the gestures that these painted figures perform and the messages on the vase act much like formulae in epic song, as repositories of a significance that goes beyond their denotative meaning on this particular occasion and that encompasses both existing traditions informing acts of bird (and specifically swallow) identification and decipherment and the social practices typically associated with the individuals included in the scene.6 And second, I reinsert the object into its sympotic milieu, showing how it was designed both to play an Steiner—Swallow This 43

Fig. 2: Photo of wrestlers on the other side of the Leningrad pelike, Hermitage 615; ARV2 1594.48. active part in the types of intra-elite verbal, social, and sexual competitions typical of the sympotic space, and to engage its audience by making them participate, as viewers, talkers, and singers, in its several representations. More narrowly, I make four principal points. First, the artist has chosen this precise scene because it confronts viewers with the type of griphos or ‘riddle’ so prevalent at the symposium, whose decipherment depends on recognizing the semantic uncertainty and doubleness of the terms that the puzzle includes.7 Sec- ond, the youth’s gesture and his words involve a second level of hermeneutic difficulty, presenting a potential dolos into which viewers, like the older man and boy within the composition, are likely to fall. Third, the artist assigns himself a varie- gated role in the scene and uses both the inscriptions and the ornamentation on the pelike to comment on his status and position vis-à-vis his elite audience. And 44 Helios fourth, by combining speaking figures with a swallow, the vase juxtaposes the visual and auditory spheres in ways that explore the powers and limitations of these media and the possible exchanges between them, setting words and images in the simultaneously complementary and agonistic relationship that other contemporary works more explicitly articulate. Included in these several arguments are demonstrations of the close relations between the vase’s two sides, and the way in which each comments on and responds to its pair.8 Since I presuppose a highly sophisticated and explicitly sympotic group of viewers, a preliminary word about the vessel type and its milieu is in order. In form and function alike, the pelike, one of the several new forms introduced by Attic potters into their repertoire in the final quarter of the sixth century, resembles the amphora.9 Like its counterpart, although distinct insofar as (unusually in Greek pottery) its broadest point falls below the mid-height of the vessel, it would have been used to store wine and oil and could also serve for drawing water. Both amphora and pelike belong among what Anthony Snodgrass classes as “generally banausic” vessels, those found in non-sympotic settings, but he goes on to note the more floating status of these two vase types: E“ specially in the case of the finer specimens with inscribed figure-scenes, it is hard to believe that they would not be shown off to the drinkers of the wine” (Snodgrass 2000, 28). This vase, for reasons to be discussed below, belongs among such “finer specimens,” and would have been brought into the dining room where guests might view it while the wine was diluted with water before their eyes—a scene that sympotic poets frequently describe. Juliusz Ziomecki’s (1975, 85) brief discussion of the pelike offers a starting point for my initial review of scenes in which individuals apprehend a bird or birds, and grant the apparition the status of a meaning-bearing sign. As Ziomecki notes, the artist includes the inscriptions because otherwise the individuals’ gestures would remain opaque: their upturned heads and pointing fingers tell us that they have noticed the bird, but only their words indicate that they regard it as significant, and what its significance might be. Archaic poetry stages many episodes when individuals, laymen and professionals alike, perceive and decipher bird signs (ornithomancy) and these, I suggest, form part of the “traditional referentiality”10 informing a late sixth-century audience’s response to the work. For all that these early sources feature milieus very remote from the here-and-now imagined by the artist, their relevance to the pelike is threefold. First, they show that the vessel exactly visualizes, through image and word, the schema framing such apparitions in a literary tradition already canonical by the late sixth century. Second, they exemplify how, from the early sources on, encounters with birds flying overhead are prime catalysts for dispute, debate, and contested meaning, and for struggles over power, verbal authority, and social status (see below). And third, insofar as Steiner—Swallow This 45 hexameter poetry seems “self-consciously to appropriate the inherent ambiguity in the discourse of bird-omen reading as a metaphor for how it should be read itself,”11 the episodes anticipate the stratagem of the pelike; here too, I suggest, the appearance of a swallow furnishes the audience with a broader hermeneutic tem- plate for viewing and decoding the pelike’s two sides. The Iliad and Odyssey contain no fewer than ten avian omens,12 and the birds’ appearances form part of a larger type-scene made up of a standard set of elements:13 first a description of the portent, second the viewers’ apprehension of and reaction to what they see (sometimes a bystander endorses the ‘portentous’ quality of the omen),14 third an exegesis of the omen’s meaning by an onlooker, and lastly the acceptance or rejection of that reading by the collective audience or one of its members. This maps very closely onto the sequence on the pelike. The swallow appears in the sky, the figures perceive it and react with gesture and word (the older man’s “Yes, by Heracles” emphatically affirms what the youth’s identification implies about the swallow’s ‘signifying’ character), and the statement “It’s already the spring” supplies the gloss. The seemingly missing fourth item—assent or dissent on the audience’s part—is something to which I will return. The convention-determined nature of the diction and structure of these scenes plays, however, against their actual contents, which call traditional practices and broadly accepted codes of meaning into question.15 Almost without exception, and even when the exegete is a practicing mantis, Homeric bird omens not only require a keenly attentive audience, but present messages that are challenged or ambiguous. Opacity surrounds both elements in the interpretation of the signs, whether the initial recognition and acknowledgment of the ‘meaning-bearing’ quality of the phenomenon, or the subsequent decipherment of its message. On several occasions onlookers question whether the birds even carry the status of omens. In Iliad 12, Hector disputes Polydamas’s reading of a bird and snake portent that features an eagle appearing on the left and releasing from its grip the viper it held in its claws (12.200–7). While Polydamas (prefacing his interpretation by observing “if the bird sign . . . was a true one”) reads the omen as forecasting the failure of the attack that the Trojans are currently mounting on the Achaean fortifications,16 Hector will not be guided by his cautionary words. Instead he counters with a wholesale rejection of ornithomancy, first dismissing the traditional mode of deciphering bird signs and then replacing it, in an obvious piece of revisionism, with an oiônos of an entirely novel, and patently non-ornithological kind (12.237–43):17

tuvnh d joijwnoi`si tanupteruvgessi keleuvei~ peivqesqai, tw`n ou[ ti metatrevpom joujd jajlegivzw ei[t j ejpi; dexiv j i[wsi pro;~ hjw` t jhjevliovn te, ei[t j ejp j ajristera; toiv ge poti; zovfon hjeroventa. 46 Helios

hJmei`~ de; megavloio Dio;~ peiqwvmeqa boulh`/, o}~ pa`si qnhtoi`si kai; ajqanavtoisin ajnavssei. ei|~ oijwno;~ a[risto~ ajmuvnesqai peri; pavtrh~.

But you, you bid me trust in [the signs of] long-winged birds. I care nothing for these nor do I pay heed to them, whether they go to the right towards the dawn and the sun, or whether they go to the left toward the misty darkness. But let us put our trust in the council of great Zeus, who rules over all mortals and immortals. One bird sign is best, to ward off on behalf of our country.

Much the same scenario occurs in Iliad 13.810–37. When Ajax predicts Hec- tor’s ignominious flight from the field of battle (the Trojan praying all the while that his horses might be “swifter than hawks”) and a bird sign appears to confirm his words, Hector again disregards the omen-laden quality of the eagle, substitut- ing for it a threat that completely writes the avian apparition out of the scene and that proposes an alternate outcome to the encounter; when he envisages his chal- lenger’s death on the field of battle, the Trojan troops greet the declaration as though it had the force of a prediction.18 In the Odyssey it is the suitors who, to their lasting detriment, reject the signifying character of birds. So at 2.181–2, Eurymachus ignores the foreboding quality of two eagles that attack one another overhead, which the more skilled portent-reader Halisthernes interprets as an indicator of Odysseus’s imminent return and defeat of his rivals; instead, the suitor declares, “Many are the birds who under the sun’s rays wander the sky; not all of them are significant. Odysseus is dead, far away.” For all her longing for Odysseus’s advent, Penelope also notoriously dismisses an ornithological sign of the hero’s presence: denying the significance of the predatory eagle that destroys her household geese in her dream, she brands the indicator, and the gloss that the bird itself uniquely supplies within the vision, delusions (19.560–9). Since in epic tradition portents are infallible and invariably realized, the audience knows very well that the significance ascribed to the bird by the poet and/or authoritative internal exegete will prove correct. But even as the system remains in place, Homer supplies his characters with good grounds for questioning the meanings that individual sign-readers assign to them. If we can class the snake devouring the sparrow and its chicks that Odysseus recalls in Il. 2.300–32 as a bird portent, then the speaker begins his account of the episode and of Calchas’s interpretation on a note of doubt: he advises his audience not to abandon the war “until we know whether Calchas’s prophecy is true or not” (2.300). Context may also be important here: Book 2 opens with the fraudulent dream sent to Agamemnon by Zeus, who promises the Greeks victory if they launch an immediate attack on Troy. Since the Steiner—Swallow This 47 snake and sparrow portent is also—and on no less than three occasions in Odys- seus’s words and his citation of Calchas’s earlier prophecy—ascribed to Zeus’s sending (2.309, 318–9, 324), an audience might wonder how truthful a sêma this past message from the capricious divinity will prove to be.19 In an incident in the Odyssey, which several commentators mistakenly regard as an instance of interpo- lation, the Odyssean prophet Theoclymenus alters an initial reading so as better to calibrate the message to his interlocutor’s desires and preoccupations: earlier, when the mantis was addressing Telemachus, he interpreted an auspicious hawk flying overhead as a sign that the youth’s lineage was the most kingly in Ithaca and would always be preeminent in power (15.531–4), but in the revised account presented to Penelope, the omen now portends Odysseus’s return to his native land (17.157–61), his current audience’s prime concern. If even in the hands of professional seers bird signs can be polysemous or shift their meanings, then the clashes between Polydamas and Halisthernes—laymen exceptionally skilled in deciphering avian indicators but not actual practitioners of the mantic technê—and their several chal- lengers seem less surprising: as later sources confirm, portent-reading is an agonistic activity, where rival seers compete and nonprofessionals can successfully reject and revise an official account.20 Hesiodic and hymnal poetry confirm the Homeric pattern. Hesiod, supposedly the author of an Ornithomanteia, underscores the uncertainty surrounding the whole practice by prefacing a bird omen in the Works and Days with a caution about the source of all portentous oiônoi: “The noos of aegis-bearing Zeus is different at different times and for mortal men is hard to recognize” (Op. 483–4).21 The omen that follows (the cuckoo’s call), with its riddling intricate double sign amply bears out the warning. Two other examples—the sound of the migrating crane (Op. 448–51), and the cry of the swallow that will appear on the pelike (Op. 568–70)— prove similarly hard to pin down. The first is bivalent—fortuitous for some, unlucky for others—and pity the poor farmer trying to regulate his activity by the swallow’s call. Instead of telling him when to prune his vines, the bird’s sound indicates only the point at which that pruning must already have been done. Indeed, as the Homeric Hymn to Hermes makes plain, gods are the only infallible bird readers, able instantly to perceive a bird’s message-bearing nature and, in one and the same moment, correctly to determine what it communicates. So Apollo, seeking the cows that the infant Hermes has stolen from him, no sooner “noticed” (ejnovei) the long-winged oiônos flying by than “he instantly recognized [aujtivka d j e[gnw] that the thief was the child of Zeus” (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 213–4);22 for a god, apprehension and comprehension go hand-in-hand. But it is Apollo again, and in the same text, who indicates the pitfalls of the practice where mortal bird readers are concerned. It is futile, he remarks, to place one’s trust in “idly-chattering birds” since only “oiônoi who bring fulfillment” should be believed (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 543–7). 48 Helios

Conspicuously missing here is the necessary criterion for distinguishing the efficacious kind from the rest.23 Further complicating correct understanding of these scenes is the way in which a final determination of meaning by the internal audience depends not on any inherent ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of the several readings on offer (as we have no way of establishing that), but on the status, perceived character, authority, and rhetorical competence of the decoder. In the incident in Iliad 12 earlier described, Hector’s view, for all that it upends traditional ornithological lore, carries the day, both because Polydamas lacks the status of official diviner, and because Hector, improvising an innovative and rhetorically compelling counter-account, proves the better performer here. In the reverse scenario that the snake-and-sparrow episode at Aulis presents, it is Calchas’s initial status as diviner, then reinforced by the rhetorical and performative authority enjoyed by Odysseus as he recalls the original interpretation (and we have only his word for what Calchas said, and Odysseus supplements that earlier account with fresh interpretative moves), which results in the Achaeans’ willingness to accede to the patently constructed and arbitrary meaning (as noted by Cicero; see note 19) that both ‘readers’ have imposed on the portent. Issues of status and authority are also integral to a scene that illustrates a final point of intersection between ornithomanteia in hexameter poetry and the Saint Petersburg pelike: the metonymic status of these episodes vis-à-vis the larger text and, as corollary to this, their role in supplying both a model for the stratagems necessary for reading that work, as well as a warning against an overly rigid interpretative framework that bucks indeterminacy and forecloses on the possibility of other narratives. As commentators note, the well-known Hesiodic hawk and nightingale ainos at Op. 202–11 closely resembles a bird portent and indeed functions as such, insofar as it contains a coded guide to its double addressees—the kings and Perses—which, read aright, should condition their future course of conduct. Here, much as in more standard cases of bird divination, two possible readings emerge. Following the Homeric pattern of portents featuring birds of prey, the superior strength of the hawk should presage the triumph of stronger party, namely the basileis, and vindicate the Iliadic notion that martial might makes right. But in the coda that Hesiod appends to the fable, where he instructs Perses to adhere to dikê and avoid hubris, the poet prompts his internal and external audience to disregard the conventional account and follow a novel gloss that runs counter to the normative view. As Derek Collins (2002, 35) remarks, here the poet advocates “sympathy with the victim, and not with the more powerful bird of prey, and this invites his external audience to rethink the traditional paradigm.” In setting himself up against the construction that, his needling incipit implies, the kings would naturally place on the fable, Hesiod challenges their status and verbal authority, inviting his audi- Steiner—Swallow This 49 tors to follow his very different lead as a superior and divinely-appointed performer who, as a later passage in the poem states, is well versed in traditional lore and “works blamelessly in the eyes of the gods, interpreting the birds and avoiding transgressions” (Op. 826–8). I have treated in detail these examples in the epic, didactic, and hymnal traditions because they supply one of the principal filters through which an ancient audience would view/read the pelike. As their scenarios demonstrate, for an artist who wishes to pose questions concerning relations between visible phenomena or self-styled sêmata and their referents and to compare and contrast different modes of signification or symbolization, which, following the poets, might introduce a breach between things seen and things ‘figured’ in speech, a scene that displays a potentially message-bearing oiônos and its decipherment is about the most eco- nomical way to do this. The narratives found in the more demotic traditions not only affirm this, but throughout the archaic and classical periods privilege the swallow as the prime site of this mantic and hermeneutic uncertainty, making the bird the lynchpin for a variety of misreadings or competing constructions.24 While the proverbial tag that Neer cites, “a single swallow does not make a spring,” is first attested in Cratinus, fr. 35 K.-A. and subsequently in Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1098a18, the saying and sentiment most likely antedate these classical sources and may already be embedded in one of the fables later ascribed to Aesop and circulated from the seventh and sixth centuries on.25 In the scenario that the Aeso- pic account (169 Perry) describes, a citified youth “eats up” his patrimony until he has only a cloak to call his own. Noticing a swallow, and believing it a harbinger of warm weather, he sells his sole remaining possession. The inevitable snowstorm follows, and seeing the same swallow lying dead, the youth ruefully reflects that the untimely bird has caused its own and his destruction. In Babrius’s retelling at 131, the young man’s words, ijdou; celidw;n h{de, exactly echo (or even model, if Babrius uses a traditional diction and scenario) those of the first figure on the vase. (Note, too, that on the pelike both the youth and his older companion wear their himatia so as to expose their upper bodies.) The swallow/cloak association visible in the fable tradition must also have been very familiar to Aristophanes’ audience. In the Birds, when the Sycophant dressed in a tattered cloak sings a ditty about a swallow, Peisetaerus remarks, “I think he is singing that skolion about his cloak; he looks as though he is need of quite a lot of swallows” (eij~ qoijmavtion to; skovlion a[/dein moi dokei`: dei`sqai d j e[oiken oujk ojlivgwn celidovnwn, 1416–7; translation by Sommerstein 1987). Peisetaerus is not the only one who suspects that the song has an underlying meaning and that there is embedded in the singer’s choice of swallow for his subject a covert message that the audience should comprehend. In the scholia’s paraphrase, which further spells out Peisetaerus’s reading, the singer “wants spring to come, for he is wearing an old 50 Helios garment.” Nan Dunbar’s (1995 ad 1416–7) commentary supplies an additional gloss on Peisetaerus’s words, suggesting implicit in it a play on the spring-swallow proverb cited above: “This man’s cloak shows that he needs a whole crowd of swallows, which mark the onset of the time to dispense with a warm cloak.” As these multiple interpretative efforts demonstrate, an allusion to a swallow carries in its wake a rich and proliferating set of meanings. Before returning to the pelike, let me offer a suggestion as to why swallows— over and above their status as oiônoi, but informing this too—seem so prime a site of poikilia and polysemy and so often come invested with a second- (and third-) order significance. Already in the archaic sources, and outside the immediately ornithomantic context, the birds regularly possess a twofold identity. At Od. 22.239–40, Athena takes on a swallow’s guise in a transformation that can be described as both an epiphany and an omen.26 Although Homeric gods regularly assume avian shape, the swallow is, in more archetypal fashion, implicated in such acts of metamorphosis. In his description of its portentous call, Hesiod labels the bird “Pandion’s daughter, the early-lamenting swallow” (Op. 568), a reference to the already extant myth of Philomela, transformed into a swallow following her and her sister’s murder of their nephew Itys. The metope from the temple at Ther- mon in Aetolia, dated to c. 630 (Athens, National Museum 13410), attests to the early diffusion of that myth; here two women flank a child lying between them, and the figure on the left is named Chelidon (Swallow), presaging her subsequent transformation. Not just quick-change artists, swallows also display a plumage whose essence is variegation and mutability. Aristophanes’ informer in the Birds could not be more emphatic on the point, three times calling the bird poikivla (many-hued, with parti-colored feathers: 1410, 1411, 1415), an adjective, as Dunbar (1995 ad 714) points out, which suits all five varieties of swallows extant in fifth-century Greece. Aristophanes’ scene endlessly exploits the visual and corresponding hermeneutic slipperiness or heterogeneity that poikilia describes: the preternaturally shifty Sycophant has stolen the adjective and his ditty’s larger phrasing from Alcaeus, fr. 345 L.-P., performing just such an act of bricolage that variegation involves as he grafts new onto old: now you hear Alcaeus, now you don’t. The adjective then turns out to have a double referent. First used of the swallow, Peisetaerus freshly understands it as describing the patched-together cloak that the singer wears, perhaps with a further play on ptevrux, both the swallow’s wing and the flap on the piece of clothing.27 This same wordplay, I would add, seems part of the pelike’s visual design; echoing the shape of the bird’s wings are the swallowtails in which the two seated figures’ himatia fall. This oscillating, unstable quality also characterizes the swallow’s distinctive voice and the quality of its song. When Homer compares to the swallow’s cry the Steiner—Swallow This 51 note given out by the bowstring plucked by Odysseus (Od. 21.411), the sound carries diametrically opposed meanings for its several auditors: portending grief for the suitors, it is styled kalovn for the archer and his allies, serving as the harbinger of (vernal) restoration and renewal for the hero and the poet’s listeners.28 Anacreon (fr. 453) is the earliest source for the familiar “twittering” (kwtivlh) swallow (and already in Hesiod, Op. 374, kwtivllousa describes a woman deceiving with her words), Stesichorus imagines it “babbling” its spring songs (fr. 211), and Aristoph anes, modifying a term earlier applied to the bird by Simonides (fr. 606), calls swallows ajmfivlaloi, this a glance not just to the frequent fifth-century association between the gibberish spoken by barbarians and the sound made by the birds, but to the species’ bivalent communiqués. Again, double or indecipherable meanings (witness the Cassandra-swallow link exploited in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon)29 are associated with the swallow. In choosing to paint a swallow and to give it the status of a portentous sign, the pelike’s artist therefore presents a scene that is in and of itself a visualization of vacillating meaning and polymorphism, as well as a flashpoint for debate and antithetical views.30 With this in mind, we might return to the lacuna noted earlier, the absence of the traditional verbal affirmation or rejection of the meaning that is assigned to the oiônos and is a precondition for the omen’s realization. As Jeffrey Hurwit observes, inscriptions on late archaic and early classical vessels aim to turn the works into “conversation pieces,” prompting commentary and discussion among the gathered symposiasts.31 On the pelike, the artist’s omission invites his viewers to supply the missing element, as each diner endorses or denies the reading that the inscription offers. As I will demonstrate below, their assent or rejection forms part of the broader competition and jockeying for status at the sympotic occasion. Integral to the agonistic element that unites the vase and its audience is the second difficulty or enigma presented by the components of the vase and the fresh visual/verbal apatê embedded in the swallow scene. Discussions of the pelike rou- tinely cite an exchange from Aristophanes’ Knights (just as standard commentaries on the play refer us back to the vase), in which the Sausage-Seller describes the various shenanigans that he got up to as a boy, including one used on butchers in order to filch portions of meat from them (417–24):

Al. kai; nh; Di j a[lla g j ejstiv mou kovbala paido;~ o[nto~: ejxhpavtwn ga;r tou;~ mageivrou~ levgwn toiautiv: ‘skevyasqe, pai`de~: oujc oJra`q ;j w{ra neva, celidwvn.’ oiJ d j e[blepon, kajgw; jn tosouvtw/ tw`n krew`n e[klepton. Co. w\ dexiwvtaton kreva~, sofw`~ ge proujnohvsw: w{sper ajkalhvfa~ ejsqivwn pro; celidovnwn e[klepte~. 52 Helios

Al. kai; tau`ta drw`n ejlavnqanovn eij d j ou\n i[doi ti~ aujtw`n, ajpokruptovmeno~ eij~ tw; kocwvna tou;~ qeou;~ ajpwvmnun:

Sausage-Seller: And, oh yeah, there are other pranks of mine when I was a boy. I used to trick the butchers by saying this sort of thing: “Look boys, don’t you see? The new season, a swallow!” And they’d look up, and in the meantime I’d steal some of their meat. Demosthenes: You clever bloke! That was a wise piece of planning: you stole, like people eat nettles, before the swallows came. Sausage-Seller: And nobody noticed me doing it. But if anyone of them ever did, I’d hide the stuff up my crotch and swear by the gods that I was innocent. (Translation by Sommerstein 1981)

The passage illuminates the pelike on several counts, and not only because it echoes the scenario and language that the artist includes. First, the Sausage-Seller’s choice to single out this particular ruse as emblematic of his boyhood pranks suggests that it carries paradigmatic status (albeit almost a century later than the vase), and that here Aristophanes draws on a traditional and familiar (mis)practice. In the gloss supplied by the Suda for neva celidwvn, the phrase is used “in reference to those deceiving people” (ejpi; ejxapatwvntwn tina~), confirming that the swallow stratagem is one that tricksters bent on mischief proverbially practice. A second passage from the comic repertoire further suggests the ‘canonical’ standing of just this type of ploy, its established place in a popular tradition of chicanery. A fragmentary scene from the fourth-century comic dramatist Euphron’s Brothers (fr. 1 K.-A.) also features a rogue who takes advantage of the moment when his companions are examining the signs in a portentous object so as to steal sacrificial meat unobserved. As Françoise Lissarrague comments in passing, these scenarios featured in comedy—and the chronology fits too, since the late sixth/early fifth century is the moment when drama was being institutionalized in Athens—seem highly apposite to the pelike artist’s composition: “While it is surely not a scene from comedy, the conditions of representation are . . . of the same order.”32 The scene in the Knights bears on the vase in two other respects. First, although commentators neglect the point, we should register the misleading nature of the Sausage-Seller’s words. As Demosthenes’ response at line 422 indicates, the bird that the trickster invites his audience to observe was purely fictive, an illusion that he conjured up by way of decoy. If the viewers of the pelike were familiar with the dolos, this would further complicate the status of the painted bird: Is it likewise illusory, a piece of artistic fabrication (as mimetic images are) which matches the verbal apatê, or does it faithfully stand in for and represent an actual swallow? Adding to the confusion is the visual illusion that the painter has contrived: the Steiner—Swallow This 53 bird seems to fly up to the palmette, as though this decorative element were actual foliage in which a real-world swallow might nest. (The bird may also be the victim of a ruse, just like the birds in the famous anecdote, preserved in Pliny HN 35.65, about the contest between the artists Parrhasius and Zeuxis, in which the latter produced a picture of grapes so accurately represented that birds flew up to the stage-building on which it was hung.) And second, there is the motive for the Sausage-Seller’s creation, its role as a means of diverting his companions’ gaze. Fol- lowing this, I suggest that for the viewers of the pelike the gesture and words assigned to the youth might likewise be read as a stratagem designed to distract his companions from what he aims to do. If I am right in identifying the presence of this second-order deception on top of the likelihood that the single swallow does not betoken spring, then what might the youth be up to here? It is on this point that my account coincides with Immer- wahr’s.33 As viewers would observe, the figures on the pelike present a group clearly stratified by age: an older man flanked by a beardless youth and a pais, an arrangement that precisely echoes the numerous images of erotic and not infrequently sexually competitive groupings on red-figure pottery.34 The status of the boy, sharply differentiated from the rest, remains unclear. He stands, while the other two sit on identical folding stools, and uniquely lacks the himation folded at the waist and covering the lower body. While his posture and nudity may simply be a function of his age, the distinctions could also indicate his subordinate status, whether because (less likely, given his wreath and attractively molded physique) he is a slave, or because he is the type of boy who typically at this period existed as the object of aristocratic desire.35 His nudity, delicacy, and location, with his body exposed to the two men, further support this second reading, as does the posture of the older man: in a configuration very unusual in Attic vase painting, his body is twisted all the way around, suggesting that he had turned not so much to gaze up at the bird as to peruse the boy, a scrutiny that the youth’s interjection would then seek to interrupt.36 At the risk of over-reading, and in a further piece of polysemy repeatedly sounded in sympotic discourse, the springtime announced by the inscription could also refer to the burgeoning pais; as the common conceit first found in Mimnermus (cf. frr. 2 and 3) and then exploited by other poets affirms, he too is in his “springtime” (hôra).37 If the boy presents a potential erômenos, then we witness a richly triangulated scene: two men in company with a single pais, the likely object of their mutual and necessarily clashing desires. As Alan Shapiro’s discussion of courtship scenes on Attic pottery documents, beardless youths like the figure on the left do regularly court younger boys, and at exactly this period (see Fig. 3): “By the late sixth century, the erastês is often a beardless youth himself, and his erômenos also appears younger, sometimes barely pubescent.”38 Further suggestive of the fact that the 54 Helios

Fig. 3: Photo of the Athenian cup signed by Peithinus, ca. 500, showing youths with incipient beards courting younger boys amid all the paraphernalia of the gymnasium; Berlin, Antikenmu- seum 2279; ARV2 115. youth has in some way generated or launched the bird, much as the Sausage-Seller would fabricate his winged omen, is the way in which his statement, alone of the several inscriptions, runs in a direct line from speaker to swallow. The artist is doubly complicit in the deception created by the youth. He has painted the swallow in accordance with what may be this individual’s verbal invention and attempt to forestall his companion’s erotic solicitation of the boy, and, by inviting his viewers to follow the figures’ pointing fingers and upturned heads, emulates that internal speaker by redirecting the external audience’s gaze from the object of desire to the bird, while still further diverting them with the swallow spring griphos. Just as Attic comedy supplies a gloss for the ruse perpetrated by the artist and painted youth, so too it might retrospectively illuminate just why, in the sympotic atmosphere surrounding viewers of the vase, and for the pelike’s erotically-disposed internal audience too, the swallow trick is so finely calculated and likely to carry the day. For all its pederastic orientation (of which more in a moment), the vase also introduces a feminine element into the first of its two scenes: the swallow is, of course, female in gender, and the boy’s auJtei? (There she is) underscores the point. The oracle that Aristophanes’L ysistrata produces from beneath her himation likewise features the swallow, not just (in an oblique reference to the Tereus and Philomela story) as the object of male pursuit, but also as the type of bird most Steiner—Swallow This 55 likely to satisfy a would-be and overeager lover’s desires, including those of that (homoerotically inclined) individual who prefers anal penetration (Lys. 770–7):

ajll j oJpovtan pthvxwsi celidovne~ eij~ e{na cw`ron, tou;~ e[popa~ feuvgousai, ajpovscwntaiv te falhvtwn, pau`la kakw`n e[stai . . . h]n de; diastw`sin kai; ajnavptwntai pteruvgessin ejx iJerou` naoi`o celidovne~, oujkevti dovxei o[rneon oujd j oJtiou`n katapugwnevsteron ei\nai.

But when the swallows take refuge in one place fleeing the hoopoes’ pursuit, and keep themselves far from phallicity, then there will be an end of troubles . . . But if the swallows start to fight and fly up on wings/grab hold of cocks from the temple, no bird whatever will be thought such an utter nymphomaniac/liable to anal penetration. (Translation by Sommerstein 1990, with modifications)

As Jeffrey Henderson’s (1991, 128–9, 147) discussion of the passage notes, we have not only a sounding of an equation confirmed by Pollux and the Suda—that celidwvn was a slang term for the female genitals—but a play on an additional meaning to the ptevrux, which could describe both a bird’s wing or swallow tail and, in the lower registers of speech, the phallus. If these sexual innuendoes were already current at the sixth century’s end (and extant iambic poetry suggests that many were), then the youth’s gesture and words become more loaded still: not just an attempt to redirect a competitor’s attention, his words propose a (willing) female partner in place of the boy. The presence of this alternate focus of desire nicely suits the sexually mixed milieu surrounding the pelike; within the space of the andrôn, adult symposiasts might satisfy a range of predilections, with flute girls andhetairai in attendance as well as youths and younger boys. A very different element of the vase could further dispose audiences to read the scene through an erotic filter that implicates both the painted characters and the external viewers, uniting them in a common and preeminently sympotic preoccupation. Depending on their position in the room, some guests would already have observed the reverse of the vase, where two symmetrically posed wrestlers, both young, but one more pais than youth,39 are locked in an agonistic encounter. There is no need to emphasize how frequently in Greek myth, poetry, and art wrestling serves as an image for erotic activity, whether between men and women, or between an erastês and his would-be erômenos.40 So, for example, in his ‘courtship’ of Cassandra, Apollo takes on the form of the palaisthv~ (Aeschylus, Ag. 1206), while the first stasimon of Sophocles’ Trachiniae, this within an ode celebrating the invincible power of Aphrodite, imagines the wrestling bout between Heracles and 56 Helios

Achelous, the rivals for possession of Deianeira who forms the third figure present at this freshly triangulated agôn, in language clearly evocative of a homoerotic sexual encounter.41 Particularly apposite to the conjunction of scenes visible on the pelike’s two sides is Alcibiades’ rueful recollection of his attempt to seduce Socrates: when his initial advance failed, the youth invited the object of his passion to exercise with him at the gymnasium. As he remarks, “I was sure this would achieve something. He exercized and wrestled with me many times . . . but I got nowhere” (Plato, Symp. 217A). Indeed, for Plato, and the comic poets before him, the palaestra seems the ‘pick-up’ site par excellence; a milieu replete with good-looking boys, it is uniquely hospitable to the initiation and pursuit of homoerotic and pederastic relationships.42 The same setting in which Alcibiades stages his courtship manqué coincides with many representations of homosexual courting scenes on Attic pottery, including a red-figure cup signed by Peithios showing youths soliciting younger boys cited earlier (Fig. 3). Visibly hanging between each of the couples are pieces of athletic equipment, strigils, and aryballoi, which succinctly identify the site where the encounters occur. In the tondo of the cup the painter has placed another episode where these same elements—love and the athletic agôn—are still more closely conjoined, here with a parthenos as the object of desire: Peleus clasps the resistant Thetis in what plainly recalls a wrestling hold. Wrestlers and homosexual courtship scenes appear side-by-side on several other contemporary images. From the latter part of the sixth century, although a little earlier than the St. Petersburg pelike (c. 550–525), is a black-figure neck amphora in Munich (Antikensammlungen J1336); while the shoulders of the vase display two sets of wrestlers locked in combat pose, each flanked by two youths, one side of the main body of the vessel portrays a courting pair, a man and a boy.43 Reinforcing the erotic implications of the pelike wrestlers is the inscription accompanying the image. Running downwards from the point where the arms of the wrestlers cross is the name of that familiar presence on painted pottery and leading member of Athens’ jeunesse dorée, Leagrus, while placed horizontally above the pair is the no less commonplace acclamation ho pais kalos, a formula particularly associated with the Pioneer Group to which the artist of the object belongs.44 As is so frequently the case, these elements function within the space of the vase not as labels but as metanarrative signs or directives designed to guide and condition a viewer’s reception of the scene—‘Read me thus’—and further serve to situate the pelike within the pederastic discourse native to the symposium.45 In keeping with that mode of discourse, the presence of these inscriptions turns the vases exhibiting them into media of courtship and solicitation, whether on the part of their artists or, more likely, of their customers, a point to which I return.46 Prompting his audience to read the two sides of the vase as an ensemble are the Steiner—Swallow This 57

Fig. 4: Munich, Antikensammlungen 2447; ARV 425. several additional visual cues included by the artist, which signal repetition, reflexivity, and continuity between its different scenes.47 In addition to the inscriptions that, in their different ways, decorate both faces, each image includes among its characters a young boy and older youth, while the wreaths worn by the three swallow watchers might link them to the athletic-cum-festival milieu on the other side.48 An attentive viewer might also have registered how the position of the arms of the wrestler on the left resembles that of the boy on the obverse, and have further noted the identical framing ornaments on the two faces, palmettes on the neck, a trapezoid of simple meanders on top and sides, a ground line of upright lotus buds on the belly. When viewed in tandem, each scene serves to condition and model our reception of its counterpart: the two wrestlers supply either a proleptic or analeptic filter for interpreting the figures observing the swallow, its two 58 Helios inscriptions serving by way of commentary or subtext to the actions and verbal exchange on the other side. Those three individuals may be looking at and talking about a swallow, but it is pederasty (or, failing that, heterosexual erôs) that is really in the air. A red-figure oinochoe in Munich (Fig. 4) illustrates how the visual and verbal elements that the pelike distributes to its separate sides can be united, and how birds can be not just implicated in the actual source of the mode of discourse that our Pioneer artist has assigned to the wrestling scene: on the shoulder of the jug runs an inscription that begins from the silhouette of a bird, the apparent initiator of the dialogue, with an unseen respondent, and which traces out a course of flight in and out of the fourteen palmettes arranged around the space: “Nicolas is handsome,” “Dorotheus is handsome,” “and so he seems to me, indeed.” “The other boy is handsome, Memnon”; “he seems handsome to me too.” This does not exhaust the thematic interactions between the pelike’s two sides. Not only do the overtly competing athletes plus inscriptions on the reverse alert us to the more insidious contest that erôs has generated between the youth and older man on the obverse and place the vessel as a whole within the pederastic language and iconology of the symposium, but each image presents us with a message about how erotic victory can be achieved. Where the youth devises a gestural-cum-verbal ruse to distract his companion, a win in the wrestling match depends not on brute strength, but rather on the combatants’ similar exercise of the faculty the Greeks styled mh`ti~. More than any other exercise in the gymnasium or the games, wrestling required the deployment of this cunning intelligence, the ability quite literally to trip up an opponent, to forestall his next move by pinioning him in an unexpected and inescapable hold. Pindar’s Isthmian 4, which celebrates the triumph of Melissus in the pankration (a combination of boxing and wrestling), conveys the skill and strategy requisite for the event. Describing his subject’s victory in the wrestling portion of the contest, Pindar remarks: “For with regard to boldness, he has a spirit resembling that of loudly roaring lions, but in skill [mh`ti~] he is a fox, which rolls over on its back to check the eagle’s swoop” (Isthm. 4.45–7). A scholion to the lines spells out exactly what Melissus’s move involves: “The fox appears to be teaching the feint used in wrestling [pavlaisma] thanks to which the athlete lying on the ground is the winner through skill [tevcnei], even when his opponent is the stronger man.”49 The deployment of this skill or mh`ti~ is something, as the next section suggests, which must be practiced by the artist no less than by the lover or contestant in the games. My third point turns from the sympotic audience to focus more narrowly on this unknown painter’s role. As noted above, exegesis belongs among the standard elements in traditional ornithomantic type-scenes, and no archaic bird omen appears without its explanatory tag. On the pelike, the caption “It’s already spring” duly completes the preceding exchange. Where many accounts assign the phrase to Steiner—Swallow This 59 the older man (perhaps assuming that his age gives him authority) or to the three figures as an ensemble,50 the remark more properly presents an independent element. Whereas the three preceding remarks all come from their speakers’ mouths, this one starts from beneath the boy’s armpit; also in contrast to the other inscriptions, its letters run in the reverse direction, from top to bottom. Albeit the cap- stone to the conversation, it actually breaks the illusion of a verbal exchange, reminding viewers that what they see is not a portico or colonnaded area where men converse, but simply a space on a vase, a flat surface that can be written on.51 So who then is the author of the phrase? It is tempting to follow Immerwahr and several others before him and to see the vase painter as the speaker; such ‘painterly interjections’ occur in inscriptions of the period and on objects produced by other members of the Pioneer Group with whom the artist worked. Rel- evant to this reading is Neer’s exploration of how painters associated with the Pioneers liked to include ‘portraits’ of themselves or of their fellow artists in their scenes, where they could assume surprisingly lofty social identities. Thus, a psykter by Smicrus in the Getty (Fig. 5) shows Euphronius, the artist he most emulates, courting Leagrus, while the athlete and boy with lyre in the larger scene situate the encounter among the pastimes and at sites favored by the contemporary Athenian elite. Elsewhere, on a stamnos in Brussels (Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, A717), Smicrus portrays himself in the context of an upper-class symposium.52 Although not physically present in the painted scene, the pelike artist has more discretely interjected himself within the clearly leisured milieu exhibited by the vase,53 where he has assumed the role of interpreter of the sign for the individuals commenting on the bird. The move can be read as a bid for status, a claim to the

Fig. 5: Photo of psykter by Smicrus showing Euphronius courting Leagrus; c. 510. Malibu, J. P. Getty Museum 82.AE.53. 60 Helios authority that both an actual seer and the Hesiodic or Homeric ajoidov~ possessed— that of practicing ornithomanteia for internal and external audiences alike. Here Neer’s account of painter-portraits bears on my argument in a second respect. Just as the personas that the artists assume in their self-images are mere fictions or constructs, so too their authorial voices belong not so much to an actual painter or potter as to what narratologists call the ‘implied author’ or constructed self.54 The gloss that the vase’s author-artist supplies is thus a projection of this more fictive and authoritative ‘second self,’ more mantis than painter here. But the status that the artist grants himself can actually cut both ways, as much an affirmation of his banausic status and marginality, his place as mere creator and executor of the pelike, as a statement of his authority. In the earliest extant account of the social position of the seer (Od. 17.383–5), the Odyssean Eumaeus already classes the prophet together with other so-called dhmioergoiv—doctors, carpen- ters, and singers, practitioners of specialized crafts/skills who are characterized by their itinerant existence and outsider status, their dependency on satisfying those who hired them out for pay.55 By the fifth century at least, the status of individuals practicing bird divination was equivocal at best: not only do the sources classify ornithomancy as a technê,56 but they further suggest that in the hierarchy of different forms of augury, reading the birds occupied the bottom rung.57 Its low prestige stemmed both from the fact that, unlike the oracle-pronouncer at a major site or haruspex, any layman could play bird diviner, and from the ready accessibility of rules for decoding ornithological signs. An inscription from late sixth- or early fifth-century Ephesus (LSAM 30) puts these rules in the public domain, spelling out just how ornithomanteia should be done; avian interpretation was common, not restricted knowledge available only to a select group.58 The Ephesus inscription reminds us of an additional reason for questioning the artist’s interpretation of the bird, and one that further undermines the authority that his self-construction as mantis could confer. Not only does the speaker of the gloss recall the fools in proverb, fable, and popular lore who forget that a single swallow does not betoken spring, but, as any individual would know, and as the inscription spells out at length, the meaning of bird omens most fundamentally depends on the direction in which the oiônos flies. The swallow on the pelike goes from left to right, the unlucky direction.59 If the voice of this patent dupe does belong to the artist, then he has positioned himself as ‘fall-guy,’ furnishing his upper-class viewers with a target for their collective mockery. This willing embrace of the buffoon’s role fits neatly into the interpretative framework proposed by the most recent readings of the painter-‘portraits’ and names included on the pottery of turn-of-the-century Athens.60 While Neer focuses attention on the impossible self-elevation of the low-status individual who situates himself in the elitist space of his vase, others suggest that the artist who portrays himself, or one of his kind, Steiner—Swallow This 61 as an athlete, symposiast, or high-class pupil engages in a form of self-parody: much like the hired entertainers and parasites at the symposium, and the misshapen, fat dancers who ‘perform themselves’ by displaying their grotesque anato- mies and flaunt upper-class decorum on contemporary komast vases,61 the painter assumes a persona that offers symposiasts an object of derision from outside their exclusive company. I would like to propose, however, another possible candidate for the speaker here, particularly in the light of the absence of any signature on the vase. Following my earlier focus on relations between the vase’s two sides, the statement “It’s already spring” corresponds in position and direction to the interjection ‘Leagros’ on the other face. Once viewed as utterances by the painter or potter, or by the commis- sioner and owner of the vase, these names are now interpreted as invitations to audiences more generally to speak the name so as to declare their interest and admiration of the designated youth and even to be seen engaged in erotic pursuit of the individual so acclaimed. The assumption that the declaration I“ t’s already spring” likewise belongs to whoever in the company of drinkers articulates the phrase gives the situation a different cast, and, as I suggest below, aligns it with the vying for status at the symposium of which visual and verbal jokes, riddles, puns, and parodies formed so integral a part. As already noted, the utterance does anything but bring prestige to its speaker; rather, it indicates his gullibility, his failure to read the bird or the larger scene aright. Other sources, where claims that a swallow’s appearance equals spring is succinct proof of an individual’s lack of mental acumen, demonstrate how exchanges sparked by the advent of the bird include just such a potential sting. In a fragment of Aris tophanes (fr. 617 K.-A.), one interlocutor remarks to another, puqou` celidw;n phnivk j a[tta faivetai (Ask when the swallow is likely to appear), perhaps seeking an opportunity to show his cleverness, or to test whether his companion has his wits about him. According to the Suda, the swallow-spring proverb carries a secondary meaning, one that explicitly foregrounds the question of an individual’s possession of wisdom: balancing the gloss “One swallow does not a springtime make” is a second matching proverbial phrase, miva hJmevra ouj poiei` to;n sofo;n teleivwsin ejmbalei`n (One [good] day does not bring the wise person to perfection), which invests the swallow’s appearance with this third-order significance. Other graphic notations on vases play this ‘trip up’ role, just to catch their readers out. Witness the nonsense inscriptions or deformations of proper speech that contemporary vase painters include and which cause those who spell them out to sound drunk or uncouth; the device seems designed to permit one symposiast to trick another into pronouncing the gibberish as he responds to the coherent utterance articulated by his companion from the other side.62 In much this way, the patently misguided interpretation of the swallow omen reveals the current reader’s befuddlement, attracting the laughter of 62 Helios his fellow symposiasts as the guest loses face. The artist’s active participation in these types of games, and contributions to the intra-elite competitions at the symposium, are, again, hallmarks of the Pioneer Group to which the pelike painter belongs. But even if a symposiast articulates the words that the artist has (unkindly) scripted for him, more properly painterly technê should not be written wholesale out of the swallow scene. For all that he is the original source of a foolish and fal- lacious interpretation of a bird omen, as a technitês this painter is a self-promoting master of his craft. The vase both demonstrates his originality—the subject matter seems unprecedented and unparalleled in the extant Attic repertoire63—and displays a striking technical innovation. The swallow vase belongs among the very earliest of extant red-figure one-piece pelikai, and Dietrich von Bothmer proposes that this particular vessel may have marked the transition from the so-called neck pelike (where the neck was fashioned separately from the body of the pot and attached with a clearly defined joint that formed a ridge) to the single piece variety. Von Bothmer (1951, 47) further comments:

At first glance one would take the vase for a neck-pelike with its rich palmette decoration above the panel, until one discovers that the neck of the vase is set off from the body only by the reserved line in the painted decoration and not by a ridge in the pot itself. . . . Perhaps the painter, accustomed as he may have been to neck-pelikai did not want to give up the neck patterns, even though the new shape was no longer in need of one.

Rather than reading the elaborate palmette ornamentation as evidence of the artist’s reluctance to abandon a familiar practice, I suggest that he includes it as a means of underscoring the novelty of his object’s design, and that the three figures’ emphatically pointing fingers serve to draw a viewer’s eye not just to the swallow, but to the site where the innovation occurs. Absent the self-advertisement that our artist inserts into his composition, precisely this arrangement occurs on a second red-figure pelike in Boston (Fig. 6), whose two faces show jumpers executing their movements to the accompaniment of a piper.64 The vessel is the product of another member of the workshop of Euphronius, contemporary with the swallow painter, and, together with the Saint Petersburg vase, this pelike stands as one of the very first examples of the single- piece variety; here, too, a palmette pattern in a running band marks off the neck as a distinct entity, for all the actual seamlessness of the join. By drawing viewers’ attention to this area of the vase, the painters alert their audience to a remarkable feature of the object, creating the momentary impression that the pot is actually something other than it seems (an older-fashioned neck pelike)—another piece of visual apatê or seeing two in one.65 Steiner—Swallow This 63

Fig. 6: Photo of sides A and B of a red-figure pelike showing a piper with two jumpers. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1973.88. Both sides inscribed Leagros kalos.

This technical mastery and illusionary element that the Saint Petersburg vessel includes also informs the pelike’s two scenes, turning them into self-reflexive images of the artist’s activity and his capacity for confounding his audience with his innovatory technique and design. Like the youth practicing his mh`ti~ on the older man, and the wrestlers whose combat requires the analogous ability to contrive and deceive, late sixth-century painters prevail in a competitive market- place through the exercise of their artistry and innovatory skill.66 It is no wonder that, repeating terms already found in Homer’s celebration of divine craftsmanship, which uses tevcnh to transform the appearances of objects and to create illusions of size, beauty, and radiance,67 Empedocles describes painters as “men through cunning well taught in craft” (ajnevre~ ajmfi; tevcnh~ uJpo; mhvtio~ eu\ dedaw`te, fr. 23.4 D-K).68 The sympotic context foregrounded in the reading presented so far proves central to my concluding point and to the questions of orality and visuality, and of words and images, which other scholars have raised in reference to the vase. At first glance, the pelike seems seamlessly to blend pictorial representations and speech. Creating the impression that the figures are in conversation with one another, it transcends the silence that, in Simonides’ famous (if quite possibly apocryphal) near contemporary dictum,69 painted objects must observe. The symposiasts would further promote the illusion, ‘envoicing’ the pelike as they articulated the phrases assigned to the different characters, with individual diners taking on the diverse speaking roles. The subject matter further unites vision and speech: mantikê regularly involves an attempt to gloss a visual phenomenon with spoken words.70 64 Helios

On a second count, the combination of words and images allows the vase to bypass the limitations of the painted medium, endowing pictures with the temporality that they more conventionally lack. Whereas the poet can narrate a sequence of activities and follow his characters through the passage of time, the vase painter wishing to show the successive stages of an action or interaction must create a composite, combining or juxtaposing elements from different parts of a story within a single image or object. For all its seemingly static quality, the scene on the pelike introduces precisely that missing dimension by virtue of its conversational exchange: the youth speaks first, the older man replies, and the young boy then adds a corroborating remark. But even as time passes from one statement to the next, the accommodation of the spoken words within the painted scene weakens the temporal character that the conversation seemingly enjoys. While every discussion of the vase, my own included, positions the youth as initiator of the exchange, there is actually no reason to assume that he is the first speaker here, and we could just as easily vary the sequence of the several remarks. Indeed, the several ways in which the comments could be delivered coheres with the fluid and open-ended quality of the erotic situation depicted within the scene. Does the older man respond to the remark made by the boy, the focus of his earlier perusal, or should we assume that the verbal distraction devised by the youth has effectively com- mandeered his companion’s attention as well as his gaze? A concern with time’s passage is, moreover, embedded in the subject matter of the vase: not just the transition from one season to the next that comes with the appearance of the swallow(s), but a man’s necessary trajectory through the several life-stages displayed here, which, as earlier noted, is a commonplace topic in sympotic song. Something, however, disturbs this otherwise neat amalgam of eye, ear, and voice—the silent swallow, whose silence becomes still more striking when we fac- tor in the ‘traditional referentiality’ with which I began. In many of the sources already cited, and in several other references to the swallow in the archaic and classical poets as well, the bird’s most salient feature is its distinctive call and the particular quality of its sound or song. Read against these literary accounts, and juxtaposed with the human participants in the scene whom the artist so effectively equips with voice, the singularly mute bird demonstrates the limits that the visual- cum-graphic medium cannot transcend: human speech yes, bird song no. The very choice of swallow may additionally be designed to underscore these questions of silence and of speech which the scene and its inscriptions pose: it is not just that the bird is associated with the unintelligible, indecipherable, and ‘twittering’ speech uttered by barbarians but that this particular avian species is, in and of itself, a way of figuring silence: Philomela becomes the swallow precisely because, with her tongue cut out, she is necessarily prohibited from generating not just coherent Steiner—Swallow This 65 speech, but any sound at all;71 only communication through graphic, pictorial media—the tapestry that she weaves—is left to her. Silence also informs the question of the bird’s signifying character and further calls the surface reading of the pelike into question by delivering another challenge to its too ready amalgam of swallow and spring. As Luis Losada’s (1985, 33) review of the archaic sources demonstrates, “the swallow’s annual return was perceived by the ear as much as by the eye,” and poets were all but unanimous in linking the bird’s role as vernal herald to its audible properties, to the voice that, in Aris tophanes’ Stesichorus-citing account, “babbles its spring songs” (Pax 800). Fresh grounds, then, for skepticism vis-à-vis the interpretation on the pot: a single necessarily silent swallow emphatically does not a spring time make. But perhaps the viewers of the vase did not listen in vain for what the artist could not supply. Instead, to develop Hurwit’s notion of inscribed vases as catalysts for sympotic speech and song, this lacuna becomes another point at which the audience comes in. Furnishing the voice denied the bird, they could sing one of the many lyric poems that featured the melodious and/or twittering swallow, or could perform the swallow ditty, whose opening is sung by the Sycophant in Aristophanes’ Birds and which Peisetaerus styles a skolion in the line cited earlier (416). Skolia or drinking songs were a sympotic genre par excellence, and their heyday coincided precisely with the date of our vase. Many skolia also involve griphoi, and in several instances these verbal puzzles include both ‘signifying’ animals and issues of deception,72 the precise concerns of the vase. Picking up on the visual and verbal cues that the pelike supplied, and promoting the likelihood of spring’s advent, the diners might also perform a version of the well-known “Swallow Song,” the Cheilidonis- mos, sung on the season’s return in communities in different parts of archaic and classical Greece. These songs—some popular, others more refined—would combine with lively debate and riddle-posing (Can you trust a single swallow and, in Aris tophanes’ phrase, “Ask when the swallow’s likely to appear”?), and with admiration of the charms of the pais on the pelike and also, perhaps, the charms of the female ‘swallows’ present at the sympotic occasion. In short, we have a realization of the milieu that Snodgrass (2000, 6–7) so well imagines in his reconstruction of how inscriptions on vases functioned at symposia: “The presence of writing would have its place in the atmosphere of convivial challenges, competitive recitation and singing, amorous discourse and table games which we know prevailed.”73

Works Cited

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———. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Second edition. Oxford. Bothmer, D. von. 1951. “Attic Black Figure Pelikai.” JHS 71: 40–7. Burkert, W. 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture. Cam- bridge, MA. ———. 2005. “Signs, Commands, and Knowledge: Ancient Divination between Enigma and Epiphany.” In S. I. Johnston and P. T. Struck, eds., Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Leiden. 29–49. Bushnell, R. W. 1982. “Reading ‘Winged Words’: Homeric Bird Signs, Similes and Epiphanies.” Helios 9: 1–14. Carpenter, T. H. 1989. Beazley Addenda. Second edition incorporating first edition byL . Burn and R. Glynn. Oxford. Collins, D. 2002. “Reading the Birds: Oionomanteia in Early Epic.” Colby Quarterly 38: 17–41. ———. 2004. Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry. Cambridge, MA. de Jong, I. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge. Detienne, M., and J.-P. Vernant, 1991. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. English translation by J. Lloyd. Chicago. Dunbar, N. 1995. Aristophanes: Birds. Oxford. Fehr, B. 1990. “Entertainers at the Symposium: TheAkletoi in the Archaic Period.” In O. Murrray, ed., Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford. 185–95. Flower, M. A. 2007. The Seer in Ancient Greece. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London. Foley, J. M. 1991. Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington, IN. Fraenkel, E. 1950. Aeschylus, Agamemnon. 3 volumes. Oxford. Frel, J. 1983. “Euphronios and His Fellows.” In W. G. Moon, ed., Ancient Greek Art and Iconogra- phy. Madison. 147–58. Henderson, J. 1991. The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy. Second edition. Oxford. Hurwit, J. M. 1990. “The Words in the Image: Orality, Literacy and Early Greek Art.” Word and Image 6: 180–97. Immerwahr, H. R. 1990. Attic Script. Oxford. ———. 2010. “Hipponax and the Swallow Vase.” AJP 131: 573–87. Lateiner, D. 2005. “Telemakhos’ Sneeze.’ ” In R. J. Rabel, ed., Approaches to Homer, Ancient and Modern. Swansea. 73–90. Lear, A., and E. Cantarella. 2008. Images of Ancient Pederasty. London and New York. Lissarrague, F. 1985. “Paroles d’images. Remarques sur le fonctionnement de l’écriture dans l’imagerie attique.” In A. M. Christin, ed., Ecritures, II. Paris. 71–94. ———. 1992. “Graphein: écrire et dessiner.” In C. Bron and E. Kassapoglou, eds., L’image en jeu. Yens-sur-Morgue. 189–204. Losada, L. A. 1985. “Odyssey 21: 411: The Swallow’s Call.” CP 80: 33–4. Nagy, G. 1990. “Sêma and Noêsis: The Hero’s Tomb and the ‘Reading’ ofS ymbols in Homer and Hesiod.” In G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca and London. 202–22. Neer, R. T. 2002. Style and Politics in Athenian Vase Painting. Cambridge. Robertson, M. 1977. “Jumpers.” The Burlington Magazine 119: 78–88. Shapiro, H. A. 1981. “Courtship Scenes in Attic Vase Painting.” AJA 85: 133–43. ———. 1997. “Correlating Shape and Subject: The Case of the Archaic Pelike.” In J. H. Oakley, W. D. E. Coulson, and O. Palagia, eds., Athenian Potters and Painters. Oxford. 63–70. Steiner—Swallow This 67

Snodgrass, A. 2000. ‘The Uses of Writing on Early Greek Painted Pottery.” In N. K. Rutter and Brian A. Sparks, eds., Word and Image in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh. 22–34. Sommerstein, A. 1981. Aristophanes’ Knights. Warminster. ———. 1987. Aristophanes’ Birds. Warminster. ———. 1990. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Warminster. Steiner, A. 2007. Reading Greek Vases. Cambridge. Steiner, D. 2009. “Pot Bellies. The Komast Vases and Contemporary Song.” In D. Yatromanolakis, ed., An Archeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Meth- odologies. Athens. 240–81. Sutton, R. F. 1992. “Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery.” In A. Richlin, ed., Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. New York and Oxford. 3–35. Thompson, D. W. 1895. A Glossary of Greek Birds. Oxford. Ziomecki, J. 1975. Les représentations d’artisans dans les vases antiques. Warsaw.

Notes

* This paper owes much to the comments of the two audiences to whom it was presented: those participating in the Cork conference, for which it was originally conceived, and the speakers and audience at a second conference on the symposium, held at Oxford in 2011. I am most grateful to the organizers of these events for their invitations to attend. 1. Hermitage 615; Beazley 1963, 1594.48; Beazley 1971, 507; Carpenter 1989, 389. 2. Lissarrague 1985, 85; see too his discussion in Lissarrague 1992, 200–1. 3. Neer 2002, 63–4. As will become clear, my discussion takes its impetus at many points from Neer’s account of both the vase and Pioneer painters. 4. Neer 2002, 27–86. 5. Immerwahr 2010. This discussion appeared several years after the initial delivery and revisions of my account, and, as noted in § 2 below, overlaps closely with my reading on one very central point. While I have profited from Immerwahr’s rich analysis and, as the footnotes reflect, have drawn on some of the material that he includes, our larger arguments and conclusions remain very different and I do not engage with his suggestion concerning the reference to a magical spell. 6. Here I apply to iconography the notion of ‘traditional referentiality’ developed for the reading of Homeric formulae; for a detailed account of this, see Foley 1991 and the definition that he offers on p. 7: “Traditional referentiality, then, entails the invoking of a context that is enormously larger and more echoic than the text or work itself, that brings the lifeblood of generations of poems and performances to the individual performance or text. Each element in the phraseology or narrative thematics stands not for the singular instance but for the plurality and multiformity that are beyond the reach of textualization.” 7. See Neer 2002, esp. 13; as he notes, the word riddle that was a conspicuous feature of the symposium typically involved an expression or phrase with a double meaning. For a particular apposite example, see the griphos that Neer cites on p. 46. 8. Here I take my cue from the important recent work on the topic in A. Steiner 2007. 9. See the discussion in Robertson 1977, 79–80, with earlier bibliography in his note 13. I have also drawn on Shapiro 1997, 63–4 and von Bothmer 1951. 10. For this term, see note 6 above. 11. So Collins 2002, 35. I also draw on Collins’s acute discussion of the issues of contested power and authority implicit in these epic scenes. 68 Helios

12. The relevant passages are Il. 2.299–332, 8.242–52, 12.200–50, 13.817–32, 24.306–21 and Od. 2.146–93, 15.160–81, 15.535–8, 19.535–69, 20.242–7. There are a handful of non-avian portents, but birds make up the overwhelming majority of omens in the works. 13. My account follows that of de Jong 2001, 52. 14. For this, see Lateiner 2005. 15. See the excellent discussion in Bushnell 1982 for fuller analysis. 16. As Bushnell’s (1982, 4–5) analysis shows, in this instance the interpretation depends on a ‘supplementation’ of the actual sign. Polydamas begins his description of the omen by repeating the lines the poet had earlier used of it, but then adds an ending absent from the original; it is the added portion that serves as the basis for the analogy with the Trojan situation. 17. See Bushnell 1982, 6 for this counter omen. 18. Bushnell 1982, 6. 19. Bushnell (1982, 4) cites Cicero’s comment on Calchas’s reading: “But pray, by what principle of augury does he deduce years rather than months or days for the number of sparrows. . . . What is there about a sparrow to suggest a year?” (Div. 2.65). The very precision of the reading shows what Bushnell calls its “unsystematic” nature; the omen could have been interpreted any number of different ways. 20. Competitive encounters between rival interpreters, in this instance both professional prophets (crhsmolovgoi), are recorded in the sources: Strabo cites lines from Hesiod (fr. 278 M.-W.) describing one such competition between Calchas and Mopsus, in which Calchas sets a test for his rival. Famously, as Herodotus records, Themistocles sets himself up against the “professional interpreters” to offer his own exegesis of the Delphic oracle concerning the wooden walls (7.143). 21. Nagy (1990, 212) remarks on the significant placement of the lines just prior to the citation of the cuckoo’s call. 22. Here I follow the discussion of the incident in Nagy 1990, 206. 23. In the subsequent passage, Apollo goes on to grant Hermes his own oracular site, where divination is practiced by the winged bee-maidens, prophetesses who utter both truth and false- hoods, depending on whether they have eaten honey (550–63). 24. For a very illuminating collection of material concerning Greek and Roman “swallow lore,” see Thompson 1895, 186–92. 25. It proves impossible to establish when the fables that appear under the name of Aesop, a figure conventionally dated to the sixth century, first came into circulation in Greece; however, the close overlap between the stories found in the much later collection of the Aesopica and the fables incorporated into the iambic, elegiac, and lyric poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries suggests an early diffusion for many of the tales and their familiarity to audiences both popular and elite. 26. For relevant discussion of the incident, see Bushnell 1982, 9. 27. For this suggestion, see Sommerstein, 1987 ad 1416. 28. See Austin 1975, 247. 29. See particularly Ag. 1050–1 with Fraenkel’s note ad loc. 30. See note 59, where I suggest yet another area where the swallow becomes a source of interpretative difficulty and doubleness. 31. Hurwit 1990, 194; a similar proposal is made in Snodgrass 2000, 26–8. 32. Lissarrague 1985, 85 and his note 42. 33. The interpretation proposed in Immerwahr 2010 develops a passing comment in a much earlier publication by the author; in his discussion of the vase in Immerwahr 1990, 70, he succinctly calls the composition “an erotic scene,” but does not elaborate on the statement there. Steiner—Swallow This 69

34. Immerwahr (2010, 577) supplies several examples, with additional material in Lear and Cantarella 2008. Note how the three ages depicted here would echo the frequent ruminations in sixth-century sympotic poetry on the different ages of humankind, and the poets’ rueful observations on the iniquities of old age and the erotic rejections it involves. 35. Neer (2002, 118) draws attention to this ambiguity in reference to other contemporary images featuring young boys. 36. Should we also, as a participant in the Oxford conference proposed, ascribe significance to the position of the youth’s left hand, pointing towards the region of his companion’s genitalia? 37. Immerwahr (2010, 580) also notes the association of springtime and youth, but as part of a different argument. 38. Shapiro 1981, 135. As he notes, both figures may be partly draped and/or naked, or one naked and the other draped. 39. I owe to Immerwahr (2010, 580) the observation concerning the slight differentiation in age between the contestants. 40. Immerwahr (2010, 578–9) would actually locate both scenes on the pelike in a palaestra setting. He too notes the tight association between that context and pederastic relations. 41. See particularly 520: h\n d j ajmfivplektoi klivmake~. 42. See Plato, Charm. 154A–C, Euthd. 237A, Lysis 206E; Aristophanes, Vesp. 1023–5, Pax 762–3. 43. Recapitulating the four-figure arrangement twice shown on the amphora’s shoulders are the four individuals included in this second scene: on either side of the lover and the object of his solicitation two bearded individuals dance, one carrying a fawn that is both a love token and a visual figure for the eventual capture of the youth.S ee too a red-figure cup in Rome with pancrat- ists on one side, a man courting a youth on the other (Vatican City, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Vaticano Ast 705; Beazley 1963, 1646.37 bis). 44. These inscriptions are of a wholly different order from at least three of the notations on the obverse; they are free-floating elements, whose author remains undefined, and that might be seen as replicating actual graffiti found at athletic sites. 45. Here I draw on the argument presented in A. Steiner 2007, 48. While for the most part kalos inscriptions bear scant relation to the scenes depicted on the pots, in some instances they do comment on the image and/or prompt the audience to respond in the appropriate fashion; see, e.g., the Attic red-figure kylix in Baltimore (Beazley 1963, 177, 3) of c. 500, possibly showing Lea- grus as little more than a pais and acclaiming him as fair; so too the term kalos on the louterion used by another desirable youth on a pelike in Berlin (Beazley 1963, 246). For the first, see the discussion in Frel 1983, 147–50; for the second, see Lissarrague 1985, 87. 46. See the discussion in Sutton 1992, 15. 47. A. Steiner (2007) supplies an essential guide to these varieties of visual “clueing.” 48. As suggested in Immerwahr 2011, 578. 49. For detailed treatment of the particular association in the Greek imaginary between wrestling and mh`ti~, see Detienne and Vernant 1991, 35–7; as their discussion also documents, the fox is the quintessential embodiment of this “cunning intelligence.” 50. Lissarrague (1985, 85) suggests that it is shared between the different characters, a piece of their collective wisdom. Hurwit (1990, 189) does not attribute the phrase to any of the three, but, without giving it an actual author, views it as extraneous to their exchange. 51. See Hurwit 1990, 192 for the relation of the writing to the pictorial space; here I somewhat modify his account, which reads all inscriptions as illusion-breaking. 52. See the discussion of this and other examples in Neer 2002, 87–117. 70 Helios

53. Immerwahr (2010, 574) describes the ornamented stools on which the youth and older man sit as indicators of “affluence and leisure.” 54. Here I draw on the fine discussion in A. Steiner 2007, 66–7. 55. See Flower 2007, 5. As Flower’s account documents, seers could nonetheless belong to elite families and regularly claimed high-class lineages. See also the important discussion in Burkert 1992, esp. 41–6. 56. For discussion of divination as a craft, see Flower 2007, 91. 57. Of possible relevance to this is the curious phenomenon identified in Shapiro 1997: archaic pelikai tend to display scenes featuring lower-class individuals and occupations. 58. For my larger point concerning the low status of bird divination, and citation and discussion of the inscription, see Collins 2002, 38. 59. This point should be qualified insofar as the direction of the swallow’s flight depends on the ‘point of view’ adopted here. If we observe the bird as spectators external to the vase, it does fly from left to right; but for the internal viewers, that direction is reversed. This confusion would perhaps promote the ‘slipperiness’ and oscillating quality of the scene as instantiated by the swallow. 60. See A. Steiner 2007, 202–3, 255–6, 259–60. 61. The citation comes from Fehr 1990. For additional discussion of the function of the “fat dancers,” see D. Steiner 2009. 62. A. Steiner (2007) explores these nonsense inscriptions in detail, proposing the account followed here. 63. As far as I know, there are no analogous scenes in either the black- or red-figure repertoire. Nor do contemporary works show individuals, mythical or otherwise, practicing ornithomanteia, although artists of the period do regularly represent scenes of extispicy. 64. See the detailed account of the vase in Robertson 1977; he draws attention to the similarity to the swallow pelike on p. 80. This vase also acclaims Leagrus as kalos. 65. For this feature of the Pioneers, see Neer 2002, 73–4. 66. So the famous tag included on the belly amphora of c. 510 by Euthymides (Munich 2307; Beazley 1963, 26.1) “as never Euphronius [could do].” 67. See particularly Od. 6.229–37. 68. Also cited by Neer 2002, 99. 69. “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks”; cited in Plutarch, Mor. 346F. 70. So Burkert 2005, 35. 71. With thanks to Andrew Ford for pointing this out. 72. Collins (2004, 111–34) provides a good account of these; for skolia involving animals, see PMG 892 and 903. 73. Snodgrass 2000, 26–7. Framing a View of the Unviewable: Architecture, Aphrodite, and Erotic Looking in the Lucianic Erôtes1

Melissa Haynes

Although quarantined from the Lucianic corpus and assigned variable dates from the second to the fourth centuries CE,2 in recent years the Erôtes has garnered attention for its generic complexity, its (late) engagement with the philosophical debate over pederasty, and its value as a significant witness for the viewing context of a lost sculptural masterwork, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Cnidus.3 Part of what makes this wayward text so attractive is its ironic and heady mix of sex, philosophy, and art, all set within a dizzying mise-en-abîme of narrative frames (Goldhill 1995, 104). An external dialogue between the pansexual Theomnestus and asexual Lyci- nus, set at a festival of Heracles, frames a travel story about a trip taken to Cnidus by Lycinus and two friends, Charicles (a woman-mad Corinthian) and Callicrati- das (a boy-crazy Athenian). An extended ekphrasis of the Cnidian Aphrodite’s sanctuary and its cult statue further embeds an etiological tale that accounts for a stain on the statue’s thigh, and this tale, in turn, precipitates a philosophical agôn between the exclusive heterosexual and the exclusive pederast. The entire piece closes with an unabashedly erotic recasting of the agôn by Theomnestus, patient listener to the entire tale. This dialogue on desiring subjects and desired objects situates its eroticism very squarely within a revelatory story about viewing sculpture (Erot. 11–7).4 The statue of the goddess embodies a doubled erotic stimulus. Viewed from the front she is the most desirable woman, but from the rear, the most perfect boy. Proof of her irresistible erotic charm is the stain on her thigh. Lycinus and his traveling companions learn that this incontrovertible fact of her being used “like a boy” (paidikw`~) remains from a night of passion performed on the statue by a besotted local youth. It is the confounding evidence of intercrural or anal sex5 with this seemingly most female of statues that engenders the debate on what is the correct focus for male erotic attention: the avenues (ojdouv~) to erotic satisfaction offered by the bodies of boys or of women. The initial terms of the central philosophical debate (inscribed in semen) are read off Aphrodite’s ambiguous body.6 This erotic perspective on the goddess, front and back equated with female and male, is a function of the position taken up by the viewer. That position, moreover, is determined by the points of visual access provided by the temple structure itself. Aphrodite is framed by the very architecture she inhabits. In the dialogue, the

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 71 72 Helios temple is depicted as a naos with two doors, front and back, communicating into an interior sacred space. There is no ‘viewing in the round,’ but rather looking is cathected along a very particular directional axis. It is precisely this specific closed temple structure with carefully designed openings onto that space that is a significant feature of Lycinus’s description:7

ejpei; d j iJkanw`~ toi`~ futoi`~ ejtevrfqhmen, ei[sw tou` new; parhv/eimen. hJ me;n ou\n qeo;~ ejn mevsw/ kaqivdrutai—Pariva~ de; livqou daivdalma kavlliston— uJterhvfanon kai; seshrovti gevlwti mikro;n uJpomeidiw`sa. pa`n de; to; kavllo~ aujth`~ ajkavlupton oujdemia`~ ejsqh`to~ ajmpecouvsh~ geguvmnwtai, plh;n o{sa th`/ eJtevra/ ceiri; th;n aijdw` lelhqovtw~ ejpikruvptein. . . . e[sti d j ajmfivquro~ oJ new;~ kai; toi`~ qevlousi kata; nwvtou th;n qeo;n ijdei`n ajkribw`~, i{na mhde;n aujth`~ ajqauvmaston h/\. di j eujmareiva~ ou\n ejstin th`/ eJtevra puvlh/ parelqou`san th;n o[pisqen eujmorfivan diaqrh`sai. dovxan ou\n o{lhn th;n qeo;n ijdei`n, eij~ to; katovpin tou` shkou` perihvlqomen. ei\t j ajnoigeivsh~ th`~ quvra~ uJpo; tou` kleidofuvlako~ ejmpepisteumevnou gunaivou qavmbo~ aijfnivdion hJma`~ ei\cen tou` kavllou~. (Erot. 13–4)

When we had taken enough pleasure in the gardens, we entered the shrine [naos]. The goddess is situated in the center—a most beautiful statue of Parian marble—splendid and smiling a little with a laughing grin. Her entire beauty is unhidden, draped by no clothes, and left naked, except insofar as she incon- spicuously hides her private parts with one of her hands. . . . The shrine has a door on both sides for those wishing to get a clear look at the goddess from behind in order that no part of her is unadmired. It is easy to enter through the other door and to examine closely her beauty from the back. Therefore, it was decided to view the goddess in all her glory, and we went around to the back of the sacred enclosure. Then, after the door was opened by the woman responsible for keeping the keys, a sudden amazement at the beauty seized us.

In the other, far briefer, references to the Aphrodite statue in literary texts from antiquity, her situation within her shrine is stressed as open and affording easy panoptic visual access. Lucian’s description of the sacred interior space is at the same time the most detailed account surviving from antiquity and totally unique.8 In scholarship, the peculiar specificity that Lycinus gives to the experience of viewing through an architectural frame has often been ‘thought away’ as something not significant in and of itself. Visibility is still stressed, and the frame is no impediment to an unobstructed view.9 Christine Havelock in her study of the Cnidian Aphrodite asserts (1995, 63) that in literary descriptions of the statue the primary interest was “in her erotic effect, not the design of her architectural Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 73 enframement.” The impulse to question the validity of using the Lucianic text or other literary sources to reconstruct the actual space of the temple is not unwar- ranted, but I would argue that the author of the Erôtes makes the “architectural enframement” indispensable to the experience he projects in viewing Aphrodite’s erotic charms. In Lycinus’s account, the goddess can only be accessed, visually and physically, through the perforations of the temple wall. This strategy heightens the effect of presenting her as available to view, but also forces the internal viewers to experience her spatial setting in gendered or sexual terms: front/back, female/male, active/passive. From the front, she has some control over the display of her pudenda. When viewed from the rear, her femininity resolves itself into the beauty of Ganymede, and s/he wears the mark of an attempted rape. These dualities are inscribed on the body of the goddess through the act of directed viewing. Further- more, at the close of the Erôtes, this visual framing and its corresponding erotic experience will underpin Theomnestus’s ironic send-up of the serious philosopher’s position on the homoerotic ideal. In this paper I trace how the architectural frame in the Erôtes both limits and exposes the goddess’s body at the center, and how visual negotiation through this frame imparts meaning, sexual and aesthetic, to the viewer’s and reader’s positionality.

Getting a Good Look

In order to understand better what is particularly significant in the Erôtes’ strategy of ‘looking through a frame,’ it is necessary to first assess the more common literary depiction of a visually open or penetrable temple setting for the Cnidia. As Havelock points out, the emphasis placed in literary sources on a temple open to view is not concerned with the real architectural structure—whether an open col- onnade or hemmed-in cella—but, rather, with a sympathetic reflection or metonymic relation between the ‘open’ setting and the divine nude body at its center. Aphrodite is a goddess marked by visual irresistibility: “More powerful than all appearances, her body is always visible” (Loraux 1995, 197). Unlike other goddesses, such as Athena, who successfully masquerade as human or other-than- divine, Aphrodite’s disguises are always ineffectual, as when she attempted to pass as an old woman in the Iliad (3.396–7) or her barely believable Phrygian princess in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (92–9, 185–6). The goddess of erotic desire always shines through. ‘Being seen’ and self-looking are constitutive elements of Aphrodite’s divinity. Callimachus plays with this issue in his fifth Hymn, on the bath of Pallas. Whereas Aphrodite is absorbed in her reflection in preparation for the Judgment of Paris (which she will win), Hera and Athena specifically do not look at themselves: 74 Helios

oujd j o{ka ta;n Ἴda/ Fru;x ejdivkazen e[rin, ou[t j ej~ ojreivcalkon megavla qeo;~ ou[te Simou`nto~ e[bleyen divnan ej~ diafainomevnan: oujd j Ἥra: Kuvpri~ de; diaugeva eJloi`sa pollavki ta;n aujta;n di;~ metevqhke kovman. (Hom. Hymn. Ven. 5.18–22)

Even when the Phrygian judged the strife on Ida, the great goddess did not look into copper nor into the transparent eddy of the Simois, nor did Hera. But Cypris, taking the shining bronze, many times altered and then again altered the same lock.10

The reflective mirror is Aphrodite’s attribute, and kosmêsis—the preparation of her body for display and sexual congress—renews and enacts her divine power.11 There is a parallel connection made in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite between viewing in the round, her godhead, and the place of devotion. When faced with the numinous Aphrodite, disguised as a Phrygian damsel in distress, Anchises promises the suspected goddess that he will build an altar for her “on a high peak, in a spot with a view going all around” (soi; d j ejgw; ejn skopih`/, perifainomevnw/ ejni; cwvrw/ É bwmo;n poihvsw, Hom. Hymn. Ven. 5.100–1). The goddess had, in fact, prepared for her assignation by withdrawing to her temple at Paphos and emphatically closing the doors (e[nq j h{ g j eijselqou`sa quvra~ ejpevqhke faeinav~, 5.60). This formulaic line is also found in the Dios Apatê (Il. 14.169) when Hera closes the door to her bedchamber to adorn herself. In the Homeric Hymn, Aphrodite’s act of preparation for seduction is translated to a ritual space (Breitenberger 2007, 53). In this formulation, her initial cosmetic and erotic preparation are housed within the sanctified space of her temple. Even in this early poetic expression of the goddess’s divinity there is a fundamental tension between the power of looking and the need to manage the look of others. In both its open and closed forms, the space of worship is equated with her erotically charged divinity. If the goddess incarnates physicality, then the Cnidia bodies forth that divine metaphor in stone. A series of epigrams from the Greek Anthology exploit the frisson inherent in the problem of Praxiteles’ artistic depiction of her divine nudity; it attracts a knowingly transgressive eye.12 Of the twelve epigrams on the Cnidia in the collection, ten contain at least one verb of looking applied directly to the body of Aphrodite.13 The setting for all this looking is the open temple that allows maxi- mum visual access. As with the altar that Anchises promised to vow in the Homeric Hymn, the emphasis is very much on ‘viewing in the round.’ An epigram, attributed to Plato but most likely dating to the first century BCE, describes the shrine as periskeptos (able to be seen from every side): Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 75

Ἡ Pafivh Kuqevreia di j oi[dmato~ ej~ Knivdon h\lqe, boulomevnh katidei`n eijkovna th;n ijdivhn: pavnth d j ajqrhvsasa periskevptw/ ejni; cwvrw/, fqevgxato: ‘Pou` gumnh;n ei]dev me Praxitevlh~;’ (Anth. Pal. 160)

Paphian Cytherea came through the surf to Cnidus, Wishing to see her own image. When she had gazed at it from every angle in its shrine viewable-all-around, S he cried out, “Where did Praxiteles see me naked?”

There is a crescendo of looking, here focalized through the evaluative eye of Aph- rodite herself: she travels to Cnidus in order to see, her act of ‘seeing’ centers on and is facilitated by the open shrine, and the statue’s lifelikeness seems to guarantee a prior act of surreptitious (artistic) looking. The conceit of this epigram emphasizes the special visual access afforded to worshippers at Cnidus. Each visitor to the sanctuary can re-create the goddess’s own self-appraisal and the originary artistic visual access; in both senses, they view a mimetically ‘true’ reflection of her divine nudity. It is the open nature of the temple setting that accommodates this visual appreciation of the goddess as statue. In fact, the phrase used to describe the situation of the temple (periskeptw/ ejni; cwvrw/) mirrors that used in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (perifainomevnw/ ejni; cwvrw/) to describe the altar Anchises would vow.14 Another epigram (Anth. Pal. 169), identified in the manuscript tradition as a comparison between the Cnidia and a statue of Pallas Athena, makes a distinction in the way one looks at the respective goddesses/statues:

Ἀfrogenou`~ Pafivh~ zavqeon peridevrkeo kavllo~, kai; levxei~: Aijnw` to;n Fruvga th`~ krivsew~. Ἀtiqivda derkovmeno~ pavli Pallavda, tou`to bohvsei~, wJ~ bouvth~ oJ Pavri~ thvnde paretrovcasen.

Look all around the golden beauty of the foam-born Paphian, And you will say, ‘ I approve the judgment of the Phrygian.’ Again, looking at Pallas of Athens, you will shout, ‘Just like a shepherd for Paris to pass this one by.’

In the first line, the verb used for looking at Aphrodite is the unusual poetic com- pound peridevrkomai, whereas the verb used for looking at the statue of Athena is simply devrkomai without the adverbial prefix. The contemporary viewer of the image is recast as a second judge at the mythical beauty contest, but his visual 76 Helios evaluation of Aphrodite is performed in the round. No angle escapes the critical eye, and he is invited to linger on her “golden beauty.” In the Cnidian series of epigrams, stress is laid on the authenticity of the viewing experience. What is marked as special is the mimetic relationship of copy to original, which is verified by an appeal to some prior moment when Aphrodite the goddess was put on view. This is the strategy also taken in an epigram attributed to Evenus:

Provsqe me;n Ἰdaivoisin ejn ou[resin aujto;~ oJ bouvta~ devrxato ta;n kavlleu~ prw`t j ajpenegkamevnan: Praxitevlh~ Knidivoi~ de; panwphvessan e[qhken, mavrtura th`~ tevcnh~ yh`fon e[cwn Pavrido~. (Anth. Pal. 166)

Once upon a time the herdsman himself on the Idaean mountains Beheld the one who gained first prize for her beauty. Praxiteles has set her up visible to all the Cnidians, Having Paris’s vote as witness to his skill.

There is a subtle shift performed by the poet between the real goddess and her stone copy: Praxiteles has set up Aphrodite herself, but it was also his artistic creation that won the vote of Paris. Which came first, the statue or the goddess? The herdsman on Mount Ida is, in fact, Anchises (Hom. Hymn. Ven. 53–4), and the epigrammatist forges a link between the man mythically privileged to view the goddess nude, the artist, and now all of Cnidus. The sculptor’s artistic refashioning, as the poet’s epigrammatic recasting, has made the goddess panwphvessan (visible to all). The properly restricted and privileged experience of viewing Aphrodite’s beauty has been transformed by the sculptor Praxiteles into a public and accessible one. The poet here ties the act of display to the sculptor’s technê, not only for mimetic replication, but also in unveiling the goddess’s full nudity. She is visible to all, and wholly visible. I close my consideration of the ‘open’ view taken on the Cnidia with the other principal source on the statue and its setting, the account offered by Pliny in his Natural History. Many of the same themes emphasized in the epigrammatic tradition are picked up and amplified—evaluative autopsy, nudity, and the open temple structure (HN 36.20–1):

opera eius sunt Athenis in Ceramico, sed ante omnia est non solum Praxitelis, verum in toto orbe terrarum Venus, quam ut viderent, multi navigaverunt Cni- dum. duas fecerat simulque vendebat, alteram velata specie, quam ob id praetu- lerunt quorum condicio erat, Coi, cum eodem pretio detulisset, severum id ac Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 77

pudicum arbitrantes; reiectuam Cnidii emerunt, inmensa differentia famae. . . . aedicula eius tot aperitur, ut conspici possit undique effigies deae, favente ipsa, ut creditur, facta. nec minor ex quacumque parte admiratio est.

There are works of his at Athens in the Ceramicus, but first in place not only of Praxiteles’ works, but in the entire world, is his Venus. In order to see this, many have sailed to Cnidus. He had made two and was selling them at the same time. One of the two was draped and for this very reason the Coans preferred it—they had a prior buyer’s agreement, although it was offered at the same price as the other—judging it to be earnest and chaste. The Cnidians purchased the rejected one, that has a far greater reputation. . . . Her shrine is completely open, so that the image of the goddess is able to be seen from all sides, built—as is believed— with the goddess’s approval. The sense of amazement is no less from any side.

Pliny begins his tale of the Cnidia by emphasizing her attractiveness as a visual site/sight; she incites people to sail to Cnidus not to offer reverence, but in order that they may see her for themselves (Venus quam ut viderent, multi navigaverunt Cnidum). Her nudity is a precondition of her place both in localized cult and in aesthetic preeminence. She enters the world twinned by a fully clothed statue- sister, but both this twin’s demurely veiled and the Cnidia’s undressed states are not contingent on the religious requirements of either the Coans or the Cnidians. The two statues are made at the same time, put up for sale at the same time, and cost the same price; the only difference is the state of nudity. In this account, any cultic significance to Aphrodite’s specific form has no bearing on her plastic representation.15 Rather, in Pliny’s anecdote, she simply embodies a cult of visual attraction. In an anecdote from the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (6.40), Philostratus exposes the danger of confusing this visual power of the Cnidia with her cultic significance. On a trip to Cnidus, Apollonius is made aware of a young man who has fallen in love with the statue. The Cnidians are willing to entertain the youth’s bid for her hand in marriage, as her celebrity will increase if she takes a lover. When Apollo- nius insists on purifying the sanctuary, the Cnidians ask whether they will have to alter their rituals of prayer or sacrifice:‘ ojfqlamou;~’ e[fh ‘diorqwvsomai, ta; de; tou` iJerou` pavtra ejcevtw, wJ~ e[cei’ (“Your eyes,” he replied; “I will correct, but you may keep the rites of the sanctuary as they are”). The error on the part of the Cni dians is a conflation of visual attraction as a celebrated object and the requirements for a cult to Aphrodite.16 What temple is fitting for such a powerful material manifestation of the goddess? Pliny’s answer mirrors that suggested in the epigrammatic tradition—the physical situation must offer full visual access; whether it did so in reality or not is another issue. In describing the setting, the Roman polymath tells us not only that 78 Helios the space is completely open (tot aperitur) in order to allow viewing the statue from every side, but that it was so constructed with the approval of the goddess herself (favente ipsa). He underscores the importance of seeing all of the goddess as part of the experience in visiting her shrine. The visually penetrable temple and the nude body reinforce the availability of Praxiteles’ creative remodeling of the erotic, physical, and visual attraction that Aphrodite always represents. Divine endorse- ment of the temple’s openness invites worshippers to become viewers; the implication is that there are no restrictions with this divine body, and this particular sculptural representation, because of the open setting of her sacred space.

Framing a View

This literary resonance between the Cnidia’s nude body and her open temple setting is a particular management of the flirtation with epiphany that a naturalistic image of the divine promises. What strategies can be employed in reading (and writing) restricted visual and physical access? In the novel Leucippe and Clitophon, Achilles Tatius makes an interpretive connection between entering a temple, Aph- rodite’s realm of influence, and a sexually desired body, in this case that of the heroine Leucippe. At the opening of Book 4, Clitophon presses his beloved to con- summate their love. She demurs and relates a vision that she had on the preceding day in which Artemis appeared and told her that she would remain a virgin until the goddess herself gave her away in marriage. In response, Clitophon then recalls a significant dream he had experienced (4.1.6–7):

ejdovkoun ga;r th`/ parelqouvsh/ nukti; nao;n Ἀfrodivth~ oJra`n kai; to; a[galma e[ndon ei\nai th`~ qeou`: wJ~ de; plhsivon ejgenovmhn proseuxovmeno~, kleisqh`nai ta;~ quvra~. ajqumou`nti dev moi gunai`ka ejkfanh`nai kata; to; a[galma th;n morfh;n e[cousan, kaiv, ‘Nu`n,’ ei\pen, ‘oujk e[xestiv soi parelqei`n ei[sw tou` newv: h]n de; ojlivgon ajnameivnh/~ crovnon, oujk ajnoivxw soi movnon, ajlla; kai; iJereva se poihvsw th`~ qeou`.’

On the previous night I dreamed about a temple [newvn] of Aphrodite, and inside the temple was a statue of the goddess. When I approached to pray, the doors slammed shut. I was disappointed, but a woman appeared who looked just like the statue in the temple and said, “You are not allowed to enter the temple [tou` newv] at this time; but if you wait a short while, I will not only open the doors for you but make you a high priest of the goddess of love.”17

In this dream, the doors of the temple symbolize the barriers that prevent sexual penetration, and consummation of the sexual act is equated with entrance into the Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 79 temple’s interior space. On the simplest reading, this dream temple of Aphrodite is a metaphor for the body of Leucippe; the doors offer or deny access to that body.18 Clitophon aims to take possession of the temple, or rather its center, which is marked by the presence of the cult statue. In the case of the Cnidia, the temple and the desired/penetrable body share the same space; there is no metaphorical distance. In the Erôtes Lucian makes clear that accessibility is still a paramount concern. His greater specificity with respect to describing the architectural frame is an extension and refinement of the mirroring between the temple and the statue. Unlike Pliny or the epigrammatists, the Erôtes presents specific viewing epiphanies that are constrained or limited by the access the temple setting allows. We do not just ‘see’ Aphrodite in all her glory, a simple and immediate visual apprehension; rather, we are offered a processual viewing experience. In framing a view of Aph- rodite through the temple’s architecture, emphasis is placed on the very negotiation of space and points of access. The interplay between the cultic space and the goddess herself is presented as a set of interlocking circles in Lycinus’s account of the visit to Cnidus. The very decision to go to Cnidus on the part of the three friends is framed as a desire to see the temple of Aphrodite: kai; dovxan hJmi`n Knivdw/ prosormh`sai kata; qevan kai; tou` Ἀfrodivth~ iJerou`—uJmnei`tai de; touvtou to; th`~ Praxitevlou~ eujceiriva~ o[ntw~ ejpafrovditon (And so, we decided to make a move to Cnidus to see especially the temple of Aphrodite—celebrated as having a lovely example of Praxiteles’ dexterity, Erot. 11.1). As in Pliny’s account, movement towards Cnidus is directed at its erotic center that encompasses both temple and statue; to see one is to see the other. After securing lodging, the travel companions then wander through the city admiring other landmarks and eventually make their way to the temple, which not all members of the touring party are equally enthusiastic to do. Callicratidas, the Athenian pederast, equates going to the temple (site) with going to see something female (sight) and is less than excited:

stoa;~ de; Swstravtou kai; ta\lla o{sa tevrpein hJma`~ ejduvnato prw`ton ejkperielqovnte~ ejpi; to;n new;n th`~ Ἀfrodivth~ badivzomen, nw; mevn, ejgwv te kai; Cariklh`~, pavnu proquvmw~, Kallikrativda~ d j wJ~ ejpi; qevan qhvleian a[kwn, h{dion a]n oi|mai th`~ Ἀfrodivth~ Knidiva~ to;n ejn Qespiai`~ ajntikatallaxavmeno~ Ἔrwta. (Erot. 11.3)

First having made our circuit to the Stoa of Sostratus and all the other places that could give us pleasure we then walked to the temple of Aphrodite, myself and Charicles enthusiastically, but Callicratidas unwillingly as it was to a womanly site/sight; it would have been more pleasurable for him, I believe, to exchange the Cnidian Aphrodite for the Eros at Thespiae. 80 Helios

At the outset of Lycinus’s description, the temple (naos) is presented as its own visual attraction, and stands for both the religious space and the statue-body it contains. On another level, the desire to see religious and artistic objects is equated very directly with the sexual object choice of the two extremists. To want to ‘go and see’ the Eros of Thespiae or the Cnidia is to want to ‘go and see’ an erotically charged and desirable body, gendered male or female respectively. The implicit coordination between the religious space of worship and the goddess herself is made manifest when the three friends finally reach the sanctuary (temenos); the air of the enclosure seems to be the very breath of Aphrodite and in place of sterile stone pavement is a flowering garden.19 The center of this space is occupied by both the naos and the goddess as statue. To approach Aphrodite is to enter her temple and simultaneously meet her face-to-face. From the front, she is described by Lycinus in fairly minimal terms: the goddess smiles and is nude except for the unobtrusive gesture of one hand over her pudenda:

ejpei; d j iJkanw`~ toi`~ futoi`~ ejtevrfqhmen, ei[sw tou` new; parhv/eimen. hJ me;n ou\n qeo;~ ejn mevsw/ kaqivdrutai—Pariva~ de; livqou daivdalma kavlliston— uJperhvfanon kai; seshrovti gevlwti mikro;n uJpomeidiw`sa. pa`n de; to; kavllo~ aujth`~ ajkavlupton oujdemia`~ ejsqh`to~ ajmpecouvsh~ geguvmnwtai, plh;n o{sa th`/ eJtevra/ ceiri; th;n aijdw` lelhqovtw~ ejpikruvptein. tosou`tovn ge mh;n hJ dhmiourgo;~ i[scuse tevcnh, w{ste th;n ajntivtupon ou{tw kai; kartera;n tou` livqou fuvsin eJkavstoi~ mevlesin ejpiprevpein. (Erot. 13.1–4)

Whereas infertile stone was replaced by luxuriant nature as a paving material in the temenos, in the statue-body its lapidary nature is undone and refashioned by artistic technê. In Lycinus’s description, her nude beauty is triply determined: it is unhidden (ajkavlupton), unclothed (oujdemia`~ ejsqh`to~ ajmpecouvsh~), and simply naked (geguvmnwtai). Modern analyses of the viewing experience presented by the pose of the Cnidia (reconstructed from Roman copies that have survived) have projected a triangle of looking that emphasizes the slight turn of the statue’s head to her left. The direct Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 81 frontal view, with eyes turned away and obscuring hand, seems to shield the goddess from view. Yet an oblique move to the statue’s left side allows a viewer to capture both her gaze and a look at what her protecting hand covers. This modern ‘look’ at the Cnidia projects both a viewer (stage left) in direct visual communication with the goddess-statue, and a voyeur who looks on this visual coupling from the blocking full-frontal position.20 In this reading, each entrant into the temple will take up successively the positions of voyeur and then of viewer engaged in a direct exchange of glances. This visual and physical repositioning locates the move around the Cnidia’s body in the attempt to catch her eye and a look at the ineffable. In terms of visual tracking, our modern accounts start with the protective hand gesture and then move up to Aphrodite’s provocatively turned gaze. In the viewing account Lycinus gives, he starts with her arrogantly enticing smile and then moves down her open and naked body to end with the punctuation of her shielded genitals. Yet this looking is not enough, and her visual enticement proves too much for Charicles, the woman-mad Corinthian, and he rushes forward to try and kiss the goddess:

oJ gou`n Cariklh`~ ejmmanev~ ti kai; paravforon ajnabohvsa~, ‘Eujtucevstato~,’ ei\pen, ‘qew`n oJ dia; tauvthn deqei;~ Ἄrh~,’ kai; a{ma prosdramw;n liparevsi toi`~ ceivlesin ejf j o{son h\n dunato;n ejkteivnwn to;n aujcevna katefivlei: (Erot. 13.4)

Charicles, for his part, raised a frantic and crazed shout: “Most blessed of all the gods was Ares who for her sake was bound.” And at the same time, he ran up with persistent lips, and stretching out his neck as far as possible, he kissed her.

The approach to the Cnidia by Charicles is direct and sexualized, a frontal assault. Moreover, the wish to be trapped together with the goddess as a later-day Ares suggests that contact with this statue may infect the lover with a reciprocal immobili- zation. The Athenian pederast remains silent, but still amazed (sigh`/ d j ejfestw;~ oJ Kallikrativda~ kata; nou`n ajpeqauvmazen.) Any shift from excluded look to direct gaze is lost in the desire to physically connect with the statue. Moreover, the subtle shift in position from voyeur to viewer does not adequately account for the next move in Lycinus’s story—around to the back; a radical shift in perspective, viewing, and erotic which modern accounts of looking do not fully accommodate.21 At first, Lycinus says that it is easy enough to enter through the rear door in order to examine Aphrodite’s beauty more closely from every angle. When the three friends, however, decide to take advantage of the full-view, the back door must be opened by a female doorkeeper: 82 Helios

ejsti d j ajmfivquro~ oJ new;~ kai; toi`~ qevlousi kata; nwvtou th;n qeo;n ijdei`n ajkribw`~, i{na mhde;n aujth`~ ajqauvmaston h\/. di j eujmareiva~ ou\n ejsti th`/ eJtevra/ puvlh/ parelqouvsin th;n o[pisqen eujmorfivan diaqrh`sai. dovxan ou\n o{lhn th;n qeo;n ijdei`n, eij~ to; katovpin tou` shkou` perihvlqomen. ei\t j ajnoigeivsh~ th`~ quvra~ uJpo; tou` kleidofuvlako~ ejmpepisteumevnou gunaivkou qavmbo~ aijfnivdion hJma`~ ei\cen tou` kavllou~. (Erot. 13.5–14.1)

The shrine has a door on both sides for those wishing to get a clear look at the goddess from behind in order that no part of her is unadmired. It is easy to enter through the other door and to examine closely her beauty from the back. There- fore, it was decided to view all of the goddess, and we went around to the back of the sacred enclosure. Then, after the door was opened by the woman responsible for keeping the keys, a sudden amazement at her beauty seized us.

There is an exclusivity to this rear view, hidden behind a locked door. It renews the visitors’ appreciation of the Cnidia, and occasions the most erotically and aestheti- cally effusive exclamations about the body on display. The avowed pederast, Callicratidas, is sent into a frenzy by those parts of the goddess that remind him of a boy (τὰ παιδικὰ μέρη τῆς θεοῦ) and he exclaims in detail on her rear endowments:

‘Ἡravklei~,22 o{sh me;n tw`n metafrevnwn eujruqmiva, pw`~ d j ajmfilaqei`~ aiJ lagovne~, ajgkavlisma ceiroplhqev~: wJ~ d j eujperivgrafoi tw`n gloutw`n aiJ savrke~ ejpikurtou`ntai mhvt j a[gan ejllipei`~ aujtoi`~ ojstevoi~ prosestalmevnai mhvte eij~ uJpevrogkon ejkkecumevnai piovthta. tw`n de; toi`~ ijscivoi~ ejnesfragismevnwn ejx eJkatevrwn tuvpwn oujk a]n ei[poi ti~ wJ~ hJdu;~ oJ gevlw~: mhrou` te kai; knhvmh~ ejp j eujqu; tetamevnh~ a[cri podo;~ hjkribwmevnoi rJuqmoiv.’ (Erot. 14.2–4)

“Oh by Heracles, how much gracefulness to her back, how generous her flanks, what a handful to embrace! How well modeled is the flesh of her buttocks as it arches—neither too thin and drawing close to the bone, nor pouring out into too great an expanse of fat. No one could say how sweet is the smile of those parts impressed on either side by her fleshy hips; how achingly precise the rhythms of her thigh and shin stretching straight to her foot.”

Callicratidas goes on to compare the goddess to Ganymede. As Callicratidas has remained silently amazed at the initial (feminine) sight, now Charicles is overcome with amazement and stands fixed, unmoving (uJpo; tou` sfovdra qavmbou~ ojlivgou dei`n ejpephvgei). In both instances, the Cnidia statufies, albeit briefly, her admir- Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 83 ers. Aphrodite’s charm as an attractive ‘boy’ is assured by her limbs’ perfect rhythm.23 The arch smile that graced her lips (seshrovti gevlwti mikro;n uJpomeidiw`sa) is mirrored here in the swell of her buttocks (oujk a]n ei[poi ti~ wJ~ hJdu;~ oJ gevlw~), and she is perfectly proportioned from hip to toe. If meeting and negotiating the gaze of the statue-goddess is a charged moment in modern scholarship, this ancient description redirects the male viewer’s gaze away from the invested act of looking a goddess in the face. That is not to say that this visual swerve is totally farcical or denigrating; rather, it plays out a serious joke about erotic-visual attraction behind the goddess’s back. Only entrance through the locked back-door allows a fully integrated appreciation of Aphrodite’s visual, erotic power—an integration that is effected by the power of her body and her divinity to incite sexual arousal in men attracted to women and equally in those with a pen- chant for boys. One of the implications of necessitating a physical, visual, and erotic move to the rear of both temple and goddess is that the architecture and the body it contains are fitted together. In order to move around the goddess, one has to move around the structure that houses her. There is no separation, no space in between temple wall and the Cnidia in this particular description which allows for viewers to maneuver. Each door opening into the interior space is coordinated by Lycinus/ Lucian with an eroticized response to the particular view taken on Aphrodite. This architectural framing is emphasized again in the etiological Tale of the Stain. While the three friends are staring long and hard at the luscious curves of the Cnidia’s backside, they notice an imperfection in the marble that looks like a stain on clothes (ejpi; qatevrou mhrou` spivlon ei[domen w{sper ejn ejsqh`ti khli`da, 15.1). The pragmatic and logical Lycinus is willing to believe that Praxiteles skillfully hid the mark, but the temple attendant has another tale to tell about the origins of the stain. The short version is that a young man fell head over heels in love with the goddess, contrived to spend the night with the statue, and left a mark from his lovemaking on the marble. Pliny the Elder briefly relates this anecdote in his account of the Cnidia and her temple setting (ferunt amore captum quendam, cum delituisset noctu, simulacro cohaesisse, eiusque cupiditatis esse indicem maculam [They say that a certain man, seized by love, hid at night and embraced the statue, and that a stain bears witness to his desire, HN 36.21]). Both Lucian in the Imagines and the Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria mention the intrepid defiler of the statue, but omit any specific reference to the stain:

Lucian, Imag. 4: ajlla; kai; to;n mu`qon h[kousa~, o}n levgousin oiJ ejpicwvrioi peri; aujth`~, wJ~ ejrasqeivh ti~ tou` ajgavlmato~ kai; laqw;n uJpoleifqei;~ ejn iJerw`/ suggevnoito, wJ~ duntato;n, ajgavlmati. 84 Helios

But surely you have also heard that tale which the inhabitants (of Cnidus) tell about her (the statue), that someone fell in love with the statue and was left behind hiding in the temple, where he had sex with the statue, as best he was able.

Clement, Protr. 4.51: Ἀfrodivth de; a[llh ejn Knivdw/ livqo~ h\n kai; kalh; h\n, e{tero~ hjravsqh tauvth~ kai; mivgnutai th`/ livqw/:

And there was also an Aphrodite of stone in Cnidus and she was beautiful; another man fell in love with her and made love to the stone.

A narrative cousin to these tales of explicit sex is the anecdote related above from Philostratus, in which the sage Apollonius is able to divert the sacrilege, reconfig- ured as marriage to the statue, connived in by the Cnidians themselves. The most expansive version of the tale is that found in the Erôtes (15–6), and the specific architecture that has just limited the viewing experience of the three friends in accessing the Cnidia’s beauty serves to limit and define the young man’s erotic experience:

e[fh ga;r ajshvmou gevnou~ neanivan—hJ de; pra`xi~ ajnwvnumon aujto;n ejsivghsen— pollavki~ ejpifoitw`nta tw`/ temevnei su;n deilaivw/ daivmoni ejrasqh`nai th`~ qeou` kai; panhvmeron ejn tw`/ naw`/ diatrivbonta kat j ajrca;~ e[cein deisidaivmono~ aJgisteiva~ dovkhsin: (Erot. 15.5)

For she said a young man of not ignoble birth—although his deed caused him to remain nameless—often came to the temple and under a wretched daimôn fell in love with the goddess and, spending the entire day in the temple, at the beginning gave the impression of pious ritual attendance.

The attendant goes on to relate how religiosity gave way to obsession: the young man would cast knucklebones to determine the goddess’s favor and scrawl love- drunk graffiti over every wall and tree of the shrine, praising the goddess as “Aph- rodite the Beautiful,” and Praxiteles as another Zeus, until he reached a fever pitch of lust:

pevra~ aiJ sfodrai; tw`n ejn aujtw`/ povqwn ejpitavsei~ ajpenohvqhsan, euJrevqh de; tovlma th`~ ejpiqumiva~ mastropov~: h[dh ga;r ejpi; duvsin hJlivou klivnonto~ hjrevma laqw;n tou;~ parovnta~ o[pisqe th`~ quvra~ pareiserruvh kai; sta;~ ajfanh;~ ejndotavtw scedo;n oujd j ajnapnevwn hjtrevmei, sunhvqw~ de; tw`n zakovrwn e[xwqen th;n quvran ejfelkusamevnwn e[ndon oJ kaino;~ Ἀgcivsh~ kaqei`rkto. (Erot. 16.4–5) Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 85

In the end, the violent impulses of his desires caused him to lose all reason, and recklessness provided a pimp for his desires. For when the sun was setting, quietly hiding from those present he slipped in behind the door and invisible he stood without moving or breathing in almost the innermost part. After the temple attendants closed the door from outside as usual, inside a new Anchises was enclosed.

The climax of the story is keyed very closely to the temple architecture, with a move to the back and a corresponding escalation of the erotic similar to that performed by the three friends, although intensified. The architectural ‘idea’ of an enclosed space is critical to the narrative—the rear door offers special access. The drama of the young man’s assault on the goddess is only effective if he must break in to the inner space of the temple. He does this very specifically through the same privileged access point offered by the rear door. In the present of Lycinus’s description, only those visitors who enter the rear of the shrine will be able to see the stain on the marble. Moreover, the elaborate story is elicited from the female attendant, who is presumably the same ‘keeper of the keys’ that had unlocked the door for the three visitors. She (hJ zavkorwn) is also an analogue to the original attendants (tw`n zavkorwn) who locked in the young man. Another significant parallel between the ‘then’ of the etiology and the ‘now’ of Lycinus’s viewing is the movement around the space of the temple. At the start of his infatuation, the young man is situated at the front of the shrine, seated at the feet of the goddess and staring intently at her:

e[k te ga;r th`~ ejwqinh`~ koivth~ polu; prolambavnwn to;n o[rqon ejpefoivta kai; meta; duvsin a[kwn ejbadivzen oi[kade thvn q j o{lhn hJmevran ajpantikru; th`~ qeou` kaqezovmeno~ ojrqa;~ ejp j aujth;n dihnekw`~ ta;~ tw`n ojmmavtwn bola;~ ajphvreiden. (Erot. 15.8)

And in the morning he would get out of bed long before sunrise and return home unwillingly only after sunset, and sitting the whole day straight in front of the goddess, he would fix his unbroken gaze on her.

In order to perform his attempted consummation with the statue-goddess, he must shift his body and his gaze from the front to the rear. The movement of Lycinus, Charicles, and Callicratidas around the shrine and the visual eroticism of their spatial negotiation mirror that of the intense lover. Moreover, as Callicratidas glee- fully points out to his companions, even given the opportunity to make love to the goddess as a woman, the location of the stain on the back of her thigh proves that the young man enjoyed her ‘as a boy.’ The pederast’s own transgendering description 86 Helios of the goddess’s flanks, buttocks, and thighs is fulfilled in the act of love perpetrated by the young man. The author of the Erôtes constructs a series of carefully managed viewing epiphanies of the statue-body of Aphrodite. The strategy of architectural framing, parti- tioned viewing, and potential sexual contact in Lycinus’s description offers an “evasive epiphany,” to borrow a phrase from Verity Platt (2002). As in the epigrams on Aphrodite she discusses, we are promised a full view of the goddess, but the fulfillment of that promise is delayed or shifted. The true epiphanic moment must always be deferred, as the viewing is itself a ‘memory’ retold, by the attendant to Lycinus and by Lycinus to Theomnestus. There is an inherent danger in success, in moving beyond the frames, architectural and rhetorical, to epiphany. What marks the story of the youth as tragedy is that he succeeds in grasping the object of his desire and enters into the divine space at the center. The terms applied to this moment of union and its aftermath make very clear what is at stake in moving from looking to touching: Aphrodite’s irresistible visibility renders her mortal lover invisible: h[dh ga;r ejpi; duvsin hJlivou klivnonto~ hjrevma laqw;n tou;~ parovnta~ o[pisqe th`~ quvra~ pareiserruvh kai; sta;~ ajfanh;~ ejndotavtw scedo;n oujd j ajnapnevwn hjtrevmei (For when the sun was setting, quietly hiding from those present he slipped in behind the door and standing invisible in almost the innermost part without taking a breath he did not move, 16.5). Once he has moved through the frame, the young man is himself remade as a metaphorical statue—not breathing (ajnapnevwn) and unmoving (hjtrevmei). Whereas the Cnidia expresses visible embodiment, his moment of integration results in his erasure. The youth pushes through the restraining architecture, that same physical barrier that now constrains the travelers’ view, into this ambiguous interior space. In his breaking through, however, epiphany becomes anti-epiphany. He becomes invisible (ajfanhv~). The attendant relating the Tale of the Stain had told Lycinus at the outset that this hubristic act of passion had sundered the young man from his name and patrimony.24 The close of the attendant’s tale reiterates the power of invisibility: aujto;n ge mh;n to;n neanivan, wJ~ oJ dhmwvdh~ iJstorei` lovgo~, h] kata; petrw`n fasin h] kata; pelagivou kuvmato~ ejnecqevnta pantelw`~ ajfanh` genevsqai (As for the young man himself, as the popular story relates, they say he either hurled himself upon the rocks or into the waves of the sea and utterly disappeared/became absolutely invisible, Erot. 16.7). The only visible part of the young man that will remain is the indelible stain of his semen on the statue—proof of his success at transgress- ing the frame between outside and inside, mortal and divine, but also proof of incommensurability. There can be no penetration of either statue or goddess (Platt 2002, 35). It is at this point, confronted by the ambiguous evidence of that stain, marking Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 87 equally the love of women and of boys,25 that Charicles and Callicratidas begin their formal debate over the best object of erotic attention. The Corinthian makes his case for the superiority of women based on mutual physical pleasure and the biological need to reproduce. The staunch Athenian pederast couches his arguments in the rehearsed language of strictly philosophical love; there is deep emotional and intellectual attachment, for life even, but no physical consummation. When Lycinus gives his judgment, he tactfully allows for marriage as a necessity, but the love of boys is an ideal reserved for high-minded philosophers. The dizzying focus on the bigendered body of Aphrodite was a catalyst for the debate, but issues of visual positionality and framing devices, narrative and architectural, seem to be inconsequential in the final verdict.

Reading back out of the Frame

All of this storytelling, viewing, and debating is situated within its own dialogic frame, and architecture is not the only limitation on understanding. Lycinus, who serves as our ‘eyes’ into the events on Cnidus, has been relating this memory of an experience to his friend Theomnestus. Our visualization as an external audience (reading or listening) is coordinated with that of Theomnestus as helistens as an internal audience to Lycinus’s account. The very presentation of the visual is mediated at the level of the dialogue through language; we ‘see’ the statue, the goddess, and her shrine as a verbal projection. The three visitors have to negotiate and ‘see through’ the architectural frame, and the audiences, both internal and external, must negotiate the ekphrastic frame of words. This is a frame, moreover, that forces a rereading of the visual and architectural framing erected at the center of the Erôtes. At the close of Lycinus’s story, Theomnestus applauds his friend’s judgment – but admits that his love of boys will never be “philosophical.” He goes on to describe the path that his love takes with a boy—looking incites the need to touch, light touching leads to the first kiss, kissing turns into groping, and finally you get to the thighs and “strike your target.” Theomnestus bursts the bubble on Platonic love.26 His lengthy description repays close attention:

ouj ga;r ajpovcrh to; qewrei`n ejrwvmenon oujd j ajpantikru; kaqhmevnou kai; lalou`nto~ ajkouvein, ajll j w{sper hJdonh`~ klivmaka sumphxavmeno~ e[rw~ prw`ton e[cei baqmo;n o[yew~, i{na i[dh/, ka]n qeavshtai, poqei` prosavgwn ejfavyasqai: di j a[krwn gou`n daktuvlwn ka]n movnon qivgh/, ta; th`~ ajpolauvsew~ eij~ a{pan diaqei` to; sw`ma. tucw;n d j eujmarw`~ touvtou trivthn pei`ran ejpagei filhvmato~, oujk eujqu; perivergon, ajll j hjrevma ceivlh proseggivsa~ ceivlesin, a} pri;n h] yau`sai teleivw~, ajpevsth, mhde;n uJponoiva~ i[cno~ ajpolipwvn: ei\ta 88 Helios

pro;~ to; parei`kon aJrmozovmeno~ ajei; liparestevroi~ me;n ajspavsmasin ejntevthken, e[sq j o{te kai; diastevllwn hJsuch`/ to; stovma, tw`n de; ceirw`n oujdemivan parivhsin ajrghvn: aiJ ga;r fanerai; meta; tw`n ejsqhvtwn sumplokai; th;n hJdonh;n sunavptousin, h] lavqrio~ uJgrw`~ hJ dexia; kata; kovlpou du`sa mastou;~ bracu; th;n fuvsin uJperoidw`nta~ pievzei, kai; sfrigwvsh~ gatro;~ ajmfilafe;~ toi`~ daktuvloi~ ejpidravttetai oJmalw`~, meta; tou`to kai; prwtovcnoun a[nqo~ h{bh~. kai; tiv ta[rrht j ajnametrhvsasqaiv me dei`; tosauvth~ tucw;n ejxousiva~ oJ e[rw~ qermotevrou tino;~ a{ptetai pravgmato~: ei\t j ajpo; mhrw`n prooimiasavmeno~ kata; to;n kwmiko;n aujto; ejpavtaxen. (Erot. 53.6–11)

It is not enough to see your beloved and listen to his voice as he sits across from you, but it is as if Eros constructs a ladder of pleasure: the first step is sight, he sees, and, once he has beheld, he desires to get closer and to touch. And if he touches only with the tips of the fingers, then the enjoyment runs through his whole body. Easily succeeding, he makes an attempt at the third stage, the kiss— not straight away an elaborate one, but gently approaching lips to lips, and then steps back before they finish meeting completely so that no cause for suspicion is left behind. Thus, adjusting to what is permitted he melts into ever more persistent embraces, sometimes gently opening the mouth; no idleness of the hands is allowed—open embraces through the clothes unite desire. Or languidly sliding a furtive right hand to the chest he presses nipples swollen more than normal, and evenly explores with his fingers the whole expanse of the firm stomach, then the flower of youth in its early down. And . . . “Why must I recount things better left untold?” Finally, having success up to this point, Eros sets to warmer business; then making a go of it from the thighs—as the comic poet says—he “strikes his target.”

Theomnestus makes it clear that the initiatory mechanism for erotic and fully sexual love is sight.27 Yet, seeing is not enough. His starting point for rereading boy-love out of a philosophical position picks up a formulation presented by Cal- licratidas himself in the emotional climax of his pederastic defense: ajll j ejmoi; mevn, daivmone~ oujravnioi, bivo~ ei[h dihnekh;~ ou|to~, ajpantikru; tou` fivlou kaqevsqai kai; plhsivon hJdu; lalou`nto~ ajkouvein (For my part, ye gods of heaven, I pray that it may forever be my lot in life to sit opposite my dear one and hear close to me his sweet voice, Erot. 46.3). For Theomnestus, looking without touching is not an end point, rather it is the first step on his ladder of pleasure. He directly reworks and responds to the idea of “sitting directly in front” (ajpantikru; kaqevsqai), but Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 89 nuances the positionality of lover and beloved: ouj ga;r ajpovcrh to; qewrei`n ejrwvmenon oujd j ajpantikru; kaqhmevnou kai; lalounto~ ajkouvein (It is not enough to see your beloved nor listen to his voice as he sits across from you, Erot. 53.6). In fact, Theomnestus had cast himself at the beginning of the dialogue in the role of an avid (erotic?) listener, a Patroclus to Lycinus’s Achilles: kai; mh;n e[gwge ejpanasta;~ e[nqen ajpantikru; kaqedou`maiv sou, ‘devgmeno~ Aijakivdhn oJpovte lhvxeien ajeivdwn.’28 su; d j hJmi`n ta; pavlai kleva ejrwtikh`~ diafora`~ melw/diva peraivnein (Well, let me get up and sit straight across from you, “waiting for the son of Aeacus to make an end of his singing.” But, unfold for us in song the ancient and glorious accounts of erotic tussles, Erot. 5.8). As he finishes his presentation of the correct, sexualized approach to the body of a desired boy, Theomnestus revisits this exact formulation, but now the erotic connection between listening, looking, and Lycinus is made even stronger:29 kai; mh; qaumavsh/~: oujde; ga;r oJ Pavtroklo~ uJp j Ἀcillewv~ hjgapa`to mevcri tou` katantikru; kaqevzesqai ‘devgmeno~ Aijakivdhn oJpovte lhvxeien ajeivdwn,’ ajll j h\n kai; th`~ ejkeivnwn filiva~ mesi`ti~ hJdonhv stevnwn (Don’t be so surprised: for Patroclus wasn’t loved by Achilles just because he sat in front of him “waiting for the son of Aeacus to finish his song,” but it was physical pleasure that was the mediator of their friendship, Erot. 54.3). Lycinus’s narrative account, cheekily dubbed “the ancient and glorious accounts of erotic tussles” (ta; pavlai kleva th`~ ejrwtikh`~ diafora`~) by Theomnestus, become in retrospect the sweet conversation of the erômenos listened to attentively by his lover. In recasting the terms of pederastic love, Theomnestus also forces an erotic reassessment of the positions, both listening and speaking, implicit in the dialogic format. The move to eroticize the relationship between Lycinus and Theomnestus, rhetor and audience, is not only prefaced in the pederastic model that Callicratidas first espouses in his part of the agôn, but in the relationship between viewers, lovers, and the Cnidia herself. As the attendant relates, the rapist of the statue-goddess would position himself every day directly in front of the goddess:

. . . thvn q j o{lhn hJmevran th`~ qeou` kaqezovmeno~ ojrqa;~ ejp j aujth;n dihnekw`~ ta;~ tw`n ojmmavtwn bola;~ ajphvreiden. a[shmoi d j aujtw`/ yiqurismoi; kai; kleptomevnh~ lalia`~ ejrwtikai; dieperaivnonto mevmyei~. (Erot. 15.8–9)

. . . and sitting the whole day straight in front of the goddess, he would fix his unbroken gaze on her. He whispered unintelligibly and complained as lovers will in secret conversation.

While the young man is talking to her face-to-face, she occupies the position of the unendingly patient and silent listener whose attention is fixed as an erastês just as 90 Helios both Callicratidas prescribes and Theomnestus does. In his own tongue-in-cheek self-positioning in front of Lycinus and engagement with the erotic scenario argued for by Callicratidas, Theomnestus forces a rereading of this central Cnidian narrative. Just as in the scenarios of seduction detailed in the debate and framing dialogue, her beloved sits directly in front of her (ajpantikru; kaqezovmeno~) and engages in an erotic monologue of sweet nothings, the meaning of which is known only to the goddess and the young man. Yet, part of the ironic power of Lycinus’s description and its resonance with Theomnestus’s reframing is that the Cnidia as statue and as divine surrogate can never take on the role of active lover (erastês), despite standing in for the goddess of erotic persuasion and physical love. Even more significantly, Theomnestus’s explicit description of sexual seduction starting from this face-to-face moment retraces on the body of his imagined boy not only the erotic experience of Aphrodite’s misguided lover, but also the visual experience that Lycinus, Charicles, and Callicratidas negotiated around and through the architecture of the shrine. Looking from the front had incited Chari- cles to attempt a kiss. Like the first approach that Theomnestus suggests, this kiss struggles to connect and acts as a prelude to the continued exploration of the desired goddess. It leaves no stain. As the young man had done, the three then circle around the shrine to position themselves at the back, where looking becomes even more openly erotic. The mark on Aphrodite’s thigh proves an attempt at sexual union, but also of breaking through the architectural constraints that limited the acts of viewing. The mark on the marble, moreover, is described as like a stain on a piece of clothing (spivlon ei[domen w{sper ejn ejsqh`ti khli`da). As Theomnes- tus warms to his subject, he advises busy hands that slide over and under clothes:

. . . tw`n de; ceirw`n oujdemivan parivhsin ajrghvn: aiJ ga;r fanerai; meta; tw`n ejsqhvtwn sumplokai; th;n hJdonh;n sunavptousin, h] lavqrio~ uJgrw`~ hJ dexia; kata; kovlpou du`sa mastou;~ bracu; th;n fuvsin uJperoidw`nta~ pievzei . . .

. . . no idleness of the hands is allowed—open embraces through the clothes unite desire. Or languidly sliding a furtive right hand to the chest, he presses nipples swollen more than normal . . .

This a reciprocal passion in which the beloved body answers with like passion, swells in response, and matches desire with desire. Aphrodite cannot respond, and there is no getting under her clothes. She is totally uncovered (oujdemia`~ ejsqh`to~ ajmpecouvsh~) and absolutely impenetrable.30 She cannot be entered and her temple, in Lycinus’s account, cannot be entered except through looking, but that, as Theomnestus makes clear, is not the same erotic experience. Moreover, the very act that resulted in the stain cannot be seen, and will not be Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 91 told by the temple guard (kai; ti; ga;r ajrrhvtou nukto;~ ejgw; tovlman hJ lavlo~ ejp j ajkribe;~ uJmi`n dihgou`mai; [But why am I, the chatterbox, explaining to you in detail the affront of that unspeakable night?,Erot. 16.5). Theomnestus performs a similar move. As he maps pleasure onto the body of his erotic object, he stops just short and deflects description with a quotation. This erotic epiphany proves just as illusory and susceptible to deferral as that of the divine. Yet the joke is not quite finished and Theomnestus refuses to defer. He takes up his thread again for one last step in the ladder of pleasure, starting from the thighs (ei\t j ajpo; mhrw`n prooimiasavmeno~)—just as the very debate on Cnidus had done. Lucian/Lycinus offers his audience access to the body of the goddess through an imaginative visual narrative that extends in unexpected ways the simple metaphor that equates temple with goddess. He did not write his detailed description of Aphrodite’s sanctuary on Cnidus with an eye to preserving an accurate record of its architectural framing, but rather with an eye to the rhetorical enframement needed for his erotic dialogue on philosophical love. The entire Erôtes circles around the irresistible, desired body of Aphrodite, and it is the architectural framing that allows her body to be ‘read’ as male and female, all erotic objects simultaneously. At the start of the dialogue it is Lycinus who initially importunes Theomnestus to continue his Milesian, erotic tall-tale telling in terms that resonate with what his own story will reveal: ajll j, ei[ tiv soi tou` kata; Ἀfrodivthn perivplou leivyanon ajfei`tai, mhde;n ajpokruvyh/, tw`/ de; Ἡraklei` th;n qusivan ejntelh` paravscou (But, if you’ve left out some part of your voyage around Aphrodite, don’t cover it over; make your sacrifice to Heracles complete, Erot. 3.7). In constructing the Cnidia as a desired body in parts and reviewing those erotic parts from different perspectives, Lycinus and Theomnestus have contrived a rhetorical, aesthetic, and erotic sacrifice, whole and perfect.

Works Cited

Beard, M., and J. Henderson. 2001. Classical Art: From Greece to Rome. Oxford and New York. Blinkenberg, C. 1933. Cnidia: Beiträge zur Kenntnis der praxitelischen Aphrodite. Copenhagen. Bloch, R. 1907. “De Pseudo-Luciani Amoribus.” Ph.d. diss., Université de Strasbourg. Borbein, A. 1973. “Die griechische Statue des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.: Formanalytische Unter suchungen zur Kunst der Nachklassik.” JDAI 88: 43–212. Borg, B. 2004. “Bilder zum Hören—Bilder zum Sehen: Lukians Ekphraseis und die Rekonstruk- tion antike Kunstwerke.” Millennium 1: 25–57. Breitenberger, B. 2007. Aphrodite and Eros: The Development of Erotic Mythology in Early Greek Poetry and Cult. New York. Buffière, F. 1980. Eros adolescent: la péderastie dans la Grèce antique. Paris. Corso, A. 2007. The Art of Praxiteles, II: The Mature Years. Rome. Elsner, J. 2007. Roman Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text. Princeton. Foucault, M. 1984. Le Souci de soi. Vol. 3 of Histoire de la sexualité. 3 volumes. Paris. 92 Helios

Goldhill, S. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality. Cambridge. Halperin, D. 2002. How to Do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago. Havelock, C. M. 1995. The Aphrodite of Cnidus and Her Successors: A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art. Ann Arbor. Jones, C. P. 1984. “Tarsos in the Amores Ascribed to Lucian.” GRBS 25: 177–81. Klabunde, M. 2001. “Boys or Women? The Rhetoric of Sexual Preference in Achilles Tatius, Plu- tarch and Pseudo-Lucian.” Ph.d. diss., University of Cincinnati. Laguna-Mariscal, G., and M. Sanz-Morales. 2005. “Was the Relationship between Achilles and Patroclus Homoerotic? The View of Apollonius Rhodius.” Hermes 133: 120–3. Loraux, N. 1995, The Experiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man. English translation by Paula Wissing. Princeton. Love, I. 1970. “A Preliminary Report of the Excavations at Cnidus, 1969.” AJA 74: 149–55. Macleod, M. D. 1972–1987. Luciani Opera. 4 volumes. Oxford. Montel, S. 2010. “The Architectural Setting of the Knidian Aphrodite.” In A. C. Smith and S. Pickup, eds., Brill’s Companion to Aphrodite. Leiden and Boston. 251–68. Mossman, J. 2007. “Heracles, Prometheus and the Play of Genres in [Lucian]’s Amores.” In S. Swain, S. Harrison, and J. Elsner, eds., Severan Culture. Cambridge. 146–59. Osborne, R. 1994. “Looking on—Greek Style. Does the Sculpted Girl Speak to Women Too?” In I. Morris, ed., Classical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies. Cambridge. 81–96. Platt, V. 2002. “Evasive Epiphanies in Ekphrastic Epigram.” Ramus 31: 33–50. ———. 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Cambridge. Pollitt, J. J. 1974. The Ancient View of Greek Art. New Haven and London. Ridgway, B. S. 2004. “Some Personal Thoughts on the Cnidia.”I n B. S. Ridgway, Second Chance: Greek Sculptural Studies Revisited. London. 713–25. Salomon, N. 1997. “Making a World of Difference: Gender, Asymmetry, and the Greek Nude.” In A. O. Koloski-Ostrow and C. L. Lyons, eds., Naked Truths: Women, Sexuality, and Gender in Classical Art and Archaeology. London and New York. 197–219. Sandberg, N. 1954. Euploia Études épigraphiques. Acta Universitas Gothoburgensis, 60.8. Göteberg. Sanz-Morales, M., and G. Laguna-Mariscal. 2003. “The Relationship between Achilles and Patro- clus according to Chariton of Aphrodisias.” CQ 53: 292–5. Shapiro, H. A. 1992. “Eros in Love: Pederasty and Pornography in Greece.” In A. Richlin, ed., Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. Oxford. 53–72. Spivey, N. 1996. Understanding Greek Sculpture: Ancient Meanings, Modern Readings. London. Squire, M. 2011. The Art of the Body. Oxford. Stewart, A. 1997. Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge. Taylor, R. 2008. The Moral Mirror of Roman Art. New York. Winkler, J. J. 1989. “Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon.” In B. P. Reardon, ed., The Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley. 171–284. Zanker, G. 2004. Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art. Madison.

Notes

1. Versions of this paper were presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Philo- logical Association (Chicago) and the “Vision and Power” panel of the 2008 Celtic Conference in Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 93

Classics, Cork. I am grateful to both audiences for their insightful comments, particularly on the issue of (in)visibility. 2. I leave aside here the question of authorship and date; I use Lucian here although the case for authenticity is unresolved. For a discussion of the issues, see Bloch 1907 and Jones 1984. Buffière (1980, 481) places the dialogue in the second century CE. Elsner (2007, 119 note 26) addresses the arbitrariness of identifying this dialogue as ‘pseudo’ and makes a claim for considering it authentically Lucianic. 3. Generic complexity: Foucault 1984, 243–61; Goldhill (1995, 102–9) places the dialogue in relation to the periplus and ancient Greek novel; Mossman (2007) discusses comic and tragic allusions. Pederasty: Halperin (2002, 89–103) restates the Foucauldian position. Cnidia: for general studies see Blinkenberg 1933, Havelock 1995, Corso 2007. Analyses of the viewing context and interpretation of the pudica gesture are offered by Osborne 1994; Spivey 1996; Stewart 1997, 97–106; Salomon 1997. For cautionary statements on interpretive reconstruction, see Borg 2004 and Ridgway 2004. A piquant, albeit brief, analysis of the Cnidia and the Lucianic narrative is also offered by Beard and Henderson 2000, 123–32; see also Squire 2011, 88–102. 4. I do not reproduce an image of the Cnidia in order to focus attention on the act of having to read a visual experience. 5. Contrary to the idealized representation of male-male intercrural sex on archaic and classical vases where the erastês and erômenos face one another during penetration (Shapiro 1992, Fig. 3.1), this dialogue makes it clear that sexual attention is focused on the buttocks. Callicratidas comments that the stain’s location on the rear of her thigh proves Aphrodite was used ‘like a boy’ because her assailant specifically did not want to face her femininity (paidikw`~ tw`/ livqw/ proswmivlhsen boulhqei;~ oi\d j o{ti mhde;n provsqen ei\nai to; qh`lu [Ηe had intercourse with the marble like a boy, not wanting, I’m sure, to be confronted by her womanliness, Erot. 17.26]). Within the agôn proper, the heterosexual Charicles in his defense of women will claim that the female body has another pathway, specifically a ‘boyish’ one, which can be used for sexual satisfaction (gunaiki; mevn, w\ Kallikrativda, kai; paidikwvteron crwvmenon e[xestin eujfranqh`nai diplasiva~ ajpolauvsew~ oJdou;~ ajnuvsanta, to; de; a[rren oujdjeni; trovpw/ carivzetai qhvleian ajpovlausin [You can enjoy a woman, Callicratidas, ‘even more like boys than boys,’ the paths to pleasure being doubled, but the male has no way of bestowing womanly pleasure, Erot. 27.6). On the sexual ‘repurposing’ of women’s bodies through anal penetration, see Anth. Graec. 5.54.5; Ovid, Her. 16.161–2; Martial 11.43.9–10 and 11.104.17–20. 6. In the actual debate, the first contestant—Charicles, the lover of women—generally keeps his arguments to this theme and addresses the unique pleasures offered in penetrating a female body. Callicratidas, the Athenian pederast, shifts the terms of the debate and presents a pederastic eroticism that elevates philosophical love above the physical. 7. All translations are my own unless otherwise stated. The text of Lucian is Macleod 1980. 8. See Borg 2004, 54–6 with notes 55–9 for a discussion of the intersection between the literary accounts of Pliny and Lucian with the material evidence. Borbein (1973) based his reconstruction of a small naiskos on the detail and vividness of the Lucianic account, but more recent scholarship (Havelock 1995, 60–1 and note 11) has distanced itself from this approach. See the discussion in Montel 2011 on the state of the question and its relation to current excavations; Montel reaches the same impasse regarding the use of literary accounts in reconstruction. 9. Stewart 1997, 97: “[F]or all its engaging vividness, his narrative was not based on firsthand experience . . .”; Osborne 1994, 82: “[Lucian]’s story, although implying that in fact it could not be seen from every side, stresses the special lengths to which the Cnidians had gone to make the back as well as the front visible . . .”; Havelock 1995, 62–3: “[W]hether the shrine was open or closed, 94 Helios the only thing that mattered to these authors, whose readers were probably predominantly men, was that the nude goddess could be seen totally, either in reality or in the imagination.” 10. Cf. Apollonius, Arg. 1.742–6. On the cloak Hypsipyle gives to Jason, Aphrodite is depicted inspecting herself in Ares’ shield. 11. On Aphrodite and the mirror as a motif in art, see Taylor 2008, 39–46, and on the issue of kosmêsis, Breitenberger 2007, 52–60. 12. For a thought-provoking discussion of the intersection between verbal and visual, poet and artist, sexual and divine, in epigrams on sculpted and painted Aphrodite, see Platt 2002 and now Platt 2011 as well. 13. Anth. Pal. 159: ejsei`den; 160: boulomevnh katidei`n, ajqrhvsasa, ei\de; 162: ijdou`sa, ei\de; 163: i[den, ei\den; 165: ijdou`sai; 166: devrxato; 167: ajqrw`n; 168: ei\de; 169: peridevrkeo; 170: ijdw`n. 14. The formulation withperifainomevno~ is found only in the Hom. Hymn. Ven. (TLG Canon search), but periskevptw/ ejni; cwvrw/ is also used in the Odyssey to describe the room of Telemachus (1.426), the palace of Circe (10.211, 10.253), and Eumaeus’s abode (14.6). 15. Praxiteles’ statue may have been associated with the cult of Aphrodite Euploia at Cnidus; on the cult see Sandberg 1954 and Corso 2007, 23–33. See Havelock 1995, 28–9, 36 for a discussion of how the cult at Cnidus may have informed the iconic form of the Cnidia—her pose, her attributes, and her nudity. 16. See Platt 2011, 293–332 for a discussion of the visual theology in Philostratus. 17. Translation adapted from Winkler 1989. 18. In the novel, however, the body that Clitophon will gain access to first is not that of Leu- cippe, but rather the sexy widow Melite. 19. Erot. 12.1: kaiv pw~ eujqu;~ hJmi`n ajp j aujtou` temevnou~ Ἀfrodivsioi prosevpneusan au\rai: to; ga;r ai[qrion oujk eij~ e[dafo~ a[gonon mavlista livqwn plaxi; leivai~ ejstrwmevnon, ajll j wJ~ ejn Ἀfrodivth~ a{pan h\n govnimon hJmevrwn karpw`n (And immediately there breathed upon us from the sacred precinct itself Love-drenched breezes. For the courtyard was not for the most part paved with smooth slabs of stone to form an unproductive area but, as it should be in Aphrodite’s precinct, the entire place was lush with fruits of the garden). 20. Osborne 1994, 84–5; Stewart 1997, 103–4; Zanker 2004, 42–5. For a different reading of the pudica gesture and this visual exchange, see Salomon 1997 and, for an overview of all these ‘positions,’ Ridgway 2004. 21. Both Spivey 1996 (Fig. 110) and Stewart 1997 (Fig. 58) reproduce a rear-view of a plaster cast taken from a Roman copy in the Musei Vaticani, but do not offer a thoroughgoing analysis. More attention is paid to the lack of a vulva (on the Roman copies) than on the Cnidia’s rear delights; see Ridgway 2004, 718–9. 22. This is the only exclamation addressed to Heracles in Lycinus’s enframed narration (Erot. 11–52). The entire dialogue between Theomnestus and Lycinus is set on the morning of a festival in honor of Heracles, and ends with the two friends leaving to see the bonfires on Mount Oeta (Erot. 54). Mossman (2007) discusses the god’s place in the framing dialogue as a self-aware reference to Old Comedy. The use of an oath to Heracles here may serve to directly link this exposition of the Cnidia’s backside to the external frame, and to Theomnestus’s position of akolasia more specifically; see further below. 23. On the mulitvalency of the ancient art critical term ruthmos and euruthmia, see Pollitt 1974, 218–28. 24. Erot. 15.6: e[fh ga;r oujk ajshvmou gevnou~ neanivan—hJ de; pra`xi~ ajnwvnumon aujto;n ejsivghsen—pollavki~ ejpifoitw`nta tw`/ temevnei (She said, “A young man from a distinguished family—but the act has made the name unspeakable—would come often into the sanctuary). Haynes—Framing a View of the Unviewable 95

25. Foucault 1984, 245: “Acte ambigu. Faut-il, cette impiété-hommage, cette révérence profana- toire, la mettre au compte de l’amour des femmes, ou des garçons?” (An ambiguous act. Should this impious homage, this profane reverence be counted for the love of women or of boys?). 26. The sexual act as a part of philosophical pederasty is conceded in Achilles Tatius 2.38.4–5 and Plutarch, Amat. 752A–B; see discussion in Klabunde 2001. 27. Cf. the exposition of love’s genesis in Achilles Tatius 1.9.4–5. 28. Homer, Il. 9.191. 29. Mossman 2007, 159. For a discussion of the homoerotic reading of the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles in postclassical ancient texts, see Sanz-Morales and Laguna-Mariscal 2003 and Laguna-Mariscal and Sanz-Morales 2005. 30. There may be an arch joke in the comment made by Callicratidas about the location of the stain (Erot. 17), namely that the Cnidia was used by her young lover ‘like a boy,’ given his idealiza- tion of pederasty in which the desired boy is loved forever and never penetrated.

Apparitions Apparent: Ekphrasis and the Parameters of Vision in the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines

Michael Squire

sed quemadmodum si litteras pulchras alicubi inspiceremus, non nobis suffice- ret laudare scriptoris articulum, quoniam eas pariles, aequales decorasque fecit, nisi etiam legeremus quid nobis per illas indicaverit: ita factum hoc qui tantum inspicit, delectatur pulchritudine facti ut admiretur artificem; qui autem intel- legit, quasi legit. aliter enim videtur pictura, aliter videntur litterae. picturam cum videris, hoc est totum vidisse, laudasse: litteras cum videris, non hoc est totum; quoniam commoneris et legere.

But if we were looking at beautifully written letters somewhere, it would not suffice for us to praise the hand of the writer—the fact that he has made them uniform, symmetrical, and elegant—unless we were also reading what, through them, he has conveyed to us. In the same way, the person who views this deed [Christ’s miracle of the loaves and fishes] might be so pleased with the deed’s beauty as to admire the person performing it. Yet the person who understands it is, as it were, the person who reads. For a picture is looked at in one way, and letters are looked at in another. When you have seen a picture, the activity is complete: to have seen is to have praised. When you have seen letters, the thing is not complete, for you are reminded also to read. Augustine, In Evang. Iohan. (Tractatus 24), 2

This volume investigates the many ways in which modes and practices of viewing were conceptualized in the ancient Greek world. The contributors have turned to both archaeological and literary products, and have used these various ‘traces’ to excavate a lost discourse of seeing, while formulating (according to the conventions of twenty-first-century academic prose) the social, political, and intellectual parameters of viewing in cultural historical perspective. But ancient Greek authors were themselves acutely sensitive to the stakes of theorizing sight in language—of translating visual stimuli, and the act of critically responding to them into spoken or written discourse. How, if at all, can words mediate sight? In what ways do texts function like images, and images like texts? And which medium better represents the hermeneutics of perception: pictures for viewing, or words for reading? Such questions stretch back to the very beginnings of the Greek literary

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 97 98 Helios tradition. Indeed, they might be said to have their conceptual origins in the Homeric description of the shield of Achilles (Book 18 of the Iliad). To my mind, Homer was the first to probe, and indeed contest, the respective limits of words and pictures. At the same time, Homer’s description of Achilles’ shield also laid the ground for critical conventions of analogizing visual and verbal modes of representation: by orally invoking pictures that paradoxically talk, sound, and sing, the shield forged by the Homeric Hephaestus itself forged a tradition of theorizing vision in terms of voice, and vice versa.1 According to Plutarch, it was Simonides who coined the subsequent aphorism that “painting is silent poetry and poetry is talking painting.”2 But this framework for coming to terms with vision remained a literary critical mainstay. If, as Michael Baxandall (1985, 107) diagnosed, viewing is always a “theory-laden” activity, Greek discourses of vision were loaded with an associated ideology of voice: in the Greek cultural imaginary, and across a remarkably long timespan, theorizing viewing meant relating it to the parallel processes of hearing and reading.3 While this tradition of conceptualizing sight stretches back to the beginnings of Greek literature, it also stretches forwards to the murky transition from late antique to early medieval intellectual thinking. As the opening epigraph wonderfully attests, Augustine (writing between the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE) also theorized the act of seeing in terms of reading. Where classical forebears tended to champion the parallels between words and pictures, however, Augustine exploited the analogy in order to champion the supremacy of language. According to this new, theologically-informed paradigm of the Word (and of the “Word Made Flesh”), the comparison between viewing and reading only underscored the phenomenological superiority of the latter over the former. For Augustine, forging an analogy with seeing and understanding Christ’s own miraculous spectacles, to engage with words after the figurative image of pictures was to engage with only their surface form: reading channels a different and more profound mode of intellectual understanding, one quite distinct from aesthetic responses to visual stimuli.4 In this article, I explore the symbiotic rapport between voice and vision in connection with a single Greek text, one that bridges the classical and the late antique: Philostratus the Elder’s Imagines, composed sometime around the early third century CE.5 The two books of the Imagines purport to describe some 65 paintings, gathered together in a gallery on the bay of Naples. Through the very art of exegetic description, though, Philostratus also acts out some salutary lessons in the epistemology of visual perception. Despite the make-believe of his descriptions, Philos- tratus knew that his readers were denied the physical pictures that he so vividly describes; for the reading audience, access to the Imagines is at a self-conscious remove from what we ‘see’ represented in and through the letters on the scroll.6 Squire—Apparitions Apparent 99

Philostratus’s quest to make sense of a visual stimulus—indeed, to conjure up apparitions before the very eyes of his readers—consequently amounts to one of antiquity’s most sophisticated meditations on the phenomenology of seeing: Phi- lostratus’s virtuoso text interrogates what it means to view, no less than what it means to write about viewing in words.7 One of the difficulties in discussing the Imagines—and one reason why the text is still less familiar than it should be among classicists—lies in striking a balance between microscopic commentary and macroscopic analysis. In what follows, my aim is not to write about every one of Philostratus’s tableaux, nor indeed to cover all aspects of their intellectual and cultural milieu. Focusing on different theories of vision, I proceed instead in five interrelated stages. First I introduce the rhetorical, critical, and intellectual stakes of ‘bringing about seeing through hearing’—the phenomenon that Greek rhetoricians came to theorize as ekphrasis specifically. After sketching that epistemological background, I turn to Philostratus’s own games of seeing and hearing and explore how these figuratively responded to the rationalized conceits of Greek rhetorical theory. In the third part, I demonstrate how Philostratus’s tableaux depict and describe the very theme of rhetorical depiction through description, and with the most amazing self-referentiality. This takes us, fourth, to some of the text’s broader mises-en-abîme, whereby the problematics of viewing are reflected in those of hearing and reading. What this might mean within the wider cultural history of Greek viewing is the subject of a brief final conclusion. My question here will be deceptively straightforward: If the Imagines paints vision as an act of subjective volition—if its appeal to the verbally-mediated imagination in some sense bypasses the material world altogether—to what extent does this vision reflect and comment upon a particular shift in late antique viewing?

I. Ekphrasis and the Mind’s Eye

Let me begin, then, with Philostratus the Elder’s original literary and rhetorical context. Although the Imagines is the earliest self-contained prose text describing a collection of paintings known from antiquity, it clearly emerged out of a much longer tradition of set-piece literary description.8 By the early Imperial period, Greek rhetoricians had developed an explicit category for discussing this topos, grouping such descriptive passages under the name ekphrasis (literally a ‘speaking out’).9 How widespread this term might have been by Philostratus’s time is debated. Where poststructuralist critics of the 1980s and 1990s used the term fairly indis- criminately, in association with any “verbal representation of a visual representa- t i on ,” 10 Ruth Webb has more recently advocated greater caution:11 “Not only is ekphrasis not conceived as a form of writing dedicated to the ‘art object,’ but it is 100 Helios not even restricted to objects: it is a form of vivid evocation that may have as its subject-matter anything—an action, a person, a place, a battle, even a crocodile.”12 Webb’s corrective is important, but we should be wary of overstating the case.13 While it is right to acknowledge the breadth of subjects with which Greek writers associated ekphrasis, there can be little doubt that ancient readers would have understood Philostratus’s Imagines in related rhetorical terms. In the proem to a subsequent book of Imagines, penned by Philostratus the Elder’s purported grandson (known today as Philostratus the Younger), the earlier work is explicitly defined as a “certain ekphrasis of works of painting” (ejspouvdastaiv ti~ grafikh`~ e[rgwn e[kfrasi~ twjmw`/ oJmwnuvmw/ te kai; mhtropavtori, praef.2);14 likewise, a much later Byzantine commentary specifically adduced Philostratus the Elder’s text as an example of the rhetorical trope.15 According to one scholar, Philostratus’s Imagines may itself even have re-oriented subsequent definitions of ekphrasis: where earlier rhetoricians found little room for described objects among the subjects of ekphrasis, at least one subsequent theorist did include the description of artworks under the larger ekphrastic heading.16 So what, then, was ekphrasis, and what was at stake in labelling Philostratus’s Imagines as ekphrastic? I do not want to get side-tracked here by the hugely scintil- lating work on ekphrasis in rhetorical theory and practice.17 But because, as I hope to show, Philostratus’s text drew upon—and indeed knowingly played with—the same theories of vision and voice found among rhetorical discussions of ekphrasis, it is necessary to say something about those rhetorical ideas of vision in the Impe- rial, Greek-speaking world. Four different rhetorical handbooks, the so-called Progymnasmata, include discussions of ekphrasis, attributed respectively to Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus, and dated to between the first and fourth centuries CE.18 Although we know relatively little about these authors (even their dates are disputed),19 and for all their differences in emphasis and explanation, the analyses of ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata are striking for their common conceptual definitions. Theon probably preserves the earliest explanation, perhaps writing in the first century CE: according to him, ekphrasis is a “descriptive passage which brings the subject that is shown before one’s eyes with visual vividness” (e[kfrasiv~ ejsti lovgo~ perihghmatiko;~ ejnargw`~ uJp j o[yin a[gwn to; dhlouvmenon).20 The definition is repeated almost verbatim among the other Progymnasmata, and Hermogenes duly acknowledged the formulaic derivation by adding “as they say” (wJ~ fasivn).21 According to the Progymnasmata, in other words, ekphrasis is a descriptive process with a transformative effect: although derived from speech (lovgo~), it has a visual consequence, turning the object portrayed from something figuratively shown (to; dhlouvmenon) into a sort of literal apparition (uJp j o[yin). Theon, like other rhetoricians, is somewhat elusive about how this transforma- Squire—Apparitions Apparent 101 tion takes place. But for Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus alike, a single adverb is used to describe the process: enargôs, translated above as ‘with visual vividness.’22 This was evidently a key concept. According to Hermogenes, enargeia is one of the two “virtues” of ekphrasis, alongside saphêneia (literally, ‘clarity’). Ekphrasis is “an interpretation that almost brings about seeing through hearing” (th;n eJrmhneivan dia; th`~ ajkoh`~ scedo;n th;n o[yin mhcana`sqai), Her- mogenes adds;23 the elements of ekphrasis, in the words of Nicolaus, “bring the subjects of the speech before our eyes and almost make speakers into spectators” (uJp j o[yin hJmi`n a[gonta tau`ta, peri; w|n eijsin oiJ lovgoi, kai; mononou; qeata;~ ei\nai paraskeuavzonta).24 The qualifying “almosts” (scedovn and mononouv) introduced by Hermogenes and Nicolaus are important. As Simon Goldhill (2007, 3) writes, “Rhetorical theory knows well that its descriptive power is a technique of illusion, semblance, of making to appear.”25 This idea of fiction and make-believe will be especially critical to Philostratus. If the Progymnasmata put the emphasis on the success of ekphrastic illusion, the Imagines plays more knowingly with the simultaneous promise and failure of words merging into images, and vice versa.26 For all their tentative suggestions of illusiveness, however, the various Progymnasmata leave little doubt about the consequences of ekphrasis: the magical effect is to see actual images of the thing that is verbally described. Such theories of ekphrastic seeing through hearing did not develop in an intellectual vacuum. As others have analyzed in greater detail, the foremost debt seems to have been to Stoic theories of vision, predicated above all upon concepts of phantasia.27 Phantasia is a notoriously tricky term to translate, and one that spurred a formidable bibliography even in antiquity.28 At its most basic level, though, phantasia existed in the gap between sense perception and rational knowledge: it refers to an intuitive insight or impression that generates cognitive understanding of the thing perceived.29 In this sense, the workings of phantasia went hand-in-hand with the quality of enargeia, implicating rhetorical definitions of ekphrasis within much broader epistemological discussions about the phenomenon of seeing: provided it taps into the requisite qualities of enargeia and saphêneia, a description could lead a listener to the same inner vision, the same phantasia, that the visual stimulus originally brought about in the mind’s eye of the artist, speaker, or writer.30 Numerous critics seem to have developed the thinking. When, in the first century CE, Ps.-Longinus described phantasia as “thought productive of logos” (ejnnovhma gennhtiko;n lovgou, 15.1), he put his finger on precisely this association: phantasia proves the lynchpin between visual stimuli and rational response on the one hand, and between the visual and the verbal realms on the other.31 Writing not long after Ps.-Longinus, Quintilian is still more explicit about the ekphrastic stakes. For Quintilian, even more than for Longinus, phantasia could be defined in 102 Helios rhetorical terms. Indeed, Quintilian forges a direct connection between phantasia and the practice of Greek and Roman oratory (Inst. 6.2.29–30):32

quas fantasiva~ Graeci vocant (nos sane visiones appellemus), per quas imagines rerum absentium ita repraesentantur animo, ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur, has quisquis bene ceperit, is erit in adfectibus potentissimus.

What the Greeks term phantasiai—let us call them “visions”—are the means through which images of things that are absent are represented to the mind; this happens in such a way that we seem to view them with our eyes and to have them present before us: whichever orator controls these things will have supreme mastery over our emotions.

Even in the absence of concrete images (imagines), argues Quintilian, rhetoricians are able to summon up pictures in the mind (animo). And yet Quintilian’s underlying theory looks back (as indeed forward) to the extant Progymnasmata: according to his rhetorical model of phantasia, audiences seem to view things that are absent, holding the apparitions before their eyes as though they were physically present (ut eas cernere oculis ac praesentes habere videamur).33 Such theories about seeing and hearing, as we shall see, lie at the heart of Phi- lostratus’s Imagines: through a series of ekphrastic evocations of paintings, Philos- tratus plays upon conceits of presence and absence, as though installing the reading audience within the gallery evoked. Before introducing the Imagines itself, though, I want to touch upon one final aspect of related ekphrastic theory. After all, if ekphrasis posits that we can (almost) see even without casting eyes on an object—if hearing can (nearly) bring about seeing—we must ask ourselves: What role do physical images themselves play in the processes of intellectual visual perception? From the Presocratics right through to the Neoplatonics and beyond, this question permeated almost every attempt to theorize vision in the ancient Greek world. On one level, we find it implicated in opposing models of extramission and intromission (the question of whether vision stems from light rays emitted first from the eye or from the object perceived).34 On another, the issue illuminates the Pla- tonic separation of material sights from the immaterial insights of logical reason: the dualist distinction between sensory appearances and incorporeal truths (body versus soul, matter versus mind, eidôlon versus logos, etc.).35 As Socrates asks the painter Parrhasius in a much discussed passage of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (3.10.1), does painting represent “images of things that are actually seen” (eijkasiva tw`n oJrwmevnwn), or does it combine different material forms in its attempt to get at the idea of something wholly more incorporeal and abstract?36 Squire—Apparitions Apparent 103

This question evidently also engaged the author of theImagines , who knowingly reframes the dialectic between sight and understanding around the corresponding poles of image and word.37 But Philostratus’s other works explored the same theme, and in no less creative ways.38 One insightful example comes in a celebrated passage of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana (2.22), a work most likely attributable to the same author.39 The context is an imagined conversation between the legendary sage Apollonius and a disciple named Damis. Apollonius begins by restating the established topos that painting is a form of imitative mimêsis (very much in the spirit of the conversation between Socrates and Parrhasius), but the discussion soon takes a different turn: For how, Apollonius asks, are we to make sense of the apparently mimetic images drawn in the sky—the semblance of centaurs, stag antelopes, wolves, and horses that we trace in the clouds? Apollonius’s dilemma prompts a series of new insights. Unlike real paintings, Damis concedes, these celestial images have not been drawn by heavenly artists. Instead, they are subjective projections (akin to the sorts of “Rorschach tests” performed by contemporary psychiatry): “Prone by nature to imitation, we rearrange [the forms] so as to create things” (hJma`~ de; fuvsei to; mimhtiko;n e[conta~ ajnarruqmivzein te aujta; poiei`n, 2.22.); what we see in the clouds, in other words, are images of our own nebulous making.40 As a result, the sage continues, we might say that there are two different sorts of ‘painting,’ the first tangible and real, the second wholly more cerebral.41 But even this would be too simplistic a division. For is not each model of artistic creation in fact implicated in the other? Whether recognizing the shades of a limited painted palette, or else imagining the colors of a monochrome sketch, are we not all in one sense ‘artists’? Does viewing not always entail projecting external cognitive ideas onto (our impressions of) the objects seen (2.22.5)?

o{qen ei[poim j a]n kai; tou;~ oJrw`nta~ ta; th`~ grafikh`~ e[rga mimhtikh`~ dei`sqai, ouj ga;r a]n ejpainevseiev ti~ to;n gegrammevnon i{ppon h] tau`ron mh; to; zw`/on ejnqumhqeiv~, w|/ ei[kastai, oujd j a]n to;n Ai[antav ti~ to;n Timomavcou ajgasqeivh, o}~ dh; ajnagevgraptai aujtw`/ memhnwv~, eij mh; ajnalavboi ti ej~ to;n nou`n Ai[anto~ ei[dwlon kai; wJ~ eijko;~ aujto;n ajpektonovta ta; ejn th`/ Troiva/ boukovlia kaqh`sqai ajpeirhkovta, boulh;n poiouvmenon kai; eJauto;n ktei`nai.

And for this reason I should say that those who look at works of painting and drawing require a mimetic faculty; for no one could appreciate or admire a picture of a horse or of a bull, unless he had formed an idea of the picture represented. Nor again could one admire a picture of Ajax by the painter Timomachus—the one which represents him in a state of madness—unless one had conceived in one’s mind first an idea or notion of Ajax, and had entertained 104 Helios

the probability that after killing the flocks in Troy he would sit down exhausted and even meditate suicide.

Philostratus does not expressly turn to the language of phantasia here,42 but the associated intellectual framework is nonetheless clear. Just like the schematic animals perceived in the clouds, the subjects of painting are said to rely on the creative ‘uploadings’ of the rational viewing subject.43 True to a fundamentally Platonic epistemology, the representational image (ei[dwlon) is always secondary to the immaterial form (eijkov~) of cerebral reason. Meaning is manufactured by mind (nou`~), not matter: to view something is always to fall back on the inner eye of the imagination.44

II. ‘Seeing in’ versus ‘Seeing as’

Writing almost two millennia later, the philosopher Richard Wollheim would draw upon a related rhetoric to formulate his own famous distinction between ‘seeing in’ and ‘seeing as.’45 According to Wollheim, images (or perhaps better, Western psy- chologies of viewing them) push and pull in two distinct ways. On the one hand, viewers are encouraged to equate representation with reality: Apollonius’s clouds are seen as centaurs, stag antelopes, wolves, or horses. On the other hand, even as viewers look, they know that such visions rely on creative input: we project images into the clouds, aware of the difference between the representation and the thing represented. This distinction between ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in’ proves a fitting introduction to Philostratus’s Imagines. As explained above, Philostratus’s text purports to describe a Neapolitan gallery of paintings: addressed to the young, the Imagines delivers a series of at once disconnected and conjoined discourses on painting. But while staging a view of the pictures, and indeed depicting an audience viewing them, the whole rhetorical exercise probes the relationship between visual objects and viewing subjects. For the Imagines does not grant physical access to the described pictures, but rather materializes a series of exegetic discursive responses: in the absence of actual paintings, the work invites audiences to exercise its own ‘innate mimetic faculty,’ reconstructing mental images of the pictures described. Even as it praises the mimetic make-believe of the pictures (representations ‘seen as’ the things represented), the text probes the creative uploading (‘seeing in’) of the viewer: painting serves as a figure for contemplating, indeed ‘seeing,’ the hermeneutics of vision itself.46 The fact that Philostratus uses words to mediate images is of critical importance here. Because the visions of the Imagines are projected through a knowingly rhetorical and verbal lens, they are both like and unlike those of material pictures. Squire—Apparitions Apparent 105

Philostratus’s ekphrastic conceit, in other words, lies in summoning up images that we can hear, or rather read about,47 but cannot physically see. Better, perhaps, Phi- lostratus’s verbal discourse at once facilitates and impedes vision: the words give an insight into the pictures, while simultaneously occluding the pictorial quality that they seek to illuminate.48 The very title of Philostratus’s treatise (Eikones in Greek) figuratively describes the paradox: if Philostratus’s project delivers ‘pictures,’ those figurative visions are nonetheless transformed into codified language.49 Like other recent interpretations, my reading of the Imagines therefore side- steps conventional debates about the professed ‘reality’ of the gallery.50 Ever since the rediscovery of the Imagines in the Renaissance, criticism has tended to fixate on this issue: in the absence of real panel paintings, Renaissance painters raided the textual descriptions in their effort to uncover the supposed ‘originals’ behind them.51 In the mid-twentieth century, Karl Lehmann-Hartleben even turned to the structural organization of the text to reconstruct the supposed ‘original’ arrangement of pictures in separate, interconnecting rooms.52 But to engage in this sort of debate is to lose sight of the text’s overriding ontological games. While the author of the Imagines is careful to establish a make-believe context for his descriptions—a gallery whose form he leaves wonderfully vague (“a stoa . . . built on four, I think, or five terraces” [stoav ti~ ejxw/kodovmhto . . . ejpi; tettavrwn, oi\mai, h] kai; pevnte ojrofw`n, praef.4])53—this very duality between reality and fiction mirrors the mimetic fictions of the paintings, no less than the text that now mediates them. To draw out some ‘real’ gallery from the written text would be like tracing stags and antelopes in Apollonius’s clouds: here, as elsewhere, Philostratus plays with the creative fantasies of our mind, and in the most knowing and self- referential ways.54 The intellectual stakes of all this are clearest to see in the work’s proem.55 Before beginning his evocations of individual pictures—presented as ex tempore epideictic addresses (with some notable interjections in between)56—Philostratus lays out the rationale of his project, posing as a house-guest in Naples. The proem has a variety of explicit functions: it defends painting (likening it to the ‘paintings’ of nature), compares painting with other visual arts, and explains the work’s generic backdrop (rather than focus on individual painters, the text will “describe the forms of painting by bringing together addresses for the young, from which they will interpret and appreciate what is esteemed in them” [ajll j ei[dh zwgrafiva~ ajpaggevllomen oJmiliva~ aujta; toi`~ nevoi~ xuntiqevnte~, ajf j w|n eJrmhneuvsousiv te kai; tou` dokivmou ejpimelhvsontai, praef.3]).57 The proem also explains the specific form of the addresses that follow, not only their setting, but also the occasion, directed to the ten-year old son of Philostratus’s host (with a group of older youths [meiravkia, praef.5], serving as a second, internal audience).58 All this establishes a make-believe narrative context: the proem paints a descriptive picture as though, 106 Helios in keeping with its title, the written Eikones was itself a painted tableau in need of exegesis.59 If the preface sets up a framework for the verbal descriptions of the paintings that follow, it also does something more critical: it establishes a parallelism, and rivalry, between the insights of pictures on the one hand, and those of words on the other. Take the text’s very first sentence (praef.1):

o{sti~ mh; ajspavzetai th;n zwgrafivan, ajdikei` th;n ajlhvqeian, ajdikei` de; kai; sofivan, oJpovsh ej~ poihta;~ h{kei—fora; ga;r i[sh ajmfoi`n ej~ ta; tw`n hJrwvwn e[rga kai; ei[dh—xummetrivan te oujk ejpainei`, di j h}n kai; lovgou hJ tevcnh a{ptetai.

Whoever scorns painting [zôgraphia] is unjust to truth; he is also unjust to the wisdom [sophia] that has been bestowed upon the poets (for poets and painters make equal contribution to our knowledge of the deeds and the forms of heroes); whoever scorns painting, moreover, withholds his praise from the due symmetry of proportion [xymmetria] whereby art [technê] partakes of reason/ speech [logos].

True to sophistic form, Philostratus defends painting on the grounds of its contribution to wisdom (sophia);60 with tongue firmly in cheek, and amid a series of whimsi- cal negative clauses, the author also associates painting with “truthfulness” (alêtheia), thereby framing the entire work around the twin poles of authenticity and falsehood.61 But the proem nonetheless conjures up a decidedly ambiguous picture of the present project. If Philostratus’s justification of painting relies on the analogous relationship between painting and poetry, his terminology interweaves the critical language of analyzing images with that of analyzing texts. For all the sentence’s progression from painting (zôgraphia) to verbal discourse [logos],62 Philostratus is well aware that the overriding criteria of sophia and technê are equally pertinent to both media. The very language mediating Philostratus’s argument thus demonstrates his overriding point: seeing pictures is both like and unlike reading words.63 In the opening sentence, as throughout the text, the Imagines underscores this parallelism between seeing and reading linguistically. After all, Philostratus’s term for painting, zôgraphia, is knowingly descended from the Greek verb graphein, a word that refers to writing and to painting alike. This is a pun with a long history in Greek, whereby the products of the artist metaleptically slide into those of the writer, and vice versa.64 Within a text explicitly concerned with verbally responding to paintings, it is no surprise that Philostratus should develop the conceit with particular fervor: Philostratus uses the noun graphê no less than 60 times in his work, and the verb graphein on some 72 occasions.65 Whenever the Imagines writes Squire—Apparitions Apparent 107 about the things ‘painted’ in the picture (gevgraptai), moreover, the term can equally pertain to the written descriptions of the scroll; in talking about each individual graphê (or indeed each graphê within each graphê in turn . . .), the speaker collapses the physical paintings into his stand-in descriptions, and vice versa. A plethora of games ensue. Because of the ‘legible’ petals of the depicted hyacinth flower (the visual form of its letters replicating an “Ai Ai” cry), for example, a painting of Hyacinthus is described as a make-believe text for reading (ajnavgnwqi, 1.24.1):66 the pictogram within the painting thereby resembles the legible words that blossom from the picture. So too, within a described painting of Cupids, we hear of offerings dedicated to Aphrodite that are themselves “painted/described” with her name (1.6.7): we again see and read of a painting that is itself designed both to be seen and to be read.67 Philostratus’s project plays knowingly with its intermedial hybridity between the lisible and the visible; as one formulation asks the Imagines’ viewers/hearers/readers, just what is the description/painting (tiv~ hJ grafhv; 1.19.2)?

III. Sight and Citation

While exploiting literal wordplay to liken painting to literary writing, the Imagines probes the relationship between seeing, hearing, and reading in still more overt and self-conscious ways. Nowhere is the author’s self-reflexivity more conspicuous than in his knowing recourse to the rhetorical language of ekphrasis. As I have said (pp. 99–102), the Progymnasmata associate ekphrasis with the qualities of enargeia and saphêneia, whereby hearing (almost) brings about seeing. Discussing the concept of phantasia explicitly, Quintilian likewise talks about how rhetoric can summon up images that are absent. It cannot be accidental, then, that these same ideas recur amid the very tableaux that Philostratus ekphrastically evokes. The self- awareness of the gesture is revealed towards the end of the proem: before launching into the first description, the speaker tells the youths standing by to interrupt him with questions if he should “say anything that is not clear” (ei[ ti mh; safw`~ fravzoimi). While invoking the ekphrastic language of saphêneia, the ekphrastic paradox should not be overlooked: if the verbal response is not insightful enough, we are told, the listener should interject with yet more words.68 Enargeia proves no less influential a concept. At several points, the speaker talks about the “vividness of the craftsmanship” (to; ejnarge;~ th`~ tevcnh~, 2.14.2), discussing the “vivid” forms (ejnargei`~, 1.16.2), even distinguishing between the verbal aspects of the painting/description and its “vivid” element.69 Critical languages for theorizing ekphrastic vision are here projected into the very gallery described: the trope of purportedly visualizing through verbalization is itself said to have been visualized, ready for Philostratus to verbalize in turn.70 108 Helios

Philostratus’s concern with visibility and invisibility should be understood in a similar light. If ekphrasis is about almost seeing through hearing on the one hand, and about making absent images present on the other, the same themes are (said to be) depicted among the paintings described. Take, for instance, a painting of Her- acles, in which the speaker discusses the hero’s madness in precisely the language used to theorize ekphrasis: “For madness is a deceptive thing, prone to draw one away from what is present to what is not present” (ajpathlo;n gavr ti hJ maniva kai; deino;n ejk tw`n parovntwn ajgagei`n eij~ ta; mh; parvonta, 2.23.1).71 No less revealing is the painted Bacchant who, “in her love for Dionysus, imagines him and pictures him and sees him though he is not present” (ajlla; tou` Dionuvsou ejrw`sa ajnatupou`tai aujto;n kai; ajnagravfei kai; oJra`/ mh; parovnta, 2.17.9). Here, as throughout the Imagines, the ‘as if’ in the picture serves as a figurative metaphor for the ‘as if’ of ekphrastic enargeia.72 Present for us to see, albeit through the text’s ekphrastic evocation of an absent painting, is an eikôn that is itself figured after theories of ekphrastic presence and absence: the description summons up an image in which the viewed object is both seen and unseen at once.73 So what, then, might it mean to view? Like the rhetorical discussions of ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata, the Imagines knows that its ekphrastic project simultaneously does and does not affect envisioning “before the eyes.” For Philostratus, the attempt to summon up pictures consequently serves as an opportunity to probe the extravisual modes by which we view. This explains the multifarious demands to look within the text, the speaker’s constant invitation to see the alleged images that are said to be in front of us.74 ‘Inspect,’ ‘behold,’ ‘observe’: if the verbal imperatives at once highlight the text’s failure to dissolve into pictures—despite the literary rhetoric, we never can cast eyes on the literal pictures—the words also speak volumes about the respective failures of imagery. Were pictures all that were required for us to see, after all, we should hardly need someone to tell us what to look at, and why. True insight involves both more and less than looking with the eyes. In the Imagines, it is verbal discourse that (dis-)embodies this simultaneous dearth and excess: contemplating pictures and the processes of understanding them mean contemplating words. This helps make sense of the gallery’s reiterative recourse to literary paradigms. For what makes Philostratus’s visual-verbal games all the more complex is the extent to which the described pictures are themselves said to derive from textual descriptions: wherever we look, or rather wherever we read, we find described images figured after literary texts. The very first tableau, derived from the Homeric description of the Scamander episode (in Book 21 of the Iliad), provides one of the clearest examples.75 “Have you noticed, child,” begins the speaker, “that these things here are from Homer?” [e[gnw~, w\ pai`, tau`ta Ὁmhvrou o[nta, 1.1.1].76 Almost as soon as the speaker introduces the Homeric derivation, he appears to tell the boy to look away from the Squire—Apparitions Apparent 109 image (ajpovbleyon), instructing him “to see the things from which the description/painting derives” (o{son ejkei`na ijdei`n, ajf j w|n hJ grafhv).77 Sight, it seems, derives from citation: to see what is significant in the picture, read the text! At this stage, the boy is told to look back at the actual painting of Scamander (o{ra dh; pavlin), something that the reader is naturally denied. But whether discussing the similarities-cum-differences between words and pictures, or indeed privileging one medium over the other, the game is about different sorts of ‘seeing’: just as the painting mediates Homeric poetry, so too is our access to the painting now mediated through the speaker’s verbal description (itself sketched in a series of highly resonant Iliadic allusions).78 All this reminds us of that alleged conversation between Damis and Apollonius, in which the sage declares that to appreciate a painting of Ajax, one must first know the story.79 Here, though, the very act of evoking the image is used to preface a professed conversation about the collaborat- ing and competing resources of words and pictures. Does true insight lie in material imagery, or else in the immaterial discourse that represents it (and from which, in the case of Scamander, the painting is itself said to descend)?80 It is appropriate, of course, that the Imagines should begin with Homer;81 indeed, the recourse to the earliest and most important of Greek poets in the context of the first image demonstrates the proem’s opening gambit about the parallel arts of painting and poetry. But Homer is not the only poet to be sighted and cited in the gallery. In keeping with the pun on graphein, Philostratus turns to numerous writers in his efforts to verbalize tableaux that are said to visualize literary texts. Aesop (1.3), Euripides (2.23.1), Pindar (2.12, 2.24.2), Xenophon (2.9.1), Sappho (2.1.2): these are some of the authors whose texts are explicitly declared to lie behind the paintings described. In each case, the respective tableaux interrogate whether it is words that illuminate pictures, or pictures that illuminate words.82 A particularly revealing case study comes in the iconic description of Pantheia, crafted after the graphê painted/described (gevgraptai) by Xenophon (2.9.1):

Pavnqeia hJ kalh; Xenofw`nti me;n ajpo; tou` h[qou~ gevgraptai, o{ti te Ἀravspan ajphxivou kai; Kuvrou oujc hJtta`to kai; Ἀbradavth/ ejbouvleto koinh;n gh`n ejpievsasqai: oJpoiva de; hJ kovmh kai; hJ ojfru;~ o{sh kai; oi|on e[blepe kai; wJ~ ei\ce tou` stovmato~, ou[pw oJ Xenofw`n ei[rhke kaivtoi deino;~ w]n perilalh`sai tau`ta, ajll j ajnh;r xuggravfein me;n oujc iJkanov~, gravfein de; iJkanwvtato~, aujth`/ me;n Panqeiva/ oujk ejntucwvn, Xenofw`nti de; oJmilhvsa~ gravfei th;n Pavnqeian, oJpoivan th`/ yuch`/ ejtekmhvrato.

The beautiful Pantheia has been described/painted by Xenophon, at least as far as her character is concerned: how she disdained Araspas and would not yield to Cyrus, and how she wished the same earth bury both her and Abradates. 110 Helios

What her hair was like, however, and the size of her brow, and how she looked on others, and the expression of her mouth—these are things that Xenophon did not speak of, although he was good at chatting about such things. But a man not good at writing things down, but very skilled at writing/painting, although he had never chanced upon Pentheia, was conversant nevertheless with Xeno- phon: this is the man who paints/describes Pantheia, as from her soul he inferred her to be.

The (description of the) painting knowingly pitches the verbal perceptions of Xenophon’s description against the visual description of the purported picture: text and image are said to offer parallel sorts of vision, the one centered around what the woman did, the other around how she looked. But the implicit question posed by the speaker’s long and unwieldy sentence—itself crafted so as to replicate a real epideictic speech83—is about telling writers and painters apart from one another. While overtly distinguishing between painting and writing, the subsequent (description of the) painting will simultaneously collapse the differences, evoking the image by way of a series of simultaneous allusions to and departures from Xenophon’s work.84 As with the graphê of Scamander, seeing the picture involves envisioning a text.85 It is the self-consciousness of all this that interests me here. As I have said, it was Simonides who was credited with the idea that painting is silent poetry and poetry talking painting. Not for nothing, though, does Philostratus’s spoken gallery feature countless scenarios where painted images are seen (which is to say said) to speak: our voice-over guide privileges speech as a recurrent theme within the set of pictures that are verbally vocalized (e.g., fwnhvn, 1.7.3; fwnh`/, 1.22.1, 1.25.2; fwnh`~, 1.26.4; fwnhv, 2.31.2). A pair of examples can demonstrate the point. In the context of a painting of Memnon, we read of a second-degree replication—a statue of Mem- non illuminated by the sun, as though summoning forth a voice (fwnhvn) by some “speech-producing artifice” (lalou`nti sofivsmati, 1.7.3).86 If we were to listen to a depicted Rhodogoune, speaks our guide in the following book, we may perhaps hear the painting not only speaking, but also speaking Greek (ka]n parakou`sai boulhqw`men, tavca eJllhniei`, 2.5.5).87 The ekphrastic conceit of seeing through hearing is knowingly turned on its head: rather than words summoning up virtual visions, (we hear how) pictures are on the verge of virtual words, all thanks to the verbal visualizations and visual verbalizations of the virtuoso Philostratus.88

IV. The Recessions of Replication

Needless to say, there are numerous Second Sophistic parallels for Philostratus’s (meta-)ekphrastic games.89 One might compare, for example, the way in which Squire—Apparitions Apparent 111 paintings are integrated within the opening fictitious frameworks of Imperial Greek novels,90 or dialogues like Lucian’s On the Hall, On Images, and On Images Defended, which talk through the respective merits of words and pictures.91 Within Philostratus’s world, such sophistic responses to paintings were part of what it meant to be an educated viewer, or sophos theatês: standing before an inarticulate picture, the exercise was to demonstrate one’s articulate education (paideia) through the ingenuity of one’s rhetorical response.92 When it comes to the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines, though, I think something more is at stake. Yes, there is a competition between imagery and language; yes, there is a concern with showcasing one’s paideia. And yet, at least for Philostratus, the project of speaking for pictures visualizes larger debates: the Imagines probes the parameters of both the visual and verbal imagination. To my eyes this helps make sense of the Imagines’ multifaceted interest in different viewpoints.93 As I have said, one of the benchmarks of ekphrasis is its cham- pioning of visual subjectivity. The idea takes us back to the Stoic language of phantasia: because the pictures described are not physically present—for, as with Apollonius’s cloud paintings, they rely on the inventive uploadings of the individual subject—‘seeing’ Philostratus’s gallery is only possible through a creative act of imagination. In the Imagines, though, that theme of visual subjectivity is once again depicted among the tableaux described: characters are credited with different ‘looks,’ so that the objects of sight themselves metamorphose into viewing subjects. This aspect of the gallery resonates with the discussions of the proem, where “the gleam of the eye” (aujga;~ ojmmavtwn, praef.2) is declared to be the unique pre- rogative of painting (albeit one that words attempt to decipher). But this aspect also looks to a much longer tradition of theorizing vision, which related sight to the literal and metaphorical eyes of the beholder. As Socrates instructed Parrhasius in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, it is not through external appearances that a painter can reveal human character, but rather by depicting the subject’s gaze (to; blevpein, 3.10.4): the eyes (ta; o[mmata) serve as literal windows to the soul. By paying such close attention to how people look and to the look of their eyes, Philostratus uses paintings themselves at once to figure and champion the subjective share of the beholder. In the context of images that are ekphrastically described, moreover, all this takes on a metavisual significance: if we (are said to) look upon the speaker and crowd looking at paintings, the paintings looked at turn out to have eyes of their own. This is not just a matter of looking; it is also a question of epistemology, of understanding how viewing works. Better, perhaps, we might say that issues of visual subjectivity go hand-in-hand with larger questions about authenticity and falsehood—the association between painting and truth introduced in the proem’s opening sentence. In a world where everybody is said to see, how is our view (or 112 Helios better, our view of the text) able to distinguish between reality and fictitious appearance? Amid the fantastic gallery of the Imagines, the make-believe of the paintings appears their single most defining feature. While knowingly representing pictures in words, the speaker draws attention to the way in which the paintings themselves elide and collapse their own painterly dimension: just as we appear to be seeing through reading, we seem to be looking not at pictorial representations, but at the very referents that the pictures represent. As I have argued elsewhere, this phenomenon is particularly marked in the two descriptions of xenia, that is, of xenia paintings, which both evoke tantalizing pictures of food.94 So appe- tizing are the painted offerings of the pictures, we are told, that they seem good enough to eat. As if foreshadowing Wollheim’s rhetoric of ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in,’ we will declare of the apples in the first xenia picture that their redness “has not been put on from outside,” but rather that it has “blossomed from within” (to; de; ejn aujtoi`~ e[reuqo~ oujde; ejpibeblh`sqai fhvsei~, ajlla; e[ndon uJphnqhkevnai, 1.31.2). In this passage, as elsewhere in the Imagines, the promise of second-person speaking (fhvsei~) fashions the tableau as transcending the boundaries not only between images and words, but also between painting and recipient. Needless to say, Philostratus is here falling back on a standard Greco-Roman critical trope, which defines successful image-making around its verisimilitude—its capacity to trick the eye.95 In Philostratus’s imaginary gallery, though, the simulations of painting reach a whole new register, tricking not only the eye but also every other sense to boot.96 Philostratus’s intermedial tableaux appeal to all the senses. We have already mentioned the aural quality of the pictures (or rather their descriptions): not only do the depicted subjects talk, they even (are said to) make music. In 1.10, the whole tableau is dedicated to Amphion and his playing of the lyre,97 and amid the Bospo- ran scenes of 1.12 the audience is told that it will “hear lowing cattle and [that] the call of the shepherds’ pipe will echo in your ear” (mukwmevnwn ajkouvsh/ bow`n kai; surivggwn boh; perihchvsei se), since the “painting/description has imitated things that are taking place, things that are yet to happen and in some cases how things might come about” (ejkmevmaktai ga;r hJ grafh; kai; ta; o[nta kai; ta; gignovmena kai; wJ~ a]n gevnoito e[nia, 1.12.5).98 But the paintings do not appeal to sight and sound alone. Among the tableaux are also frequent invocations of scent and smell: the imagined dewy roses in a painting of Comus, for instance, are said to be “painted/described fragrance and all” (fhmi; gegravfqai aujta; meta; ojsmh`~, 1.2.4); if we only listen carefully (proquvmw~ a[koue), as the speaker later declares of a painting of Cupids, we will “catch something of the fragrance of the garden” (ejphv/sqou ti th`~ ajna; to;n kh`pon eujwdiva~, 1.6.1).99 So too with taste and touch. Although most extensively developed in the context of the xenia paintings, we find Squire—Apparitions Apparent 113 numerous descriptions of ‘sweet’ subjects, developing the critical language of hêdonê and glykytês (terms as applicable to the appreciation of words as to that of pictures).100 As for tangibility, there are several exhortations to reach out and touch the flat paintings as though they were in fact a three-dimensional substance: “Why do you not grasp the ripe fruits?,” asks the speaker before the painted fruits of Imag. 2.26 (tiv ou\n ouj ta;~ drupepei`~ aJrpavvzei~, 2.26.3); similarly, before a double- degree representation—a two-dimensional painting of a three-dimensional statue of Aphrodite—the speaker declares that one could almost grasp the (representation of the) goddess in the picture.101 If the synesthetic paintings purport to deceive the eye, ear, nose, mouth, and hands, they also test the limits of mimêsis in other still more overt ways. Sometimes the descriptions introduce the theme of deception explicitly: a tableau of Menoe- ceus, for example, talks about “deceiving the eyes” through the receding lines of the picture (klevptesqai tou;~ ojfqalmouv~, 1.4.2).102 Some pictures even demand that we interact with them as real-life physical entities. In the same tableau of Menoe- ceus, the speaker exhorts that we should catch the hero’s blood with our garments, as though the subject of the painting could stretch out of his frame and penetrate the world of the viewing audience, and vice versa (1.4.4). To view the painted representation, it seems, is to play present protagonist in Menoeceus’s drama—or so the present text of the absent picture implies.103 One of the most sophisticated meditations on this theme comes in the tableau of Hunters (1.28).104 After an opening description, the speaker suddenly stops in his tracks. The painting has fooled us, he declares: this is not a real scene of hunting, but an empty mirage (1.28.2):

oi|on e[paqon. ejxhvcqhn uJpo; th`~ grafh`~ mh; gegravfqai dokw`n aujtouv~, ei\nai de; kai; kinei`sqai kai; ejra`n—diatwqavzw gou`n wJ~ ajkouvonta~ kai; dokw` ajntakouvsesqai—su; d j oujd j o{sa ejpistrevyai parapaivonta ejfqevgxw ti, paraplhsivw~ ejmoi; nenikhmevno~, oujk e[cwn ajneivrgesqai th`~ ajpavth~ kai; tou` ejn aujth`/ u{pnou. skopw`men ou\n ta; gegrammevna: frafh`/ ga;r paresthvkamen.

How I was deceived! I was deluded by the painting/description, thinking that these figures were not painted/described, but that they were actual beings which move and love—I shout at them, at least, as though they hear me, and I think that they somehow listen in return. And you, overcome as much as I was, did not utter a single word to avert me from my mistake: you were unable to free yourself from the deception and the slumber associated with it. So let us look together at the things painted/described. For yes, it is a painting/description before which we stand. 114 Helios

Once again, Philostratus’s residual game lies in the dual senses of graphein and graphê. While the speaker exposes the illusion of the painting, the very language he uses raises simultaneous questions about the make-believe of the description: just as the speaker was fooled by the painted graphê, we readers are being continually hoodwinked, drawn in by the fictions of the mediating graphê of the text. As though that were not complex game enough, the speaker ends by drawing out yet another level of fiction: the tableau concludes by evoking an additional figure within the painting, one at whom the others stare as though he himself were now painted/described (oi|on grafevn, 1.28.8). Of course, as the speaker has just reminded us, this figure is painted (and so too is the fictional painting represented by the present description). Inside the fiction of the tableau, though, the painted figure should not seem fictitious at all, otherwise the painterly illusion would be broken; likewise, within the fiction of the ekphrasis, the figure should not appear described, but instead painted. The replications keep on self-replicating: we are said to look at (that is to say, read of) a speaker before a fictitious painting, who sees (speaks about) make-believe characters, who are themselves said to be looking upon a figure whom they (mistakenly!) identify as painting-cum-description. In this weird and wacky world, nothing is quite what it seems: the boundaries between reality and fiction perpetually shuffle and shift.105 At each moment, moreover, the described make-believe of the tableau serves as a literal and metaphorical figure for the fictitious words that ekphrastically represent them. Describing the deceit of all this, the speaker lets slip an additional detail. For the orator, at least, the (virtual) reality of the painting is said to come down to the subjectivity of its characters—not just their capacity to ‘move’ and to ‘love,’ but also to ‘listen’: the speaker talks to the painting (or so he says!), and he is deceived into thinking that the painted protagonists listen to him in return. It is a masterful touch, for through the very act of speaking, the speaker in some sense trumps the Simonidean parameters of painting and poem, so that the images of the Imagines (or at least their descriptions) really do now listen and talk.106 Where Plato’s Phae drus had contrasted painting’s silence with the ‘talkability’ of letters—ask a picture something and it is silent, ask written words the same question and they simply say the same thing over and over again107—Philostratus’s text at once envisions and exposes the fantasy of a two-way, intermedial dialogue.108 But things are yet still more complicated, for the graphê before us is not simply a text, still less simply a picture: it is also a make-believe transcript of a live, spoken dialogue. The proem sketched a scenario in which the following discourses could unfold: “ ‘Let the boy be put up at the front,’ I said, ‘so that my effort at speech be addressed to him, but you others follow, not only agreeing, but also asking questions, if anything I say is unclear’ ” (‘oJ me;n pai`~,’ e[fhn, ‘probeblhvsqw kai; ajnakeivsqw touvtw/ hJ spoudh; tou` lovgou, uJmei`~ de; e{pesqe mh; xuntiqevmenoi Squire—Apparitions Apparent 115 movnon, ajlla; kai; ejrwtw`nte~, ei[ ti mh; safw`~ fravzoimi,’ praef.5).109 The effect is to make the written speeches themselves a representation of sorts, one aware of its own fiction and facture: even before we begin purportedly ‘seeing’ the paintings, the text paints a make-believe picture in which written words are made able to speak. And yet, as we read the represented epideictic speeches that in turn represent the painted representations, that signifying dimension similarly fades away. It is as though readers too can hear the speaker and enter into his drama: if the speaker has addressed the paintings, as well as the internal audience of the boys, he also on some level addresses us as readers. In this sense, the speaker’s rebuke to the boy within the “Hunters” description doubles as a direct challenge to Philostratus’s own reading audience. “If you have seen the pretence,” the implication runs, “speak!” Aware of the critical framework of ekphrasis, Philostratus’s speaker takes ‘seeing’ as a given: it is speech that is here said to test the limits of subjective imagination. The irony for us readers is that the very act of speaking, the very gesture of exposing the pretence, would simultaneously perpetuate the fictions represented; for the reader, as for the speaker before his painting, to address the written graphê would be (mistakenly) to think that the image/discourse/text is listening to us. However we react, we conspire in the mul- tiplex layering of illusions. Even our silence projects us into the fantasy represented in and by the painted/spoken/written text. By not speaking, but by listening (or at least seeming to), we readers might be said to (appear to) turn into a stilled tableau of our own. We thought we were viewing/reading the graphê. But the speaker’s illusory words before the imagined painting raise a new question: Are these graphai in reality watching and listening to us? If these ekphrastic descriptions interrogate whether or not we can trust our eyes, then, they also give voice to the purported limits of visual representation, thereby figuring the limits of their own verbal replication, for the Imagines is always concerned with the interwoven fictions of both seeing and reading. The text before us is a written representation of a spoken representation, translating into language a series of visual replications (which, I have said, frequently derive from the literary representations of earlier texts). The tension between ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in’ consequently mirrors the complex dynamics of reading represented speech: in this mise-en-abîme of representations, the fiction of seeing paintings through language replicates the artifice of reading the spoken words as written text. By drawing attention to the believability, and indeed the deceit, of pictorial graphai, the Imagines flags the mimetic make-believe of the mediating speeches, no less than that of the written graphê that depicts all of these representational levels and more.110 Nowhere is Philostratus more vocal about this mise-en-abîme than in his reflections on the described mirror-painting of Narcissus (1.23).111 “The pool paints/ describes Narcissus,” begins the description, with the customary pun on graphein, 116 Helios

“and the painting/description paints/describes both the pool and everything to do with Narcissus” (hJ me;n phgh; gravfei to;n Navrkisson, hJ de; grafh; th;n phgh;n kai; ta; tou` Narkivssou pavnta). Many scholars have shown that this literal mirage of a mirage wonderfully reflects the ekphrastic games of the Imagines writ large: the (description of the) painting figures the promise and failure of all ekphrastic replication. To my eyes, however, there is something more going on here. For if the image serves as figurative mirror for the illusion both of visual representation matching reality and of verbal representation matching image, it also reflects the illusion of written text capturing live oral speech.112 How, then, to tell in this tableau fact apart from fiction, and fiction apart from text?113 After drawing attention to the mimetic make-believe of the picture—above all its regard for truth (ajlhvqeian, 1.23.2), the same word used in the proem (praef.1)—the speaker proceeds to address the young boy directly (1.23.3):114

se; mevntoi, meiravkion, ouj grafhv ti~ ejxhpavthsen, oujde; crwvmasin h] khrw`/ prostevthka~, ajll j ejktupw`savn se to; u{dwr, oi|on ei\de~ aujtov, oujk oi\sqa, ou[te to; th`~ phgh`~ ejlevgcei~ sovfisma.

As for you, child, no painting/description has deceived you, nor are you engrossed by colors or wax. But the water has struck your image just as you are as you look upon it, and you do not know it, nor do you question the clever device of the pool.

As with the earlier discussion of the painting’s truthfulness, talk of the picture’s “clever device” (sovfisma) echoes to the sound of the proem, in particular painting’s claim to “wisdom” (sofiva).115 But the direct address also implicates the reader within the games of painterly-cum-written fiction described; for just who is the “child” (meiravkion) addressed here? Through this carefully placed metalepsis, the speaker leaves it decidedly ambiguous as to whether he is chastizing the boy within the picture (Narcissus, fooled by his own painted reflection), the boy within the gallery (the son of the speaker’s host, whose own deceit replicates that of the replicated Narcissus before his replication), or indeed the external reading audience (fooled by the mirroring graphê of both the ekphrastic words that replicate image, and the writing that replicates speech). The reflected reflection of Narcissus serves as a figure for reflecting upon the relations between sight and knowledge, themselves mirrored in the Greek linguistic relationship between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing (oi|on ei\de~ . . . oujk oi\sqa).116 As the address continues, that particular ambiguity undulates away: it is Narcis- sus whom the speaker addresses. But the subject of the spoken address now speaks of the trope of addressing specifically (1.23.3): Squire—Apparitions Apparent 117

ei\tav soi hJ phgh; muvqw/ crhvsetai; ou|to~ me;n ou\n oujd j ejpai?ei ti hJmw`n, ajll j ejmpevptwken ejpi; to; u{dwr aujtoi`~ wjsi; kai; aujtoi`~ o[mmasin, aujtoi; de; hJmei`~, w{sper gevgraptai, levgwmen.

What use will your speech be to the pool? No, he hears nothing of what we say: instead, he is immersed in the water, with his ears and eyes alike, and we must ourselves do the talking, just as it has been painted/described.

The orator chastizes Narcissus for thinking that the watery mirage should engage him in conversation. And yet the apostrophic address of this description simultaneously acts out the fiction that it itself evoked: the speaker’s conversation with the fictional painting replicates Narcissus’s own imagined conversation with his fictional reflection. The replicatory ramifications ripple and recede. After all, the dialogue between speaker and make-believe painting (before make-believe painting) also mirrors the imaginary conversation that frames the text as a whole: it mirrors the spoken address before the youths who are represented as standing in front of the speaker, hearing the discourse, and even speaking back. We readers see the full recession of replications. But because we remain silent—because, like Narcissus’s reflection, we do not speak back, leaving the text’s speaker to ‘talk’ for and to us— do we not in turn mirror the graphê painted/described before our eyes and ears alike?

V. Seeing the Bigger Picture

There is much more to be said about the Imagines and its multifaceted rhetorical, literary, and art-historical backdrop. Within a volume on ancient Greek ideas of viewing, though, my foremost concern has been to showcase Philostratus’s self- conscious play with different paradigms of vision and representation. On the one hand, the Imagines flirts with rhetorical theories of ekphrasis, even to the point of depicting them amid the paintings described (and in the most self-reflexive ways). On the other, the text’s games with seeing and hearing are themselves to be understood against a larger intellectual backdrop. The Imagines probes our subjective implication in the things that we see. Whether in summoning up the represented spoken scenes before the pictures, or else attempting to evoke the image of the paintings themselves, the text appeals to the mind’s eye of the reader: it asks questions about the effectiveness of written language as a mode of mediating both spoken discourse and the visual imagery that that discourse represents. It should be noted here that Philostratus’s first readers seem to have been sensitive to those underlying ideological stakes. As I have mentioned, a text that imitates the mode and manner of Philostratus’s Imagines, and which associates itself 118 Helios with Philostratus’s purported grandson, explicitly comments upon the work as ekphrasis, thereby connecting it with the theoretical frameworks of the Progym- nasmata. Not for nothing does Philostratus the Younger continue his proem (modelled, as we have said, after that of the earlier Imagines) by stating that poetry and painting share a common interest in phantasia (praef.5);117 if the Elder Philos- tratus had defined the work around the trait of “truthfulness” (ajlhvqeia), moreover, this later work expressly defends the genre by way of its “sweet . . . deception” (hJdei`a . . . ajpavth).118 Replicating the replicatory games of his alleged grandfather, Philostratus the Younger will take them to a new level of self-referential complexity.119 This is most spectacularly reflected in the verbal evocation of a visual painting that is itself modelled, at least in part, after the Homeric description of the shield of Achilles (Imag. 10). As we have said, Philostratus the Elder made recourse to many literary texts. In describing a painting of the Achillean shield, though, Philostratus the Younger embarks on a text describing an image forged after a text that itself provided the paradigmatic example of ekphrastically representing vision in words.120 Let me conclude by returning to the specific cultural context in which both Philostrati seem to have been writing. As noted above, and as the Younger Philostra- tus’s subsequent ekphrasis on Homeric ekphrasis so wondrously reflects, the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines draws on philosophical theories of vision which stretch the length and breadth of Greek critical thinking. And yet the specific contest between purported paintings and verbally-mediated impression representations of them must have had a particular relevance in the third century CE. In art historical terms, this is a period where we see a slow but sure shift away from the naturalistic regimes of visual representation that had so dominated the earlier Greek world— and which were so important under the earlier Roman Empire—and a move towards much more abstract figurative forms and styles. According to John Onians (1980, 12), there consequently arose a new “visual sensibility which enabled the late antique spectator to make more and more out of the same or less informa- t i on .” 121 By the early fourth century, some objects would even combine different representational systems, and in the same single monument, inviting their audiences to compare and contrast not only divergent visual forms, but also whole economies of seeing. One thinks, most famously, of the Arch of Constantine, in which a series of more schematic scenes of the latter-day emperor was juxtaposed with spolia from earlier Imperial monuments: however viewers came to terms with the monument, making sense of it meant reconciling different sorts of visual modes, constructed by and reflected in the Arch’s different physical components.122 This artistic context seems to me of the utmost importance when thinking about the Imagines. As recent scholarship has come increasingly to realize, Philos- tratus’s descriptions engage with not only a library of texts, but also a repertoire of Squire—Apparitions Apparent 119 images: just as the Imagines appeals to a reader’s literary learning, so too does it play upon its audience’s experience of actual paintings, sculptures, and mosaics.123 And yet the whole framework of Philostratus’s text—its staged competition between represented texts, speeches, and pictures—arguably interrogates a still more fundamental contemporary artistic dilemma. For all his sophisticated games with verisimilitude, Philostratus exploits art’s purported mimêsis to probe the supersensory, verbally-mediated workings of the subjective imagination. If ‘seeing’ something entails not only responding to a physical image, but also exercizing the mental imagination, what role does the material image actually play? Do different sensory forms differently exercise the literary imagination? Indeed, might we think that the less we ‘see as,’ the more we in fact ‘see in’? I end by planting these questions in the hope not of answering them, but rather of flagging our own perspectives. Philostratus’s active interrogation of vision,I suggest, had a contemporary literary and art historical dimension: the dialectic between image and text intersects with a larger contest between the material world and the ineffable realm of the imagination. Inevitably, given our own retrospective view, modern critics have conventionally seen the artistic developments of late antiquity in negative terms: the ideological debts of the Renaissance still have us undervaluing the non-naturalistic, so that the less mimetic an image, the less favorably we will judge its aesthetic quality. If nothing else, the self-referential games of the Imagines testify to a somewhat more complex historical picture: we should see in late antiquity a culture that was more, not less, attuned to the intellectual stakes of viewing.124

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Notes

1. Of the many discussions of the passage (Il. 18.478–608), the most successful in drawing out the visual-verbal stakes are Lynn-George 1988, 174–200; Becker 1995; Francis 2009; and Lecoq 2010. I discuss the shield, along with ancient literary and artistic responses to it, in Squire 2013. 2. [Plutarch], De glor. Ath. 346F (= Simonides, fr. 190b Bergk): oJ Simwnivdh~ th;n me;n zwgrafivan poivhsin siwpw`san prosagoreuvei, th;n de; zwgrafivan lalou`san; for discussions, see, e.g., Maffei 1991, 591–3; Carson 1992;S prigath 2004; Männlein-Robert 2007b, 20–2; and Hirsch-Luipold 2002, 55–72, esp. 62–3. All translations of Greek and Latin are my own unless otherwise stated. 3. For me, one of the most enlightening literary examples comes in the form of the so-called technopaegnia, short epigrammatic poems that used their varying verse-lengths to figure the (literally) literal shape of the objects evoked: cf. Squire 2011a, 231–6, along with Luz 2010, 327–53 and Kwapisz 2013 (non vidi). The earliest poems are attributable to Simmias at the beginning of the third century BCE, although the tradition seems to have spanned the subsequent length of both Hellenistic Greek and Latin literary production (cf., e.g., the diagrammatic grammata-games of Optatian Porphyry in the early fourth century CE, which include three figure-poems; for bibliography, see Squire 2011a, 219–23, along with Squire, Forthcoming). 4. For some further thoughts on this prototypical ‘linguistic’ turn, see Squire 2011b, 181–6 (along with the bibliography cited on 224–7). 5. Bibliography on Philostratus’s Imagines is finally booming. In what follows, I chiefly use the Greek text of Bendorff and Schenkel 1893 (although some of the mistakes in numbering are corrected), following the 1968 critical commentary of Schönberger and Kalinka; a new edition by Luca Giuliani and Oliver Primavesi is eagerly awaited. The text is well served by recent Italian translations (Carbone 2008, Abbondanza 2008, Pucci 2010), but markedly less so by the sole Eng- lish translation of Fairbanks 1931. In terms of critical readings, Elsner (1995, 21–48) and Boeder (1996, 137–70) have been fundamental in shifting the scholarly focus, while the edited volume of Constantini, Graziani, and Rolet (2006) showcases the more recent Francophone contribution. Baumann (2011)—arguing “daß sich die Ästhetik der Eikones sowohl hinsichtlich ihrer näheren Gestalt als auch hinsichtlich ihrer Funktionalisierung durch den Text al eine Ästhetik des Virtu- osen beschreiben läßt” (9)—now provides an excellent introduction to the text’s poetics of arrangement in particular. For some introductions to the Second Sophistic context more generally, see, e.g., Anderson 1993, esp. 144–55; Swain 1996; Goldhill 2001; Borg 2004a; Whitmarsh 2005. 6. As such, the ‘virtuality’ of the Imagines’ collection of paintings parallels that of the objects collected in and evoked through epigrammatic anthologies. In Greek and Latin epigram, as in the Imagines, we find the speaking poet relishing “the paradox inherent in the verbal articulation of the visual”: like epigram, Philostratus represents “a viewer working through the powerful emotive impact of art so as to tame it in articulation of thought” (Gutzwiller 2002, 87, 110; cf., e.g., Goldhill 128 Helios

1994; Alto Bauer 2007; Männlein-Robert 2007b; Prioux 2007 and 2008; Squire 2010a and 2010b). Something similar could be said of the aesthetic arrangement of the tableaux in the Imagines, I would add: the complex frameworks that structure Philostratus’s gallery-book are ultimately figured after the poikilia and varietas of the poetic and epigrammatic collection. 7. My language of ‘interrogation’ is important here. As Giuliani (2007, esp. 422–3) emphasizes, Philostratus acts out the inherent problems of visual interpretation (albeit, I would add, without preaching any singular solution): “Man könnte diese und andere Thesen aus dem Text heraus präparieren und sie in Form eines Traktates bringen: Das Resultat wäre eine Art Proto-Laokoon— ein lehrreiches Werk, in dem allerdings vom eigentlichen Reiz der Eikónes nichts mehr zu finden wäre. Ganz im Gegensatz zu Lessing ist Philostrat alles andere als ein Verächter der bildenden Kunst gewesen . . .” (cf. Braginskaya 1985, 41–2). Rather than embark upon objective analysis and philosophizing alone, Philostratus actively plays with the intellectual stakes of vision. 8. Contrast, e.g., Bertrand 1881, 53–4, arguing of the Imagines that Philostratus had “a new idea” and one day simply “created art criticism” (“Mais il eut un jour une pensée neuve, et ce jour- là créa un genre qui lui survécut et suscita des imitateurs: il créa la critique d’art”)! Suffice it to say that Philostratus’s project seems to have had much earlier parallels in epigram, not least Nossis’s late fourth-century BCE epigrammatic tour of votive objects dedicated to Aphrodite (cf. Männlein- Robert 2007b, 45–52; Prioux 2008, 151–8; Tueller 2008, 166–77), or indeed the series of epigrams on Lithika and Andriantopoiika gathered together in the ‘new’ Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309; for a well-referenced discussion, see Prioux 2008, 159–252). Much more persuasive, in my view, is the argument of Cassin 1995, 502: “Avec la second sophistique en effet, non seulement les ekphraseis font partie intégrante, codifiée, du cursus rhétorique, mais elles se multiplient et s’autonomisent au point de constituer un genre à soi seul.” 9. On the etymology, see Graf 1995, 143, noting how the ek- of ekphrasis implies “ein ‘völlig und restlos deutliches Machen.’ ” 10. The celebrated definition is that of Heffernan 1993, 3–4. 11. See Webb 1999, esp. 11–5. Webb develops her arguments elsewhere (e.g., 2000, 221), and most fully in her recent book (2009, 1–38). 12. Webb 1999, 13; cf. Webb 1999, 7: “By a sort of etymological magic, the Greek word is even seen to bear its meaning inscribed within it.” 13. For my own view, see Squire 2013; cf. Squire 2008; 2011a, esp. 11 note 29, and 327 note 46. 14. For the graphein pun written/drawn into the noun grafikhv—not just visual painting, but also verbal description—, see below, pp. 106–7. Callistratus’s descriptions of statues were likewise transmitted under the title Ἐkfravsei~. 15. For the comments (in the context of John of Sardis’s commentary on Aphthonius), see Rabe 1928, 215. More generally on the reception of Philostratus’s Imagines, see Braginskaya 1985, 26–7, emphasizing the breadth of his ancient readership: “Im Alterum wurde dieses Buch, wie wir wis- sen, von Libanios und Menander, Prokopios von Gaza und Photios, Eustathios und Michael Psellos, von den namenlosen Autoren der Scholien, den antiken Rhetoren und den byzantinischen Philologen gelesen” (26); cf. the diverse essays in Ballestra-Puech et al. 2010. 16. See Elsner 2002, 2: “It is not impossible that it was the existence of the corpus of Philostra- tus and his successors that prompted Nicolaus to introduce the specific discussion of the description of sculpture and painting into his Progymnasmata in the fifth century”; cf. Elsner 2009, 10. 17. For a guide to bibliography, see Squire 2009, 142–3 note 199. The most important analysis is now Webb 2009 (with references to the author’s earlier work). More generally on the function of these handbooks, see G. Anderson 1993, 47–53; Webb 2001, esp. 294–5 and 2009, 39–59; Goldhill 2007. Squire—Apparitions Apparent 129

18. The most pertinent passages are conveniently collected in Webb 2009, 197–211: Theon, Prog. 118.6–120 (see Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, 66–9); Hermogenes, Prog. 10.47–50 (see Rabe 1913, 22–3); Aphthonius, Prog. 12.46–9 (see Rabe 1926, 36–41); Nicolaus, Prog. (see Felten 1913, 67–71). 19. For the suggestion of a later date for both Theon (not in the first century but rather the fifth) and Hermogenes, see Heath 2002/2003. Webb (2009, 14 note 3) is probably right to “prefer to retain the earlier date because of the parallels with Quintilian and the unusual use of Hellenistic historians while acknowledging that these are by no means exclusive criteria.” 20. Theon, Prog. 118.7 (see Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, 66). 21. Hermogenes, Prog. 10.47 (see Rabe 1913, 22). 22. The Progymnasmata generally use the adverb ejnargw`~, except for Hermogenes, who prefers an adjective (ejnarghv~). On enargeia as literary critical trope, see esp. Zanker 1981 and 1987, 40–1, and Manieri 1998. There is a large bibliography, but I have particularly benefitted from the following: Meijering 1987, 29–30; Dubel 1997; Bartsch 2007; Webb 2009, 87–130 (summarizing Webb 1997a; 1997b; 1999, 13–5; 2000, 221–5). 23. Hermogenes, Prog. 10.48 (see Rabe 1913, 23). 24. Text in Felten 1913, 70; cf. 68, on how ekphrasis “tries to make listeners of its speakers” (hJ [e[kfrasi~] de; peivratai qeata;~ tou;~ ajkouvnta~ ejrgavzesqai). Still more explicit is John of Sardis’s later commentary on Aphthonius (Rabe 1928, 216), stressing the impossibility of even the most “vivid” ekphrasis bringing the “thing down” before the eyes. 25. Cf. Becker 1995, 28; Chinn 2007, 268; Webb 2009, 168–9. 26. Cf. Webb 2009, 167: “As teachers, the rhetoricians emphasize the practical over the speculative and, as vendors of a particular method, they are interested first and foremost in stressing the power that the word is able to wield through enargeia and ekphrasis.” Webb’s subsequent conclusion is that “Philostratos’ Eikones transcend in their sophistication the world of the rhetorical handbooks and hint at the inadequacies of the discussions of ekphrasis there” (190). 27. On the prehistory of phantasia in Socratic (or rather Platonic) philosophy, see esp. Silver- man 1991 and Barnouw 2002, along with Rispoli 1985’s historical overview. 28. For some well-referenced guides, see, e.g., Tanner 2006, 283–7; Bartsch 2007; Webb 2009, 107–30; note, too, the dossier of articles in Labarrière 2004. On the larger epistemological context in which Stoic discussions of phantasia were framed, see, e.g., Frede 1983, 65–93; Annas 1992, 71–85; Zagdoun 2000; Reed 2002; Männlein-Robert 2003. 29. As Pollitt (1974, 53) writes, phantasia “implies not simply fabricating something in the mind but actually ‘seeing’ something that is not perceptible to the senses” (and cf. discussion at 293–7). Cf. Frede 1983, 67 on how, according to Stoic theories of vision, “to see something . . . is to have a certain kind of thought generated in a certain way.” 30. For the associated play with phantasia in ekphrastic epigram, see Squire 2010b, esp. 78–82, with more detailed bibliography. 31. Cf. Webb 1997a, 232–3. As Elsner (1995, 26) nicely paraphrases, phantasia was therefore “explicitly both a vision seen through the mind’s eye which had been evoked and communicated in language and a mental vision which in turn gave rise to language.” 32. The best discussion is Webb 2009, 93–6. More generally on the relationship between Quin- tilian’s theories of rhetoric and the Progymnasmata, see Henderson 1991; cf. also Vasaly 1993 on related passages in Cicero. 33. For the underlying rhetoric of “placing before the eyes” and its resonance among countless other Latin texts, see Scholz 1998 and Chinn 2007, esp. 272–3 (on Pliny, Ep. 5.6.42–4). 130 Helios

34. For discussion, see “Introduction,” this volume, pp. 15–20. Among the best overviews are Lindberg 1976, 1–17; Simon 1988; Nightingale 2004, 7–14; and Darrigol 2012, 1–5. 35. Cf. Hermann, this volume. For a guide to Plato’s theory of vision, along with its Presocratic debts and subsequent Aristotelian and Stoic reception, see Lindberg 1976, 1–17; for the influence of the Platonic view on Aristotle, see Zanker 2000. 36. For discussions of the critical passage, see, e.g., Preisshofen 1974; Rouveret 1989, 14–5; Goldhill 1998, esp. 207–10; Steiner 2001, 33–5; Neer 2010, 155–7. 37. For the ways in which Philostratean phantasia departs from previous middle Platonic and Stoic concepts, approximating something closer to the aesthetic imagination, see, e.g., Watson 1988, 59–95; Vernant 1991, 164–85, esp. 184–5; and the further bibliography cited in Platt 2011, 324 note 99. 38. Here, as throughout this article, I pass over well-trodden debates about the precise identity of the Philostrati and the attribution of the works associated with them; see Anderson 1986, 291–6; Flinterman 1995, 5–28; de Lannoy 1997; Billault 2000, 5–7; Primaevesi and Giuliani 2012, 27–32; cf. also the introductory analyses of Elsner 2009 and Bowie 2009 (with further references). To my mind, the close relationship between, e.g., the Imagines and the Life of Apollonius, both in terms of linguistic form and content, leaves little room for doubting a common authorship. 39. For discussions see Birmelin 1933, 153–80; Onians 1980, 12–4 and 1999, 267–8; Schirren 2005, 272–85; Miles 2009, 147–56 (with more detailed bibliography); note, too, the highly influential art historical discussion in Gombrich 1959, 154–69. 40. For the Aristotelian debt here (cf. Poetics 1448b20–1), see Miles 2009, 149–50, although noting that “the emphasis on the viewer’s exercise of this faculty which Philostratus/Apollonius describes is quite unlike Aristotle.” 41. VA 2.22.3: “The mimetic art has two sides; the one consists of using the hand and the mind (namely painting), and the other of making images with the mind alone” (ditth; a[ra hJ mimhtikhv . . . kai; th;n me;n hJgwvmeqa oi|an th`/ ceiri; ajpomimei`sqai kai; tw`/ nw`/, grafikh;n de; ei\nai tauvthn, th;n d j au\ movnw/ tw`/ nw`/ eijkavzein). 42. Note, though, that the sage does expressly differentiate between mimêsis and phantasia elsewhere in Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius (cf. Birmelin 1933, esp. 392–414, on VA 6.19): discussing images of the gods, Apollonius is said to have pitched the representational regimes of mimêsis against those of phantasia, concluding that phantasia is consequently declared “wiser than mimê- sis” (sofwtevra mimhvsew~) because “mimêsis will fashion what it has seen, but phantasia also what it has not seen” (mivmhsi~ me;n ga;r dhmiourghvsei, o} ei\den, fantasiva de; kai; o} mh; ei\den, VA 6.19.2]; for the general epistemological framework, together with further parallels, see most recently Platt 2009, esp. 149–54, developed in Platt 2011, 320–9. As Miles (2009, 156) concludes his comparison of the two passages, “both scenes . . . despite the differences and contradictions between them, show an interest in the purely internal functioning of the imaginative or image- making faculty . . . The pleasure of viewing . . . lies in the action of a receptive mimêsis and in recognition of the object of the representation.” 43. Zanker (2004, 72–102) nicely labels the phenomenon “reader or viewer supplementation,” offering a solid analysis of literary and artistic parallels in the Hellenistic Greek world. 44. As Zeitlin (2001, 219) argues, this Second Sophistic rhetoric of phantasia “shifted attention from the mimetic faculty and technical excellence in the production of images to the valorisation of a kind of interior vision.” Cf. Watson 1994, 4769, relating Philostratus’s sentiment to its Platonic and Stoic intellectual archaeology: “The less earthbound it is the more wonderful the art, and that is why literature is superior to painting or the plastic arts: it is a product of the mind and not tied Squire—Apparitions Apparent 131 to material place or time.” For the visual articulation of related themes in the context of Roman funerary monuments, see Koortbojian 2005. 45. See, e.g., Wollheim 1980, esp. 205–6. The ultimate intellectual debt is to Wittgenstein 1972, 193–229. 46. On the Imagines as an exercise in second-degree representation, whereby the quality of ekphrastic enargeia (making things like a picture) is itself literalized through the figure of the paintings described, see Webb 1997a, 239: “Car en tant qu’example de l’enargeia, toute ekphrasis, qu’elle soit d’une œuvre d’art ou non, doit ‘faire voir’ et doit être ‘comme une peinture’; le cadre fictif des tableaux fonctionnerait donc comme une métaphore qui exprime la qualité visuelle de ces discours.” This explains why we also find the set subjects of rhetorical ekphrasis projected into the paintings described. As Elsner (2002, 14) argues (with the examples cited on 18 note 73), the paintings “indulge in a number of the wider subjects of ekphrasis (as defined by the Progymnas- mata) such as the description of places and landscape, the evocation of particular times and seasons or festivals, the account of battles, as if they were paintings” (original emphases). 47. For the distinction, see below, pp. 113–7. 48. Cassin (1995, 504) nicely expresses the point: “En effet, les tableaux ne sont jamais là sous nos yeux, ni sous les yeux de quelque auditoire que ce soit: ils sont dits être sous les yeux; ou encore: ils sont mis sous les yeux.” 49. The titleEijkovne~ is further attested by the Suda (even though the precise authorship remains disputed), as well as by, e.g., Ps.-Menander; see Anderson 1986, 291–6, esp. 295. But I think there is more to be said about the title’s significance. Although the Younger Philostratus uses the term eijkwvn frequently (some 15 times), the word features only once in the Imagines of the Elder Philostratus (and in a most revealing context: 1.2.4). In my view, the choice of title situates the work within a much larger tradition of philosophical and epistemological enquiry about what images are, and what it means to view them; it also frames the project around larger questions of semblance, similitude, and replication—not only in terms of pictures, or indeed the words that describe them, but also in terms of the dramatic fiction behind Philostratus’s transcribed declamation (cf. Quet 2006, 32–5 and Graziani 2006). 50. The best discussion here is Giuliani 2007, who demonstrates the various visual ‘impossibili- ties’ of Philostratus’s described gallery by analyzing its post-Renaissance artistic reception. Cf. too Lesky 1940, 40–1: “Wer in den philostratischen eijkovne~ Fiktionen erblickt, muß annehmen, daß ihr Verfasser zunächst Bilder erdacht habe, daß er aber dann diese erfundenen Bilder nicht durch das Wort so sichtbar als möglich machen will, sondern nun erst recht mit dem freien Spiel seiner Ausdeutungen das einmal Erdachte zum großen Teile wieder überdeckte.” 51. The bibliography is substantial: for some guides, see Cämmerer 1967, 6–12; Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 26–37; Braginskaya 1985, esp. 34–40; Fuchs 1987; Elsner 1995, 313–4; Baumann 2011, 91–164. On the Renaissance reception of the Imagines more generally, see Marek 1985 and Webb 1992. For the French sixteenth-century reception specifically, as mediated through the translation of Blaise de Vigenère (the French diplomat and, crucially, renowned cryptographer), see Graziani 1990 and Crescenzo 1999. Graziani (1995) provides an excellent edition of the work, which remains the most detailed commentary on the Imagines to date. 52. See Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, with the critical discussions of Bryson 1994 and Baumann 2011, 94–105. The attempt to ‘authenticate’ the gallery on the grounds of archaeological evidence still continues apace; see, e.g., Vetters 1972–1975, comparing the architectural design of Lehmann- Hartleben’s reconstructed gallery with supposed architectural parallels in Ephesus (“Die von Phi- lostrat beschriebenen Eikones waren also wohl in Sälen rings um einen Peristylhof untergebracht. Es handelt sich nicht um eine öffentliche Galerie, sondern um die private Sammlung seines 132 Helios

Gastfreundes” [228]). Cf. also Schönberger 1995, 164: “Mit ziemlicher Sicherheit hatten sie [sc. die Gemälde] auch Titeltäfelchen und den Einzelfiguren beigeschriebene Namen.” In my view, such responses efface the ontological games of the text. 53. Observe not only the vagueness of the architectural structure (as if challenging future readers like Lehmann-Hartleben into attempting a reconstruction!), but also the qualifying oi\mai (I think). This word is used some 66 times in the following descriptions, conjuring up a picture of not only the paintings, but also the viewing subject who in turn conjures up each wistful visual interpretation. 54. As Giuliani (2007, 402) comments, the objections were already prefigured by Goethe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although they did not stop him from intervening in debates about the gallery’s authenticity (cf. Michel 1973, Osterkamp 1991, Guillot 2003, Siebert 2010)! 55. For discussion, cf. Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 46–56; Michel 1974; Maffei 1991, esp. 261; Boeder 1996, 145–9; Abbondanza 2001; Thein 2002; Graziani 2006. The detailed commentary of Primavesi and Giulani (2012, 48–79) appeared while this article was in proof. 56. On the interjections, see below, 113–7. 57. For the significance of the phrase, which leaves it ambiguous as to whether it is the paintings or their rhetorical expositions that are intended as objects of aesthetic appreciation, see McCombie 2002, 152: “ejpimevleia tou` dokivmou . . . is not just an attending to what is estimable in the painting but also a taking in charge, a reception in the sense of management, of the painting in textualised form, which aspires to have re-expressed to; dovkimon (‘what is estimable’).” 58. On the importance of this epideictic frame, see below, pp. 116–7. For the significance of the dual internal audience—the one concerned with painting, the other with rhetoric—see Primavesi and Giuliani 2012. 59. In this sense, the Imagines playfully inverts novelistic conventions that begin prose fictions with an ekphrastic description of a painting: where Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tati- us’s Cleitophon and Leucippe open with first-person accounts of paintings, using these (fictional descriptions of) painted fictions to set up the fictional descriptive narratives that follow (cf., e.g., Billault 1990; Maeder 1991; Morales 2004, 36–48; Webb 2009, 178–85 and 2010, 358–9), the Imagines gives pride of place to the pictures, instead restricting the narrative frame to the proem. 60. The Gymnasticus, most likely attributable to the same author, opens with a similar discussion of sophia. For analysis, see esp. Maffei 1991, 601–3; Abbondanza 2001, 116–8; and König 2009, 260–2 on Gymn. 1, which reads: “As for wisdom, let us consider the following things as examples—things like poetry and speaking artfully and undertaking poetry and music and geom- etry, and even astronomy (when not overdone), and also the art of organizing enemies, and even things such as the following: the whole of medicine and modelling, and all types of sculpting and gem-cutting and metal-engraving” (sofivan hJgwvmeqa kai; ta; toiau`ta mevn, oi|on filosofh`sai kai; eijpei`n su;n tevcnh/, poihtikh`~ te a{yasqai kai; mousikh`~ kai; gewmetriva~, kaiv, nh; Diva, ajstronomiva~, oJpovsh mh; peritthv: sofiva de; kai; to; kosmh`sai stratiavn, kai; e[ti ta; toiau`ta, ijatrikh; pa`sa kai; zwgrafiva kai; plavstai kai; ajgalmavtwn ei[dh kai; koi`loi livqoi kai; koi`lo~ sivdhro~). 61. On the theme, see below, pp. 112–3, 116. The opening association of painting with ajlhvqeia forges another connection with, e.g., VA 2.22, where Apollonius and Damis likewise define painting in terms of its “truthfulness.” 62. On the significance of this transition, see esp. Michel 1974, 465–6: “Philostrats ejpainei`n beschränkt sich nicht auf ein explizites Lob der Technik, der ‘Auffassung’ des Gegenstandes, sondern äußert sich zuerst in dem Bestreben, mit dem lovgo~ des Bildes die jeweils angemess- ene . . . Bildsprache aufzufinden” (466). Squire—Apparitions Apparent 133

63. The best discussion of the opening sentence is Maffei 1991, concluding thatL “ ’esaltazione della sofiva del pittore nel proemio delle Imagines assume dunque uno spessore teorico tutto particolare” (621); other analyses include Michel 1974; Boeder 1996, 145–9; and Abbondanza 2001. For the literary/art historical critical backdrop, cf. Squire 2010c, 72–7 and 2011a, 102–20, esp. 112–1, on the inscribed epigrams of two extant Tabulae Iliacae. 64. For the pun see Lissarrague 1992, as well as Squire 2011a, 235–42 on the graphic games of the Tabulae Iliacae. Ancient commentators could draw explicit attention to the verbal ambiguity, as when Servius glosses the Latin verb perlegere as being synonymous with perspectare at Aen. 6.34. The verb is not incongruous in this context, Servius continues, since in Greek γράψαι may be said to mean both ‘to paint’ and ‘to write,’ (cum graece gravyai et pingere dicatur et scribere [= Thilo and Hagen 1923–1927, 2.11]). Needless to say, Augustine would view and read things differently, as can be seen/read in my opening epigraph. 65. The figures are based on the concordance of Benndorf andS chenkel 1893, 166. By contrast, note how the term zôgraphia, used to refer to painting specifically, is only used in the proem (although the noun ‘painter,’ zôgraphos, is used 22 times). Perhaps most significant of all is the fact that the work’s very final word is graphein at Imag. 2.34.3, sealing the text with the pun (as noted by Boeder 1996, 165; more generally on the ontological play of the final description and sentence, see Elsner 2000a, esp. 253–5). 66. Cf. Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 352: “ ‘Lies die Hyazinthe’: das geht auf den Klageruf ‘Ai ai’, der auf der Hyazinthe zu lesen sein sollte.” 67. “[The things] say that they belong to Aphrodite, and this has been written/painted” (levgei de; Ἀfrodivth~ ei\nai, kai; gevgraptai tou`to, 1.6.7). Where the speaker had earlier instructed the audience to ‘look’ at Aphrodite, we ironically (are now said to) see her through a written/described presence which is itself said to speak, thereby mirroring the ontological games of the Imagines writ large. There are numerous other comparanda. Consider, for example, the painting of Cassandra at 2.10, where the speaker weighs up the resources of tragedy against those of painting (cf. Elsner 2007b), all the while knowing that, like theater itself, this ‘painting/description’ blurs the boundaries between seeing and hearing: “If we scrutinise these things as drama, child, a great tragedy has unfolded in a small space, but if we do so as a painting/description, you will see more in it. For look . . .” (kai; eij me;n wJ~ dra`ma ejxetavzomen, w\ pai`, tau`ta, tetragwv/dhtai megavla ejn smikrw`/, eij d j wJ~ grafhvn, pleivw ejn aujtoi`~ o[yei. skovpei gavr . . . , 2.10.1–2). 68. So, too, in the context of a description of female centaurs, the speaker talks about the “not yet clear form” (ei\do~ ou[pw safev~, 2.3.2) of the depicted infants, incorporating within the tableau the ekphrastic terminology of saphêneia. 69. “Such is the word/speech/story [logos] of the painting,” as Philostratus writes of a picture of the Gyraean rocks, “but the vivid part of it is this” (oJ me;n dh; lovgo~ th`~ grafh`~ ou|to~, to; de; ejnargev~, 2.13.2). In each scenario, the purported “vividness” refers not only to something within the painting, but also to its rhetorical description. In the case of 1.16, moreover, describing the very process of Daedalus forging the literal semblance of a bull, the painterly-cum-literary forms of the “vivid” (ejnargei`~) Cupids themselves give way to a rhetorical instruction to look (skovpei gavr, 1.16.3). 70. For related games in ekphrastic epigram, see Squire 2010b, 81–2 on Anth. Plan. 310. 71. This forms part and parcel of the Imagines’ larger preoccupation with embodied versus disembodied representation, all in the context of these textual dematerializations of pictorial mate- rializations of texts. So it is, for example, that the tableau of Comus pictures Night as something “painted/described not from her body, but from what is going on around her” (gevgraptai de; hJ nu;x oujk ajpo; tou` swvmato~, ajll j ajpo; tou` kairou`, 1.2.1); similarly, a painting/description 134 Helios embodying Aesop’s Fables, itself therefore personifying a text, is said to be “clever” precisely because of its literal personifications of the depicted stories (filosofei` de; hJ grafh; kai; ta; tw`n muvqwn swvmata, 1.3.2). 72. My thinking here has learned from Webb 1997a, 244: “Mais l’effet de l’enargeia verbale n’est, évidemment, que comparable à la sensation. C’est toujours ‘comme si’ l’on voyait. Ce que l’on se figure est une fiction, dans le sens propre, faite à partir de bribes de sensations.” 73. It is no accident that when the Younger Philostratus comes to defend his own Imagines (themselves represented after the absent model of his purported grandfather), he explicitly defends the work in terms of this same theme of ontological presence and presence (cf. below, p. 118). 74. On the Philostratean “Look!” as “the moment of lift-off” when “the exclamation directs the reader not towards the text, or its image, but past them both into another space where presence is alive to all the senses at once (sight, hearing, touch, taste),” the key discussion is Bryson 1994 (quotations from 266 and 273); cf. Fimiani 2006, 211 (“Le ‘regarde!’ instaure une narration de l’impossibilité de toute narration du visible, car il montre l’inénarrable devenir-tache du sujet au sein du tableau même qu’il doit regarder et dire”); Pigeaud 2010, 18–20. More generally on the verbs of seeing in the Imagines, cf. Palazzini 1996, 117, who counts some 64 uses of the present verb oJravw. 75. For earlier discussions, see Conan 1987, 166–7; Elsner 1995, 29–31; 2000a, 259; 2004, 258–9; Boeder 1996, 149–53; Leach 2000, 246–7; Webb 2006a, 124–5; Newby 2009, 326–7. 76. The fact that the very first word of the first sentence of this first tableau begins with a direct address in the second-person singular (e[gnw~) is significant. We move from narrative frame (set in the past) and launch straight into live speech: “Now we are no longer the direct addressees of the Sophist’s conversational, almost confidential, account of his visit. Instead, we are thrust into the background as eavesdroppers on another speech, addressed to a different person, the Boy” (Webb 2006a, 118; cf. Webb 2010, 352). 77. Even this instruction, however, is perhaps more complex than it at first seems (cf. Elsner 1995, 316 note 27). As Bartsch (1989, 20 note 19) observes (following a suggestion of J. J. Winkler), the verb ajpoblevpein might be interpreted as punning on an instruction not only to ‘look away’ but also to ‘gaze at’ the painting more intently: like the intermedial graphê before us, the precise nature of ‘looking’ is always left ambiguous. 78. Cf. Elsner 1995, 30: “In actualising, in substantiating, in embodying the implications of a story, art and its ekphrasis conduct a wholesale transformation of the original narrative”; some of the Iliadic allusions are picked up by Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 273–5. For a similar game, cf. 2.7, where the speaker contrasts the Homeric rendition of the story of Antilochus with the gallery tableau (“Such are the paintings/descriptions of Homer, but the drama of the painter is as follows” [au{tai me;n ou\n Ὁmhvrou grafaiv, to; de; tou` zwgravfou dra`ma, 2.7.2]). 79. The connections between the works have been surprisingly overlooked (cf. Elsner 2000a, 256 note 16, on Birmelin 1934’s “refusal to link the VA with any reference to the Imagines”). For two important correctives, though, see Boeder 1996, 165–70 and Miles 2009, esp. 150 on VA 2.22. 80. Cf. Newby 2009, 328: “So in this one piece Philostratus both advises the search for a text to interpret the image and prevent one being distracted by its visual effects, but also undermines this by playing with the details of the text he has chosen.” To claim, as does Anderson (1986, 264), that “in all such ploys Philostratus is striving to unify literature and art” therefore strikes me as overly simplistic: although, as the Greek title of the work suggests, the Imagines perpetually sketches the semblance of a reconciliation between words and pictures, that promise is itself staked on a knowing awareness of their different medial resources. 81. The opening recourse to Scamander is only one of many allusions to Homer: in addition to Squire—Apparitions Apparent 135

Imag. 1.8.1 and 2.7.1–2 (which are noted by Newby 2009, 328–9), other explicit references include 1.3.1, 1.26.1, 2.2.1, 2.8.1, 2.8.6, 2.28.1, 2.33.2, 2.34.1 (“Das letzte Bild beginnt wie das erste mit einer Erinnerung an Homer”: Boeder 1996, 164); there are also non-explicit allusions to the epic tradition at, e.g., 1.7 (Memnon), 1.27 (Amphiaraus), 2.7 (Antilochus), and 2.13.1 (the death of Ajax). In each case, the Imagines draws upon a rhetorical tradition of depicting Homer as an artist—the “best of painters/describers,” as Lucian nicely puts it (oJ a[risto~ tw`n gravfewn, Imag. 8): cf. Zeitlin 2001, 218–33 and Squire 2011a, 337–41. 82. In this connection, it is worth noting the sheer diversity of generic paradigms that are united in Philostratus’s single ekphrastic text—not only the literary traditions of epic, but also tragedy (e.g., 1.18, 2.4, 2.10; cf. Elsner 2007b), lyric (2.12), pastoral (cf. Squire 2009, 342–8 on 2.18), geography (1.12–3, 2.14, 2.17), and history (2.9, 2.31), among others. Where different literary genres resorted to ekphrasis as a transgeneric rhetorical trope, in other words, the Imagines turns the practice inside out: in this encyclopedic gallery, ekphrasis is depicted/described as containing and subsuming all genres within it. 83. On this aspect of the Imagines, and explicit discussion of it by ancient commentators, see esp. Webb 2006a, 113–9, drawing on Webb 1992. 84. Cf. Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 403–7, now supplemented by Cannatà Fera 2010, 375–84. 85. For preliminary discussion, see Tatum 1989, 21–2. But the particular trope of viewing the soul taps into larger discourses about the promise and failure of mimêsis, as well as the rhetorical trope of “ensouled logos” (e[myuco~ lovgo~; cf. Hunter 2012, 24–7 on, e.g., Phdr. 276A). One of the ultimate debts is Xenophon, Mem. 3.10, where Socrates and Parrhasius discuss the limits of visible replication in terms of the invisible properties of the soul (cf. the bibliography cited above, note 36). In his Progymasmata discussion of ekphrasis, moreover, Nicolaus explicitly talks about ekphra sis’s capacity to make a speech “ensouled” (e[myuco~: Felten 1913, 69), and we find the same theme as a favourite topos in Hellenistic ekphrastic epigram (see Squire 2010a, 605–10 and 2010b, 77–82). In the case of Philostratus’s tableau, the description ends by returning to the grander philosophical stakes: the speaker summons up the image of Pantheia’s eyes (tou;~ ojfqalmouv~), which are said to give an impression of her soul (th`~ yuch`~, 2.9.5), thereby recalling the terms in which Parrhasius and Socrates discuss the image of the eyes (ta; o[mmata) as a way of rendering the invisible properties of the soul at Xenophon, Mem. 3.10. But there is still more going on here, I think. This is reflected in the apparent interplay with Lucian’s Imagines (for the claim of “brilliant and high-octane intertextuality,” cf. Elsner 2004, 182 note 10). In his short dialogic skit, Lucian reports a conversation between Lycinus and Polystratus, who vie with one another in their rival attempts to describe the image of the emperor’s wife, also called “Pantheia” (she is never named explicitly, only identified with teasing reference to Xeno- phon’s text: Lucian, Imag. 10, 20). Like Philostratus, Lucian uses the occasion to deliver a sophisticated representation of the ontological challenges of ekphrastic representation (cf. Steiner 2001, 295–306; Cistaro 2009, 113–47): after Lycinus’s lengthy ekphrastic description of a woman modelled after (ekphrases of) artworks, Polystratus is said to recognize the subject as the emperor’s wife; but, Polystratus complains, Lycinus has described only Pantheia’s outward appearance, “blind to the inner beauties of her soul” (tw`n de; th`~ yuch`~ ajgaqw`n ajqevato~: Lucian, Imag. 11). Polys- tratus subsequently offers a rival description, setting out to “paint/describe an image of her soul” (tivna eijkovna grayavmeno~ th`~ yuch`~, Imag. 12). In Philostratus’s (description of a) painting, by contrast, the image is said to depict the soul—precisely what, we are told, Xenophon failed to represent through his description. 86. Cf. Platt 2011, 309–10. Here, as elsewhere, the term sovfisma refers readers back to the 136 Helios proem’s opening declaration of the shared sofiva of painting and poetry (praef.1; cf. Pigeaud 2010, 28–30). The subjects of sofiva and its cognates recur in the proem, not only in the first sentence but throughout its discussion of the purported gallery (praef.1: sofivan, sofizevsqai, sofoiv; praef.2: sofizevtai; praef.3: sofivan; praef.4: sofiav). We subsequently find it to be a recurring theme amid the tableaux, so that in each case the sofiva of the painting reflects the sofiva of the speaker responding to it, and vice versa: 1.3.2 (sofou`); 1.4.2 (sovfisma); 1.7.3 (sofivsmati); 1.9.1 (sofhv); 1.9.5 (sofivan); 1.9.6 (sofiva); 1.10.1 (sovfisma); 1.11.1 (sofoi`~); 1.15.1 (sofaiv); 1.16.1 (sofivsasqai); 1.16.2 (sofivan); 1.20.2 (sofwvtato~); 1.23.2 (sofoiv); 1.23.3 (sovfisma); 1.24.1 (sofistaiv); 1.26.5 (sofiva); 1.27.1 (sofov~); 1.30.3 (sofiva~); 2.1.1 (sofhv); 2.1.2 (sofiva); 2.6.2 (sofwvtata); 2.7.1 (sofisamevnou); 2.8.2 (oujde; a[sofon); 2.8.3 (sofivzetai); 2.12.1 (aiJ sofaiv); 2.16.3 (sofou`); 2.16.3 (sofovn); 2.17.8 (sesofismevnou); 2.20.2 (sofovn); 2.20.2 (sofiva~); 2.27.3 (sofwtevrou~); 2.29.3 (sofivan); 2.31.1 (sofovn); 2.33.1 (sofivan); 2.33.1 (sofhv); 2.34.1 (sofhv). 87. Cf. Newby 2009, 335: “[T]he effect of this close looking takes us into a fantasy world where everything is Greek, even where we might not expect it to be.” But this is not always the case. In a painting of Themistocles, for instance, we find a Greek text telling of an image which itself represents people listening to a non-Greek speech. In this case, we are invited to look at the eyes of those listening to Themistocles speaking in Persian: I“ f you do not believe this, look at the listening audience and at how their eyes indicate that they easily understand him” (eij d j ajpistei`~, o{ra tou;~ ajkouvonta~, wJ~ eujxuvneton ejpishmaivnousi toi`~ o[mmasin). To hear Themistocles, in short, one has to look (or better, to look at those looking at Themistocles talking); indeed, the audience is encouraged to “see how the posture of his face resembles that of those who speak” (o{ra kai; to;n Qemistokleva th;n me;n tou` proswvpou stavsin paraplhvsion toi`~ levgousi), even though Themistocles’ eyes reveal a hesitancy that indicates the newly learnt language (2.31.2). 88. For the frequently repeated trope of hearing paintings in the Imagines, see esp. Manieri 1999, 115–16, citing, e.g., 1.2.5, 1.9.3, 1.17.1, 1.25.2, 2.1.2, 2.4.2, 2.5.5. But the concordance of Benndorf and Schenkel 1893 catalogues some 27 instances of the verb ajkouvein in the Elder Philostratus’s Imagines alone. A variety of ekphrastic games follow: as the speaker puts it before a painting of Hippolytus (itself evoked in terms highly redolent of Euripides’ play), the painting makes sounds before our eyes, “unless you do not hear the painting/description” (eij mh; parakouvei~ th`~ grafh`~, 2.4.2); in a painting of Hippodeameia, moreover, the speaker tells how “you will perhaps hear” the men shouting at Oenomaus (ajkouvei~ gavr pou, 1.17.1). On the related ways in which ekphrastic epigram attributes speech to its subjects, see, e.g., Gutzwiller 2002; Petro- vic 2005; Männlein-Robert 2007a and 2007b, esp. 154–86; Tueller 2008; Squire 2010a, esp. 608–16 and 2010b, esp. 86–8. For the specific late antique contestation of vision and voice, however, see Boeder 1996 and Agosti 2006. 89. Lesky (1940, 53) nicely describes the cultural framework in terms of “das freie Spiel des Logos mit dem Kunstwerk.” For an introductory discussion, see, e.g., Squire 2009, 239–47 (with further references), as well as the overviews in Benediktson 2001, 162–88 and Borg 2004b. 90. Cf. above note 59. As the opening of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe puts it, punning on the dual sense of graphein, the novel “writes/paints back to the writing/painting” that opens it (ajntigravyai th`/ grafh`/). Also important is the opening of Heliodorus’s Aethiopica, which does not evoke an artwork but nonetheless describes ‘real’ scenes as if depicted (cf. Whitmarsh 2002). 91. For discussions of Lucian’s On the Hall, see esp. Goldhill 2000, 44–52; Newby 2002a and 2002b, 118–34; Thomas 2007, 229–33; Webb 2009, 172–4 (“[Lucian] discusses the issues raised by the idea of achieving sight through words in general and in particular by the epideictic practice of describing and praising sights which were present to the audience”). For Lucian’s On Images, see now Cistaro 2009, along with Maffei 1994 (on Lucianic ekphrasis more generally). Squire—Apparitions Apparent 137

92. On the sophos theatês, see Goldhill 1994 and 1996, 21–4, along with Goldhill 2001, 157–67 on the cultural connections with the pepaideumenos theatês of the Second Sophistic. For the Imag- ines’ explicit and recurrent concern with sophia, see above note 86. 93. Cf. Elsner 2004, 164–71, discussing 1.13.9, 1.16.4, 1.21, and 1.23: “In so many ekphrases in the Philostrati, the gaze itself appears to become the subject of the description, taking on its Laca- nian form as an object . . . in its own right” (168); cf. also Michele Cometa’s concluding essay in Carbone 2008, 125–30. There are numerous glances at the eyes and their look in the Imagines, among them 1.7.2, 1.11.4, 1.14.1, 1.22.2, 2.1.4, 2.5.4, 2.8.2 (“You would say that the eyes of Meles were looking over some poetic theme” [ei[poi~ a]n tou; ojfqalmou;~ tou` Mevlhto~ ajnaskopei`n ti tw`n poihtikw`n]), 2.9.6, 2.17.9, 2.18.4, 2.21.2, 2.31.2, 2.34.3. This interest in the subjective look explains why so many objects in the gallery are themselves furnished with eyes: from the figurative “yellow eyes” (xanqoi`~ toi`~ ojfqalmoi`~, 1.10.2) which adorn the image of Amphion’s lyre, to the pirate ship of 1.19.3, which “seems to see through the grim eyes on its prow” (blosuroi`~ de; kata; prw`/ran ojfqalmoi`~ oi|on blevpei); indeed, even the gallery itself is described as actively looking (as opposed to something to be passively looked at), “gazing out over the Tyrrhenian sea” (ajforw`sa ej~ to; Turrhniko;n pevlago~, praef.4). 94. See Squire 2009, 416–28; cf. Blanchard 1986, 133–41 and Bryson 1990, 17–30. For the wider tradition of xenia in the context of “realismo illusionistico fra retorica, iconografia e letteratura,” see now the independent analysis of Moretti 2010, 347–54, discussing the Philostratean tableaux at 350–4. 95. Cf. Pollitt 1974, 125–38, although I find Pollitt’s (63–7) association of this trait with “popular criticism” somewhat problematic. 96. The key discussion is Manieri 1999, now supplemented by Alexandre 2011, esp. 62–70; cf., e.g., Schönberger and Kalinka 1968, 49–51; Anderson 1986, 262–5 (on the illusions); Leach 2000, 248–50; and Michele Cometa’s discussion in Carbone 2008, 121–2. More generally on ekphrastic synesthesia, the classic discussion is Laird 1993. 97. Compare similar citations of music at 1.6.2, 1.12.5, 1.14.4, 2.1.2; other sounds are cited by Lissarrague in his introduction to Bougot 2004, 120 note 20 (1.3.5, 1.6.2, 1.9.3–4, 1.12.5, 1.17.1, 1.19.1, 1.23.2, 1.25.2, 2.4.2). 98. For the significance of the description, cf. Manieri 1999, 117. The phrasing might remind us of Vitruvius’s condemnation of what modern scholarship has interpreted as the “Third Style” of Pompeian wall painting, which represents “things that are not, are not able to be, nor have been” (haec autem nec sunt nec fieri possunt nec fuerunt, Vitruvius 7.5.4; for a bibliographic guide to the much discussed passage, see Elsner 1995, 323 note 40). 99. Manieri (1999, 116) cites numerous other examples: 2.1.2, 2.26.3, 2.27.3, 2.33.3; others can be added (in addition to 1.2.4 and 1.6.1), e.g., 1.5.1, 1.31.2, 2.2.3, 2.31.1. 100. For discussion, see Squire 2009, 422–3, discussing Imag. 1.31. Cf. too Imag. 1.20.2, on a painted satyr who (says that he) “tastes the breath” of Olympus (ajpogeuvsasqai tou` pneuvmato~). 101. Imag. 2.1.1: “But the goddess is unwilling to seem painted/described, and she stands out as though she could be taken hold of” (ajll j ouj bouvletai gegravfqai dokei`n hJ qeov~, e[kkeitai de; oi{a labevsqai); there is an excellent discussion of the combined epiphanic-cum-ekphrastic stakes in Platt 2011, 1–7. 102. Cf. also a described painting of a centaur whose body is said to elude the eyes (diafeuvfein tou;~ ojfqalmouv~, 2.2.4) through its combination of different forms: the true wonder (qau`ma) of the painting, opines the speaker, is not the equation of equine and human bodies, but rather the seamless juncture between the two. 138 Helios

103. Other paintings explicitly evaluate the importance of mimêsis, not least 1.9.5–6 (cf. Conan 1987, 164): to praise the represented goats and sheep, or even the musical pipes and players, would be to “praise a small part of the graphê and one that has solely to do with mimêsis, but we would not be praising its wisdom or its appropriateness, which seem the most important aspects of the craftsmanship” (smirko;n ejpainesovmeqa th`~ grafh`~ kai; o{son eij~ mivmhsin h{kei, sofivan de; oujk ejpainesovmeqa, oujde; kairovn, a} dh; kravtista dokei` th`~ tevcnh~, 1.9.5); cf. also 1.2.4 on a crown of flowers. 104. For discussions, cf. Conan 1987, 163; Elsner 1995, 33–5 and 2004, 171–4; Boeder 1996, 167–9; Newby 2009, 340–1; Pigeaud 2010, 27–8; Webb 2010, 361–2; Baumann 2011, 69–76. 105. As Boeder (1996, 169) nicely puts it in the context of this passage, “Gemalte Bilder werden lebendig, Wirklichkeit wird ein gemaltes Bild.” 106. At one point, moreover, the talking speaker urges his audience that they speak with hushed voice lest their chatter wakes (the image of) a sleeping satyr (1.22.1): “The satyr sleeps, and let us speak of him with bated breath so that he does not wake and spoil what we see” (kaqeuvdei oJ Savturo~, kai; uJfeimevnh/ th`/ fwnh`/ peri; aujtou` levgwmen, mh; ejxegeivrhtai kai; dialuvsh/ ta; oJrwvmena). It is a virtuoso detail: if the represented painting is said to hear the image of us talking and listening, the very act of responding risks dissolving “the things that are seen” within the picture. 107. Plato, Phdr. 275D: “This, Phaedrus, is what is strange about writing, and what makes it truly analogous to painting. The creatures that painting begets stand in front of us as though they were living entities; ask them a question, however, and they maintain a most majestic silence. The same holds true with words: you might think that they speak intelligently, but ask them a question, wishing to find out what they speak about, and they go on signalling only one and the same thing forever” (deino;n gavr pou, w\ Fai`dre, tou`t j e[cei grafhv, kai; wJ~ ajlhqw`~ o{moion zwgrafiva/. kai; ga;r ta; ejkeivnh~ e[gkona e[sthke me;n wJ~ zw`nta, eja;n d j ajnevrh/ ti, semnw`~ pavnu siga`/. taujto;n de; kai; oiJ lovgoi: dovxai~ me;n a]n w{~ ti fronou`nta~ aujtou;~ levgein, eja;n dev ti e[rh/ tw`n legomevnwn boulovmeno~ maqei`n, e{n ti shmaivnei movnon taujto;n ajeiv). For discussion, see esp. Männlein-Robert 2007b, 30–1, 154–7. 108. Cf. Mathieu-Castellani 1996, 94 (on Imag. 1.8): “Voici une image que l’on pourrait dire inter-active, sur laquelle pourrait agir le regard ou la voix du spectateur.” 109. Cf. McCombie 2002, 152: “[Philostratus’s] textual narration is an interpretation and therefore a representation, a mimetic process that produces from the painting another artifact. That artifact is his text and has its own hermeneutic requirement, of which in the device of the internal audience he shows an acute awareness.” On the epideictic backdrop, see Kennedy 1974; Pernot 1993, 441–3; Webb 2009, 188. More generally on declamation as sophistic performance, see Rus- sell 1983, esp. 74–86, as well as Patillon 1988, esp. 302–3; Webb 2006b and 2009, 176–8 on the multiple layering of audiences. 110. Cf. Elsner 2004, 174 on Imag. 1.28: “Whatever the purported painting looked like, it has undoubtedly been as much occluded as exposed, as much suppressed as made explicit, in a dialogue that has more to do with the speaker’s dramatizations of his own failure and success to penetrate the painted surface than it has to do with giving the painting a descriptive space.” 111. The key discussion is Elsner 1996 (revised in Elsner 2007a, 132–76); cf. Conan 1987, 167–8; Bann 1989, 108–13; Beall 1993, 361–2; Boeder 1996, 153–61; Frontisi-Ducroux and Ver- nant 1997, 225–30; Heffernan 1999, 22–3; Elsner 2004, 170–1 and 2007b, 325–6; Webb 2006a, 128–32; 2009, 188–9; 2010, 359–61; Baumann 2011, 1–9. On the ways in which Imperial Roman wall paintings explored the same underlying themes—especially, in one case, through the addition Squire—Apparitions Apparent 139 of an inscribed Greek couplet (in the “Casa di Properzio” at Assisi)—cf. Squire 2009, 270–3, along now with Valladares 2011. 112. The layering of replications is brilliantly discussed in Elsner 2007a, 149: “If, to paraphrase Philostratus, the pool paints Narcissus and the painting represents both the pool and the tragedy of Narcissus’ viewing, then the description repaints the painting, the pool, and the tragedy as a vision in the listener’s or reader’s mind.” I would only posit an additional level of complexity, whereby the (dis)simulation of reader posing as listener further reflects and refracts the depicted replicative theme. 113. Cf. Elsner 1995, 38: “Like the circularity of the Narcissus description (1.23) . . . we are in a circle (or in a series of reflecting mirrors) in which the text’s notion of ‘reality’ is caught.” 114. For similar concerns with ‘truth’ amid the descriptions, see, e.g., 1.6.2 (ajlhqhv~), 1.12.5 (ajlhvqeian), 1.27.2 (ajlhqestevrou~), 1.27.3 (ajlhqou`~), 2.6.1 (ajlhqeiva~), 2.28.3 (ajlhvqeian). Still more revealing is the description of personified Truth herself (Ἀlhvqeia) at 1.27.3. 115. Cf. above note 86. 116. For the philosophical backdrop here, see Graziani 2006, 137–9 (“étymologiquement, le verbe eidô nomme à la fois l’acte de voir et l’opération mentale qui en découle”: 138). The key discussion remains Snell 1924. 117. On the significance of the term here, cf. Pugliara 2004, 13–4. 118. Praef.4: “The deception inherent in this is sweet and bears no reproach. For to stand in front of things which do not exist as if they did exist, and to be led by them into thinking them into existence: since no harm comes from this, surely this is a suitable and faultless mode of beguile- ment?” (hJdei`a de; kai; hJ ejn aujtw`/ ajpavth kai; oujde;n o[neido~ fevrousa: to; ga;r toi`~ oujk ou\sin wJ~ ou\si prosestavnai kai; a[gesqai uJp j aujtw`n, wJ~ ei\nai nomivzein, ajf jou| blavbo~ oujdevn, pw`~ ouj yucagwgh`sai iJkano;n kai; aijtiva~ ejktov~…). Webb (2009, 189) writes: “These remarks apply equally to the reader’s own involvement in the whole scene in the gallery, in the dynamic of communication between non-existent Sophist and non-existent boy.” But they also return to the critical language of theorizing ekphrasis, phantasia, and enargeia, placing the objects of representation in an ontological paradox between presence and absence. The Imagines of the Younger Philostratus are ripe for reappraisal. Philostratus’s playful mimêsis of his purported grandfather’s text has always been seen as unoriginal and uncreative (cf., e.g., Friedländer 1912, 90, who, after treating Philostratus the Elder, simply declares “übergehen wir, wie billig, die Nachahmer Philostrats, den jüngeren Namensvetter und den Kallistratos . . .”); to my eyes, however, the rippling mises-en- abîme are precisely what make the text so interesting. 119. Hence, for example, the Younger Philostratus’s construction of his internal audience: where his purported grandfather had constructed a narrative around the conceit of address, the Younger Philostratus simply instructs readers to imagine the audience: “Let someone be supposed . . .” (e[stw ti~ uJpokeivmeno~, praef.7). 120. On Philostratus the Younger, Imag. 10, see Squire 2011a, 331–3 and 2013, esp. 163–6. For some examples of verbal reminiscences between the Elder and Younger Philostrati, see Elsner 2004, 184 note 33. 121. Cf. Onians 1999, 217–78, esp. 261: “Not only was it inherent in this visual imagination that it did not need to be limited by the reality of what was presented to the eyes, it was actually desirable for one to be able to do imagine the exaggerated and the false . . . As art becomes less descriptive, the accounts of art become more so.” 122. Elsner (2000b) provides one of the best discussions. 123. Cf., e.g., Elsner 2000a and Ghedini 2004, pace, e.g., Beaujour 1981, 31: “The word-pictures 140 Helios merely frame and transform into prose well-known poetic texts, so that the pictorial medium’s ability to encode specific information is quite left out.” 124. Sincere thanks to the three guest-editors and anonymous reviewer of this volume for their patience, corrections, and suggestions, not only with regard to this article, but also in connection with a related research project on Greek epigram, originally presented at the 2008 Cork conference. As ever, I am also grateful to Jaś Elsner for sharing so many ideas about Philostratus; to John Henderson and Jonas Grethlein for their generous comments; and to Luca Giuliani for our Imagines-led conversations in Berlin between 2008 and 2010. II. Narrative

Hesiod and the Divine Gaze

Helen Lovatt

The Hesiodic universe seems like a surveillance society. Under the controlling, assaultive, and all-pervasive imperial gaze of Zeus, men, women, monsters, and other gods struggle to take a share of control in their own narratives by violence, deception, and evasion.1 The following passage from the Works and Days depicts a legion of immortal spies keeping a sinister (or is it reassuring?) eye on the moral actions of kings and judges:

w\ basilh`~, uJmei`~ de; katafravzesqe kai; aujtoi; thvnde divkhn: ejggu;~ ga;r ejn ajnqrwvpoisin ejovnte~ ajqavnatoi fravzontai, o{soi skolih`/si divkh/sin ajllhvlou~ trivbousi qew`n o[pin oujk ajlevgonte~. tri;~ ga;~ muvrioiv eijsin ejpi; cqoni; pouluboteivrh/ ajqavnatoi Zhno;~ fuvlake~ qnhtw`n ajnqrwvpwn. oi{ rJa fulavssousivn te divka~ kai; scevtlia e[rga, hjevra eJssavmenoi, pavnth/ foitw`nte~ ejp j ai\an. (Op. 248–55)

As for you kings, too, ponder this justice yourselves. For among human beings there are immortals nearby who observe all those who grind one another down with crooked judgements and have no care for divine retribution. For three times ten thousand are Zeus’s immortal guardians of mortal men upon the bounteous earth. They watch out for judgements and wicked deeds, clad in invisibility, walking everywhere upon the earth.

This passage introduces many of the themes of this paper: it conveys a sense of the power of immortals over mortals; the poet aligned with Zeus, attempting to hold power over kings, who in turn take power over society; of watchers unseen; and of divine punishment associated with divine viewing. It also shows well the slippage between vision and knowledge that is so important in Greek language and culture.2 This article investigates the theme of vision and power in the Hesiodic poems, and is an offshoot of my project on vision in epic from Homer to Nonnus, The Epic Gaze.3 In this project, I start from the classic article of Mulvey 1975 to explore a number of visual phenomena in epic: the ever-present divine spectators; prophetic visions and blind prophets; the women on the walls; ekphrasis as a way of secluding

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 143 144 Helios and objectifying the Other; the beautiful body of the hero; the blazing eyes of berserk heroes; visual confrontations and battles of the gaze; and monuments as visual signs. Modern analysis of genre, and of the Latin reception of Hesiod, sees a stronger distinction between didactic and narrative epic than is apparent in archaic epos.4 In the tradition of narrative epic, Hesiod is an ambivalent presence: highly influential, yet always on the sidelines.5 TheIliad in particular is such an important code model that other streams of Greek epos seem not to be epic at all. In this paper I explore the Hesiodic poems in the light of my ongoing research on vision in epic, and compare Hesiodic visions with those of the Iliad in particular, and different parts of the Hesiodic corpus with each other.6 One of the biggest differences between the Homeric and Hesiodic poems is their treatment of the divine audience. In the Iliad, the gods often are watching the events of the siege at Troy as a group, and engaging in vigorous disagreement with each other about them, just as the Danaans watch the chariot race at Iliad 23.448–98 and argue about the likely outcome.7 This connection is self-consciously underlined by the simile at 22.162–6, which compares the race between Hector and Achilles to games, and the watching gods implicitly to the audience at the games.8 The gods can be seen as a model for the readers of epic.9 In Hesiod, however, the gods are rarely given the chance to sit back and enjoy a show. The ultimate spectacle of the Titanomachy (Theog. 674–86) appears (e[fainon, 677) but has no one to watch it. The cosmos itself feels rather than sees the battle; trembling, shuddering, and groaning are the order of the day:

oi} tovte Tithvnessi katevstaqen ejn daῒ lugrh`/ pevtra~ hjlibavtou~ stibarh`/~ ejn cersi;n e[xonte~: Tith`ne~ d j eJtevrwqen ejkartuvnanto favlagga~ profronevw~: ceirw`n te bivh~ q j a{ma e[rgon e[fainon ajmfovteroi, deino;n de; perivace povnto~ ajpeivrwn, gh` de; mevg j ejsmaravghsen, ejpevstene d j oujrano;~ eujru;~ seiovmeno~, pedovqen de; tinavsseto makro;~ Ὄlumpo~ rJiph`/ u{p j ajqanavtwn, e[nosi~ d j i{kane bareià tavrtaron hjeroventa podw`n aijpeiàv t j ijwh; ajspevtou ijwcmoiò bolavwn te krateravwn. w}~ a[r j ejp j ajllhvloi~ i{esan bevlea stonoventa: fwnh; d j ajmfotevrwn i{ket j oujrano;n ajsteroventa keklomevnwn: oiJ de; xuvnisan megavlw/ ajlalhtw`/. (Theog. 674–86)

They took up their positions against the Titans in baleful conflict, holding enormous boulders in their massive hands; and on the other side the Titans zealously reinforced their battle ranks. Both sides manifested the deed of hands and of LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 145

strength together. The boundless ocean echoed terribly around them, and the great earth crashed, and the broad sky groaned in response as it was shaken, and high Olympus trembled from its very bottom under the rush of the immortals, and a deep shuddering from their feet reached murky Tartarus, and the shrill sound of the immense charge and of the mighty casts. And in this way they hurled their painful shafts against one another; and the noise of both sides reached the starry sky as they shouted encouragement, and they ran towards one another with a great war-cry. (Translation by Most 2006)

Visual elements in the whole battle are very much secondary to sound effects.10 And who could watch this battle anyway, given that the whole cosmos is involved?11 In the Iliad the tumult going up into the sky forms an act of communication with the divine audience, the noise calling for their visual attention; in the Theogony the cosmos echoes, but no one within the text is there to hear it. When Zeus fights Typhoeus later on in the Theogony, the fireworks are more prominently on display, though there is a similar emphasis on sound and fury, and there is at least an audience, if only from the underworld:12

treve d j Ἀivdh~ ejnevroisi katafqimevnoisin ajnavsswn Tith`nev~ q j uJpotartavrioi Krovnon ajmfi;~ ejovnte~ ajsbevstou kelavdoio kai; aijnh`~ dhioth`to~. (Theog. 850–2)

And Hades, who rules over the dead below, was afraid, and the Titans under Tartarus, gathered around Cronus, at the inextinguishable din and dread battle- strife. (Translation by Most 2006)

The audience from hell is the closest we come to a divine audience in the Theogony, barring Zeus on his own, and it consists of Zeus’s defeated enemies from earlier in the poem, along with the dead. Even this audience does not actually watch the battle, but responds rather to the sounds that filter down from above. The Homeric scenes of multiple gods watching and responding to events below are replaced in the Hesiodic schema with the sole and pervasive visual power of Zeus.13 I have made the negative point that Hesiod’s subject matter, in contrast to the Iliad, is not a spectacle for a divine audience, partly because his most spectacular poem (the Theogony) takes the gods as its main protagonists. Perhaps also it reflects a different theological perspective, one that takes the gods, Zeus especially, a great deal more seriously than the Iliad.14 Visual power, however, remains very important in the Theogony, as well as in the Works and Days and the Shield. Zeus in particular possesses visual power, if in a different sense: the power of correctly observing, understanding, and revealing. The theme of deception, revelation, 146 Helios and concealment comes up again and again, in the power struggles between gods and Titans, gods and gods, even gods and men (Cairns 2002). In the struggle for power between Cronus and Rhea (and ultimately Zeus), deception and sharp observation compete. Cronus’s strategy of swallowing his children in order to contain their power requires constant watchfulness: tw`/ o{ g j a[r j oujk ajlaoskopih;n e[cen, ajlla; dokeuvwn É pai`da~ eJou;~ katevpine (For this reason then he held no unseeing watch but observed closely and swallowed down his children, Theog. 466–7). Is this the ultimate consumptive gaze? Or is it a prefiguring of the deception to come?15 The battle between Zeus and Cronus is entirely displaced onto the moment of his birth, so that Zeus’s first victory becomes Rhea’s victory, a victory of Mh`ti~ and concealment (lelavqoito, 471, 474–6). Ironically the mechanism of her escape from Cronus’s observation is hidden from the reader: she literally removes herself to Crete and somehow is able to put a stone into his hands rather than the baby:

to;n tovq j eJlw;n ceivressin eJh;n ejskavtqeto nhduvn, scevtlio~, oujd j ejnovhse meta; fresivn, w{~ oiJ ojpivssw ajnti; livqou eJo;~ uiJo;~ ajnivkhto~ kai; ajkhdh;~ leivpeq j, o{ min tavc j e[melle bivh/ kai; cersi; damavssa~ timh`~ ejxelavan, oJ d j ejn ajqanavtoisin ajnavxein. (Theog. 487–91)

He seized this with his hands and put it down into his belly—cruel one, nor did he know in his spirit that in place of the stone his son remained hereafter, unconquered and untroubled, who would overpower him with force and his own hands, and would soon drive him out from his honor and be king among the immortals.

The mh`ti~ of Gaia and the concealment of Rhea make Zeus’s first victory visual, deceptive, and feminine.16 Cronus’s failure is one of observation, of realization: ejnovhse is a key word of divine observation in the Iliad, often linking together vision and understanding.17 Knowing, vision, and embodiment come together here; Cronus should have felt the stone in his guts, just as he should have noticed that it was a stone and not a baby.18 Further, Zeus’s victory is sealed by the gift of “thunder and the blazing thunderbolt and the lightning,” which had previously been concealed by Gaia (Theog. 503–5). Zeus’s next feat is also characterized by a (probably) visual epithet: as he hurls the Titan Menoetius into Erebus, he is called “far-seeing” (eujruvopa, 514).19 This key word underlines the visual construction of Zeus’s supreme power. The larger episode of his power struggle with men represented by the immortal Prometheus is also a visual battle of deception and concealment.20 At lines 550–2, a mini-battle LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 147 of the gaze is staged between Zeus and Prometheus, in which, contrary to many other versions of the myth, Zeus sees through his deception:21

fh` rJa dolofronevwn: Zeu;~ d j a[fqita mhvdea eijdw;~ gnw` rJ j oujd j hjgnoivhse dovlon: kaka; d j o[sseto qumw`/ qnhtoi`~ ajnqrwvpoisi, ta; kai; televesqai e[melle. cersi; d j o{ g j ajmfotevrh/sin ajneivleto leuko;n a[leifar, cwvsato de; frevna~ ajmfiv, covlo~ dev min i{keto qumovn, wJ~ i[den ojsteva leuka; boo;~ dolivh/ ejpi; tevcnh/. (Theog. 550–5)

So he spoke, plotting deception. But Zeus, who knows eternal counsels, Recognised the deception and did not fail to perceive it; and he saw in his spirit evils For mortal men—ones that were going to be fulfilled, too. With both hands he grasped the white fat And he became enraged in his breast and wrath came upon his spirit, When he saw the ox’s white bones, the result of the deceptive craft. (Translation by Most 2006)

Here words of understanding and seeing are mixed up together. Zeus knows and perceives what is going on, but the word of seeing (o[sseto qumw`/) is applied to the one moment that cannot literally have involved seeing: his foreknowledge of the unspecified evils that would befall people.22 Zeus appears not to see through the fat to the bones, but in actuality we can see through his pretence of being deceived to see with him the bad things awaiting humankind in the future. This play on knowing and seeing might be strengthened by an etymological allusion in eijdwv~ and i[dein.23 At the moment of revelation another verb of seeing underscores the emotional impact of the deception, apparently contradicting his earlier omniscience. Zeus’s visual power seems to be compromized still further by Prometheus’s theft of fire. The moment of deception and the moment of Zeus’s realization are linked when the fire is described as a “far-seen gleam” (thlevskopon aujghvn) at 566 and 569, emphasizing the way Zeus both did and did not see it—first when it was concealed in the hollow fennel stalk and then when it is revealed from afar on the earth among men. Even Zeus, despite his enormous visual power, is able to be affected by what he sees, even if not actually vulnerable through viewing.24 Continuing through the Theogony, Zeus holds a frighteningly literal assaultive gaze. The term assaultive gaze is used in film theory to describe a visual connection that leads to violence and killing, exemplified by the film Peeping Tom, in which a serial killer wields a camera with a spike for the skewering of victims (Clover 1992). In the Iliad the line of sight often structures battle narratives and leads from 148 Helios one killing to another (see, e.g., Slatkin 2007, 19–20). Achilles and Hector share a blazing gaze and the ability to clear the field by visual terror alone; Achilles in particular becomes metaphorically fire, star, and thunderbolt.25 In the Theogony this assaultive gaze is particularly prominent in Zeus’s battle with Typhoeus; but already in the Titanomachy the victory is one of fire over sight:

tou;~ d j a[mfepe qermo;~ ajutmh; Tith`na~ cqonivou~, flo;x d j aijqevra diàn i{kanen a[speto~, o[sse d j a[merde kai; ijfqivmwn per ejovntwn aujgh; marmaivrousa keraunou` te steroph`~ te. kau`ma de; qespevsion kavtecen Cavo~: ei[sato d j a[nta ojfqalmoi`sin ijdei`n hjd j ou[asin o[ssan ajkou`sai au[tw~, wJ~ o{te Gaià kai; Oujrano;~ eujru;~ u{perqe pivlnato: toiò~ gavr ke mevga~ uJpo; dou`po~ ojrwvrei, th`~ me;n ejreipomevnh~, tou` d j uJyovqen ejxeripovnto~: tovsso~ dou`po~ e[gento qew`n e[ridi xuniovntwn. (Theog. 696–705)

The hot blast encompassed the earthly Titans, and an immense blaze reached the divine aether, and the brilliant gleam of the lightning bolt and flash blinded their eyes, powerful though they were. A prodigious conflagration took possession of Chasm; and to look upon it with eyes and to hear its sound with ears, it seemed just as when Earth and broad Sky approached from above; for this was the kind of great sound that would rise up as she was pressed down and as he pressed her down from on high—so great a sound was produced as the gods ran together in strife.

This passage is the climax of the Titanomachy, when Zeus finally lets go, and walks forward, all thunderbolts blazing. Fire is the chosen means of destruction and so it is inevitably visual; it is particularly noticeable that this is the last mention of the Titans before the description of them defeated (716–20). The visual battle seems to stand in for the actual battle; they are blinded, even though they are strong.26 The connection of these two phrases suggests that blinding them deprives them of their strength. Another comparison with a parallel in the Iliad is revealing.27 At 13.339–44, there is the same idea of blinding (West 1966, 352):

e[frixen de; mavch fqisivmbroto~ ejgceivh/si makrh/`~, a}~ ei\con tamesivcroa~: o[sse d j a[merden aujgh; calkeivh koruvqwn a[po lampomenavwn qwrhvkwn te neosmhvktwn sakevwn te faeinw`n LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 149

ejrcomevnwn a[mudi~: mavla ken qrasukavrdio~ ei[h o}~ tovte ghqhvseien ijdw;n povnon oujd j ajkavcoito.

The battle where men perish shuddered now with the long Man-tearing spears they held in their hands, their eyes were blinded In the dazzle of the bronze light from the glittering helmets, From the burnished corselets and the shining shields as men came on In confusion. That man would have to be very bold-hearted Who could be cheerful and not stricken looking on that struggle.

This passage describes the reaction to the aristeiai of Idomeneus and Meriones, stirred up by Poseidon to defend the ships. The armor blinds the enemy. It is as if Idomeneus and Meriones become avatars of Zeus: at 242–4, Idomeneus in his armor is compared to a thunderbolt from Zeus; at 330, he becomes a flame. How- ever, in the Iliadic passage this is one aspect of one battle, not the climactic moment of one of the most important in the poem. The blinding of the Trojans does not seem to have any specific effect; in fact, they all continue fighting, whereas Zeus’s blinding of the Titans in the Theogony seems to cause, or immediately anticipate, their defeat. In the Iliad, too, there is another more distant viewer, a notional audience, as it were, other than those actually involved in the battle, whose horror offers a model response to the battle as a whole. Yet surely we should be more horrified at Hesiod’s description, in which the whole cosmos seems about to fall to pieces. Hesiod’s audience is rather encouraged, through both vision and sound, to relate the description to an image of cosmic creation (or is it destruction?).28 West suggests that this simile of heaven crashing down on earth might represent a reference to a myth found in the Orphic Lithica in which Uranus tried to crash down on earth and destroy the kingdom of Kronos (West 1966, 353). Creation seems almost to be the obverse of destruction here—an act of procreation so enormous as to threaten the destruction of the universe itself in one climactic explosion. Zeus’s flames blind the Titans and threaten the integrity of the cosmos. It was his gaze that led him down from the sky and Olympus (689–90) and then to attack the Titans visually; this then broadens out to encompass the whole cosmos. From being the guarantee of narrative, society, and universe, Zeus becomes its potential destroyer. Hesiod reaches beyond the Homeric focus on the relationship between gods and men and those in between to include the universe. In the later epic tradition this cosmic dimension to epic battle remains central. Titanomachy and Gigantomachy were viewed as the ultimate epic subject, hints of which evoked and produced the sublimity of epic.29 If the Theogony was in the end the earlier text, it would make sense for the Iliadic Idomeneus and Meriones to evoke the Hesiodic Zeus;30 but it is equally plausible that Hesiodic epic picked up and amplified the topos of fire, 150 Helios thunderbolts, and blinding your enemies to literalize it in the enormous, ultra-epic universe of gods fighting. The battle with Typhoeus is even more strongly configured as a visual battle, a battle of the gazes. Typhoeus combines the monstrous, the heroic, and the divine.31 The fire for which he is famed comes not from his mouth but his eyes:32

ejk dev oiJ o[sswn qespesivh/~ kefalh`/sin uJp j ojfruvsi pu`r ajmavrussen: pasevwn d j ejk kefalevwn pu`r kaiveto derkomevnoio: (Theog. 826–8)

And on his prodigious heads fire sparkled from his eyes under the eyebrows, and from all of his heads fire burned as he glared.

As with Hector and Achilles in the Iliad and countless other heroes, anger, violence, and destructiveness are figured as fire in the eyes; and just as this image often borders on the literal, expressing and making sublime the visual power of the hero, so Typhoeus becomes literally fiery. The fire that started in the eyes grows beyond control, threatening the cosmos. Typhoeus’s fire almost equals Zeus’s in its destructiveness:

kau`ma d j u{p j ajmfotevrwn kavtecen ijoeideva povnton bronth`~ te steroph`~ te purov~ t j ajpo; toi`o pelwvrou prhsthvrwn ajnevmwn te keraunou` te flegevqonto~: (Theog. 844–6)

The violet-dark sea was enveloped by a conflagration from both of them—of thunder and lightning, and fire from that monster of typhoons and winds, and the blazing thunderbolt.

This conflict between two fiery powers matches one sort of fire against another.33 Zeus’s victory is fundamentally a visual one, already inevitable from the moment he sees the threat and moves to neutralize it:

kaiv nuv men e[pleto e[rgon ajmhvcanon h[mati keivnw/ kaiv ken o{ ge qnhtoi`si kai; ajqanavtoisin a[naxen, eij mh; a[r j ojxu; novhse path;r ajndrw`n te qew`n te: (Theog. 836–8)

And on that very day an intractable deed would have been accomplished, and he would have ruled over mortals and immortals, if the father of men and of gods had not taken sharp notice. LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 151

Here again we have ojxu; novhse, the Iliadic phrase of divine vision and comprehension: Zeus sees and understands the significance of this threat. These few lines also represent the narrator intervening to draw the episode into the narrative frame of the whole poem: just as Zeus’s relationship with Metis might have produced his own generational usurper, Typhoeus too is figured as a potential Zeus, who might move from monster to god and take over the cosmos. The counterfactual possibility underlines the truly remarkable achievement of Zeus: not just gaining power but holding onto it, breaking out of the narrative pattern in which the ruler in each succeeding generation is overthrown by his youngest son (Clay 2003, 25–8). The narrator’s knowledge of this counterfactual plot, the potential other universe within the text, mirrors Zeus’s knowledge both of the need to fight Typhoeus and of the prophecies about Metis’s children (886–900). These connections work in the opposite direction when Zeus blasts Typhoeus into the ground and is compared to a craftsman making tin or iron (859–68). Here Zeus is like a craftsman vigorously re-fashioning the world around him. Naomi Rood (2007, 123) has read this simile as an analogy for Hesiodic poetry. Finally, at the end of the episode, when Zeus is chosen as king, he is once more called “far-seeing”:

aujta;r ejpei; rJa povnon mavkare~ qeoi; ejxetevlessan, Tithvnessi de; timavwn krivnanto bivhfi, dhv rJa tovt j w[trunon basileuevmen hjde; ajnavssein Gaivh~ fradmosuvnh/sin Ὀluvmpion eujruvopa Zh`n ajqanavtwn: oJ de; toi`sin eju; diedavssato timav~. (Theog. 881–5)

When the blessed gods had completed their toil, and by force had reached a settlement with the Titans regarding honours, then by the prophecies of Earth they urged far-seeing Zeus to become king and to rule over the immortals; and he divided their honors well for them.

Zeus’s visual power is ratified; by taking responsibility for dividing the Olympian honors he is once more re-fashioning the world, giving it its divine logic, with his own gaze above gods as much as men.34 The Theogony as a text focuses supremely on Zeus, on his feats, achievements, and power; however, Zeus continues to dominate the visual field in the other Hesi odic poems. The Works and Days is much more concerned with the relationship between gods and mortals, and the theme of deception and concealment recurs. Here the gods exercise their visual power over humans by concealment: kruvyante~ ga;r e[cousi qeoi; bivon ajnqrwvpoisin (For the gods keep the means of life concealed from human beings, Op. 42). There is a surprising amount of continuity 152 Helios between this, the least Homeric of the Hesiodic poems, and the other portrayals of the divine gaze. For instance, Zeus continues to be characterized by his Iliadic epithet of “far-seeing” (eujruvopa) and is presented allotting good and evil to man (the ultimate master narrator) at 225–47:

oi} de; divka~ xeivnoisi kai; ejndhvmoisi didou`sin ijqeiva~ kai; mhv ti parekbaivnousi dikaivou, toi`si tevqhle povli~, laoi; d j ajnqevousin ejn aujth`/ Eijrhvnh d j ajna; gh`n kourotrovfo~, oujdev pot j aujtoi`~ ajrgalevon povlemon tekmaivretai eujruvopa Zeuv~: (Op. 225–9)

But those who give straight judgements to foreigners and fellow-citizens and do not turn aside from justice at all, their city blooms and the people in it flower. For them, Peace, the nurse of the young, is on the earth, and far-seeing Zeus never marks out painful war.

oi|~ d j u{bri~ te mevmhle kakh; kai; scevtlia e[rga, toi`~ de; divkhn Kronivdh~ tekmaivretai eujruvopa Zeuv~. pollavki kai; xuvmpasa povli~ kakou` ajndro;~ ajphuvra, o{sti~ ajlitraivnei kai; ajtavsqala mhcanavatai. toi`sin d j oujranovqen mevg j ejphvgage ph`ma Kronivwn, limo;n oJmou` kai; loimovn: ajpofqinuvqousi de; laoiv: oujde; gunai`ke~ tivktousin, minuvqousi de; oi\koi Zhno;~ fradmosuvnh/sin Ὀlumpivou: a[llote d j au\te h] tw`n ge strato;n eujru;n ajpwvlesen hj j o{ ge tei`co~ h] neva~ ejn povntw/ Kronivdh~ ajpoteivnutai aujtw`n. (Op. 238–47)

But to those who care only for evil outrageousness and cruel deeds, far-seeing Zeus, Kronus’s son, marks out justice. Often even a whole city suffers because of an evil man who sins and devises wicked deeds. Upon them, Kronus’s son brings forth woe from the sky, famine together with pestilence, and the people die away; the women do not give birth, and the households are diminished by the plans of Olympian Zeus. And at another time Kronus’s son destroys their broad army or their wall, or he takes vengeance upon their ships on the sea.

This sense of the divine gaze as the measure of human actions takes a strikingly Iliadic figure ofZ eus and fits him firmly into the didactic scheme ofWorks and Days: rather than intervening in specific events, pushing along a narrative, showing the moral complexity of life by imitating it, Zeus’s gaze is generalized, creating a Sartrean field of vision, which terrifies and objectifies all of humanity.35 There is a LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 153 recapitulation of this passage in lines 280–5 which links this more general divine gaze to Hesiod’s specific agenda. Justice leads to divine approbation, which leads to prosperity and kleos:

eij gavr tiv~ k j ejqevlh/ ta; divkai j ajgoreu`sai ginwvskwn, tw`/ mevn t j o[lbon didoi` eujruvopa Zeuv~: o}~ dev ke marturivh/sin eJkw;n ejpivorkon ojmovssa~ yeuvsetai, ejn de; Divkhn blavya~ nhvkeston ajavsqh, tou` dev t j ajmaurotevrh geneh; metovpisqe levleiptai: ajndro;~ d j eujovrkou geneh; metavpisqen ajmeivnwn. (Op. 280–5)

For if someone who recognizes what is just is willing to speak it out publicly, then far-seeing Zeus gives him wealth. But whoever wilfully swears a false oath, telling a lie in his testimony, he himself is incurably hurt at the same time as he harms justice, and in after times his family is left more obscure; whereas the family of the man who keeps his oath is better in after times.

In the Shield, too, Zeus’s visual power is on display. Zeus is the ultimate viewer of the shield, validating and framing the ekphrasis:

qau`ma ijdei`n kai; Zhni; baruktuvpw/, ou| dia; boula;~ Ἥfaisto~ poivhse savko~ mevga te stibarovn te, ajrsavmeno~ palavmh/si. to; me;n Dio;~ a[lkimo~ uiJo;~ pavllen ejpikratevw~: ejpi; d j iJppeivou qovre divfrou, ei[kelo~ ajsteroph`/ patro;~ Dio;~ aijgiovcoio, kou`fa bibav~: ([Sc.] 318–23)

A wonder to see even for deep-thundering Zeus, through whose counsels Hephaestus had made the shield, big and massive, fitting it together with his skilled hands. Zeus’s strong son wielded it forcefully, and he leapt onto his horse- chariot, springing lightly like the lightning of his father, aegis-holding Zeus.

Zeus stands behind Hephaestus, as he stands behind the poet, legitimizing his artistic production. The transition to Heracles using the shield underlines that the shield (and presumably the poem) are part of his plan for the world (as well as representing the cosmos). Heracles is twice called son of Zeus as well as being lik- ened to lightning. By contrast, Achilles’ shield is not authorized by Zeus, but begged by Thetis (Il. 18.368–467), and in the Aeneid Vulcan’s housewifely demeanor further problematizes divine authority (Aen. 8.407–15), and the cosmic significance of Achilles’ victory is less pronounced. 154 Helios

The opening lines of the Shield also offer a portrayal of Zeus’s predatory erotic gaze—the imperial gaze of the conqueror—who looks down from above and takes what he sees. As he devises a plan, he comes down from Olympus, and takes up a different vertical perspective on Mount Phicion while he plots how to sleep with Alcmene. Hesiod avoids the self-consciously visual erotics that we find later in accounts such as Nonnus’s narrative (Dion. 7.190–279) of Zeus’s pursuit of Semele and the conception of Dionysus:

path;r d j ajndrw`n te qew`n te a[llhn mh`tin u{faine meta; fresivn, w{~ rJa qeoi`sin ajndravsi t j ajlfhsth`/sin ajrh`~ ajlkth`ra futeuvsai. w\rto d j ajp j Oujluvmpoio dovlon fresi; bussodomeuvwn, iJmeivrwn filovthto~ eujzwvnoio gunaikov~, ejnnuvcio~: tavca d j i|xe Tufaovnion: tovqen au\ti~ Fivkion ajkrovtaton prosebhvsato mhtiveta Zeuv~. e[nqa kaqezovmeno~ fresi; mhvdeto qevskela e[rga: aujth`/ me;n ga;r nukti; tanisfuvron Ἠlektruwvnh~ eujnh`/ kai; filovthti mivgh, tevlesen d j a[r j ejevldwr: ([Sc.] 27–36)

But the father of men and gods was weaving a different scheme in his spirit, to produce a protector against ruin for gods and for men who live on bread. He rushed from Olympus by night, planning deception in the depths of his soul, desiring the love of a fine-girdled woman; he quickly reached Typhaonium, and from there the counsellor Zeus went up to lofty Mount Phicion. Sitting there, he devised wondrous deeds in his spirit: for that very night he mingled with Elec- tryon’s long-ankled daughter in her loving bed, and he fulfilled his desire.

We are not graced with a long description of his erotic obsession with the beauty of Alcmene. Instead the emphasis is once more on the theme of deception and mêtis: erotic desire is mapped onto divine providence. Just as he must restrain himself from the erotic pursuit of Metis herself, and later Thetis, for the sake of security of power, so his seduction and deception of Alcmene is represented as a plan to produce Heracles, the great civilizer and guardian of the cosmos, rather than an end in itself. Here too there is a great deal of continuity between the Hesiodic poems. We also see the visual power of Zeus in the largely impersonal catalogue of his erotic conquests at the end of the Theogony; here, Hesiod presents a miniature of desire and visual power in his brief description of Zeus’s third ‘marriage’ to Eury- nome and of his daughters the Graces: tw`n kai; ajpo; blefavrwn e[ro~ ei[beto derkomenavwn É lusimelhv~: kalo;n dev q j uJp j ojfruvsi derkiovwntai (From their eyes desire, the limbmelter, trickles down when they look; and they look beauti- LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 155 fully from under their eyebrows, Theog. 910–1). Here, as it often does, the gaze works both ways, combining power and powerlessness, objectification and subject- hood, intromission and emission, in the representation of the erotic charms of the Graces.36 The power of fury and the power of love are both located in the eyes, and the effect of looking at the Graces becomes an active gaze from them, sending out erôs with an assaultive gaze.37 Pandora, too, in both the Theogony and the Works and Days is characterized as a visual object who generates desire.38 She is described in similar terms to the Graces at Op. 65–6: kai; cavrin ajmficevai kefalh`/ crush`n Ἀfrodivthn, É kai; povqon ajrgalevon kai; guiobovrou~ meledwvna~ (And [he told] golden Aphrodite to shed grace and painful desire and limb-devouring cares around her head). Jenny Strauss Clay points out that Pandora has more individuality, including a name and the ability to act, in the Works and Days.39 It is in the Theogony, however, that she is treated much more as a visual treat, a crafted work of art, an object of the wondering gaze of both mortals and immortals.40 When she is created, she is displayed as a spectacle to both gods and mortals:

aujta;r ejpei; dh; teu`xe kalo;n kako;n ajnt j ajgaqoi`o, ejxavgag j e[nqav per a[lloi e[san qeoi; hjd j a[nqrwpoi, kovsmw/ ajgallomevnhn glaukwvpido~ Ὀbrimopavtrh~: qau`ma d j e[c j ajqanavtou~ te qeou;~ qnhtouv~ t j ajnqrwvpou~, wJ~ ei\don dovlon aijpuvn, ajmhvcanon ajnqrwvpoisin. (Theog. 585–9)

Then when he had contrived a beautiful evil in exchange for a good thing He led her out to where the other gods were and men, While she exulted in the adornment of the mighty father’s bright-eyed daughter. Wonder gripped both the immortal gods and the mortal men, When they saw steep destruction, inevitable for men.

Here the gods and mortals seem to form a mixed audience, though the mortal audience may well be imagined to be proleptic (or at this stage are humans and gods not entirely separate?). From either perspective Pandora represents a thauma (wonder to behold): a divine artifice exuding and inspiring desire. Pandora is woman objectified, called a thauma four times (575, 581, 584, 588).41 Yet, in the passage above, her own viewpoint is also on display, a woman complicit in her own fabrication, enjoying her visual power over those watching.42 Pandora is a beautiful weapon, the structural equivalent of the shield, which is called a thauma idesthai at the very beginning of the ekphrasis ([Sc.] 140) and the very end (318).43 Pandora herself is a walking ekphrasis, made by Hephaestus to Zeus’s plans (Theog. 571–2; Op. 59–68).44 Her adornment parallels heroic arming scenes; it is her accoutrements 156 Helios not just her person that inspire awe, just as the armor of heroes terrifies their enemies.45 The climax of the description in the Theogony is an ekphrasis of her headband (578–84), also called thauma idesthai (581), a mise-en-abîme of the Hesiodic cosmos and poetry. The ekphrasis like the woman is imbued with cavri~, and already characterized by the topoi of ekphrasis (zwoi`sin ejoikovta fwnhvessin [similar to living animals endowed with speech, 584]). This ekphrasis breaks the bounds of containment: it contains a description of sea monsters (boundary- breaking hybrids in themselves), and evokes the catalogue of monsters at 270–336 of the Theogony, making it a reflection of its own context.46 Pandora, too, will not remain a wonder to be watched, but will go out into the world to act and have an effect, even if she has to wait until the Works and Days to gain a voice or a name. The agency of art is already in play at this early stage in the tradition: the effect that artistic creation has on its viewer, and the way this can change the world, is a self- conscious theme for reflection in Hesiod.47 Further, themes of deceptive appearance are important in these two episodes (Theog. 585, 589; Op. 65–8, 83, 104) as well as being at the very heart of the Hesiodic moral universe: the poet is potentially deceptive, a version of his all-powerful divine protagonist, but also equally (perhaps) fabricated by the Muses. The Hesiodic poems have their share of erôs, then, but are they fundamentally misogynistic in comparison to Homer? The fragmentary state of the Catalogue of Women does not help us here, although structuring a narrative around women as agents of reproduction may be read either way.48 In epic the women on the margins are important as an audience both complicit with the values and workings of epic and often offering an alternative perspective.49 In the microcosm of epic battle represented on the shield at 237–69, the city besieged is also characterized by the women on the walls:

aiJ de; gunai`ke~ ejudmhvtwn ejpi; puvrgwn calkevwn ojxu; bovwn, kata; d j ejdruvptonto pareiva~, zwh`/sin i[kelai, e[rga klutou` Ἡfaivstoio. ([Sc.] 242–4)

The women on the well-built bronze towers Were crying out sharply and rending their cheeks And they looked as though they were alive, the work of famous Hephaestus.

Not just women, but, as in the teichoscopy of Iliad 3, old men ([Sc.] 245–8); but here the two are segregated physically: the women look down from the walls while the old men are outside the gates, as if almost about to join in. The women are lamenting, while the old men pray for their sons, with whom they are strikingly contrasted. The passage draws attention to ekphrastic disobedience (sound and LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 157 movement) from the women, also marked by the topos of marvel. This part of the description seems in line with the Homeric world; but it is surrounded by passages much more characteristic of the Shield, descriptions of monsters and personifications: the Gorgons (230–7) and the Kêres or Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos) and Achlus (Death Mist), all characterized as feminine. These descriptions are saturated with violent gazes: the Gorgons’ snakes are glaring savagely (a[gria derkomevnw, 236); Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos competing over a dying man “glared terribly with their eyes at one another in their fury” (deina; d j ej~ ajllhvla~ dravkon o[mmasi qumhvnasai, 262). Epic femininity moves seamlessly from victim to monster, those watching the battle powerless to act, those involved being inhuman and repellent. Yet all this more or less Homeric paraphernalia is contained within the ekphrasis of the shield, which is problematic in so many ways: Pandora is perhaps a truer emblem of Hesiodic womanhood. My final focus is the way Hesiod uses vision in reflecting on poetic functions and practices. I have suggested above that Hesiod as poet figure is a version of Zeus (who threatens to unmake the cosmos), and that Zeus and Hephaestus as commis- sioner and artisan respectively legitimate the authority of the poet in his re- fashioning of myth through their fashioning of Pandora and the shield. The ‘kings and singers’ passage from the beginning of the Theogony affirms these connections:

o[ntina timhvsousi Dio;~ kou`rai megavloio geinovmenovn te i[dwsi diotrefevwn basilhvwn, tw`/ me;n ejpi; glwvssh/ glukerh;n ceivousin ejevrshn, tou` d j e[pe j ejk stovmato~ rJei` meivlica: oiJ dev nu laoi; pavnte~ ej~ aujto;n oJrw`si diakrivnonta qevmista~ ijqeivh/si divkh/sin: (Theog. 81–6)

Whomever among Zeus-nourished kings the daughters of great Zeus honor and behold when he is born, they pour sweet dew upon his tongue, and his words flow soothingly from his mouth. All the populace look to him as he decides disputes with straight judgements.

Though Zeus is a model of the ideal king, Hesiod also sets up the king as a poet. The Muses do not only sponsor poets but also kings, allowing their eloquence to heal society; the excellence of a king is the result of the divine gaze of the Muses, emphatically here the daughters of great Zeus, who “honor and behold him.”50 This visually constructed favor is mirrored in the gaze of his subjects who literally look towards him, presumably accepting and welcoming his judgments.51 Thus the value of poetry and eloquence in ruling reflects in turn on the importance of poetry and the legitimacy of the Muse-sponsored poet. Continuing the comparison 158 Helios of the different Hesiodic works, a famous passage from the beginning of the Works and Days builds further on this visual poetic. The two Strifes (Erides) at 11–26 seem to correct an earlier genealogy of a single Strife (Eris) at Theogony 225. The good Eris, which seems to be invented here, is a force for creative rivalry rather than destructive war; envious looking becomes a social good, which inspires work- ers and craftsmen, climaxing with poets themselves:

h{ te kai; ajtavlamovn per oJmw`~ ejpi; e[rgon e[geiren. eij~ e{teron gavr tiv~ te ijdw;n e[rgoio cativzwn plouvsion, o}~ speuvdei me;n ajrwvmenai hjde; futeuvein oi\kovn t j eu\ qevsqai, zhloi` dev te geivtona geivtwn eij~ a[feno~ speuvdont j: ajgaqh; d j Ἔri~ h{de brotoi`sin. kai; kerameu;~ keramei` kotevei kai; tevktoni tevktwn, kai; ptwco;~ ptwcw`/ fqonevei kai; ajoido;~ ajoidw`/. (Op. 20–6)

It rouses even the helpless man to work. For a man who is not working but looks at some other man A rich one who is hastening to plough and plant and set his house In order, he envies him, one neighbour envying his neighbour, Who is hastening towards wealth. And this strife is good for mortals. And potter is angry with potter and builder with builder, And beggar begrudges beggar and poet poet.

For Hesiod, it seems, self-conscious poetic rivalry is a moral necessity:52 to be the object of envy is the aim, and to watch and envy others makes farmers, craftsmen, and poets rise to excellence. Just as a king is the object of the gaze, even though he holds visual power like Zeus, so the poet might be the object of envy: if he is successful others will try to outdo him. These passages at the beginning of the Theog- ony and the Works and Days bespeak poetic self-confidence and a strong belief in the social force of poetry. The end of the Shield, however, seems to offer a more pessimistic, and more Homeric, reflection on poetry and monumentality. The Shield, which has told the story of the battle of Heracles and Cycnus, finishes with Heracles and Iolaus stripping the body of their defeated enemy, while Athena returns to Olympus and Cyc- nus is buried:

Kuvknon d j au\ Khvϋx qavpten kai; lao;~ ajpeivrwn, oi{ rJ j ejggu;~ nai`on povlio~ kleitou` basilh`o~, Ἄnqhn Murmidovnwn te povlin kleithvn t j Ἰawlko;n Ἄrnhn t j hjd j Ἑlivkhn: pollo;~ d j hjgeivreto laov~, LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 159

timw`nte~ Khvϋka, fivlon makavressi qeoi`sin, tou` de; tavfon kai; sh`m j ajide;~ poivhsen Ἄnauro~ o[mbrw/ ceimerivw/ plhvqwn: tw;~ gavr min Ἀpovllwn Lhtoi?dh~ h[nwx j, o{ti rJa kleita;~ eJkatovmba~ o{sti~ a[goi Puqoi`de bivh/ suvlaske dokeuvwn. ([Sc.] 472–80)

Cycnus was buried by Ceyx together with the countless host Of those who lived near the city of the famous king, Anthe and the city of the Myrmidons and famous Iolcus And Arne and Helice. A great host was assembled Paying honour to Ceyx, who was dear to the blessed gods. But the river Anaurus, full with winter rain, Obliterated the tomb and the monument; for Apollo Leto’s son had ordered him to do so, for whoever brought Famous hecatombs to Pytho, he would observe closely and plunder them with violence.

Cycnus’s assaultive gaze has angered the watching god: while Ceyx is blessed by the gods and can gather an enormous audience and presumably equally enormous fame for his monument, Cycnus is quickly erased by Apollo. The heroic monument that is the wage of the beautiful death is provisional and relies on the favor of the gods, just as the survival of poetry is in the hands of chance. To end with this failure of monumentality sets a striking challenge to the logic of epic: the figure of Heracles transcends conventional epic dilemmas by becoming a god, but Cycnus’s heroic fama is provisional at best. In this article I have surveyed various visual tropes associated with epic in the Hesiod corpus, bringing out continuities and differences between Hesiodic and Homeric epos, as well as the Theogony, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles. The different aims and emphases of advice-poetry and the divine subject matter of the Theogony make for structural difference from Homer, yet visual battles, battles of the gaze, remain very important. The monolithic visual power ofZ eus strikingly dominates Hesiodic poetry, and in this the Works and Days is more similar to the other Hesiodic poems than one might have expected. This contrasts with Homeric poetry where divine audiences and the divine gaze are multiple and fractured. This observation reveals a self-confident visual poetic that implies that the poet is an avatar of Zeus and socially efficacious, like the Zeus-sponsored king. Gender and ekphrasis feed into a more complex picture of vision in which the deceptive nature of appearance comes to the fore. Vision in Hesiod is often suspect, not to be relied on, and our final image of the tomb of Cycnus erased at the bidding of Apollo serves to make us wonder how reliable any monument (or poem) can be. 160 Helios

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Notes

1. The assaultive gaze is a concept of an aggressive gaze that leads to violence; see, e.g., Clover 1992, passim. This article, much labored over, has been greatly improved by those who have heard and read 162 Helios it. Thanks to the audience at the Celtic Conference in Classics at Cork in 2008, the editors of this special issue, especially Douglas Cairns and Sue Blundell; Anton Powell; Philip Hardie; and Helen van Noorden. Their help in (for me) the far reaches of Greek epos has been invaluable. All mistakes and misunderstandings that remain are, of course, my own. 2. See Cairns 2005. On Homeric words of vision, see Snell 1953, 1–5 and Prier 1989. 3. Lovatt 2013. There has been a surge of recent work on vision in Latin epic: see Salzman- Mitchell 2005, Syed 2005, Smith 2006, Reed 2007. On the Greek side, see Prier 1989, Slatkin 2007, Clay 2011. 4. For theory about genre, see A. Fowler 1982, Conte 1986, D. Fowler 2000, Hinds 2000, Bar- chisi 2001. For instance the Virgilian poetic career subordinates the Georgics as Hesiodic to the Aeneid as Homeric; on the Virgilian poetic career see Farrell 2002. On didactic as a genre see Atherton 1998; Gale 2004; Volk 2002, 25–34, with Scodel 2007. 5. See, e.g., Rosen 1997, 464: “The conspicuous differences between the poems of Hesiod and between Hesiod and Homer existed in tension with the unified tradition of epos, to which these works belonged at the broadest level.” 6. Clay (2003) produces a reading of the Works and Days and the Theogony which sees them as complementary halves of a self-conscious poetic oeuvre, one that deliberately contends with Homeric poetry; see also Most 1993, 83. Other scholars see them as rather more distinct; for instance, Ford (1992, 13–56) distinguishes between epos as “unsung” hexameter poetry, and the Homeric/Hesiodic narratives as “that subclass of epos that offers a Muse-sponsored presentation of the past” (17). In particular, he excludes the Works and Days from this class, and labels it instead as parainetic epos (advice poetry). 7. Griffin 1978 is the classic treatment of this theme in Homer; see also Griffin 1980, 144–204. Some key examples of this phenomenon can be found at Iliad 4.1–84 (council of the gods; gazing down on the Trojans); 7.442–63 (watching the Greeks build their wall; debate between Zeus and Poseidon); 8.1–52 (Zeus forbids the other gods to intervene); 11.73–83 (Eris and Zeus are watching; the other gods sit apart); 12.176–8 (the narrator wishes for divine powers to tell the story, but the Achaean gods are dejected); 20.4–32 (Zeus watches, but sends the others to join in); 22.162–87 (race of Hector and Achilles); 24.23–76 (the gods watching Achilles mistreat the corpse of Hector discuss what to do). 8. On the divine audience as spectators at games, see Lovatt 2005, 80–100. Later epic picks up on this trope to such an extent that it might be called an emblem of the epic genre. Clay (1997, 9–25) sets up a comparison between the gaze of the (blind) epic poet, inspired by the Muse, encompassing the deeds of both men and gods, and the gaze of the far-seeing gods, esp. Zeus and Helios, which nevertheless has blind spots. 9. Pucci (2002) makes a strong argument for the gods as spectators in the Iliad as a mediating audience. In contrast, de Jong in her conclusion (1987, 228–9) decides that “the Iliad mainly pre sents a human vision of the events around Troy,” based on her statistic that only in about 12 percent of the total text are the gods focalizing. Graziosi and Haubold (2005, 75–80) argue that the changing relationship between gods and men from the Theogony to the Iliad to the Odyssey reflects their settings at different times in mythic history: “Whereas in the Iliad the gods must constantly be reminded not to fight one another for the sake of mortals but rather enjoy themselves on Olympus, in the Odyssey they have accepted that and, in fact, regret that mortals still hold them responsible for what happens on earth” (79). This observation is built partly on the “issue of divine visibility,” that is, how much we see and interact with the gods, how much the characters know about what is transpiring on the divine level. This might explain the changes in the representation of the divine LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 163 audience from the Theogony to the Iliad. In Apollonius’s Argonautica this process has extended still further, with humans literally at sea in a world controlled by mysterious divine forces. 10. In the Iliad, too, the gods often hear rather than see events on earth: if gazing is a metaphor for knowing, then aural communication may also be part of this study. But there is a crucial difference between seeing and hearing: hearing can only be passive, while seeing, in ancient thought and modern, is often characterized as active. Hearing takes in sounds from all around whether you like it or not; we can choose whether or not to see by opening or closing our eyes, and where we direct our eyes. 11. A similarity, noted by West (1966, 349), between 684–6 in the Theogony and 17.424–5 in the Iliad brings out these structural differences. As the mortals fight on after the death of Patroclus, the narrator comments on Achilles’ lack of knowledge (Il. 17.403–11). The lines are strikingly similar to the Hesiodic lines: w}~ oiJ me;n mavrnanto, sidhvreio~ d j ojrumagdo;~ É cavlkeon oujrano;n i|ke di j aijqevro~ ajtrugevtoio (So they fought on and the iron tumult went up into the brazen sky through the barren bright air [translation by Lattimore]). The narrative immediately moves to an audience response: first the horses of Achilles, weeping at the death of Patroclus (426–40), and then Zeus watching the battle through the horses (441–55). Here we see the Iliadic structure of divine viewing brought into action by the aural connection, while in Hesiod the aural elements dominate. 12. There is anI liadic connection here too; see West 1966, 349 for the similarity with Iliad 20.54–66. This passage follows on from a divine council (20.4–30) in whichZ eus specifically instructs the gods to move from audience to actors in response to Achilles’ new wrath, so that he should not capture Troy prematurely. While it is the clash of the gods that destabilizes the cosmos, this serves to bring into relief Achilles’ semi-divine status, which is visually constituted through the fear of the Trojans (20.26–30, 41–6). Hesiod’s cosmic perspective shows quite how extraordinary Achilles is in his visual power, both active (in his blazing eyes) and passive (in the effect he has on those watching without even doing anything); but Greek optical science and folk models of viewing tend to blur this distinction between active and passive forms of visual power; see Cairns 2005, 138–42. On this passage see also Griffin 1980, 185; Schein 1984, 50–1; Graziosi and Haubold 2005, 73–4. Achilles’ visual power is brought out particularly at 18.198–200 and 205–31, where Iris advises him that his mere appearance before the Trojans will terrify them. Athena shrouds him in a golden cloud; and with three mighty shouts, he attracts the attention of the Trojans; they see the divine fire shining from his head, and twelve of them drop dead. 13. Zeus is also the most frequent and important divine viewer in the Iliad: see 2.1–15, 8.41– 52, 8.397, 11.80–3, 11.181, 11.336–7, 11.543–5, 13.1–9, 15.4–13, 15.599–600, 16.431, 16.644–58, 17.198–208, 17.441, 19.340, 21.388–90, 24.331–2. Other gods, however, dominate the beginning of the poem, and continue to view separately and often in antagonism toZ eus: Apollo (1.47–51, 4.507, 5.460, 10.515–6, 5.320); Apollo and Athena (7.58–62); Athena (1.193–200, 7.17, 19.349–51, 23.388); Athena and Hera (5.418); Hera (1.56, 5.711, 8.350, 14.153, 16.439); Poseidon (13.10–6, 14.135, 20.291); Aphrodite (3.374; 5.312); Ares (5.846); Iris (2.800–1). I have restricted myself to examples where viewing is specifically mentioned, but the blurred boundary between intellectual awareness and vision makes it difficult. 14. Graziosi and Haubold 2005, 68: “The gods in the Theogony appear to be in no way as light- hearted as they are in the Homeric poems.” 15. On deception and archaic poetics see Pratt 1993, 95–113. On Hesiod see Cairns 2002, 78: “In the generational conflict of the gods in Hesiod’s Theogony . . . the struggle for ascendancy is a struggle to consign one’s opponents to perpetual darkness. To be the passive victim of concealment 164 Helios is thus to be deprived of timhv. Actively to conceal oneself or one’s intentions from others, on the other hand, is to dishonour them, to deal in a degree of darkness as the price of greater light.” This theme is also prominent in Homer; see Cairns 2002, 76–7. 16. On the mêtis of Gaia see Rood 2007. 17. Slatkin 2007, 19 note 3: “The semantic range of noeô in the Iliad includes not only ‘taking note of’, ‘observing’, but ‘having in mind’, ‘bearing in awareness.’ ” Snell (1953, 13) defines noos as “the mental eye which exercises an unclouded vision.” 18. Meta phrêsin locates Kronus’s understanding in his body: the Homeric phrên ranges in meaning from heart and mind, to diaphragm, chest, and guts. To quote Philip Hardie (per litteras) Kronus’s understanding is “visceral not visual.” 19. Alternatively it might mean ‘far sounding’: see LSJ, s.h.v. Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos suggests “breitgesichtig, mit weitem Blick” or “mit weitreichender Stimmer.” It is always used of Zeus in the Homeric and Hesiodic corpus: see Iliad 1.498, 5.265, 8.206, 8.442, 9.419, 9.686, 13.732, 14.203, 14.265, 15.152, 15.724, 16.241, 17.545, 24.98, 24.296, 24.331; Odyssey 2.146, 3.288, 4.173; Homeric Hymns 2.3, 2.335, 2.442, 2.461, 3.340, 4.540, 23.2, 23.4. 20. On Hesiod’s Prometheus myth see Clay 2003, 100–28 and Vernant 1974. 21. West 1966, 321: “It has long been recognised that in the original story Zeus did not see through the trick, but was thoroughly deceived. The statement that he was not deceived (though he acted as if he was) is manifestly inserted to save his omniscience and prestige.” Clay (2003, 100–28) argues that Zeus expects Prometheus to deceive him and is provoking him into actually doing so: but what is the significance of Zeus making the choice himself in that case? His anger also seems too extreme. While in favor of readings that take Hesiod seriously as a poet, this seems to go too far towards ironing out the idiosyncratic difficulties.Z eus seems both to see and not to see, just as his omniscience often seems to have at least temporary gaps. For a theoretical perspective on omniscience and narrative, see Culler 2004. 22. This is a Homeric phrase: cf.Il . 18.224 and Od. 1.115, 10.374, 18.154; o[ssomai can refer to intellectual ‘seeing’ or ‘foreseeing’ even when it is used without qualification (e.g., Od. 2.152). I am grateful to Douglas Cairns for this point, which emphasizes the continuity between seeing and knowing and overlap between vision and visions of the future in Greek thought. 23. With thanks to Helen van Noorden for this suggestion. 24. With this we might want to compare the dios apatê and his vulnerability to Hera’s erotic deception (Il. 14.293–6) which causes him to turn his eyes away from the Trojan War for long enough for the gods on the Greek side almost to turn the tide back in their favor. 25. Hector: Il. 8.748–9, 12.462–6, 15.605–10. Achilles: Il. 19.15–7, 19.364–7, 19.398, 20.44–6, 22.131–7. The blurring of active and passive vision, and its implications for reading the hostile gazes of epic heroes, are explored in greater depth in Lovatt 2013, 310–46. 26. Though this quotation finishes with sound, the visual side returns at the end of the section, summing up the climactic moment of the Titanomachy: “The deed of supremacy was made manifest” (kavrteu~ d j ajnefaivneto e[rgon, Theog. 710). 27. West (1966, 353) points out that marmaivrousa is an Iliadic word (used nine times in the Iliad). 28. Most (2006, 59) notes: “Despite some uncertainty about the Greek text, the meaning is clear: the analogy is not to some cataclysmic final collapse of the sky onto the earth, but instead to the primordial sexual union between Sky and Earth.” The fact that there are readers who see this as creation and some who see it as destruction suggests that there is ambivalence here. 29. See Innes 1979 and Hardie 1986, 85. On sublimity, see, e.g., Leigh 2006. LoVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 165

30. On the priority debate see Graziosi and Haubold 2005, 29 and Rosen 1997, 463–4, with further bibliography. 31. West (1966, 384) points out that Typhoeus is represented both as a god (824, 849, 859) and as not one (871). He argues that Typhoeus must be a sort of immortal in order to challenge Zeus as ruler of the cosmos. 32. West (1966, 389) reads this as another aspect of his serpent-like quality: “The flashing eyes of a serpent are another typical feature.” In my exploration of this phenomenon, blazing eyes characterize the terrifying, both gods and monstrous animals, as well as berserk heroes, and are by no means restricted to serpents or dragons. 33. West (1966, 389) emphatically denies Typhoeus the reciprocal ability to produce fire: his fire, like the moon’s, is but a reflection of a greater fire, in this case the fire of the thunderbolts bursting from his body. This interpretation seems rather strained. West (1988 in his translation) allows but does not enforce this interpretation: “A conflagration held the violet-dark sea in its grip, both from the thunder and lightning and from the fire of the monster, from the tornado winds and the flaming bolt” (28). 34. In contrast, the Titans’ exclusion to the other side of gloomy Chaos emphasizes their loss in a sort of perpetual concealment (Theog. 813–4), as does that of Typhoeus in Tartarus (868), although he has an etiological afterlife as the force of the winds. 35. Sartre (1966) envisages the self as alienated in a hostile field of vision, generated by all the others who might be looking at her or him. For a lucid introduction to theories of the gaze see Fredrick 2002. 36. For further reading on the erotic gaze in ancient literature, and the input of ancient optics, see Morales 2004; Cairns 2005, 132–3; and Bartsch 2006, 57–83. Calame (1999, 39–48) discusses the erotic side of epic; this moment, however, is more akin to lyric poetry; see Calame 1999, 20–1, citing Alcman, fr. 3.61–2 Page, among others. 37. West 1966, 409: “Love, or beauty, is thought of as a sort of physical emanation from the person of the lovely girl, and particularly from her eyes.” 38. Recent interventions on Pandora, with further bibliography, include Reeder 1995 and Lev Kenaan 2008, 82–126 (on Hesiod’s Pandora). Lev Kenaan draws on Prier 1989, as well as Pucci 1977, 82–126, to argue that Pandora represents the central point of the Theogony and a form of enlightenment. Although not explicitly concerned with ‘the gaze,’ she uses closely associated feminist terminology: “The Theogony introduces through the making of Pandora the very experiences of objectification” (36). 39. Clay 2003, 122–4: “In the Theogony, the anonymous Woman/Wife is depicted as a statue, a work of art; tellingly, she has no voice and thus no interior from which her voice can emanate. . . . In keeping with the human perspective of the Works and Days, Hesiod gives us a more subjective view of Pandora, not as a robot, but as a beautiful and enticing living woman, whose looks and voice have a devastating effect upon men. Her speech above all constitutes the vehicle of seduction and deception.” See too, among others, Pucci 1977, who suggests that Pandora is the ultimate copy or mimêsis (95), and Becker 1993. Lev Kenaan (2008, 33–6) focuses on audience responses to Pandora. 40. On the iconography of Pandora, see Reeder 1995, 277–86. Particularly relevant examples of Pandora represented as artistic object are: a white ground kylix with Pandora, c. 470–460, British Museum, which shows Pandora being crafted (Redder 1995, 279), and a kalyx crater with Pandora, c. 460, British Museum, which shows Pandora on display before the gods (1995, 282). 41. Lev Kenaan (2008, 36–7) identifies the thauma as wonder mixed with fear of the new, or displaced wonder at the beauty of the cosmos. 166 Helios

42. Reeder (1995, 125–6) discusses the female gaze in the Pandora episode. 43. Also used of various images on the Shield: snakes at 165; Perseus at 218; at 224 the pouch holding the Gorgon’s head. 44. Lev Kenaan (2008, 36) uses the word ekphrasis, “indicating that visibility is the essence of w om an .” 45. Pucci (1977, 96–101) explores the way that Pandora’s bedecking implies novelty and dis- placement and renders her a sign, “a standardized virgin, a copy of a copy” (99). However, it also echoes Hera’s preparations for the seduction of Zeus in Iliad 14.170–86. 46. Lev Kenaan (2008, 42–3) views Pandora as a hybrid of the human, divine, and the bestial (in her connection to Typhoeus): “The diadem represents the moment when the subversive bestial voices are silenced by Zeus’s overwhelming power, the power of visibility” (43). 47. For a reading of Pandora through Ovid’s Pygmalion and Myrrha episodes as a metaphor for artistic creation, see Sharrock 1991. 48. For a gendered reading of the structure of the catalogue, see Osborne 2005. 49. See Lovatt 2006; on the broader pervasiveness and importance of this motif in epic, see Lovatt 2013, 205–61. 50. On the beneficial gazes of muses, gods, and subjects, see Cairns 2005, 132. 51. Cf. Od. 8.167–79, with Martin 1984. 52. Griffith (1990) explores the representation and mechanics of poetic competition in archaic and classical Greece. ‘Empire of the Gaze’: Despotism and Seraglio Fantasies à la grecque in Chariton’s Callirhoe

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

When I said I had actually stayed in a harem, I could see the male portion of my audience, as it were, passing round the wink. ‘You may not put the word “harem” on the title of your lecture,’ said the secretary of a certain society. ‘Many who might come to hear you would stay away for fear of hearing improper revelations, and others would come hoping to hear those revelations and go away disappointed.’ Grace Ellison, An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem

In this article I explore how Greek literature of the postclassical age used the motif of the past glories of a decadent East to fantasize about the erotic pleasures of looking at women. These fantasies take place in an arena usually considered taboo for any male observer: the Persian royal seraglio. My focus will be on Chariton’s novel Callirhoe, the lively story of an exceptionally beautiful Greek woman—the fictional Callirhoe—who is compelled to become a concubine at the Persian royal court.1 Callirhoe’s status as a desired possession is negotiated throughout the novel by increasingly intimate levels of viewing as she progresses on her dual journeys from Greece to Persia and from Greek wife to Persian concubine (and, finally, back again). The climactic and most intimate viewing of Callirhoe takes place within the Persian Empire, at Babylon, inside the royal palace’s seraglio of queens and concubines; here she is seen by the Great King Artaxerxes alone, affording us, the readers of the novel, the vicariously privileged position of viewing the body of a much desired royal paramour. Greek novelists and historians of the Roman Imperial period, working with source materials derived in large from, most probably, the fourth-century BCE Persica of Ctesias, Dinon, and Heraclides of Cumae recognized that bona fide royal Achaemenid women had been part of a tightly regulated court society in which their high rank was emphasized by, partly, the women’s avoidance of the public gaze.2 I will suggest that the Greek authors of the novel (and, indeed, other types of Imperial-period literature) deliberately play with the tensions associated with viewing women in the palaces of the Persian Great Kings. These stories, concocted long after the fall of the Persian Empire, were intended to arouse the passions of (male) readers who saw in these seraglio tales an open licence for exotic voyeurism.

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 167 168 Helios

By the first century CE, the seraglio motif had embedded itself so firmly in the popular imagination that biographers and historians like Plutarch and, later, Aelian were using the stereotypical image of the seraglio as factual content in the composition of their Eastern histories.

Callirhoe, History, and the Historical Novel

Callirhoe, written at some time in the period 25 BCE to 50 CE, is generally regarded as the earliest extant piece of Greek prose fiction.3 Like many of the early novels (the Alexander Romance, the fragmentary Ninus, and Metiochus and Parthenope), Callirhoe is best classified as historical fiction. The story is set at the height of the Persian Empire, and the Persians who populate it have a secure basis in Achaeme- nid history: King Artaxerxes II (405–359 BCE) is the ruler who figures in Xeno- phon’s Anabasis, whose brother, Cyrus the Younger, rebelled against him and lost his life at the Battle of Cunaxa in 401 BCE; he was the ruler whose health was cared for by Ctesias of Cindus, who worked as a royal physician at the Persian court.4 And it is Ctesias (writing early in the fourth century BCE), and later followed by Plutarch, who confirms that the name of Artaxerxes’ wife was Stateira and she too appears in Chariton’s novel,5 while the other characters found there are principally drawn from Achaemenid nobility, as first recorded by Ctesias: Rhodogyne, Mega- byzus, Zopyrus, and Pharnaces all occur in Book 17 of his Persica, while the King’s eunuch Artaxares, found in Book 19 of Ctesias’s work, becomes the model for Chariton’s eunuch Artaxates.6 Therefore we can say that Chariton intended a precise literary-historical equation and that the novel is set in the last decade of the fifth century BCE. The first Greek novels skillfully exploit the conventions of history writing and provide historical settings for the action that follows, so much so, in fact, that early scholars believed that the origins of the Greek novel could be found in ‘bad’ history (such as, supposedly, the Persica of Ctesias).7 This idea has now generally been discounted in favor of viewing the novel as a genre arising from, but different to, historiography (although the crossover points between the genres can often be left deliberately blurred).8 Thanks to the groundwork laid by such proto-novelists as Ctesias in his Persica and Xenophon in his Cyropaedia, by the mid-fourth century BCE Achaemenid Persia had already became enshrined for the Greeks as “a literary landscape suited to tales of erotic intrigue: the sort of romantic escapades commonly found in the Greek novel.”9 Indeed, three of the six surviving full-length Greek novels take place in the Achaemenid Empire, a fact perhaps best explained when we acknowledge that throughout the first two centuries CE Persia, now under Parthian rule, continued to play a decisive role in Roman international politics and that for many Greek Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 169 authors, the Achaemenid past found its reflection in the Parthian present of drawn- out wars and protracted diplomacy. Accordingly, as Daniel Selden (2012, 45) has noted,

Whereas [Chariton’s] post-Herodotean world of the fifth century BCE sets Greece over Iran as two antithetical political spheres, where [Syracuse] and [Babylon] constitute the metonyms of this polarity, the ambit that [Callirhoe’s] journey traces circumscribes the heartland of the Levantine-Mediterranean tributary state as it had expanded under Roman rule of the first century CE.

The Greek novelists, following the paths laid down by Ctesias and Xenophon (and even Herodotus, if we want to trace the motif of romantic Persia back as far as the later fifth century BCE) found the spectacle of love-struck kings and satraps to be very compelling and so manoeuvre their texts so that the action takes place in the cities and courts of the Orient. Chariton’s novel in particular moves the central section of his action away from the ostensibly Greek world of Asia Minor squarely into the heartland of the Persian Empire, and the Achaemenid royal city of Babylon becomes the scene for many of the climatic moments of Callirhoe’s journey. During her erotic anabasis from Miletus to Babylon, Callirhoe is the obsession of ever more powerful men: first there is Dionysius, the leading man of Ionia, followed by Mithridates and Pharnaces, the powerful Persian satraps, and finally the Great King Artaxerxes himself. Chariton expands on a pre-existing tradition drawn from the Greek accounts of court intrigues which perhaps originate with Ctesias (F8b), to suggest the influence of erôs upon Persian political life.10 In historical terms we know that Artaxerxes carefully protected himself against the growing satrapal power, but Chariton presents the quarrels of the Great King and his rebellious satraps as motivated by Callirhoe, unconsciously the pawn of Aphro- dite (Cal. 1.1). At Babylon, Callirhoe’s erotic charm exerts a powerful, if baneful, effect over the Persian nobles’ ability to rule effectively: even the Great King, as conceived of from Herodotus onward to be the supreme arbiter of justice, falters in judgment because of the powerful effects of erôs and Callirhoe combined. Erôs goes on to subvert other royal exploits: the King’s hunt, the symbol of his masculine military prowess, becomes tainted when Artaxerxes loses himself in voyeuristic fantasies of Callirhoe, an image that Chariton thereby links to Persia’s decline as an imperial power (6.4–5). It is not Babylon as such that becomes the locale of Callirhoe’s story, though; Chariton is even more specific about confirming the location of the dramatic highlights of the story and he takes us deep inside the city and into the palace of the Great King to play out several key scenes. Here, within the ceremonial apadana, 170 Helios the court and people assemble to hear the double trial of Mithridates and Diony- sius, although following on from that event Chariton takes us even further into the heart of the royal court and allows us, quite unexpectedly, to gaze into the forbidden space of the inner quarters of the royal palace itself. This has a major impact on our engagement with Callirhoe’s story, for suddenly we find ourselves in the hidden, rarefied world of harem women and eunuchs. As any reader of Chariton’s novel would have realized, the Persian palace is the traditional locale for Greek tales of intrigue, violence, and deception. Herodotus’s story of Amestris’s robe and the orgiastic bloodbath that follows the events at Xerxes’ birthday party (9.108–13) was well known to Greek readers, as were the many machinations of Queen Parysatis and her kin recounted by Ctesias in his Persian history (F26). Readers of the Septuagint version of the Book of Esther saw the same motifs played out there (LXX Est. 1:1–2:21). What differs in Chariton’s engagement with the Persian past, though, is his desire to sensualize the goings-on at court and to expand what has been termed mere “petite histoire,”11 or gossip mongering, into an Arabian Nights styled romantic adventure. Unlike Herodotus and Ctesias, Chariton creates this form of exotic indulgence at the expense of any other type of narrative content as violence, revenge, and bloodshed give way to erotic seraglio excesses. A brief summary of the events of Books 5 and 6 of the Callirhoe will serve us well. In Book 5, Callirhoe arrives in Babylon, transported there by Dionysius in a curtained carriage and, as she appears before the common crowd, the Babylonians ogle at her beauty (5.2). A group of aristocratic Persian women go to the royal seraglio and tell Queen Stateira about the lovely Greek girl who has arrived in the city; they fear that the Queen’s reputation as the most beautiful woman in Asia is under threat and so they decide to hold a beauty contest within the city (5.3). How- ever, since Stateira cannot show herself in public, a substitute, the Persian noble- woman Rhodogyne, is chosen to represent the Queen by proxy. All Babylon witnesses the beauty competition and Callirhoe is declared the winner, and at the end of the contest she retires to the seclusion of her covered wagon (5.3). King Artaxerxes commands Mithridates and Dionysius to bring Callirhoe to his palace where he will decide who is her legitimate owner. But upon seeing her (5.8), the King too is struck by her beauty and has his eunuchs escort her into the royal seraglio—for her own protection, he hastens to add. In the seraglio Callirhoe meets with the Persian Queen who treats her kindly and offers her jewellery and fine clothing, which Callirhoe modestly rejects (5.9). The King is increasingly besotted with the lovely girl; he becomes a constant visitor to the seraglio and Stateira realizes that her royal husband’s eyes are wandering (6.1). The King’s chief eunuch, Artaxates, persuades Artaxerxes to keep Callirhoe as a concubine within the confines of the royal palace (6.2). The King goes hunting Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 171 to clear his mind, but visions of Callirhoe, dressed as Artemis, occupy his every thought (6.4–5). He decides to follow the eunuch’s advice and instructs Artaxates to tell Callirhoe of her happy fate, but she rejects the King’s advances. The girl is threatened with torture and death but she still refuses to comply with the King’s will (6.6). Suddenly, at the end of Book 6, a revolt breaks out in Egypt and the King leaves Babylon to put down the rebellion. Dutifully, the royal seraglio follows after him, with Callirhoe in tow.

‘Once upon a Time in a Kingdom far away’: Chariton’s Seraglio

There can be little doubt that the Persian court of Callirhoe is, by and large, a place of Oriental fable. By locating his story in old romantic Persia, Chariton puts a heady Orientalist flavor into his narrative mix; in fact, I suggest that Callirhoe can be seen as an important formative contributor to a long line of beautiful, if deeply misunderstood and precarious, Orientalist clichés that permeate later Greek works of literature. This particular sort of Orientalism is not necessarily of the familiar form identified by Edward Saïd in his seminal 1978 study, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient and followed thereafter as a main line of argument in contemporary classical scholarship, at least in relation to studies of fifth-century Attic literature.12 It is my contention that Saïd’s reading of Orientalism actually sits awkwardly in its relationship to the ancient Greek literary imagining of the East; Alain Grosrichard’s variation of the Saïdian concept of Orientalism works much better for our Greek literary sources overall, and for the romantic literature of the late Hellenistic and Imperial Roman periods in particular. In his 1979 work Structure de sérial: la fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Oc- cident classique (published in 1998 in English as The Sultan’s Court: European Fan- tasies of the East), Grosrichard, unlike Saïd, focuses his attention on the dominance of literary fiction in the Western representation of the East. His work, while it has many admirers, has unfortunately received considerably less attention than it deserves, being published in the direct shadow of Saïd’s Orientalism.13 Yet Gros- richard’s reading of the make-believe structure of the East provides a better meth- odological framework for classical scholars’ own analysis of ancient Orientalist literature. In particular, his exploration of the creation of the Eastern royal court as the ultimate fantastical ‘Other’ in European fiction, with its focus on the sexual- political fantasy of ‘Oriental Despotism’ and the often cruel mechanisms of absolute power, is more in keeping with the fantastical Eastern stereotypes propagated and reiterated in later Greek literature than the model proposed by Saïd, who took his material for study from more staid and sober post-Napoleonic travel literature and Victorian intellectualism.14 Both theories of Orientalism nevertheless prioritize male visual pleasure, a 172 Helios form of gratification bound up in imperial (in Saïdian terms) or despotic (in Gros- richardian terms) identities. But Grosrichard’s particular version of Orientalism, with its focus on the supposedly enigmatic and opaque structure of a despot’s power, as well as a focus on his eunuchs, countless wives, and concubines, finds a particular resonance, I suggest, in Chariton’s Callirhoe. Chariton pieces together an imaginative geography of the East that is symbolized by sensual women of the seraglio and the despotic but curiously compelling King. This setting of the seraglio becomes the ultimate space of narrative, the place in which, and about which, tales are told.15 It is the fitting venue for the most dramatic sequence of Chariton’s romantic fiction. What Chariton conveys about the reality of women’s lives at the bona fide historical Persian royal harem is at odds with the fantasy of the Persian royal seraglio by which he captivates his readers. Elements of historical facts about the imperial harem were gleaned from classical period Persica and were then used by him to give background verisimilitude to the sensual seraglio of the imagination.16 We have here a tension between ‘harem’ and ‘seraglio’ which goes beyond simple semantics. ‘Harem,’ stripped of any Orientalist gloss, is merely a synonym for a family institution, albeit in Chariton’s Persian context a royal family.17 In the highly developed Achaemenid court system. the presence of women of definite social status would have called for a codified hierarchical structure that must have been reflected in such issues as court protocol and even in designated (if not permanent) social and living spaces; lacking an Old Persian word to designate this, ‘harem’ is the most appropriate term for us to use to describe the domestic make-up and the gender ideology of the Persian royal court. By contrast, ‘seraglio’ is a word utilized by Grosrichard to refer to the phantasmic place of the Orientalist imagination; it is the mandatory topos of all accounts of the Orient.18 Because it shuts out men’s eyes, the seraglio becomes a paradise for transgressive male fantasy; merely lifting the seraglio veil is a transgression, and any male spectator who gazes into its enclaves is therefore committing the crime of unorthodox viewing.19 Since, as Grosrichard (1998, 56) notes, the seraglio is the supreme focus of an attention that is erotic, dramatic, and speculative, ‘seraglio’ is the appropriate term to use for Chariton’s chosen literary locale. Callirhoe, our story of a Greek girl in the palace of the Great King, in fact affords us an ‘open sesame’ to view simultaneously two forbidden areas: the Persian royal seraglio of the Orientalist imagination and the body of a (respectable) Greek woman who is ostensibly protected by the seraglio’s impenetrable walls. Therefore, when reading the seraglio scenes within Books 5 and 6, issues of female visibility become paramount. Moreover, Chariton’s imaginative projection into the space least accessible to the observing, masculine eye endorses and augments a sense of Otherness, and it is compelling to read his imaginary journey into the heart of the Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 173

Persian Empire as an attempt to ponder on the nature of despotism and the effeminacy of barbarian rule. In Callirhoe we see the seraglio as the place from which power originates and where power ends.

The Oriental(ist) Gaze

The Persian scenes in Callirhoe invite the gaze. The reader views the pageantry and splendor of Persia in its heyday, although it is an exotically fictionalized Persia of the imagination, a world in which all eyes are seduced into feasting upon the sights of the seraglio. According to Grosrichard (1998, 56), the gaze is “the driving element of despotic power in the Orient,” and to endorse this idea he cites a passage from Montesquieu’s very popular early eighteenth-century epistolary novel Persian Letters, which, full of Orientalist appeal, tells of a Persian royal custom of blinding potential heirs to the throne:

There is a very specific thing in Persian law, which is that the law of theS tate directs that no blind man should be raised to the throne . . . It has been used to uphold the prevailing custom in Persia of blinding male children of royal blood.20

Here, no doubt, Montesquieu follows the tract of the seventeenth-century adventurer-traveller Jean Chardin who, in his widely read description of the court of the Persian Shah, Abbas I (1588–1629), offered an elaborate investigation into the issues surrounding the succession of a Safavid prince to the throne of Persia:

The right of succession belongs to the oldest son, unless he is blind. But the King usually has the sceptre handed on to one of his choosing, by blinding his eldest sons . . . The King gives an order for a certain child to be blinded . . . Once the order is carried into the seraglio, it is quickly understood, provoking cries and weeping. [A eunuch] takes [the child], puts him across his knees with his face upturned and grips his head . . . Then with one hand he opens the eyelids and with the other he takes his dagger by the tip and rips out the pupils one after another . . . and takes them off to the King.21

Here Chardin recounts something of the dark side of Persian history, and of the character of Shah Abbas himself who, as his obsessive fear of assassination increased throughout his reign, ordered the execution of one son and the blinding of two others.22 This, according to Grosrichard, is the ultimate Orientalist scenario. Why? Because it informs us that the despotic ruler is in command of the gaze of others. To be the master is to see. While the absolute monarch may be mad, 174 Helios intoxicated, drugged, or diseased, if he has his sight, then he is an undisputed ruler. Thus, Grosrichard declares Oriental despotism to be “the empire of the gaze.”23 Grosrichard’s scenario of an “empire of the gaze” works very well for understanding the Greek imaginative construction of the Achaemenid empire, in literature both contemporary with, and subsequent to, its period of greatest influence. It is useful therefore to set Chariton’s Orientalist gaze in its wider cultural context by noting that from Herodotus on, there is something in the Greek discourse on the nature of the Persian Empire which is fixated on the Great King’s ability to control the sight of others, but also to see and to be seen (or, conversely, to be hidden from sight). Cyrus the Great, at least as portrayed by Xenophon, modelled his kingship on the premise that “the good ruler [has] eyes for men, [so that] he is able not only to give commandments but also to see the transgressor and punish him” (Cyr. 8.1.22).24 On a less positive note, Xenophon evokes the image of a somewhat para- noid Great King policing his realm by utilizing a tight network of spies, the Faithful (pistoi), throughout the length and breadth of the empire to report back to the central authority any threat of rebellion in the satrapies (Cyr. 8.2.10–2).25 A court official bearing the (curious) title of “King’s Eye,” so beautifully lampooned by Aristophanes in Acharnians (61–129), was in charge of intelligence gathering and reported directly, and perhaps even daily, to the King.26 Greek sources emphasize that the Persian King has power over the sight of others, so much so, indeed, that he puts out the eyes and directly manages the gaze of his subjects. In Ctesias’s Persica the gouging out of eyes is not infrequently cited as the punishment for treason: the rebellious eunuch Petisacas, for instance, has his eyes plucked out prior to his crucifixion (F9 §6 and F9a) and the braggart Mithri- dates is deprived of his eyes before molten lead is poured in his ears (F26 §7). Ctesias also recounts the cruel practice of pricking the eyeballs of tortured prisoners (F26 §4 = Plutarch, Artax. 14–7). Xenophon too recalls that, as he marched through the Persian Empire, he often saw along the roads people who had lost their eyes because of some crime against the Great King’s law (An. 1.9.11–2). 27 The Greek authors are correct to identify this particular form of Persian punishment that focuses on sight, for there is good evidence for the practice of blinding rebellious traitors from Old Persian sources too. In his monumental Bisitun Inscription, Darius the Great boasts of how the Median pretender Phraortes (Fra- vartish) “was captured and brought to me. I cut off his nose, his ears, and his tongue, and I tore out one eye, and he was kept in fetters at my palace entrance, and all the people beheld him” (DB II §32). The same fate is reserved for the traitor Tritantaechmes (Cicantakhma) the Sagartian (DB II §33).28 In this Darius is consistent with a general Near Eastern practice, since successive Eastern civilizations regarded blindness as the lowest type of degradation that could be inflicted upon an individual; the gouging out of the eyes of an enemy prisoner (sometimes specifi- Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 175 cally only the right eye, which rendered a soldier useless, since the shield was held over the left eye) was thus a form of national retribution in warfare. Assyrian policy promoted the blinding or partial blinding of vassal kings, together with their troops, who had broken treaties. Thus, a text by Ashurnasirpal II recounts how, “I captured many troops alive: I cut off some of their arms and hands; I cut off their noses, ears and extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops” (Annals of Ashurnasirpal).29 Of particular interest in the Bisitun text, however, is Darius’s report that the mutilated heads of the rebellious prisoners were placed on display, probably at the gates of the royal palace.30 This is a standard practice, since the public display of rebels, either as mutilated corpses or as living prisoners awaiting the final death penalty, signified the serious nature of rebellion and acted as a warning to other subject peoples. That “all the people beheld him” highlights the notion of the active gaze of the population who must look and learn from the decapitated head with the hollow eye sockets, and underscores the paradox of the seeing and unseeing eye. Of equal interest to the Greeks was the nature of the Great King’s inaccessibility, or more appropriately, his invisibility, for the Achaemenid monarch was un roi imaginaire. 31 As Pseudo-Aristotle notes (Mund. 348a),

[The King] himself, so it is said, established himself at Susa or Ecbatana, invisible to all, dwelling in a wonderful palace with a surrounding wall flashing with gold, electrum and ivory; it had a succession of many gate-towers, and the gate- ways, separated by many stades from one another, were fortified with brazen doors and high walls; outside these the leaders and most eminent men were drawn up in order, some as personal bodyguards and attendants to the king himself, some as guardians of each outer wall, called ‘guards’ and the ‘listening- watch,’ so that the king himself, who had the name of ‘Master’ and ‘God,’ might see everything and hear everything.

Should suppliants reach the King’s closely guarded presence, having negotiated the tortuous protocol and rituals that surrounded the royal audience, even then they were denied the opportunity to view the monarch’s face directly: court ceremonial carefully regulated the gaze of any petitioner.32 The act of proskynêsis, the tightly codified gesture of respect involving bowing and blowing a kiss (a kind of sala’am) in front of a high-status individual, ensured that in the presence of majesty suppliants threw themselves on the floor and kept their gaze strictly lowered.33 Even favored courtiers in the privileged position of dining with their monarch were unlikely to gaze directly upon the Great King. Heraclides of Cumae reports that 176 Helios

Of those who are invited to eat with the King, some dine outdoors, in full sight of anyone who wishes to look on; others dine indoors in the King’s company. Yet even these do not dine in his presence, for there are two rooms opposite each other: in one the King has his meal, in the other the invited guests. The King can see them through a curtain at the door, but they cannot see him. (Heraclides, FGrH 689 F2 = Athenaeus 4.145)34

With this power over the gaze, the Great King can (and does) play with sight; he is all-seeing, but invisible.35 The appearance of the ruler, when he deigns to reveal himself to the gaze of his courtiers or to his subjects at large, is a kind of theatrical staging where the ‘charisma’ of monarchy is enhanced by setting and costume. These elements play key roles in what has been termed the ‘theater of power’ where, hidden behind palace gates and walls and behind curtains, veils, and, of course, the intricacies of court etiquette, the Achaemenid monarchy fashions a mystique through palace architecture and ceremonial.36 Moreover, the Great Kings’ removal from the mundane sphere of existence is emphasized by the gorgeousness of their robes and regalia. Paradoxically their invisibility is emphasized through display. Xenophon is therefore able to conceive that Cyrus the Great knew that grandeur is purely a thing of optical illusion when he adopted the dress of the Medes as a kind of state ‘fancy dress’: “He thought if anyone had any personal defect, that costume would help to conceal it, and that it made the wearer look very tall and very handsome.” Not content with the physical trappings of dress, Cyrus allegedly “encouraged also the fashion of painting beneath the eyes so that they might seem more lustrous than they are, and of using cosmetics to make the complexion look better than nature had made it” (Cyr. 8.1.40–1).37 So, Great Kings are kings for display, but they are also kings through display. As Grosrichard (1998, 60) conceives of it,

The despot tends to be constituted as a pure being of the gaze, simultaneously peripheral and central, enclosing and enclosed, since he is this gaze which is imagined to look upon everyone else, and this unique gaze which, from the centre of the palace, is cast down upon the empire and the world.

Chariton’s Artaxerxes controls the gaze of others, although he too is the focus of admiring looks as, dressed in Chinese silk and seated on a white horse, he sets out to hunt: “Horsemen rode out splendidly got up, Persian courtiers and the pick of the army. Every one of them was a sight worth seeing, but the most spectacular was the King himself . . . He was an impressive sight in the saddle” (Cal. 6.4). Neverthe- less, Artaxerxes’ power over the sight of his subjects is rendered null and void when he meets Callirhoe; despotism gives way to abject slavery at the sight of Callirhoe’s Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 177 beauty and the King shifts uncomfortably from being the absolute master of the gaze to being its victim.

Looking at Callirhoe

Callirhoe is in every way the focus of Chariton’s novel. She is central to all its action and is onstage, so to speak, throughout most of its development so that the thoughts, emotions, motivations, and actions of all other characters revolve around her. Most strikingly, the gaze of other characters always falls upon Callirhoe. She is forever being looked at—by men, by women, by kings and queens, by the public, by the narrator, and by the reader.38 She is the object of this visual fixation because of her astonishing loveliness, a “beauty more than human,” Chariton tells as at the outset of the novel, an “astonishing vision” as fair as Aphrodite, he reiterates (1.2). “Her beauty is superhuman,” exclaims King Artaxerxes when he first sees her (6.3). A glance at Callirhoe is enough to ensure her everlasting fame: “When people saw her, they would talk about her, her beauty would enslave the whole of Ionia, and report of her would reach the Great King himself,” Dionysius muses in a self-fulfilling prophecy (2.7.1). The vocabulary Chariton uses for looking, admiring, and watching Callirhoe is rich, but one particular phrase sums it up: tou;~ aJpavntwn ejdhmagwvghsen ojfqalmouv~ (4.1.10). Reardon translates this as “she drew all eyes to her,” while Gould takes things a step further by rendering it, “she alone held every eye [in thrall].”39 But there is more to this turn of phrase than either of these translations suggests: Callirhoe is noted to be a dêmagôgos of the eyes, a charismatic public figure, but “she draws the people to her” not by rhetorical speaking skills, but simply by her visual magnetism. As an object of the public gaze, she is compared to an admired artwork: “No painter had ever yet painted nor sculptor sculpted or poet recounted,” says Chariton, a thing as lovely as the sight of Callirhoe holding her newborn son in her arms (3.8). At her wedding, the people of Miletus cannot get their fill of looking at her, and climb to their rooftops to glimpse her as she passes by below (3.2). Sometimes the radiance of her beauty is simply too much for the crowd and they turn away blinded by her loveliness and fall to the floor, their eyes cast down or closed tightly; even children are affected in this way (4.1).40 The constant public gaze on the ravishing beauty of the heroine is without question designed for erotic effect. The gaze focuses on Callirhoe’s exquisiteness and it rests (almost loiters) there; the reader is invited to join in and stare at her loveliness too, objectifying her as the recipient of his (undoubtedly male) desire. The operation of this all-encompassing masculine gaze is exemplified in Book 1.14, where Callirhoe, sold into slavery, is unveiled to her stunned buyer and, simultaneously, to the reader: “Theron . . . unveiled Callirhoe’s head [and] shook loose her hair . . . 178 Helios

Leonas and all the people were awestruck at the sudden apparition—some of them thought they had seen a goddess . . . and amazement followed.” Callirhoe’s dual role as both desired object and passive victim is obvious here. There is, however, an ambiguity surrounding the ability of the male gaze to dominate, since to gaze on a desired female does not always confer mastery on the male observer; it can also unsettle him and threaten his authority. Wherever Callirhoe goes, men simply fall at her feet. Four leading Persian statesmen have no raison d’être other than to seduce her, but not one of them can resist the power of her beauty. Mithridates faints on seeing her (4.1.9) and Dionysius is driven to the point of suicide because he cannot have her (3.1). Thus, even though Callirhoe is reduced to actual servitude, it is her captors and masters who are represented as emotionally subjected to her through her erotic powers, a standard in the Greek phenomenology of êros.41 More remarkable, however, is Callirhoe’s own attitude to her good looks and to the attention she solicits from others. Like Helen of Troy’s rejection of her own exquisiteness (Homer, Il. 6.345–9), Callirhoe too is a reluctant beauty (although, of course, this reluctance itself can create desire in others). A constant image in the novel is that of Callirhoe veiling her face, not simply at times of heightened anxiety, but in a general desire to create a blockage between herself and the relentless gaze of others. A woman’s veiled modesty and chastity, however, is an erotic turn-on in itself. For a Greek male, a circumspect display of aidôs or sôphrosynê on the part of a woman (or a young man) was frequently regarded as a sexual stimulus.42 The Greek veil heightens that sexuality, as it covers and conceals the body and keeps it chaste and secure; but in concealing the figure, the same veil also highlights the body’s sexuality and makes it desirable. Veiling temporarily denies men access to women’s sexuality, but the rebuff itself can be erotically charged. Greek men expected women to veil in order that they could be unveiled.43 It might seem paradoxical that the veil, the guarantor of chastity and honor for those who are perceived to warrant that respect, might actually be responsible for sexualizing the chaste and decorous wearer, but sexual innocence is often viewed as desirable. Thus, towards the end of Chariton’s novel, Chareas is reunited with Callirhoe:

So Chaereas crossed the threshold into the room. The moment he saw her, rest- ing, and veiled though she was, his heart was stirred by the way she breathed and looked, and he was stirred with excitement. . . . While he was still speaking, Callirhoe recognized his voice and unveiled and at the same moment they cried out: “Chaereas!” “Callirhoe!” (8.1.7–8)

As the story of Callirhoe progresses and the action of the plot moves ever further inland away from the coast of Asia Minor, it is interesting to note how Cal- Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 179 lirhoe’s visibility and freedom become progressively more restricted. As she travels into the mansions of the Persian nobles, we learn that she is kept under careful surveillance (4.6), so that the unrestricted visibility that had been a hallmark of her life in Syracuse and Miletus is limited. As Callirhoe progresses further into the Persian Empire, Chariton uses the literary device of concealment with increasing frequency and she is hidden from the novel’s internal audience with greater regularity. The seraglio motif begins to be established in Book 4, and from this point in the novel until her release from Persian capture in Book 8, only the narrator and the reader, together with the few male characters who own Callirhoe, are now permitted to view her. In effect Callirhoe enters completely into the Greek fantasy of Oriental seclusion.44 In a later period, Plutarch expanded on the commonly held Greek belief in this ‘Oriental seclusion’ of women, and commented boldly that “As a rule the barbarian peoples are excessively jealous of their wives, and the Persians outdo all others in this respect. Not only their wives, but also the female slaves and concubines are rigorously watched, and no strange eye is allowed to see them” (Them. 26). Here the Persians dominate their women through means of regulating access to viewing: they watch their women assiduously and guard them against being watched by others. But who are these “others” so intent on doing the watching? Plutarch does not say but we are led to imagine that the “other” viewers are there illicitly, dishon- estly. What we have in Plutarch’s justification of a barbarian custom, I suggest, is little more than a cliché in which the seraglio morphs into a luxurious women-only prison where the gaze (into and out of its space) is tightly controlled. Certainly this obsessive Oriental need to watch, safeguard, and conceal their womenfolk is a character trait Chariton readily gives to Dionysius, who jealously guards Callirhoe and controls her visibility: at the close of Book 5, just before the Babylonian episode, we realize that “He saw all men as rivals—keeping watch over Callirhoe in Miletus was one thing; in the whole of Asia, it was another matter” (4.7). These “rivals” are, we can imagine, the “others” of Plutarch’s text but Chari- ton’s statement acts as a warning to the reader that in Book 5, as Callirhoe gets to Babylon, Dionysius, increasingly anxious over her chastity, might conceal her from the eyes of others ever more assiduously, so that the reader too might lose sight of her. “My only hope of safety,” Dionysius schemes, “lies in keeping [Callirhoe] hidden” (5.3). To do so, he employs a curtained carriage to transport his wife into Babylon. Chariton is careful with the detail: “[Dionysius put] Callirhoe into the carriage [harmamaxa] and shut the curtains” (5.1). The Greek reports of Persian queens and noblewomen progressing through the empire within their curtained carriages (harmamaxae) is well attested.45 Chariton is therefore recalling a genuine Persian custom in which women of privileged status augmented their high social position by separating themselves from the 180 Helios common gaze through the use of curtained litters. The harmamaxa was a deluxe four-wheeled chariot-wagon composed of an enclosed box, long enough to recline in, which was richly upholstered and decorated all around with concealing textile hangings. As Plutarch would have it, “When [Persian women] take a journey, [they] are carried in closed tents, curtained on all sides, and set upon a harmamaxa” (Them. 26.5). It was a vehicle supremely suited to transporting women and, in S. I. Oost’s words, it was used by Persians for “shuttling their harems about.”46 Curtius Rufus (3.3.24–5) comments that as the massive peripatetic court of Darius III trundled on its routine progress around the empire, the army was followed by

Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, drawn in a curtained carriage, and in another came his wife. A troop of women attended the Queens on horseback. There followed the fifteen so-calledharmamaxae in which rode the King’s children, their nurses and a herd of eunuchs . . . Next came the harmamaxae of 365 royal concubines.47

Greek sources frequently reiterate this detail of transportable female purdah: Xenophon, for instance, recalls that Mania, the extraordinary female governor of Dardanus, a dependant of the satrap Pharnabazus, watched and commanded battles from the purdah of her curtained litter (Hell. 3.1.10). Callirhoe’s harmamaxa is certainly attested in the historiographic sources, but Chariton’s use of the curtained coach is perhaps intended to put the reader in mind of another (earlier) literary heroine who, like Callirhoe, found herself the subject of the erotic attention of an oriental despot. Xenophon’s Panthea, the beautiful Lady of Susa, a model of the sôphrôn wife, is depicted reclining in her carriage, hidden completely from the public gaze by its curtained walls (Cyr. 6.4.11).48 Callirhoe’s carriage serves the same function as Panthea’s: both allow the heroines to conceal themselves from unwanted eyes. For Chariton, however, the wagon also operates as a place of conspicuous display, for his version of the harmamaxa is transformed into a kind of portable theater that serves only to frame, and endorse, Callirhoe’s remarkable beauty. The carriage itself becomes a fetish for the crowd’s desire to see and, ultimately, own Callirhoe: as she sits inside its curtained barrier, the crowd attempts to kiss the carriage itself (5.3.10), an act that in itself recalls Panthea’s tender farewell to Abradates in the Cyropaedia (6.4.10): “And when she had entered the carriage through the hangings, the groom closed them up and Panthea, not knowing how she could now kiss him good-bye, touched her lips to the carriage.” But as the Persian noblewomen demand to see Callirhoe, and Rhodogyne challenges her to the duel of loveliness, Chariton notes (5.3.8): Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 181

It was no longer possible for Callirhoe to remain concealed, and Dionysius, against his will . . . asked her to come out [of the carriage]. At that moment everyone strained not only their eyes, but their very souls, and nearly fell over each other in their eagerness to be the first to see and get as near as possible.

The theatricality of the scene, with the revelation of Callirhoe to her star-struck audience, is underlined by the theatrical vocabulary employed by Chariton: he uses the term skênê for the wagon’s curtains (5.2.9), no doubt encoding in the word the sense of enclosed and hidden space of the theater’s stage building of painted cloths.49 Dionysius draws back the skênê to reveal the actress.

Ogling at Concubines: Issues of Visibility

In the books leading up to her Oriental sojourn, Callirhoe voices her apprehension at being forced to live as a concubine in the house of some great Persian noble- man.50 “If Dionysius wants to have me as a concubine [pallakê],” she declares, “if he wants to enjoy the satisfaction of his own desires, I will hang myself rather than give my body up to an outrage fit for a slave” (3.1). But what is it about concubinage (pallakia) that Callirhoe so fears? Is it that the concubine is little more than a man’s sexual possession? That she is open to the enslaving view of others?51 With its setting in the Orient, Callirhoe conjures up the ‘exotic’ yet historically verifiable polygamous practices of the Persians. In regard to pallakia, Chariton was no doubt following the likes of Herodotus (1.135) who noted that “Every [Persian] has a number of wives, a much greater number of concubines,” which was an image still being presented in Chariton’s own day (perhaps) by Strabo (15.3.17): “They marry many wives and also maintain a number of concubines for the sake of having many children.” While this Greek scenario of empire-wide polygyny should not be taken at face value, it may well be representative of the elite of Persian society in the Achaemenid (and later Parthian) period, since Persian nobles, and certainly satraps, imitated polygynous customs of royalty and, as a mirror image of the royal court, they housed numerous concubines within the satrapal palaces. Pharnaba- zus, satrap of Phrygia, for instance, kept a court full of concubines (Xenophon, Hell. 3.1.10). Concubines tended to be foreign girls and could be acquired for the palaces through gift exchange, or were brought to Persia as war booty or gifted to kings and satraps as tribute.52 It would appear that in Callirhoe Chariton draws on the common knowledge and popular clichés of Persian concubinage and exploits the historical figure of the captive concubine for dramatic effect. The allure of the seraglio concubines proves to be irresistible to Greek writers. Thus, the story of Aspasia, the Greek-born 182 Helios concubine of Artaxerxes II (not Pericles’ pallakê but “the other Aspasia,” as Pierre Brulé names her) as related by Plutarch (Per. 24.11; Artax. 26.5–9) and romanti- cized by Aelian (VH 12) has much in common with the story of Callirhoe. Passed around the Persian court from brother (Cyrus the Younger) to brother (Artaxer xes) and then to son (Crown Prince Darius), Aspasia’s story is a highly romanti- cized, not to say eroticized, Greek treatment of the fashionable concubine image.53 For Greek authors concubines are the primary object of the fantastical despot’s visual and, by extension, sexual gratification, and Greek texts reveal a particular preoccupation with the sex life of the Persian monarch. Heraclides of Cumae for instance records:

Three hundred women watch over [the Great King] . . . These sleep throughout the day in order to stay awake at night, but at night they sing and play on harps continually while the lamps burn; and the King takes his pleasure with them as concubines. (Heraclides, FGrH 689 F2 = Athenaeus 12.514b)54

Plutarch, perhaps utilizing Heraclides’ report, also attempts to numerate the palace concubines, confirming that “[ArtaxerxesII ] had . . . no fewer than 360 concubines, selected for their beauty” (Artax. 27), although Diodorus (17.7.77) expands the number slightly:

[Alexander the Great] added concubines to his retinue in the manner of Darius [III], no less than the days of the year in number, and outstanding in beauty as selected from all the women of Asia. Each night these paraded about the couch of the King so that he might select the one with whom he would lie that night.

What is to be done with these reports? Three hundred and sixty nubile concubines parading themselves around the King’s bed in a yearlong carousel of loveliness—there to looked at, to be ogled; and there for the King to ‘take his pleasure’ with. It is a very titillating image. These texts compel us to visualize the excesses of the Great King’s sex life, and Diodorus in particular implies that each and every night the monarch chose to sleep with a new concubine, discarding earlier bed- mates (the same image is provided in Esther 2.12–4 where young concubines are called for by the king at night and leave his bedchamber in the morning to advance into a new harem).55 These texts force us to think about the royal concubines in a particular way, and in doing so we step away from the harem of history and enter, it appears, into the seraglio of fantasy. It is clear that Chariton’s depiction of the Persian court acts in accord with general Greek preconceptions of Oriental customs. However, he indulges his imagination by affording his reader the ultimate male voyeuristic fantasy: the female beauty contest. Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 183

This in itself is not unusual, for the beauty pageant is a familiar enough topic in Greek literature and mythology, but Chariton gives it an added frisson because the competition occurs in the context of the royal harem and he uses the device of the contest to gaze ever deeper into the seraglio of his Orientalist construction.56 We meet with Queen Stateira there, and while the author does not indulge the reader with a description of her face, her ladies-in-waiting assure us that she is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom and a threat even to Callirhoe’s captivating looks. One of the Persian noblewomen explains to the Queen that “A Greek female is waging a campaign against our women, whom the world has long admired for their beauty; there is a danger that in our time the renown of Persian women will be ended” (5.2.3). The Persian Wars are now seen to be escalating into a battle of beauty, and an international incident emulating from the seraglio threatens to ensue: “The Greeks are braggarts and beggars,” declares Stateira defensively, “Let one of us appear beside [Callirhoe] and eclipse this poor slave.” Action is needed. To save face, faces must be shown. But custom forbids Stateira from showing herself outside the confines of the seraglio, and the Persian women remind the Queen that she cannot reveal herself to the common gaze (5.3.4). Of course, Chariton is cleverly reworking a proper Persian royal convention here: the high rank of royal females, like that of the Great King himself, was stressed by their conspicuous invisibility. The royal women of Achaemenid Persia did not live in complete purdah isola- tion, no more than they inhabited a world of sultry seraglio sensuality, but they did form part of a strict hierarchical court structure that moved in close proximity to the ‘invisible’ king. As a component of the inner court they too enjoyed a privileged ‘removal’ from public eyes. However, popular conceptions of ‘harem’ imply a lack of freedom for women, and their imprisonment within the royal palace, far away from the eyes of others. Thus, harem women are usually thought of as sad, lonely, and sometimes desperate individuals. But the idea that ‘freedom’ must be linked to ‘visibility’ and thus bring about ‘happiness,’ is a construction of our own age. Freedom in the modern sense of the word does not equate with ancient concepts of public visibility, since in Greek and Near Eastern antiquity a woman felt no honor in being put before the public view.57 True authority and prestige lay in a woman’s removal from an overt public view. This was certainly the case among high-status Persian women where numerous social conventions (including veiling and the demarcation of space) ensured their public invisibility, and thereby boosted their sense of honor and, simultaneously, the honor and status of their male kin.58 In Persia it was important for the status and honor of Achaemenid royal women that their public invisibility was publicly demonstrated. Chariton works within these commonly known notions of Persian royal women’s status, honor, and invisibility, but expands on their dramatic potential to help 184 Helios serve his narrative and add tension to the intricacies of the plotline, and in this he is consistent with other early novelists, as we can see from the opening of the Book of Esther, as reworked for a Greek audience in the early Hellenistic period. In that text Queen Vashti is holding a feast for the court ladies inside the palace at Susa while the King and his nobles dine outdoors in the garden (Est. 1:9). Drunk and immodest in the presence of his sycophantic courtiers, the Great King commands Vashti to appear before him and his male guests. Shocked and repelled by the suggestion of appearing before men who are not of her blood-kin group, nor even slaves of her own household, Vashti refuses to appear and rebuffs the King’s command. But, unjustly, the Queen’s concern for self-honor and her consequent rebuff of the King’s perverse orders bring about her swift divorce, downfall, and disgrace as the humiliated Ahasuerus enacts his revenge.59 This story, reminiscent in many ways of the Herodotean tale of Gyges and Candaules’ wife (Herodotus 1.8), finds further reflection in Greek sources that suggest that the royal women of Persia did not drink with their husbands and that the appearance of such high-ranking women in male company would have been thought improper.60 For Vashti to appear in the full sight of the King and his guests would be tantamount to reducing herself to a concubine or a dancing girl, a loss of status that would be intolerable to her self-importance. The reader of the Book of Esther, I suggest, is solicited by the author to sympathize with Vashti’s plight, and consequently we find the King’s treatment of the Queen, caught up as she is in his zeal to exploit his despotic gaze, both illicit and degrading. Interestingly, even Plato recognized that a Persian queen’s fear of outside accu- sations of licentiousness meant that her vigilance on the matter of her own chastity ensured that harem walls and guards were quite unnecessary: “The Persian King is so superior to us that no one has a suspicion that he could have been born of any- body but the King before him; therefore the King’s wife has nothing to guard her except fear” (Plato, Alc. 1.121C). This terror helped maintain a queen’s high status and her removal from the public gaze. Dinon’s Persica also gives us a fascinating glimpse of the kind of formalized court etiquette that preserves the high status of the legitimate wife of the King, even over his concubines:

Among the Persians the Queen tolerates a large number of concubines because the King rules his legitimate wife as an absolute owner, the other reason . . . [is] because the Queen is treated with reverence by the concubines; at any rate they do obeisance to her. (Dinon, FGrH 3 F27 = Athanaeus 13.556B)

In Callirhoe, therefore, Chariton’s depiction of Stateira confirms that she is a com- pliant wife who obeys royal protocol (as indeed does her circumspect husband). Her heightened sense of prestige is magnified by her invisibility because, after all, Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 185

Stateira is the highest-status female of the novel, and her honor is never compro- mised in Chariton’s account of the remarkable twists and turns of the plot. In a way Stateira is Chariton’s ideal Hellenic woman, but in Oriental fancy dress. While beautiful, her looks do not quite match up to Callirhoe’s, but she is striking nonetheless, and desirable and meekly obedient too.61 It is important to note that it is Rhodogyne, a women of a lower (if still noble) social rank, who invites direct comparison with the Greek heroine at the beauty contest; and while the assembled Persian noblewomen acknowledge Stateira’s supremacy, when the idea for the contest is first suggested by them, they realize the impossibility of the situation by crying out, as one, “If only you could be seen, mistress!” (5.3). This cri de coeur serves to emphasize the Persian despotism that sets them apart from the free Greeks, by reminding the reader that he gazes unlawfully into the royal seraglio and dares to challenge the supremacy of the despotic gaze reserved for King Arta xerxes alone.

Conclusion

By penetrating behind the walls of the Persian inner court, and well beyond the facts of the historical Achaemenid harem itself, the Greek authors of the late Hel- lenistic and Roman Imperial periods indulged in the public’s taste for the compelling cliché of the royal seraglio. The real, historical imperial harem of the Achaemenid monarchs was concealed behind its own veil of circumspection, and thus was hazy even in Persian culture itself, as decorum demanded respect for the privacy of the institution. The harem had long fascinated outsiders, and the Greeks of the classical period from Aeschylus and Herodotus to Ctesias, Xenophon, and even Plato found ways of peering, however briefly, into the domestic heart of the palace, and used the harem as a place to chronicle the family rivalries and comment on the political tensions of the Achaemenid dynasty.62 By and large, the historical harem, however, remains a hidden world. But in the seraglio fantasies of the Greek novels of the Roman Imperial age, the reader is given license to raise the curtain of the inner quarters, just as Dionysius raises the skênê of Callirhoe’s harmamaxa, and view (and delight in viewing) the seraglio as a theatrical performance space created for our visual titillation. Together with the despotic ruler of the realm, we the readers indulge in, and share with him, his empire of the gaze by viewing a rich mélange of sex, decadence, slavery, power, riches, and sheer abandon; in short, the incarnation of the most eye-catching of all Orientalist clichés. 186 Helios

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Notes

1. On the heroine of Callirhoe, see generally Alvares 1997; Haynes 2003; Hägg 2004, 73–108, 277–307. For masculinity as portrayed in the novel, see importantly Jones 2012. 2. On the issue of the Achaemenid harem, and debates surrounding the term, see Llewellyn- Jones 2010 and 2013. For a balanced and thorough investigation into ancient harem systems (including Persia) see Scheidel 2009; for Ctesias, Lenfant 2004 and Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010; for Dinon, Stevenson 1987. 3. On the dating issues see Hägg 1987; Goold 1995, 1–2; Bowie 2008. For a recent study of the novel and its author, see Tilg 2010. 4. See Cook 1983, 210–4; Dandamaev 1989, 274–85; Briant 2002, 615–30. On Ctesias as court physician, Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, 12–7. 5. Brosius 1996, 66, 73–4, 110–1. 6. Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010. 7. On the notion of the novel arising out of ‘bad history,’ see comments by Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, 68–87. 8. Morgan 2007 and Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, 76–87. Likewise the Greek and Hebrew versions of the biblical book of Esther have all the hallmarks a historical novel. The story is set in a precise location (Susa: Est. 1:2), at a specific time (the third year of the reign of King Ahasuerus, that is, Xerxes: Est. 1:3), and follows two classic reversal of fortune scenarios: as Esther and Mor- decai rise from obscurity to their exalted positions at court, so the wicked Haman, the King’s chief minister, falls from grace and is executed. There are several marks of history writing in Esther, and the book actually opens with the phrase “It came to pass” (Est. 1:1). The unknown author(s) pre sents the work as if it were history, although the kind of detailed information given to the reader (including a note on the extent of the empire: Est. 1:1) is as much at home in the historical novel as it is in ‘history proper.’ A particularly interesting reading of Esther has been provided in Knee- bone 2007. See further discussion in Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, 67–70. 9. Romm 2008, 113. 10. See Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010, 71–2, 157. 11. See Cook 1983, 22. 12. Hall 1989, with reflections and reworkings in 2006, 184–224. 13. As acknowledged by Hall 2006, 191–2. 14. For criticism of Saïd, see Irwin 2006; also Varisco 2007 and Warraq 2007. 15. Grosrichard 1998, 124. 16. On the nature of the harem or inner court in Persia, see Llewellyn-Jones 2002 and Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010. For comparative evidence see Peirce 1993 and 2008, Bahrani 2001, Hashat 2003, Marsman 2003, Nashat 2003, Solvang 2003, Lal 2005 and 2008, Kaplan 2008. 17. Fighting against the current tide of Achaemenid scholarship, Balcer (1993, 273–317) writes with common sense on the concept of early Achaemenid harem; see also Llewellyn-Jones 2002. 18. The Turkish word for inn, serai, became a byword in the Islamic world for whorehouse; in later Western misunderstanding this developed into seraglio and the confusion between harem and brothel was established. See Murphy 1983, 109. 190 Helios

19. On the Western image of the harem, see Kabbani 1986; Lytle Croutier 1989; Mernissi 1997, 2001, 2003; Yeazell 2000; Lewis 2004; Ballaster 2005. For Orientalist visions of the seraglio in art, see DelPlato 2002, Bohrer 2003, Davies 2003. 20. Grosrichard 1998, 56, citing Montesquieu, Mes Pensées, no. 1794; see also Betts 1973. 21. Chardin 2001 [1711], 5: 241. 22. For a discussion see Ferrier 1996. 23. Grosrichard 1998, 57. 24. On Xenophon’s literary construction of Cyrus, see Due 1989 and Gera 1993. 25. See Briant 2002, 344. 26. See further Herodotus 1.114 and Ctesias F 20 §12. In the early fifth-century Athenian empire, the Persian institution was copied, with the Athenians calling their inspectors episkopoi or ‘overseers.’ This title may have been a word-play on the (probable) Persian name of the King’s Eye, spasaka or ‘seer’; see further Balcer 1977. 27. Generally on eye gouging and other forms of corporal punishment, see Strid 2006. 28. For a brief discussion see Nylander 1980. 29. See Pritchard 1969, 275–6 for the complete text. From the Hebrew Bible too there is evidence for the routine practice of destroying the sight of enemies: the Philistines bored out the eyes of Samson (Judges 16:21), King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon blinded the captive Hebrew monarch Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:7), and Nahash the Ammonite demanded as a condition of surrender that he should thrust out the right eye of every man of Jabesh-Gilead as a reproach to his Israelite enemies (2 Samuel 9:2). 30. Kuhrt 2007, 1: 154. 31. On the concept of the ‘invisible king,’ see Allen 2005 and Briant 2002, 259–63. 32. On the ritual of the audience see Allan 2005 and Llewellyn-Jones 2013; more generally, Brosius 2006, 32–7 and 2007. 33. See Horst 1932, Frye 1972, Mitropoulou 1975. 34. On the formality of the king’s dinner see Briant 2002, 286–97. 35. On this paradox see Lasine 2001. 36. The term is commonly found in court studies; see, e.g., Strong 1973 and Llewellyn-Jones 2013. 37. For Achaemenid royal dress see Bittner 1985, Henkelman 1995/1996, Tuplin 2007. 38. On vision in Callirhoe see, importantly, Elsom 1992 and in the Greek novel in general see Morales 2005. 39. Reardon 1989 and Goold 1995. 40. For the rich cultural models of erotic vision in Greece, see esp. Cairns 2005. 41. The locus classicus for the power of kallos is the chariot myth in Plato, Phdr. 246A4–7; for its effect in the Greek novel see Heliodorus 3.7.5. See Cairns 2005 for full references. 42. E.g., Pindar, Ol. 6.6 and Theognis 1331–3; see discussions in MacLachlan 1993, 32–3, 69–70, 109–10. The erotic aspect of sôphrosynê is also discussed in Humble 1999. 43. On the eroticism of the veil see Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 283–98. On veiling in Callirhoe see Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 101, 167, 287, 303. On the veil in Greek culture and its relationship to aidôs, see importantly Cairns 1993 and 2002. 44. On Greek women and the notion of seclusion, see Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 192–5. 45. Xenophon, Cyr. 6.4.11; Diodorus Siculus 11.56.7–8; Plutarch, Them. 26. See also Herodotus 2.7.41, 2.9.76; Aristophanes, Ach. 70; Maximus of Tyre, Serm. 34; cf. Piggott 1992. 46. Oost 1977/1978, 227. See further Lorimer 1903, esp., 141–2, and Casson 1974, 54. 47. See also Diodorus Siculus 17.35.3. On the Persian peripatetic court see Briant 1988 and 2002, 187–92. Llewellyn-Jones—‘Empire of the Gaze’ 191

48. For Panthea see Gera 1993, 221–45. 49. For the early stage skênê as a tent, see Pickard-Cambridge 1946, 74; further Csapo and Slater 1998, 433 with references. 50. See Cal. 2.11. 51. It is hard to pin down the exact status of the concubine, in a wholly Greek context at least. Patterson (1991, 284) has suggested that concubinage was seen as a servile status in classical Ath- ens, although Odgen (1996, 158–9) notes that precise legal evidence for the status of Athenian “concubines is actually very hard to find.” Tragedy and New Comedy provide the best data for Athenian attitudes to pallakia, but whether characters like Andromache (the heroine of Euripides’ eponymous drama) or Glykera from Menander’s Perikeiromênê are representative of real-life concubines is difficult to say; see Henry 1985, 73ff.; Konstan 1987; Allan 2000, 167–72; also Scheidel 2009, 289–93. It would appear that in Athenian literature, the term pallakê was somehow associated with gynê (wife), but how far classical period Athenian attitudes towards concubinage was typical for Greek communities in the Imperial period is hard to ascertain. 52. Historically, at least in the Greek (and Hebrew) sources, Persian royal concubines were generally considered to be beautiful girls; see Plutarch, Artax. 27; Diodorus 17.77.6; Est. 2:3. They could be bought as slaves (Herodotus 8.105; Plutarch, Them. 26.4), or were received as gifts and tribute from different parts of the vast empire (Herodotus 3.97; Xenophon, Cyr. 4.6.11, 5.1.1, 5.1.5, 5.2, 5.9, 5.39; Est. 2:2–3). Concubines could also be regularly acquired as war booty or were captured from rebellious subjects (Herodotus 4.19, 7.83, 9.76, 9.81). Herodotus (6.32) confirms that after the crushing of the Ionian uprising, “the most beautiful girls were dragged from their homes and sent to Darius’s court.” Of course, the Greeks too acquired Persian concubines as war prizes: 329 concubines were part of Alexander’s post-Issus booty. Likewise, Parmenion captured a number of Persian women, of high status, at Damascus in 333 BCE. These included the wife of Arta xerxes III and three of his daughters, including Parysatis whom Alexander later married. On concubines see further details in Llewellyn-Jones 2010 and 2013. 53. For an enlightening exploration of the story of Aspasia see Brulé 2003, 198–203; for further details see Llewellyn-Jones 2002, 36. 54. See comments in Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010. 55. Llewellyn-Jones 2002, 33, 36–7 and Briant 2002, 282. In her excellent study on the Otto- man harem, Leslie Peirce (1993, 3) makes a vital observation on the nature of absolute monarchy, like the Achaemenid dynasty, and its intimate relationship with the women of an inner court: “Sex for the Ottoman sultan, as for any monarch in a hereditary dynasty, could never be purely pleasure, for it had significant political meaning. Its consequences—the production of offspring— affected the succession to the throne, indeed the very survival of the dynasty. It was not a random activity . . . Sexual relations between the sultan and chosen women of the harem were embedded in a complex politics of dynastic reproduction.” This idea is completely overlooked in the Greek sources, where stories of the Great King’s sex life are recounted for titillation. 56. See Hawley 1998, 37–9 on the concept of the beauty contest in Greek literature. 57. For a full discussion of female shame and its connection to veiling and to domestic space, see Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 155–214. 58. Llewellyn-Jones 2003. 59. For an interpretation of the events see Klein 1995; Myers 2000, 166–7; Berlin 2001, 11–21; Yamauchi 2008. 60. Plutarch, Conj. praec., Mor. 140B and Artax. 5.5. 61. Haynes 2003, 103–4. 62. Llewellyn-Jones and Robson 2010.

III. Performance

Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy*

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz

The project of this article, and of this volume as a whole, must be situated in contemporary interest in the related topics of the ‘gaze,’ the body, and performance.1 Gaze theory is indebted to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, which postulates the infant’s gaze in the ‘mirror stage’ as formative of its subjectivity: the infant looking at himself in the mirror is jubilant in his misrecognition of the wholeness of the image as a sign of his own physical integration, but soon experiences alienation (Lacan 1977).2 Thus, following existentialism and Sartre in particular, Lacan recognizes that there is another gaze or look outside that of the subject’s own (Lacan 1981, 67–78, 84; Sartre 1956, 252–66). That external gaze is also significant in Fou- cault’s notions of discipline and spectacle exemplified by the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham, where the inmates are visible at all times, but the guards are invisible: “visibility is a trap” (Foucault 1977, 200–7). These concerns are also of central interest to feminists who, since the time of Mary Wollstonecraft, have engaged with the problem of women as objects of the male gaze.3 As is often pointed out, John Berger (1972, 47) made the important claim that woman in culture is “to be looked at”:

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

Lacan (1981, 75) says something similar in his work on the gaze: “At the very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this all-seeing aspect is to be found in the satisfaction of a woman who knows that she is being looked at, on condition that one does not show her that one knows that she knows.4 Going further, Laura Mulvey argued that in mainstream cinema woman is the passive object for the active male gaze; furthermore, she claimed (esp. 1989b, 19–26) that that structure of viewing is fundamental to male power. Her work has been challenged and developed by others, in particular by those arguing that there are other spectatorial positions for women in the audience.5 In a subsequent collection of her essays, Mulvey modified some of her early statements by putting them in the

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 195 196 Helios context of particular moments in feminist politics (1989a, vii; 1989c; see the excellent summary in Stewart 1997, 13–9).6 These hypotheses about the masculinity of the filmic gaze, and its role in objectifying women, raise important questions for my consideration of the gaze in tragedy. We clearly cannot simply apply modern theories to antiquity, especially a theory of cinema to ancient theater, where, for one thing, many points of view replace single lens of the camera. Moreover, the visual regimes of antiquity and codes of gendered behavior were different from our own. Boys and men were the objects of the gaze, and the primary sign of respectable women’s relationship to the gaze in antiquity was their modesty or aidôs; that in turn was related, at least in ideology, to their relegation to the private sphere, not to be looked at, and to their stereotypi- cally downcast eyes when in public.7 A woman’s failure to lower her eyes might even be taken as a sign of prostitution (Cairns 2005a, 134); hetairai and pornai were in part defined by the fact that they were available to be admired in the case of the former, and possessed in the case of the latter. In a comic fragment from Philemon’s Brothers, the prostitutes “stand there naked, lest you be deceived: look everything over . . . The door’s open. [Price] one obol; jump right in” (fr. 3 K-A; translation by Kurke 1999, 197). Other comic writers similarly give the impression that women for sale stand about naked, or in transparent garb, and can be bought cheaply (Euboulus, Pannychis, fr. 82 K.-A. = Athenaeus 568E). We need, however, to be cautious in adopting wholesale the traditional view of citizen-class women’s seclusion8 for several reasons. First, we lack archaeological evidence showing actual female domestic spaces; second, women are prominent in ritual; third, they dance in choruses to attract marriage partners (on gaze in ritual, see Goff 2004, esp. 78, 85, 89, 91; on choruses, see Stehle 1997 and Calame 1997); and fourth, there is the possibility that the veil could create a mobile private sphere.9 Nonetheless, it does seem to hold for drama: in particular, there were no female bodies on offer in tragedy (see below). When I went back to Greek tragedy with viewing in mind, I was particularly struck by the image of Polyxena standing up to Odysseus in Euripides’ Hecabe and saying “I see you” (342). And as I went further in the texts of the ancient plays, I found female characters looking wherever I turned, in ways that contradicted both Mulvey’s original formulation about women as the object, not the possessor, of the gaze (1989b) and our stereotype of women in antiquity. In this essay, I will consider what power that conveys to Polyxena and the others. As we shall see, the gaze in fact does not always travel along a vector of power; indeed, gender may trump viewing. I will argue that a seeming cause for feminist celebration—the representation of women’s active gaze—negates neither the relegation of women to the domestic interior nor the prescription of downcast eyes. Rather, women outside Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 197 and women looking are intertwined with allusions to the norms prohibiting those very locations and actions. The following essay falls into four parts: the relationship of tragedy to the city; women represented as to be looked at; female characters represented as looking; finally, the ways in which sacrificial heroines are represented as both to be looked at and looking. At the end I will try to address the question of the effect of this structuration of viewing on the audience. Tragedy is obviously a privileged location for thinking about Athenian visual and performance culture. Though we generally read plays and therefore focus on the language, the etymology of the word theater makes it clear that it was a place for viewing (see Hall 2006, esp. 99–121 on relation to other visual arts). Athenian tragedy not only was a highly visual medium requiring an attentive gaze on the part of its audiences, but it also frequently concerned itself thematically with problems of vision and visibility, of revelation and knowledge (Zeitlin 1994, 141; Rehm 2002, 3–6; Thumiger, this volume). Aristotle was famously dismissive of the role of the spectacle in producing tragic emotions, but he foregrounds recognition, which is also frequently conveyed through metaphors of seeing.10 But what the actual, live audience sees is made complicated by two conventions of the Greek tragedies: the chorus often plays the role of an onstage viewer, and the messenger speeches describing something that took place offstage have a visual dimension as well.11 The messenger is a character, but one with limited personal identity; he mostly exists to narrate events that the audience and characters only see with their mind’s eye (Gould 2001, 328–31; Barrett 2002 and 2004, passim; de Jong 2004, 6–7; Lowe 2004; Squire, this volume). What are these reported events? Death and dismemberment (e.g., Oedipus Tyrannus, Bacchae), events that took place far away or long ago (e.g., Agamemnon) or in the domestic interior—including murder, death, and the suffering of women (e.g., Alcestis, Medea). The plays are a mixture of those old chestnuts, showing and telling (Goward 2004, 15–120). Both modes of representation coexist within theater, without sharply distinct effects; John Gould (2001, 315) even takes tragedy as a subset of narrative (also Gould 2001, 319–34, esp. 322–3 on Agamemnon). Barbara Goward (2004, 13) argues that “It seems only sensible to define the chorus in general as a potential narrator or narratee just as the other characters, while looking carefully at specific narrative functions the chorus of any one play may carry out.” Sight is a privileged source of knowledge to be sure, but sound too makes up an “important part of dramatic experience” (Rehm 2002, 6; cf. Squire, this volume). Thus, the narratives within the choral odes, for instance in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, may give the audience a more distanced view than a staged representation would, and the fact of narration must surely modify the effect on the audience, but they do not thus eliminate the effect. 198 Helios

For instance, the Messenger in Euripides’ Medea describes the death of the Prin- cess in gory detail; though neither Medea nor the audience actually sees the scene, the narrated sight does have an impact on both. Indeed the narrated death of the Princess plays a complicated role in the audience’s response to Medea. Moreover, such speeches contribute to our sense of the thematic significance of the looks that are reported (see below on Iphigenia). Thus, in my discussion I will consider narrated episodes of seeing as well as staged scenes where seeing is important because the narrative, as much as the spectacle, can shape the response of both the internal and the external audience. The ideological significance of looking and being looked at does not depend only on the audience’s view of what is literally taking place before the skênê. The tragic festival of the Great Dionysia represented an opportunity for the city to display itself: during the festival the city awarded honors to those who served the city, received tribute from its subject allies, and celebrated the orphans of the war dead in procession.12 Sponsoring a set of plays (the role of the chorêgos) was a civic duty and presented opportunities to wealthy citizens for self-promotion and display (Wilson 2000). Simon Goldhill and others argue that attendance at the festival was analogous to sitting at the Assembly; thus being a member of the audience in part defined a citizen (Goldhill 1996, 19; 1998; 1999; see 2000 for extended discussion of the connection to viewing). If the citizens were performing a civic duty as viewers, they were also the object of the civic gaze since the festival provided a site for the viewing of one’s fellow citizens. The proagôn, for instance, in which the playwrights appeared with the casts of their plays, required the actors and members of the chorus (who were citizens) to reveal themselves without costume to those who would be watching (Flaumen- haft 1994, 69). And as is often mentioned, the open air theater, with daylight performances, ensured that the audience was well aware of one another as well. (In modernity, a form of the same process can be witnessed at ceremonies like the Oscars or opening night of the opera.) Ancient Greeks went to see and to be seen. The seating seems to have given visual evidence of status (Winkler 1990, 58–9; cf. Wiles 1997, esp. 212), with generals and priests occupying front row stone seats, and the ephebes and members of the Boulê or Council arguably given special groups of seats. The theater was especially important in ancient Athens, but it was part of an overall culture that also prioritized looking. In the Funeral Oration, Thucydides (2.37.2) represents Pericles as imagining a city where the citizens did not harm each other with their gaze (opsis), thus reminding us of the importance of the citizens’ effect on one another and that such a jealous gaze could inflict harm (see Hunter 1994, 89 on gossip as a form of social control and the slave’s gaze). As Simon Goldhill emphasizes, the public awareness of “the specialness of Athens’ Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 199 culture and its concomitant requirements of its citizens” (Goldhill 1999, 8 and 2000) was connected to a regime of “display and regulation”; thus, there must have been an element of performance involved. Certain behavior was required, and activities and gestures were carefully monitored. It follows, as well, that there was someone who was watching in order to monitor. It is perhaps possible to think of Athens as a city under the influence of a disciplinary regime in the sense that Fou- cault has described in Discipline and Punish (1977, 200–9).13 This structure of looking in Athens and at the theater was highly gendered. Importantly for my concerns here, women were excluded from the performance and judging of tragedy.14 That is, in tragedy women were not the physical object of the male gaze since male actors played the roles of women, a convention that further complicates the relevance of the Mulveyan critique of male power. As I have argued elsewhere (Rabinowitz 1998 and 2008, 56), this practice should not be accepted without a second glance simply on the basis of the debatable ‘fact’ that women were not to be seen in public in ancient Athens. Dionysus is elsewhere strongly associated with female followers, so why not in tragedy? Richard Seaford (1994, 270–5) associates the transition from the female chorus to tragedy’s male chorus with transformations connected to Dionysiac ritual, especially its use of initiatory transvestism. Others have argued that the playing of the female parts allowed men access to emotions that were useful to put on, but then to take off and return to normal life (Zeitlin 1996; Loraux 1995; on satyr drama, see Hall 1998). The practice also perhaps kept those dangerous emotions associated with women somewhat in check. Thus, the use of a male actor to play female parts leads us to question whether there was necessarily a desiring (male) gaze at work in the actual performance, and if so, whether that desire was for the same (homo) or the other (hetero). Women were not totally absent; they did participate in the pre-festival procession, as basket bearers at least (Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 61 with note 5; Flaumen- haft 1994, 70; Csapo and Slater 1995, 113, no. 19; Scodel 1996, 112–3; Wiles 1997, 26); that role was one of display, emphasized by the gold of the baskets, and as Wiles points out, the “first fruits” in the baskets suggest their role in reproduction (see also Sourvinou-Inwood 1994, 271). There has historically been considerable debate about whether women were in the audience that was so much a part of the Athenian community. That is, we don’t know for sure what women saw. The evidence from Plato (Gorg. 502B–D and Leg. 658C–D) strongly suggests that women were present, but comedy is less clear. In Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae390–7, the Chorus says that when men get home from the plays they give their wives suspicious looks on the basis of what they have seen. Theater leads to surveillance. But does that mean that women were not also in attendance? The ancient evidence is not conclusive, and frustratingly enough the 200 Helios same quotations from the sources can be used both to prove and disprove their presence. A passage from Aristophanes’ Peace (962–7) is an example of this ambiguity; we are told that the women did not get any of the barley (a pun on penis) that has been thrown to the audience, but that they will get it when they get home. Were the women not there, or were they there but seated in the back and so did not get any barley?15 Most recently, David Roselli (2011, 158–94, esp. 164) has argued for their presence based on the lack of a prohibition and on the evidence for women in ritual. Given this uncertainty about the participation of actual women, I will devote the rest of this essay to the viewing that goes on in the plays16 where, as we know, women characters are central.

Women as Object of the Gaze

Despite the norm expressed in oratory of women’s restriction to the domestic inner regions and thus unseen, they are prominently represented as objects of the gaze in Greek art and literature.17 On the face of it, this visibility does not seem to corroborate Mulvey’s notion that the gaze constitutes male power, since in antiquity the woman, as object of the gaze, was represented as powerful. This is not surprising given that, in one of the Greek conceptions of erotic, desirability emanates from the eye of the beloved.18 The adult man, for instance, can be rendered weak and like a statue by the experience of desirous seeing (Plato, Chrm. 154C; Euripdes, Alc. 1118, 1123; Homer, Od. 18.212 [desire loosening the knees]; Steiner 2001, 199–201, 205–6). It was notably dangerous for men to look at some females; Medusa is one obvious example, but the beauty of Hera also distracts Zeus and allows her to deceive and seduce him in Iliad 14.293–4. Similarly, the sight of the beautiful and seductive Pandora leads to desire and thence to evil for mortals (Steiner 2001, 126, 186–90; Vernant 1996, 383–4, 388). Helen’s visibility and beauty were destructive. Who does not know Helen of Troy? Thus, for instance, Aeschylus has his Chorus punningly point out in the Agamemnon: “Whoever named you thus completely truly? . . . Helen fittingly destroyer of ships, of men, of cities” (helenaus, helandras, heleptolis, 689–90). More- over, Helen’s absence leaves longing and a spectre in her place (phasma, 415); as a result, the beautiful statues that her husband sees are painful to him.19 The statues have no charm (charis, 417); “All Aphrodite is gone from their eyes” (418–9), either because of the statues’ blank stares or because Menelaus’s eyes are starved for Helen.20 She, on the other hand, is imagined as coming to Troy in the form of a wealthy statue (agalma) shooting a soft glance from her eyes, a heart-biting blossom of erôs (741–3; cf. Iphigeneia as agalma and the wealth of the house, below 206). Toward the end of Trojan Women, when the women are about to board the ships with their captors, Hecabe begs Menelaus to kill Helen without looking at her Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 201 because she fears he would not be able to resist his desire for his wife: “Avoid looking at her lest she seize you with longing” (891). Helen, she says, “seizes men’s eyes, destroys cities and burns down houses. Such are her bewitching charms [kêlê- mata]” (892–3). Helen is a magical person, and the source of her magic is her beauty. The power of her striking good looks was legendary, and this speech would probably be a reminder to the ancient audience of a reported scene from the epic cycle (Hesiod, Cat. 519) where she wins Menelaus back by showing him her breast (cf. Euripdes, Andr. 627–31; Aristophanes, Lys. 155). In Helen, Menelaus is struck dumb when he meets his wife (548–9). But was that really a sign of Helen’s power? I want to emphasize, and I return to this point below, that the power of the woman as object of the male gaze is more imagined than real. Zeus soon enough sees through Hera, and Pandora is merely a construction whose name is synonymous with trouble. Her gifts (dôra) are malev- olent. And in truth, even Helen’s power is dubious. She is a desirable object, and as such she is always at the mercy of men (raped by Theseus and Perithous when she was arguably a mere child, and later by Paris)21 and divinities (Aphrodite) alike, so that her disastrous “to be looked-at-ness” (Mulvey) does not indicate agency or free will for her22—in fact, it is a burden. In Euripides’ Helen, she wishes that her beauty could be erased and that she had an uglier form instead.23 She explicitly calls her beauty evil (kaka, 264, 265, 266) and the cause of her suffering.24 More- over, this very “power” can be understood to lead to the cultural desire to control women and contain them within the house, a desire that is apparent in the lawsuits (and comedy). Evelyn Reeder (1995, 26, 123–6) hypothesizes that the repression of eye contact between males and females was motivated by the possibility that a man might be overwhelmed by the erotic charge set off by a woman’s look.25 The modern parallel of the veil and debates about its cultural significance cannot be overlooked.

Inside/Outside

As noted above, the norms of Athenian life, at least as articulated in prose, held that women and girls of citizen class should neither be seen nor look at men.26 Since drama necessarily represents ‘women’ in the public arena, the plays bend the rules of everyday life.27 Thus, the ancient male audience was placed in the position of looking at ‘women.’ If that was potentially dangerous, the men were protected by the convention of having men enact women’s roles; the disruption of the dominant ideology is neither real nor long-lasting, as the convention of masking further suggests.28 Nonetheless, the interruption of the inside/outside and seen/unseen dichotomies is strongly marked in several plays that begin with a suffering woman offstage. 202 Helios

As we will see, her subsequent public appearance is not thereby normalized, but is rendered problematic. Euripides’ Alcestis opens with the eponymous heroine inside preparing for her appointed day of death; everyone knows that she will die because she has promised to replace her husband in the underworld. The Chorus enters questioning what has happened; they cannot be sure because they lack evidence, neither hearing nor seeing the expected signs of death (98–100). They elicit information from the servant, who describes Alcestis’s ideal feminine behavior, thereby exposing the inside to public (male) scrutiny. Visual terms predominate: Alces- tis wants to see the light (blepsai, 206), and when she emerges, the sun sees her (244–6). As she enters from the house, she is in a trance and sees Charon (252). She is highly irrational, as she was when inside. In this way the feminine interior space is coded as hysterical. But she soon snaps out of that visionary state; then she becomes more articulate and makes a compelling and logical speech. Alcestis is more in control of her emotions than is her husband, Admetus, in this scene; she accepts reality, urging him to see her situation as it is (oJra`/~ ga;r tajma; pravgmat j wJ~ e[cei, 280). When she was inside crying over her marriage bed, she feared that Admetus would remarry; but when she regains her composure, she extracts a promise from him that he will not do so. She acts like an equal and demands this not only as a favor (charis), but as a matter of right and justice (299–301, 302). This public and arguably masculine behavior does not last because the play’s resolution turns on the reversal of Admetus’s promise: Heracles has brought Alces- tis back from death, but before revealing that to Admetus, he convinces him to accept a new woman into his house. This deception could only work if Alcestis were veiled and looking down, not looking at her husband.29 The ending of the play, I would argue, restores Admetus to power over his objectified wife by placing her inside and out of view once more. Medea and Hippolytus also open with the sounds of lament emerging from within, followed by the appearance of the protagonist. Medea is, like Alcestis, completely composed and somewhat masculine when she emerges. Hearing her cries, the Chorus asks the Nurse to bring her outside and into their sight (173, 179–80). Medea’s masculinity at this point is shown in the manner of her coming out, in her assertion of herself, and in the language used about her by others. When she finally appears before the women of Corinth, she says that if she did not come out, she could be blamed for being haughty or proud (semnos, 214–7), a charge not really typical of an Athenian woman as much as of an Athenian male citizen or aristo- crat.30 Phaedra has stayed within, keeping her suffering hidden out of shame, while she tries to starve herself to death; when she comes out of the house and into the light (178, 179), she expresses masculine desires, which imitate the behavior of the hunter Hippolytus and would put her near him (e.g., 208–11, 215–22). These expressions of longing for springs and hunting lead the Nurse to wonder at her and Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 203 to call her mad (223–7). And like other women, Phaedra will go inside to kill herself (Loraux 1987, 21–2). Thus, we can see that these characters’ emergence onto the stage is coded as masculine but not as powerful.

Looking/Not Looking

Being outside is implicitly related both to being seen and to the problematic of looking; in these cases, the very act of women’s looking is frequently linked to a restatement of the norm of not looking. For instance, Antigone in Euripides’ Phoe- nissae is physically on the city’s wall, asking questions about what she sees before her (we might compare her to Helen in the Iliad who is, however, answering, not asking, questions). Antigone would seem free in body and mind, but she is aware that if a citizen woman should see her, she might be blamed (88–96; cf. Medea’s very different fear of blame above). In this instance, the awareness of other women’s gossip controls her. Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis stages the arrival of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra at Aulis where Iphigenia will be sacrificed so that the Greek army can sail to Troy; she has been brought there under the pretense that she will be married to Achilles. Iphigenia runs away when she sees a crowd of men approaching; she wants to hide her face within the inner chambers (melathra, 1340). At this moment of crisis, she gives the response of a proper maiden; she is ashamed to look on Achilles (idein aischunomai, 1341). The trope is highlighted since her mother argues with her, labeling her modesty as inappropriate delicacy (habrotêi) or excessive holiness (semnotêtos) (1343, 1344).31 The Chorus of Chalcidian women in Iphigenia in Aulis are also powerfully represented as spectators; they have come to Aulis to see the Greek army and give a long description of it in their parodos. The energy of their looking is underlined with many verbs of seeing and intensified because no motive is given other than their desire to see. Even as they look, however, they corroborate the norm of women’s aidôs by saying that they are embarrassed to be looking (187–8).32 I would like to take Cassandra as my last example of these women who are outside and strongly marked as seeing. As is traditional for her, Cassandra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon sees what goes on in the house of Atreus, but she is not understood. When she promises to speak clearly (1178–82), she uses a visual image, saying that her prophecy will no longer look out from veils like a young bride (Rehm 1994, 44–52; 2002, 81; 2005). Though she is not technically a virgin, since she has been a victim of rape, Cassandra’s arrival will have reminded the audience of a wedding procession; like a bride she is with her ‘mate’ on the chariot, and the image she uses refers to the veiled modesty appropriate to the bride. Thus, she states the norm of chaste modesty even as she is an example of its rupture. 204 Helios

There is a further tension of opposites: Cassandra was not only raped, but she was also not really the shy maiden she claims to have been. Her prophetic power comes from Apollo, who desired her; she rebelled against him and resisted his sexual domination. In the present she specifically throws away the clothing that marked her as his servant; to the extent that women’s clothing stands for their restraint, she refuses to be tamed.33 The gift of prophecy remains, however, and she can see what is happening in the house, as well as her own death. She not only speaks out about the shameful past of the Atreides, but she also resists Clytemnestra, refusing to go inside when ordered to do so. Ultimately, however, she is still not believed. She can see what will happen, but she cannot prevent it, and she goes inside to her death.34 As we can see, these scenes and representations of women on the outside and with the gaze do not simply free the women nor in any straightforward way validate deviations from the Greek code of gender norms. By drawing attention to them as disruptions as well as to the kinds of problems women could cause, the plays partially reinstate the norms at the same time that they enact temporary infractions. The gaze is also implicated in women’s dangerous desire and revenge. The Greek conception of the visual nature of Desire (personified as the god Eros) can be seen in choral songs, which typically pray away the power that is so obviously destructive in tragedy (Calame 1999, 3–8). So, for instance in Sophocles’ Antigone, the Chorus, after having observed a tense scene between Creon and his son Hae- mon, sings of Eros as an unconquered warrior; they later connect erôs to the desire (or desirability?) that shines from the eyes of the bride (Ant. 781–97; see below 211). In Euripides’ Hippolytus, Phaedra has kept her illicit love for her stepson a secret; after the Nurse has convinced her to speak about her desire, but before Theseus reads her suicide note accusing Hippolytus of rape, the Chorus similarly hopes that “Eros which drips longing from the eyes will not be out of control” (525–32; arruthmos, 529). The Chorus of the Iphigenia at Aulis moves from praising the possession of Aphrodite in moderation (543–5) to women’s virtue, which is chastity (569), to Paris and Helen and the look that he gave her, which stirred up her desire (584–5). In tragedy, not surprisingly, the effects of the desiring female gaze are deadly. Thus, Aphrodite arranged for Phaedra to fall in love with Hippolytus upon seeing him, as she announces in her prologue (27).35 Medea’s desire for Jason is terrible, and is implicitly dependent on sight (explicit in Argonautica 3.287–8; Cal- ame 1999, 141; Buxton 2000, 270–1; Cairns 2005a, 132). In Trojan Women Hecabe denies that Helen was forced to go with Paris, asserting that she fell in love on seeing him because he was handsome (987–9; cf. Gorgias, Hel. 19, cf. 15). The prominently aggressive women are also associated with a powerful look. It is an aspect of what marks them as problematic. So, for instance, Clytemnestra’s deviation from appropriate feminine behavior, evident from the Watchman’s Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 205 description of her “man-counseling heart” (11), is enacted in part through her ability to envision and describe the path of the beacon of light that she ordered to be set up. In contrast, in Libation Bearers she tries, by baring her breast, to turn herself into the pathos-inspiring object of Orestes’ filial gaze, although she fails to produce the desired response. And of course she is killed as a result of her failure to control the way in which he sees her. Other women also exert their dangerous power through their eyes. In Euripides’ Hecabe, Agamemnon expresses his disbelief that a woman could take revenge on men, but Hecabe and her fellow slaves manage to succeed. They blind Polymestor, who killed her son, and kill his sons by pretending to take a close look at (leussein, 1154) the fabrics of his robes. Feminine gaze and feminine interest in cloth are here interwoven. In the end of the play, the power of vision continues in its significance: Polymestor becomes a blind seer and predicts that Hecabe will become a bitch, a sign to sailors—turned into something to be looked at rather than someone who sees, though she will have a blazing eye (Zeitlin 1991, 64–9 on eyes). Medea’s revenge is related to the gaze as well (Benton 1999) in complicated ways. First, as we noted earlier, from the beginning of the play her eyes are a sign that she is violent and like a bull (Med. 92; Benton 1999, 189, 191). Second, the scene where she rethinks her plan is dominated by visual imagery. She shrinks from her exile because it means that she will not see her children happy or married (she will not look on their shining eyes, 1043), and their eyes almost move her to give up her plan. She asks, “Why do you look at me with your eyes, children? Why do you laugh your last laugh” (1040–1). Finally, her sadistic pleasure is related to the delight she takes in hearing the description of the death of the Princess as reported by the messenger.36 To sum up this section, women who are represented as coming outside and being seen often articulate the cultural norms that they are breaking; women who possess the gaze either of desire or of aggression are viewed as doing harm. Thus, the way tragedy represents women looking can be seen as oscillating between empowering and disempowering them.

Sacrificial Heroines as Objects and Subjects of the Gaze

The sacrificial heroines make an appropriate culmination for this overview of the ideology and representation of the relationship of women to the operation of the gaze in tragedy, because they exemplify the poles of visibility and invisibility while directing a significant gaze of their own. As marriageable and elite females, they both are and are not suitable to behold; each of these maidens (like Alcestis) seeks the kind of glory that is associated with masculinity and military heroism, a timê or kleos that is based on being the object of an implied admiring gaze. 206 Helios

The sacrifice of Iphigenia is an obvious place to start. In Agamemnon, she is the object of the narration, of the gaze as well as of the knife. She is only ever represented at a distance—through the eyes of the Chorus looking back to the Greeks’ setting out for Troy ten years earlier; her fate is embedded in their song (Barrett 2002, 239). The Chorus describes Agamemnon articulating his dilemma: “How can I choose between my role as leader of the ships and my role as father? How can I sacrifice my daughter, who is a treasure [agalma, 208] of the house or abandon the navy” (212)? That word, agalma, points out subtly that as the daughter of the house Iphigenia is an inappropriate offering; an agalma could mean statue, as it does in Euripides’ Andromeda (fr. 125 Nauck),37 and as such would be more suit- ably given to a god (Steiner 2001, 16 on gifts). The reference to her as an art work also alludes to her status as object of the gaze.38 As Mulvey would surely note, Iphigenia’s position as spectacle makes her a victim; Agamemnon is the agent—he dares to become the sacrificer of his daughter (Ag. 224). The Chorus also describes the actual scene of the sacrifice, up to the point at which they say they did not see (eidon, 247) any more. The language here is very difficult to understand, but Iphigenia’s victimization is clear. She is lifted up on the altar like an animal, and her mouth in her beautiful face has been stopped up lest she curse the house—in other words, she is kept silent by force. She is “pouring her crocus-dipped robe to the ground” (krovkou bafa;~ d j ej~ pevdon cevousa, 239). Her robe is (perhaps) falling off her, or she has shed it, either accidentally or on purpose; in any case, her implied nudity makes her even more of an object of the gaze (cf. Polyxena in Euripdes, Hec. 560).39 This nakedness, like that of Clytemnes- tra when she tries to gain pity, is ineffectual. Iphigenia is not completely passive, however (Scodel 1996, 115). Aeschylus describes her throwing a missile at each of the men performing the sacrifice from her pitiable or piteous eyes, literally “pity loving” (philoiktôi, 241); that is, she seeks to attract pity with the gaze. As her father compared her to a statue, which one might offer instead of a human to a goddess, here the sacrificial victim is compared to a painting: prevpousav q j wJ~ ejn grafai`~ (Ag. 242).40 She is “like a picture”: by getting the men to look at her as an image, she can perhaps motivate them to remember the way she sang at her father’s table and therefore to save her (Ag. 240–7).41 At that past time, her father was sacrificing to Zeus in a healing song and needed her clear voice. She was a performer at a men’s dinner (unattested as a practice elsewhere)—they would have watched and listened to her. She was perhaps being displayed to win a husband, which is reported elsewhere, although for the most part the examples are of groups of girls and girls in choruses, not at a private dinner.42 We have to imagine her looking at the men as she is bound and gagged on the altar, trying to arouse pity on the basis of their former relationship with her. Was it a reciprocal gaze that she seeks to recall, or only her status as lovely Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 207 object of the gaze? Her glance and her voice, that is, her actions, are both evoked here, though to no avail (see Fletcher 1999). The sacrifice fetishizes her, as Mulvey would say, and makes her the silent object of the male gaze by highlighting her attempt to throw a powerful glance that hits its target (Rabinowitz 1993, 23–4, 48–9, 52–4). The contrast with Helen heightens the sense of pathos and waste about her death. The dangerous, mature woman, Helen, is also called anagalma , and when she went to Troy, she too threw a soft dart from her eyes, but Helen’s gaze was not ineffectual (Ag. 741–3). The Iphigenia in Aulis expands on the Oresteia’s sacrificial scene; here the issue of visuality is prominent over and over again (Zeitlin 1994, 167, 169).43 I mentioned earlier the striking role of the Chorus as onlookers at the camp of the Aege- ans, and have also discussed Iphigenia’s sharp sense of modesty above. The entire plot of Euripides’ play turns on seeing. The play opens (in the sole surviving manuscript) with Agamemnon sending Clytemnestra a note countermanding his original order that she send Iphigenia to Aulis for the alleged marriage. When that letter is intercepted, he still argues with Menelaus, but once he knows Iphigenia has been seen arriving, he gives up. Vision is underlined in this situation. As a bride and a princess, Iphigenia is to be admired; thus, the Messenger announces that her rumored arrival has led everyone to come look at her (425–30) and the Chorus cries out “Look at her” (592; Scodel 1996, 112–4 on visibility and display of the bride). At the same time, we repeatedly hear the ideology of women’s invisibility. Agamemnon wants the women to stay away from the crowd (735, 737); when Cly- temnestra accosts Achilles, he expresses an acute sense of shame (Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 202; Cairns 1993, 311–2). As I mentioned earlier, Iphigenia wants to run away from the male gaze, but her mother offers her “eye free of aidôs” (994) to Achilles. He refuses the sight of her, fearing blame (997–9). The extent of the catastrophe to come is defined in part by changes in the visual register. Initially, father and daughter share a reciprocal, nonhierarchical gaze. In the first meeting Iphigenia wants to look at her father and longs for his omma (‘eye’ or ‘face’ here, 648; cf. 644); she says that she is glad to see him after such a long time, and he says she speaks for him too, literally, equally for both of them; the dual (in between singular and plural) is striking (amphoin, 641) evidence of their close relationship and intimacy. A few lines later, she tells him to put away his frown, and he says “Look [idou], I’m as cheerful as I can be looking [hôron] at you” (649). Thus, loving father and daughter look at one another and are identified with one another by that look. This mutuality sharpens the piteousness of what will tran- spire, which will break their connection completely and lead to his death. Before Iphigenia is ready to be sacrificed, and while she is still fighting for her life, she supplicates Agamemnon, and her plea is again based on the looks they had 208 Helios exchanged (1239; cf. 640–1). The loss of this bond between them is underlined by the fact that they no longer share eye contact. When Clytemnestra has found out the plan, she tells Agamemnon to look at his daughter (1120), and while he is pretending not to know that anything is wrong, he asks why Iphigenia looks down (1123; cf. 1128: suvgcusin e[conte~ kai; taragmo;n ojmmavtwn [with confusion and terror in your eyes]). Clytemnestra later threatens Agamemnon, asking not only how she will be able to look at him when he returns home, but how his children will look at him (1174, 1192). At this point, Iphigenia pleads for life; she wishes to stay in the light, not be under earth. The imagery of light and dark at the beginning and end of her speech intensifies her sense of the beauty of life (1218–9, 1250). Iphigenia is still a girl, dependent on the loving look of her father; she opposes the heroic code from the realistic perspective, saying “It is better to live badly than to die well” (1252; cf. 1281). When, however, Iphigenia changes her mind and heart, having understood the threat to Achilles and his men, she reverses that statement (1375). Now, she will not look on the light, but will be the light for others; she is willing to die and wishes to win imperishable reputation (kleos, 1504). The maiden Iphigenia was afraid to be seen by Achilles; now that she has adopted the masculine code of values, she wants to become a spectacle for all of Greece (1378). The relationship between glory and the gaze is typical for the male hero; here Iphigenia attempts to adopt that role. The Chorus grants her wish (1510) and calls on everyone to look at her. With this command, which is essentially a stage direction, she is of course already becoming an icon for the audience. Like the statues in Athens that inculcated civic virtues, she is a sight that teaches a value; by looking at her (1411), Achilles is filled with heroic resolve. Iphigenia has greater volition assigned to her by Euripides than by Aeschylus—she is not dragged off but goes willingly—yet she is even more of an object and less in possession of the gaze than her Aeschylean forebear.44 Iphigenia here dies for heroic causes, but that value system has been put into question by the play’s opening: Agamemnon disavows the desire for glory and debunks the whole venture. Thus, it seems that being looked at, and the desire to be looked at, are problematic in the ways that Mulvey hypothesized. This brings me back to the Hecabe, a play whose Trojan War theme is closely related to that of Iphigenia in Aulis, though written earlier. Both plays correlate vengeful mothers and sacrificial daughters, and both plays highlight the exchange of glances. Like the IA, Hecabe is set in limbo (cf. Zeitlin 1991, 53–4); the army is between Troy and home. The war is now over, and the Greek army is becalmed in Thrace, as it was at Aulis. This time it is stopped by Achilles’ ghost (38) demanding the sacrifice of Polyxena on his grave before the homeward journey can take place. Polyxena’s death, like that of Iphigenia, is tied into the heroic code—here the argument is that the army should honor the dead Achilles as it honored him when he Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 209 looked on the light (312). The question of honor versus human life is very present in this play. Like Clytemnestra, and Iphigenia before her change of heart, Hecabe tries everything to save her daughter, including offering herself as a substitute (386); she urges Polyxena to use every power at her disposal to convince Odysseus to release her (334–41). Polyxena refuses to beg, however, declaring her heroism. She goes further than either of the Iphigenias; like Iphigenia in Agamemnon, she claims the power of the gaze, but she is much more assertive. She begins her discourse with the statement that first caught my attention: I“ see you” (342). This simple declara- tive and its placement at the opening of her speech, the first word in the sentence, make it equivalent to her performance of subjectivity: she is interpellating Odys- seus, stopping him in his tracks.45 She sees him hiding his right hand under his robe and turning his face away from her lest she touch his chin (342–4). Instead of looking at her openly as a gentleman of honor should, he avoids her look to escape her claim on his mercy. He is a coward, and she later literally ‘en-courages’ him, telling him to “be brave” (345). Polyxena, like Iphigenia in her freedom and prime, was a princess who expected to marry a king; she was outstanding among girls and women, equal even to a goddess except for her mortality. In that role, she was much looked at (apobleptos, Hec. 355; see Gregory 1999, 88) and sought after as a bride. Like Iphigenia, too, she substitutes another kind of glory for the attention that would have been paid to her as a nubile woman. Now that she is a slave and has nothing to lose, she stares Odys- seus down; she would rather not look on the sun than endure slavery (412).46 Polyxena emphasizes her disdain for life and her typically male heroic concern for reputation, or how she will be seen (phanoumai, 348). The typical use of eyes and life is intensified by her addition of the word ‘free’—“I leave this light with free eyes” (367); she sees nothing to encourage her to be brave (echoing her taunt to Odysseus). But at what cost does Polyxena gain this freedom? In supposedly freely making herself over to Odysseus and ultimately Neoptolemus, she makes herself the object of the male gaze. Talthybius describes the tableau in glowing terms to the on- and offstage audience. She is represented as the director, manipulating the scene to her own ends. She not only takes over the setting, but like Iphigenia with her robes falling to the ground, she makes herself a spectacle for the army, ripping her robe and revealing her body from neck to navel (560). Polyxena offers Neoptolemus a limited range of options of where to strike, in the neck or chest (563–4), baring her breasts as she does so.47 When she falls, however, she hides what should be hidden from men’s eyes, with regard for her appearance (euschêmôn, 569; Scodel 1996, 122, 125). Polyxena’s earlier power to stop Odysseus in his tracks has been transformed 210 Helios into self-sacrifice. As Achilles fell in love with the self-sacrificingI phigenia, so the army is smitten with this self-sacrificing Polyxena. We hear that the soldiers were moved to give her gifts and praise her courage and aretê (579–80). This description of the army as an audience moved to pity (and desire: Steiner 2001, 197) by what it has seen may help to redeem them and to cut short a critique of the hypocrisy of the military leaders. The audience may presumably be moved in a similar way; if so, then the possibility of a life-loving set of values set against the heroism of the military is eliminated. As Iphigenia in her self-sacrifice became part of the corrupt male value system, so Polyxena is turned into a support of it.48 She takes on the very heroic beliefs that require her death. She makes the best of it, but in doing so, she is very limited in her efforts to resist. The modern feminist viewer can see the irony and contradiction between the woman who stares down the hero and the one who is a portrait to be looked at; that gap may lead to a healthy skepticism about the value of war. There is even a hint of this reading in the play. Hecabe demands that the army not touch Polyxena, lest she be harmed in death (605–8); the old queen does not trust the mob and emphasizes the fact that she is burying a bride for Hades. Polyxena must remain chaste, and it seems the army would jeopardize that. I want to end with Sophocles’ Antigone, because her situation is often taken as a model for these sacrificial virgins who are, like her, called brides of Hades.49 Visu- ality is prominent in the descriptions of her power. For instance, when Antigone first covered her brother, she was mysteriously invisible, leading the Chorus to wonder if some god did it (279). When she reenacts the burial, she is at first hidden by a whirlwind and dust that choke the guards, which they again take to be the sign of the gods (421); when the elements calm down, however, she is revealed. The guard says “The child was seen” (hê pais horatai, 423). Between first and second burial she has become bolder—willing to be seen—and, in a seeming contradiction, more passive—willing to be caught. We are not told whether Antigone looks at the Guard or away from him. But in her first interaction with Creon, her downcast eyes are emphasized. She apparently does not look at him but looks down (441; cf. 269–70, where the guards do the same thing); he hails her rudely, saying “Hey there, you with your face bent toward the ground.” Is this maidenly modesty, fear (as it was in the case of the guards earlier), or does it mark her passive resistance? Given the strong contrast between her and her sister in terms of femininity, it seems unlikely to be the former. I would say that in refusing to look at Creon, she refuses to give him the empowering mirror that he requires of all his subjects.50 Antigone asserts the power to interrupt the gaze, and her speech is correspond- ingly bold. Creon asks her emphatically not if she did it, but if she says she did it or whether she denies doing these things (442). She replies with the same kind of emphasis, “I did it and I do not deny it at all” (443).51 Creon accuses her not only Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 211 of doing it but also of boasting about it, thereby adding insult to injury (480–1). Like Polyxena with Odysseus, Antigone urges Creon on and asks him what he is waiting for (499–500). She comes even closer to her fellow sacrificial victims when she claims her glorious reputation (klevo~ g j a]n eujkleevsteron, 502). She will be heard of. But Creon replies by pushing both her and Ismene inside, saying that they have to be women (579); they cannot be on the loose (Seaford 1990, 80–1, 83, 89–90). Because she has courted glory in this way, she will be deprived of the light not only by death but also by the way in which she is to die—by being buried alive. Antigone’s willing death is set against her betrothal to Haemon (Neuberg 1990, 67–9). After Haemon exits, and before Antigone makes her last speech, the Chorus sings the ode on erôs mentioned above.52 Like Iphigenia and Polyxena, she will enjoy the spotlight not as a bride but through her sacrifice; therefore, she approaches her death asking her fellow citizens to look at her (806). Since she has alluded poignantly to the fact that she will not be wed in life, but will only marry Hades, the Chorus attempts to console her by referring to her fame and praise (817–8). She marches out calling on Thebes to look on her sufferings for doing what was right— to corroborate her sense of her own propriety (940). For these heroic and virtuous women, to be looked at is not a sign of their marriageability but a sign of honor, as it was for elite men (cf. Mueller 2011, 421–2, who sees it as a political gesture). As Nicole Loraux (1987, 28; cf. 47–8) points out, however, “Women’s glory in tragedy was an ambiguous glory,” and further “Glory always makes the blood of women fl ow.” 53 The eroticization of the actual death may undercut her achievement of even that glory. Unlike Iphigenia and Polyxena, Antigone seems to be in resistance to, not in complicity with, the dominant state order. But Antigone’s decision is undercut by the possibility that she acted out of an incestuous desire for her brother or out of self-willed martyrdom. In her final speech she gives her reasons for her actions and says that she would not have done what she did for anyone but her brother: a brother (with both parents dead) is irreplaceable (905–15). This speech has long troubled critics; some go so far as to excise it as non-Sophoclean.54 But it is consistent with the rest of the play (Neuberg 1990; Cropp 1997; Griffith 1999, 278): Antigone has arguably been married to her family, and to death, all along.55 Sopho- cles does not leave her decision to act on the level of her earlier abstract and philosophical statement that she acts on the basis of the gods’ law. Her rationalizing and self-pitying speech, like Polyxena’s positioning herself as an object for admiration, compromises the glory of the woman who said “I did it and I do not deny it.” Is that the genre’s conservatism, as well as Sophocles’? Or has he seen something that we must accept as real? Because of a reading of her as the spokesperson for the unwritten laws as over and against the state, Antigone has proven attractive to generations of philosophers. 212 Helios

She has won the admiration of the psychoanalytic critic Jacques Lacan. He says that “it is Antigone herself who fascinates us, Antigone in her unbearable splendor. She has a quality that both attracts us and startles us, in the sense of intimidates us; this terrible, self-willed victim disturbs us” (1973, 247). He takes the play and its heroine in love with her brother as revealing “the line of sight that defines desire’ (1973, 247); but she is also, according to him, the personification of the death wish (1973, 281). That somewhat dubious fame is countered in feminism, which sees her as a freedom fighter.L uce Irigaray (1994. 69–70) reclaims a political Antigone who as an “example is always worth reflecting upon as a historical figure and as an identity or identification for many girls and women living today.”56 But is that use of her as role model achieved merely by ignoring the problematic speech? In her penetrating study, Judith Butler goes further and interrogates both these readings; she ends by claiming Antigone not quite as a “queer heroine” but one who troubles kinship and the definition of the human (Butler 2000, 82). As I worked on this essay, I realized that I, like many other feminist critics (e.g., Zeitlin 1996, 7), had hoped to find a way out of a view of tragedy as revealing the victimization or oppression of women; I sought to extricate myself from the old pessimism by arguing that women in tragedy are not simply objects of the gaze but also its owner. But it seems that these characters do not acquire the kind of power that Mulvey and others hypothesized for the male gaze. If women were in the ancient audience, they would have seen that women’s beauty might make them powerful; but since that power is perceived as dangerous, it leads to men’s desire to control them. They would have seen that if women turn a desiring or aggressive eye on the world, they are killed off. If they are respectable maidens, they are turned into statues, or made to turn themselves into statues. Wanting to be looked at is a trap for the sacrificial maidens; it leads them to support a power structure that demands their death. It seems to me that tragedy did indeed use women for the construction of male citizens. What are the contemporary echoes of these plays? Where can we find ourselves in them? In the tragedies, these characters went as far as they could go, but we are in a much different position today. One implication here might be that women simply objectifying men in our world is not solving the problem of objectification through the gaze. Feminists need to unsettle the structure, not simply grab the dominant position to make change. Critical attention to Helen might make modern women suspicious of celebrating the power that women allegedly gain through beauty, for it is women’s dangerous beauty that requires them to be cloaked and veiled today. While such covering may protect women from the oppressive gaze of men (Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 200; cf. notes 59–61), the assumption that women are a threat to male virtue ultimately leads to limitations on women’s freedom, as orthodox religions make clear. In a discussion of feminist pedagogy in classics, I Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 213 learned that students tout lap dancing and pole dancing as signs of women’s power (cf. Cody 2005).57 Thus, a discussion of beauty in antiquity can raise important questions about the risks and benefits of that privilege and the power to which it gives access. What then about women’s deployment of the gaze? The fate of women who take on the male power of looking has something to tell us, too. It might make us re- examine the terms: What is that power? How can one use it better? Early critiques of representation as pornography left me questioning why I should continue working on tragedy. To misuse Aeschylus: Perhaps learning can help us avoid suffering by showing us the suffering of others.

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Notes

*Special thanks to Sue Blundell, with whom I began this project and so many others, and to Douglas Cairns for their thoughtful and thorough reading of the manuscript. Of course, they are not responsible for remaining errors. The Deans of Faculty, David Paris and Joe Urgo, at Hamilton College provided invaluable support for research and writing; Michael Harwick, Andres Matlock, and Emily Delbridge were wonderful student researchers; and the library staff at Hamilton was assiduous in their assistance. Finally, I would like to thank the students in “Tragedy Then and Now” for their interest in this project as it was incubating. Line references in the Greek plays are to the Oxford Classical Texts; translations are my own except where noted. 1. For instance, see Heywood and Sandywell 1999, ix: “The visual field has begun to be explored with a thoroughness and global understanding unique in the history of human self- reflection”; Bryson et al. 1994, xv–xxix. There has been increased attention to the body and visuality in antiquity: e.g., Bremmer and Roodenburg 1992, 15–35 (on gesture); Goldhill and Osborne 1994; Frontisi-Ducroux 1996; Goldhill 1996; Stewart 1997; Wyke 1998a, 1–6; Cairns 2005; Chris- tol 2005; Morales 2005. 2. The use of the masculine is Lacan’s; it reflects a certain gender ideology implicit in psychoanalysis. 3. Evelyn Keller and Christine Grontkowski (1983, 207) sum the concern up in this way: “The gist of this sentiment is that the logic of the visual is a male logic.” See also Pollock 1994. 218 Helios

4. Silverman (1994) offers a reconsideration of the gaze and the look, via an essay on Fassbinder. 5. In classics, see Rabinowitz 1992; on representation of women, Richlin 1992 and Sharrock 2002; on Seneca, Benton 2002. Benton (1999, 4–5) says: “Female characters presented in the tragedies of Euripides and Seneca offered multiple spectatorial positions for the citizen and senatorial male gazes.” Linguistics would suggest that we have to distinguish the power of agency offered by different words for looking (Christol 2005). 6. Jacques Rancière (2010, 2–3, 4), in contrast, points out, in citing Plato, a traditional concept of a passive spectator at the theater; this notion leads the theater reformer to attempt to create a new theater that can move the viewer to action (2010, 4). Rancière (2010, 13) does not accept the passivity of spectatorship, arguing rather that viewing is an activity requiring the work of interpretation. 7. In the writing of later physiognomists, “looking and eye-contact is fundamentally regulated by the display rules and social norms that form part of the ideologies” (Cairns 2005a, 130); the citizen man was marked by his straightforward look, which distinguished him from modest women and boys, madmen, and the kinaidos (Cairns 2005a, 129, 130, 146–7 notes 16–9; Bremmer and Roodenburg 1992, 23). 8. The references to women working, for instance in the orators (e.g., Demosthenes 57.45), make it clear that seclusion is a matter of class as well as gender; see Blok 2001. 9. On seclusion and veil see Llewellyn-Jones 2003, 155–214 and Cairns 2002, 76. Cairns (2002, 88 note 52, with citations) points out that “the notion that veiling expresses women’s cultural invisibility is complicated by the paradox that the veil, the instrument of women’s concealment, is itself regularly made conspicuous and beautiful and used to attract and manipulate, rather than to repel, the male gaze.” Judith Sebesta (2002, 136; cf. Stewart 1997, esp. 42) adopts this binary with respect to nudity and clothing: “Pandora therefore incorporates the metaphors and images that conceptu- alize woman in Greek imagination. She is feminine sexuality that must be bounded by clothing lest, unrestrained, it endanger men.” 10. Shaw 1975 on interior spaces viewed. Seale (1982, 21) relates the conventions of Sophocles’ stage and the language of viewing: “The perceptions on-stage now coincide with those of the spectator”; Sophocles’ use of “visual language . . . covers the whole range of words connected with the operation of sight.” 11. Rehm (2002, 20–5) expands this simple binarism into theatrical space, scenic space, extrascenic space, distanced space, metatheatrical space, and reflexive space. 12. The political function of tragedy within Athens has been well studied: Winkler and Zeitlin 1990, Goldhill 1990 and 1999, Rabinowitz 2004, among others. See Hall 2006 on the dialectic between the social and the aesthetic elements (her “underlying contention is that the complicated dialectic between the infrastructure underlying theatrical fictions and the impact they had on society can only be fully understood by approaching them from ‘both sides of the curtain’ simultaneously” [3]). 13. Cartledge 1998, 5–6; cf. Frederick 2002, 1–18. Winkler (1990, 46) says that the gaze was only put into effect against a tiny elite; therefore, Athens was not a true panopticon. Bell discusses the need that the elite felt to manipulate their status and prestige in order to gain power; politicians had to maintain a certain appearance in “ ‘the forest of eyes’ ” (2004, 54; see 79–81 on theater). Lanni (1997) discusses the similarity of theater and the lawcourt, with a reference to Bentham (183). Robertson’s (2000) study of the dokimasia notes the physical scrutiny of that institution. 14. On the male actor and cross-dressing, see among others Rabinowitz 1998 and Llewellyn- Jones 2005. Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 219

15. Csapo and Slater collect the sources (1995, nos. 128, 129, 130, 144A); on women attending the theater, see Goldhill 1994 and Podlecki 1990. See also Rabinowitz 2008 for an earlier summary of this material. 16. For an interesting experiment, see Marsh 1992. 17. On this debate see Shaw 1975; Foley 1982; Easterling 1987. 18. For the reciprocity of the gaze in vase painting, especially, and the importance of the eye in desire, see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996 and Calame 1999, 21; Pato, Crat. 420B on the physiology of love and the eye—erôs comes from “ersei,” flowing in from the beloved to the eye of the beholder; on Plato, Phdr. 251B–C, deriving the term from rheô, see Cairns 2011, 43, with thanks to him for the reference. 19. On phasmata see Thumiger, this volume. 20. Fraenkel 1962 ad loc.; Steiner 1995, 177, esp. on Ag. 416–9; MacLachlan (1993, 66–7) interprets this as the loss of the “love-flash” from Helen’s eyes leading Menelaus to stare emptily; as Steiner (2001, 50) points out, it is not clear that the viewers are not “party (even as they sit and watch the representational dramas unfolding before them) to the same confusions and disappoint- ments”; see also Fletcher 1999. 21. Scodel (1996, 114) recognizes that there is some danger to the maiden from this “aesthetic and erotic male gaze.” Shapiro says that “one of Helen’s original aspects” was “to be an object of desire and a pawn in the power struggles of heroes” (1992, 232, 235 on the significance of her beauty). On her age, see Diodorus 4.63.2; Apollodoros, Epit. 1.23; Plutarch, Thes. 31. 22. She talks about the power of Aphrodite in Euripides, Tro. 924–32; Lloyd (1984, 307) dismisses the argument of forceful abduction. Sutton (1997/1998, 8) discusses the nuptial Helen and relates the changes in depictions of touch and glance, in the end involving male and female nudity (28). 23. Zeitlin (1994, 142–3); cf. Steiner 2001, 55–6. The word aischion here implies the relationship between inner and outer beauty since it also means shameful (cf. Horace, Carm. 1.19 and Sutherland 2003). Goldhill (1998, 114) says that “Theodote is not naked but is dressed to attract; even, like the spider, dressed to kill.” He also mentions Candaules and Pandora, in conjunction with the Gorgonic dangers of looking at the female form. Cairns (2005a, 135) points out that the “prostitute is distinctive because she is open to the gaze of men.” 24. Cf. Il. 3.172–6 where Helen is ashamed before the Trojan leaders; 411–2 where she fears the judgment of the Trojan women; 418–20 where Aphrodite makes her return to Paris, hiding her from view. Moreover, the heroine is used as proof of the deceptiveness of physical evidence since Zeus sent an imitation to Troy in her place. On Helen and Plato’s notion of imitation and forms, see Gumpert 2001, 14–9. 25. See Stewart 1997, Fig. 47, for a scene of the warrior departure with woman’s downcast eyes, and 81–2 for his work on male shyness. 26. On the limitations of this rule and the supposed silence of women, see Blok 2001. 27. Let us remember that this prominence is a result of the choices that the tragedians made as to which scraps from Homer they would dramatize. 28. Zeitlin (1996) argues forcefully for the connection between femininity and tragedy; I owe much to Zeitlin’s work, but I tend to make more of the fact that, as she says, “women are never an end in themselves” (Zeitlin 1996, 347). 29. The whole scene unrolls through his vision and his imagination of the marital bed chamber with this new woman in it. It is reminiscent of his earlier declaration of fidelity (and of the Agamemnon scene [1046–69] where Menelaus’s grief is exacerbated when he looks at statues; see above on Menelaus). 220 Helios

30. See Blondell 1998, 163–4 on masculinity here; Foley 1989. The description of Medea’s eyes reaffirms the notion that downcast eyes may signify more than a woman’s lack of status vis-à-vis men. At first, the nurse takes the fact that her mistress does not lift her eyes from the earth as a sign of her distress (27), and for contrast she notes that her eyes light on her children like those of a bull or a lion with a gaze like a bull’s (92, 187–8). Her downcast eyes are taken as a sign of her distress by Aegeus as well (689). 31. Cairns (1993, 313) works on habrosunê as misplaced sensitivity—a way of describing unhelpful aidôs (associated with semnotês); for the general development of its semantics, see Kurke 1992. 32. Zeitlin (1994, 157) mentions the trope of feminine modesty, but emphasizes the overall connection to the work of memorization (157–62). Cf. Heraclidae, where Macaria, interestingly known as Parthenos in the text, apologizes for coming out; aidôs and sophorosunê are linked at 474–7; Alcmene taunts Eurystheus with not looking at her (942). 33. Dalby (2002), however, argues that fine clothing is particularly the mark of the hetaira; cf. the clothing or nudity of sacrificial heroines below, as well as Phaedra’s uncovering and covering herself (243, 245, 250). 34. Rehm (2005) points out that she is the exception to the rule that prophetic figures know without seeing. She sees, exclaiming, “idou,idou.” Rehm calls her “a sensually present seer” (349); cf. Rehm 1994 and Seaford 1987, 128. On the nudity in performance, see Rehm 2005, 351–3. 35. Stewart 1997; Benton 1999, 85, 98–103 on the failed male epistemological gaze and The- seus’s gaze, 102 esp. on the audience’s apparent better access to truth. 36. See above on narrated scenes of viewing; Rabinowitz 1992; Benton 1999, 176–80; cf. Cly- temnestra’s sexual pleasure in the murder of her rival, Cassandra: Ag. 1447. 37. The passage mentions the likeness of a maiden and a statue (agalma). Hall (2006, 123) addresses this fragment and other images as erotic, further pointing out that they make the audience conscious of their own viewing. 38. Scodel (1996, 115) argues that this usage implies display; Steiner (2001, 198) discusses the desire implied; Hall 2006, 122–33 on sex and death. Holoka (1985, 229) observes that “She is like a figure in a painting not only because she is central and mute, but also because she does not break the gaze.” On the significance of frontality, see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, 80–9. 39. For a discussion of the relationship of this picture to the “saffron tunics worn by the girls who acted the bear in the cult of Artemis Brauronia,” see Scodel 1996, 115 with references. That ritual prepared girls for the end of their childhood and marriage. In Cretan wall paintings the crocus (source of saffron dye) was associated with the onset of menstruation (Rehak 2002). 40. As Cassandra imagines she will be wiped out like a picture (Aeschylus, Ag. 1329), and Hecabe asks Odysseus to look at her as a painter would (Euripides, Hec. 807). Thalmann (1993, 151) also notes this stereotypical femininity. 41. Cf. Fletcher 1999, 18 who thinks that she is a real picture staring at her sacrificers, but also victimized; Scodel 1996, 117, cf. Wohl 1998, 67–82. Thalmann (1993, 145) connects these to Polyxena as well. 42. Plutarch, De mul. vir. 249 and Lyc. 14.2; Plato on groups of girls and boys (Leg. 6.772); Calame 1997 on homoeroticism in choruses; Stehle 1997, 32. 43. I differ from Zeitlin 1994 in my concern with the way in which the desire for kleos leads to Iphigenia’s doom. 44. Macaria is much less important in Heraclidae, but she participates to some extent in the same problematic of visibility. She is marked as the non-bride, whereas Iphigenia is the false bride- to-be and Antigone the bride-to-be. Rabinowitz—Women as Subject and Object of the Gaze in Tragedy 221

45. This address may be interpreted as a form of interpellation, reminiscent of Louis Althus ser’s formulation (1971, 127–88). There, the individual gains subjectivity by responding to the address, but is also subjected, since Althusser refers to the police officer’s shout. Polyxena, however, lacks the authority to subject Odysseus. 46. Scodel 1996, 112–4 on how virgins invited the male gaze; the bridal procession offered a safe way to put her on display; cf. Benton 1999, 31. 47. This action would recall Helen, at least for the audience (Scodel 1996, 123 and Thalmann 1993, 142–3). 48. Thalmann 1993, 147: I“ f Polyxena is not to be a passive Iphigeneia, there is only one pattern of heroism available to her. So she both is feminine victim of male power and takes on the male attributes valued by the power structure that demands her death; and that is why the watching soldiers are so filled by admiration for her.” 49. Though she is not exactly a sacrificial heroine—it is her choice to bury Polynices, and no one demands her death in advance—it is still possible to see her as sacrificing herself since it was clear that burying her brother would be punishable by death (though originally by stoning, not by being buried alive). Loraux (1987, 31–2) argues that she actually kills herself like a wife because she hangs herself. I do not think that makes her a wife, however, but a marriage-resister. 50. Griffith 1998, 65, 71 on the father’s demand; Boegehold (1999, 60–2) thinks that she is nod- ding yes. Douglas Cairns (personal communication) points out that “Creon clearly thinks he has the upper hand at this point; it’s possible, then, that he thinks Antigone is hanging her head because she’s been caught out; but in fact her silence and head-hanging are followed by a defiant outburst, at which point the audience must surely interpret her refusal to engage in visual contact as deliberate disrespect—a gesture that often accompanies anger”; see also Cairns 2001. More recently, Mueller (2011, 412–6) argues that the gesture is dual, addressing two audiences—the external audience and her interlocutor, Creon; she compares Antigone to Hecuba performing aidôs (2011, 416). For a challenge to the psychological readings, see Chanter 2011. 51. On the significance of the repetition as speech act, see Butler 2000. The philosophical tradition from Hegel is powerful in Butler; see now Wilmer and Źukauskaite 2010. 52. There is a textual problem, and given the first stanzas, it is not really logical to think of desire as lawful. Griffith (1999, 260 ad 787–9) suggests emending; he also points out the multiple possible interpretations of 795. 53. She also argues that women in tragedy “are wives in their deaths” (1987, 28). 54. See Mader 2010 on the various reasons why readers have been troubled by this passage. 55. See Seaford 1990, 80 on the burial of these women and incest; Lacan (1973, 218–23) points out that the imagery of the kommos emphasizes the relationship to the divine; cf. Miller 2007, 1. Griffith (2005) explores the psychoanalytic reading of Antigone at length. 56. On Lacan and Irigaray, and the importance of psychoanalysis for understanding the play, see Leonard 2003. 57. Diablo Cody (2005, 196), a student turned stripper, puts it this way: “I’d always believed in the potency of women. I’d supported and participated in the sex industry even as it was buffeted with criticism from people who felt it objectified us. I’d felt like such a libertine. . . . There was a reason men paid ridiculous sums of money for the company of an exaggeratedly feminine creature. Because strippers are spectacular. They rule.” But she goes on to say: I“ t was the whole girls- in-bulk thing that repulsed me . . . It’s like a girl buffet . . . I hated the girl buffet. I deserve better presentation, I thought. We all did.”

Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy*

Chiara Thumiger

It is to be expected that the problematization of seeing features importantly in theater, especially so in tragedy, since it emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge and the process of human ‘learning’ from experience.1 First, the sense of sight is central to human existence and is, at the same time, a characteristically close and remote experience. As Robert Michaels (1986, 303) explains, “Seeing is immediate, personal; it carries conviction . . . Vision is also the most distant, the least inner of perceptions. We can touch, smell, feel and even hear the inside of our body, but never see it.” Seeing is ‘biologically’ the most self-evident and forceful of the senses, as well as the most readily loaded with metaphorical meaning, whereby physical sight becomes an image for reflective knowledge in its various forms.2 Second, seeing engages with theatricality (the specific type of seeing that is proper to a theatrical audience as they watch the show). A play is a performed spectacle, as much as a literary text. The themes of vision and knowledge interact, therefore, with the conventions and the medium of theater itself.3 Third, the problem of seeing and appearances as epistemologically charged has great relevance within Athenian culture in the second half of the fifth century. The Sophistic movement (exemplified notably in Protagoras and Gorgias) focused on the problem of defining knowledge and the way it is gained. Plato’s late work The- aetetus (ca. 369 BCE) illustrates vividly the extent of the debate: in the first part of the dialogue (142A–158E) the Platonic Socrates explores Protagoras’s doctrine of knowledge and sensible perception, refuting the Sophist’s statement that “Man is the measure of all things.”4 Socrates focuses on the ambiguity of the senses and on the importance of his own mission to dispel the false ideas about knowledge spread by the Sophists, opposing ‘image’ and ‘imposture’ to the ‘real’:

So great, then, is the importance of midwives; but their function is less important than mine. For women do not, like my patients, bring forth at one time real children [ajlhvqina] and at another mere images [ei[dwla] which are difficult to distinguish from the real . . . The greatest thing about my art is this, that it can test in every way whether the mind of the young man is bringing forth a mere image, an imposture [ei[dwlon kai; yeu`do~] or a real and genuine offspring. (Tht. 150B–C)

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 223 224 Helios

Gorgias of Leontini is also known to have been concerned with the reliability of appearances in building knowledge in his lost work On Not Being. Sextus Empiri- cus’s account (Against the Logicians 1.65–87) summarizes the content of the treatise along three points: “First, that there is nothing; second, even if there is [something], it is not apprehensible by a human being; third, that even if it is apprehensible, it is still not expressible or explainable to the next person.” This evidence points at a rich philosophical debate initiated in the fifth century, at first dominated by the philosophy of Parmenides, continued in the second half of the century by the Sophists, and then reformulated by Plato in his later dialogues (Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist). In this debate the unknowability of reality and the incommunicability of knowledge between subjects are crucial.5 Knowledge as originating in the senses is questioned, and a definition of ‘real knowledge’ and ‘real being’ is sought. The motif of the reliability of seeing and vision in tragedy has to be understood within this cultural milieu. In this article I explore how the issue of vision and knowledge emerge in Greek drama in the second half of the fifth century. I will follow a working division into three ‘levels’: the subject as viewer, the world as object of viewing, and flawed viewers and unclear sights. These correspond to different approaches to the fundamental epistemological topic—the reliability of sensory perception and the communicability of knowledge. Although they are simultaneously present in the cultural reflection of the period (and they are, indeed, three crucial components of the cognitive experience of viewing), I propose that they also reflect a development in the history of philosophical thought. The emphasis on the visual can be articulated along a wide range of points between these two poles: conceiving the objective world as animated by ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ made up of phenomena dispensed by the gods (Aeschylus), at one extreme; or problematizing the subject as viewer (Sophocles’ Ajax and Oedipus Tyrannus) and challenging the objective reality of the world itself as ‘viewed,’ at the other extreme (Euripides’ Helen and Bacchae). This range reflects a historical and cultural shift, which corresponds to a crisis in traditional religious beliefs and a radical questioning of received knowledge. Imagery of light and darkness illustrate the range of these possibilities. Refer- ences to these two (a constant in Greek culture overall6) are frequent in Athenian theater, these dualities obviously connected to the opposition between sky and earth, between uranian and chthonian divinities. In different contexts, the primary opposition between light and darkness can turn into further dichotomies that involve the phenomenal world as well as the perceiving subject. On an ontological level, in fact, image and object, copy and model, life and death, the visible body of the living as opposed to the ghosts of the departed, are all equally ‘real,’ part of the phenomenal world. On the other hand, seeing and blinding, knowledge and under- Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 225 standing versus ignorance and error, sanity and clarity versus madness and obfuscation, freedom and hope as opposed to failure and desperation, are all experiences of the subject. In their sustained interaction with the status of tragedy as visual experience, light and darkness finally suggest the alternating presence and absence of characters onstage and enact the doubling and ambiguity that mar human judgement. As we shall see, all these levels interact with and mimic one another in the characteristic idiom of tragedy with different outcomes. It can be conveniently generalized that Aeschylus did not devote much space to questioning the subject’s point of view in itself or as posing epistemological problems. In Aeschylus issues are typically played out in the ‘externalized’ arena of relationships, family, religion, politics; there is a constant attempt to strike a balance between the individual and his or her duties within the world. Significantly, the elaboration of light and darkness in the older tragedian locates the fundamental opposition within a firmly established world and does not involve questioning the perceiving subject. When we find the motif of visual clarity made manifest in the Oresteia’s use of light imagery, it is characteristically ‘objectified’: from the fire seen by the watchman at Ag. 22–3 (w\ cai`re lampth;r nuktov~, hJmerhvsion É favo~ pifauvskwn [Welcome, beacon, bringing us through the night a message of light bright as day!]), to the invocation to the dead king that he should rise back into the light, at Ch. 459 (a[kouson ej~ favo~ molwvn [Hear, rise to the light!]), to the celebration of the ‘heavenly norm’ that wants Clytemnestra executed at Ch. 960–1 (a[xion oujranou`con ajrca;n sevbein. É pavra to; fw`~ ijdei`n [It is fitting to revere the rulers who dwell in heaven. The light is now plain to see]). At the end of the Eumenides, holy torches accompany the defeat of the dark infernal forces of family and blood that the Erinyes represent and celebrate the Apolline clarity of a pacified political community; as a result, darkness is incorporated within the light, not eliminated. The appeased Chorus of Erinyes now invokes the light of the sun to shine over Athens: faidro;n aJlivou sevla~ (the bright light of the sun, Eum. 926); at 1005, a “holy light” guides the procession, fw`~ iJerovn; at 1022 (and 1029), Athena escorts the new goddesses under the earth “by lamplight” (fevggei lampavdwn). These instantiations of life and death, presence and absence, past and present, are part of the world, available to all characters and the audience to contemplate. Reflection on the nature of knowledge or on the individual’s viewpoint as epistemologically isolated, however, is not prominent. The works of Sophocles and Euripides were produced and staged in a rapidly changing world and one very different, in many ideological respects, from that of Aeschylus. The influence of the Sophistic movement and a progressive devaluation of traditional religion had a profound impact on the way the phenomenal world was represented in tragedy; light and darkness are no longer part of the objective world alone, but become inseparable from the subject as viewer. In the following 226 Helios pages, I concentrate on this phase and examine the works of the younger playwrights, Sophocles and Euripides, to illustrate the epistemological questioning of the subject as viewer and the undermining of reality as object of viewing.7

The Subject as Viewer: Ajax and Oedipus

Light and darkness and sight and blindness as subjective, personal experiences of life and death are central in Sophocles’ Ajax, where they appear in a very wide range of connections.8 The motif begins with the aggressive action of Athena; for instance, at line 85 the goddess announces her attack against the hero as a sort of blinding: ejgw; skotwvsw blevfara kai; dedorkovta (I shall place his eyes in darkness, even though they still see). The image is amplified and given universal significance by Odysseus forty lines later, at 124–6, where darkness is no longer just the image for the maddening sent upon the hero by Athena, but is extended to represent the error and misjudgement common to all human beings: “[When I look at Ajax], I see his no less than my own fate: because I see that all of us who live are nothing but ghosts or thin shadows” (oujde;n to; touvtou ma`llon h] toujmo;n skopw`n. É oJrw` ga;r hJma`~ oujde;n o[nta~ a[llo plh;n É ei[dwl j o{soiper zw`men h] kouvfhn skiavn).9 The shadow refers not only to human weakness when dealing with the gods; it also anticipates Ajax’s suicide and, in the sympathetic acknowledgement of a common destiny, hints at the final reconciliation between the two rivals at 1332– 401, on the grounds that Ajax, though an enemy, is a man still and a noble one: o{d j ejcqro;~ ajnhvr, ajlla; gennai`ov~ pot j h\n (1355). Odysseus’s looking (skopw`n, oJrw`, 124–6) allows him to grow in sympathy toward the man whose sight has been impaired in the first place. Three referents of darkness, therefore, coexist: the blinded mind of the deranged Ajax, his ensuing longing for the darkness of death, and the condition of helplessness and ignorance common to all human beings. Audience and readers are prepared to decipher the imagery of light and clarity in its paradoxical connection to death as indicating relief and accomplishment—for instance, in Ajax’s own words as he first realizes what he has done: “Darkness, my light! Erebus below, that is most bright for me!” (skovto~, ejmo;n favo~, É e[rebo~ w\ faennovtaton, wJ~ ejmoiv, 394–5). Later, in the deception speech “long and innumerable time [oJ makro;~ kajnarivqmhto~ crovno~] . . . brings to birth hidden worlds and then hides them again in turn [fuvei t j a[dhla kai; fanevnta kruvptetai]” (646–7). This cyclical movement is, indeed, the sequence of appearance and disappearance of all that lives, the substitution of one generation for the other,10 a natural law to which Ajax himself is subject (650). But it is also the change from life to death that Ajax in particular will soon experience, as well as his further change of mind, when from Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 227 seeming to yield he returns to his previous inflexibility. The speech is couched in ambiguous terms, which have received a great deal of critical attention. They seemingly imply a softening of the hero, his acceptance of and adaptation to the rules of power and nature, but in fact they anticipate his radical decision and his self- annihilation. Clarity and darkness, evidence and obscurity, are played with to reflect this ambiguity: light brings clarity and salvation only at first appearance, and the darkness of death is finally revealed as the only acceptable destiny—while all those who surround Ajax fail to grasp this fundamental inversion. Later on, the extreme preference for death over life, or over a certain life,11 is epitomized in imagery of brightness in the suicide scene, where the last words of the hero point to a progression towards the light, heavenly and wide, starting with an invocation to Helios and the open skies: w\ faennh`~ hJmevra~ to; nu`n sevla~ É kai; to;n difreuth;n Ἥlion prosennevpw (You, light of this bright day, and you, Sun riding in your chariot, I call on you, 856–7).12 He proceeds on a flight that brings him back to Salamis, Athens, and the Trojan plains where he once excelled (856–65), before becoming or returning to be the ghost we all are (according to Odysseus, at 124–6) and joining the dead down below (toi`~ kavtw, 86). In this use of light and darkness the two are reversed and manipulated to reflect, primarily, Ajax’s plan and his paradoxical view of life and death. Sophocles’ use of the motif of vision is consistent across various plays, as analyzed by Richard Buxton in his influential piece on blindness and sight in tragedy.13 Buxton focuses on the tragedy where seeing and learning are most central, Oedipus Tyrannus (hereafter, OT). Sight and blindness in this play have been noticed and analyzed by many, in particular as related to the motif of knowledge and identity. The theme of visual abilities and foresight also shape the opposition between two characters who are equal and opposite, Oedipus and Teiresias: both bearing the signs of election and curse and opposed in a duel in which knowledge of reality and, most importantly, the interpretation and use of this knowledge are at stake.14 Seeing and knowledge appear on different levels in the text: lexically, as literal insistence on seeing and being seen and in the extensive use of the vocabulary of learning and knowing, starting from the assonance with the very name of Oedipus, Oid-ipous, played on the root *wid.15 But it is also a motif, in the imagery of darkness and light marking the stages of the investigation; and, on a conceptual level, in the more general reflection on ignorance and knowledge and on the refusal and acceptance of an uncomfortable truth. Here, too, the visual element and its connection with knowledge are used to convey the subjectivity of characters. The visual here, however, has a deeper importance for the representation of characters than the light/darkness nexus had in Ajax: in the earlier play the seeing and the visual presence summarized mental soundness and life and its worthiness, both denied to the hero by the gods. Life is finally rejected by the hero himself in 228 Helios favor of a death that he sees as a preferable kind of existence. The common fate of all mortals, in their misfortune and glory, is reinforced; by the end of the play, the same light shines for all, as honors to the memory of Ajax are paid by the initiative of his main enemy, Odysseus. In OT, instead, the individual viewpoint of the seeing character is placed under the spotlight; all references to the visual take off from this one source, Oedipus and his own, personal, (un)privileged vision; they are never corrected by a final, communal view. On the lexical level of the play much has been said. Buxton concentrates on the relationship between the blind seer and Oedipus, which ironically juxtaposes mere vision and real insight, ignorance, and blindness. At 284–5 the sight of Teiresias is praised by Oedipus as being “the same as that of lord Apollo”; but at 367, the seer reproaches Oedipus for “not seeing” (oujd j oJra`n); and, most poignantly, he replies in turn (370-5):

Oi. soi; de; tou`t j oujk e[st j, ejpei; tuflo;~ tav t j w\ta tovn te nou`n tav t j o[mmat j ei\. Te. su; d j a[lqiov~ ge tau`t j ojneidivzwn, a} soi; oujdei;~ o}~ oujci; tw`nd j ojneidiei` tavca. Oi. mia`~ trevfei pro;~ nuktov~, w{ste mhvt j ejme; mhvt j a[llon, o{sti~ fw`~ oJra`/, blavyai pot j a[n.

Oed. you do not have [that strength of truth], since you are blind in your ears, in your mind, and in your eyes. Teir. it is sad that you utter these reproaches, Which all men shall soon utter against you. Oed. you are sustained by darkness only, so that you could never harm me, or any other man who sees the light.

The ironic play on sight and blindness is prolonged and marks all crucial stages of the enquiry.16 It underlines the dynamic of (decreasing) ignorance and (increasing) knowledge in the drama; second, it escalates towards a climax in the blinding scene, visually building up to the physical, in the very body of Oedipus, who can ultimately find shelter only in extreme visual retreat, in “shutting off” his wretched self (ajpoklh`/ sai toujmo;n a[qlion devma~, 1388); finally, it leaves Oedipus painfully displayed to the internal choral audience (from 1295 onwards) and objectified, at the end, like a cir- cus attraction, in front of the theatrical audience overall.17 So lines 1295–7:

. . . qevama d j eijsovyh/ tavca toiou`ton oi|on kai; stugou`nt j ejpoiktivsai. Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 229

Co. w\ deino;n ijdei`n pavqo~ ajnqrwvpoi~, w\ deinovtaton pavntwn o{s j ejgw; prosevkurs j h[dh.

you shall soon see such a sight, as would drive to pity even one who hates him. Ch: o grief terrible for me to see, o grief most terrible of any I have yet encountered!

Here various previous tensions culminate and future outcomes are pointed to: on the part of Oedipus, the desire to be revealed (e.g., at 1287–9 the messenger reports that Oedipus boa`/ dioivgein klh`/qra kai; dhlou`n tina É toi`~ pa`si Kadmeivoisi to;n patroktovnon [is crying for someone to unbar the gates and show to all the Cadmeians his father’s killer]) and the wish to be removed and remain concealed (e.g., at 1340–6, ajpavget j ektovpion [take me away]); the final gesture of compassion of Creon, as he invites the Chorus to withdraw Oedipus, the a[go~ . . . ajkavlupton (the pollution [now] overt, 1426–7) from the sight of Helios and hide him inside the house where only his family can see him (see 1424–31). The visual objectification ofO edipus, his reduction to a blind sight, will be the main force of his character in Oedipus at Colonus (hereafter, OC), from the opening with his entrance onstage guided by Antigone (a typical Teiresias-style entry, whereby the seer is always accompanied onstage by a silent character as aid: and so blind Oedipus’s entrance in OC is reminiscent of his antagonist in the antecedent play and of the knowledge he has now assimilated), to his evaluation as a guarantee of divine favor, once dead (402, for the Thebans; at 576, in his own words to Theseus: I“ come to give you this miserable body of mine, as a gift; it is ‘not worth much to look at’ [ouj spoudai`on eij~ o[yin]); but the benefit it can bring is greater ‘than a beautiful appearance’ [h] morfh; kalhv]”). This objectification is compen- sated for and redeemed by Oedipus’s miraculous disappearance, at the end, through which he becomes a wonder (deinov~) to look at (1647–52, in an echo of the first phrase of OT’s fifth stasimon, at 1297, w\ deino;n ijdei`n pavqo~):

Once we had left, after a little we turned back and we saw [ejxapeivdomen] that he was no longer there, nowhere to be seen and that the king [Theseus], alone, was holding his hands against his face, covering his eyes [ojmmavtwn], as if some fearful wonder had appeared [fovbou fanevnto~], unbearable to behold [ajnascetou` blevpein].

The last enterprise of the blind man, who could see many things, but not what he needed, is a miraculous disappearance from sight.18 230 Helios

I sketched out at the start the human subject as ‘viewer,’ and reality as ‘viewed’ and ‘knowable,’ as the two ends of the epistemological spectrum. In the Sophoclean examples the subject is in the spotlight, but the world retains its objectivity. In Ajax light has connotations of sanity, heroism, pride, and honorable life (or honorable death) as an accomplishment that is open to the individual to choose. Ajax’s choice, in fact, will be to refuse ‘light,’ in the conventional sense, for a preferable ‘darkness’. In OT, likewise, the objectivity of reality is not questioned. The important ambiguity resides in the extent to which facts are acknowledged, not in what the facts are. These ‘facts’ are clear to the audience: who Oedipus really is, what he has actually done. The Oedipus who interrogates Dürrenmatt’s Pythia, with her labyrinth of capricious and arbitrary oracles, a game in which the difference between what is true and what is believed is lost, is far from the world of Sophocles. The focus is on vision as knowledge and on knowledge as embedded in the reality of a community and of an individual, not separable from them. The importance of the visual reflects the varying degrees of access to knowledge and wisdom offered to characters. The literal, macabre mark of the misunderstanding that Oedipus bears on his own body, and his longing for a physical expulsion, reveal all too well where the point of rupture is: not in the definition of reality against falsity or knowledge against illusion, but in the individual and his or her communication, his or her alignment with the world outside. Both Ajax and OT, in this sense, are about the task (or its failure) of aligning the seeing (and knowing) subject with the shared reality at critical times.

The World as Object of Viewing: Eidôla and Nephelai

The other end of the spectrum, the challenge to the existence of a knowable and shared reality, is notable in Euripides.19 We are concentrating here on theatrical evidence;20 the issue is, however, as we saw earlier, one of the foundations of West- ern philosophy, beginning with Parmenides’s oppositions of doxa (opinion) versus ‘being.’ In the work of the youngest tragedian, a radical questioning of the ontological status of reality emerges in Helen (412 BCE). The play fully exploits the visual theme, which offered such a rich opportunity for the display of the subjectivity of character in Sophocles. The theme of the eidôlon, the ghost of Helen which went to Troy, replacing the real woman who was instead transported to Egypt, is crucial in taking this further step. To explore the philosophical implications of this theme we can compare the Chorus of Aristophanes’ Clouds.21 The comedy, which was revised and no doubt circulated no more than eight years (and no fewer than five) before the Helen, is concerned with themes that have much in common with the implications of the Euripidean play. With its ludicrous ‘Socrates’ and the trivial and cap- Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 231 tious questions addressed in his ‘think tank,’ the comedy proclaims its concern with the contemporary philosophical trends and the epistemological debates of the Sophists.22 The two texts use a similar visual element and philosophical metaphor, the ‘ghost’/‘cloud’ and the ‘image’/‘double,’ to make a point about appearances and reality and about discourses on such topics. The motif of the eidôlon as double, ghost, or image for Helen is not a Euripi dean invention.23 The stage-ghost, which has a great future ahead of it in European theater, is one of the dramatic inventions of earliest Greek tragedy.24 We can identify various usages: actual ghosts or phantoms of a person onstage; images repro- ducing or evoking an identity, literally or as tropes; and metaphor for human fragility. All these have in common a diluted, weakened, or partial quality as compared to their original or referent. Ghosts can serve the basic purpose of staging a dead character whose opinion (Darius in Persians) or stance (Clytemnestra in Eumenides) has an impact on present events; they can disclose hidden happenings from the past (Polydorus in Hecuba); they are longed for as replacement for the beloved person (Ag. 415–9: the image of Helen longed for by Menelaus is a ghost, favsma dovxei dovmwn ajnavssein [a phantom will seem to rule the house]); they can be nightmares25 or hallucinations.26 More generally, these terms appear to be used for items on which the judgement is momentarily suspended: at Sophocles, El. 1466, for instance, the sight of the veiled corpse of Clytemnestra is a favsma in the horrified eyes of Aegisthus as he first sees her, because he cannot make sense of who she may be, if she is dead or alive, nor indeed of what has happened. The last type of ghost in tragic idiom (also present elsewhere in Greek poetic language) is used as a metaphor for human fragility, weakness, and helplessness, whether physical, existential, or moral: at Ag. 839, “shadowy phantoms” (ei[dwlon skia`~) are the friends who disappear in the hour of need; at Phil. 946–7, Sophocles uses kapnou` skiavn É ei[dwlon a[llw~ (the shadow of a smoke, a mere phantom) for the weak and defenceless Philoctetes. The use of a ‘ghost’ can thus be a reference to the existential status (an appearance deprived of the physical living being: not Darius the king, say, but his mere ‘soul’); a statement about the identity of the vision (it is not what the audiences and characters were led to think, but a different reality: not a young guest, say, but Alcestis in person); or an allusion to a potential aspect of our status as human beings (we are all exposed to the risk of being reduced to a mere eidôlon or to being seen as such). All these exploit the visual level to convey something about the way characters view and judge each other, and the quality of their existence. The Helen pushes the effect of this tactic to the limit, using it as an instantiation of the philosophical question of appearance versus reality. Cloud imagery is also present in tragedy, to some extent overlapping in tone and context with the eidôlon/phasma group. The application of this imagery is not 232 Helios exclusively visual. Running clouds appear as an image for the passing of time and the indifference of the world.27 Nevfo~ is also used as a military image, as a cloud of armed men;28 finally, it is used to evoke emotions, weakness, death, and destruction.29 These cover the whole range from divine obfuscation (doom) to emotions and upsetting events (with a range similar to that of the ghost motif above). They are mostly used in an externalized way; that is, they befall humans. Whereas the eidôlon/phasma is the image of the person in a certain state, the nephelê tends more often to conceal or ‘wrap up’ the person from the outside.30 By looking at ghosts and clouds imagery and following the enquiry into the visual, we move the focus from the perceiving subject to the object of sight. Both Clouds and Helen, in this sense, speak of a world whose knowability is brought under discussion. Aristophanes’ Chorus of clouds make fun of the concerns of philosophical debates, being “great goddesses for men of idleness, who bestow on us intelligence and discourse and understanding, fantasy, and circumlocution” (Nu. 316–8); as heavenly phenomena, they are associated with “insecurity, suspense and excitement”31 and offer a fitting metaphor for empty philosophical sophistication, being “insubstantial, impermanent things, ‘mist and dew and vapour’, fit deities for those who teach men to obscure reality under a smokescreen of rhetoric”;32 finally, they have a “multiplicity” and “shifting quality,” participating as they do in “rarefied speculation and airily sterility” and “abundance of nature” at the same time.33 There is a contradiction between the clouds as distant, serene, and peaceful and their nature as bearers of a storm.34 In this net of connections, clouds relate to the themes of appearance, knowledge, and illusion as human problems as much as to the medium of artistic creation and theatrical representation, inviting the audience to engage with the first by means of the second; they interact with theatricality as they become symbolic of the freedom of artistic creation and of the infinite power of theatrical representation, as “they take any form they like” (Nub. 348). If the nephelai of Clouds should not be taken lightly, neither should the phasma or eidôla of the Helen. This play presents an oscillation between comedy and tragedy which is relevant to its reflection on appearances.35 Under the surface of the melodrama and adventure story, it carries a despairingly serious message: ajpistiva is the wisest option left to mortals, says Theoclymenus at the end, asserting a general norm as, paradoxically, he was not deceived by the eidôlon of the woman, but by the real Helen (Hel. 1617). The Chorus wonders about “the divine, the non- divine and the in-between,” components of a world that seems now impossible to fathom (1137). In Aristophanes deceptive appearances degenerate into empty sophisms; likewise, in Helen (711–33) the presence of the ghost exposes, through the words of the messenger, a radical criticism of metaphysical beliefs (“how changeable and inscrutable is the divine!,” 711–2), of established social hierarchies (“Even if I am a slave, let me be a slave who has nobility, one with a free man’s heart Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 233 even if he lacks a free man’s name!,” 728–3136), of prophecies and judgements about reality (“But now I know about prophets: how worthless they are, what liars!,” 744–5). We can imagine Euripides in Helen engaging not only with contemporary philosophical concerns about knowledge and vision, but also with the work of his comic antagonist, to show from a different perspective that those seemingly harm- less and silly ‘clouds’ must be taken seriously, because all too often a simple nephelê can instigate or stir up a war and change the destiny of many.37 More generally, we can see in the work of the two playwrights converging reac- tions to the philosophical and cultural debate on knowledge and appearances in fashion at the time. The theme of vision and knowledge is here redirected from focus on the subject as center of perception and judgement, to a questioning of the world as accessible object of vision and knowledge. This shift emerges in the sur- real lightness of the comic clouds and most poignantly in the bitter implications of Helen’s ghost. In the Helen the failed view becomes the cause, the “anterior question” (Segal 1971, 560): Is there, in fact, a reality we can rely on? If “behind the issues [about the nature of reality] lies a deeply felt rift in the late fifth century between man and his world,”38 the ghost is surely the quintessential image for this crack in the surface of reality. The woman whose whole being, whose essence, has been traditionally reduced to her beautiful looks, is condensed into a vain image in the eyes of those who contend for her: Paris, but also Menelaus and the new suitor Theoclymenus. Ours remains a visible world that duplicates women, reasons for war, divinities claiming worship, and where the moral debate can be reduced to a fanciful opposition between logoi.39

Flawed Viewers and Unclear Sights: The Case of Euripides’ Bacchae

In his article on Helen as a play that stages a “double world,” Charles Segal commented on the relevance of the motif of vision and knowledge in other Euripidean plays, including Medea, Hippolytus, Helen, and Bacchae. As mentioned above, his claim was that within this group of plays it is the Helen that “poses the anterior question,” the question about reality and illusion, whether a material reality indeed exists; the other plays would stage this crisis in a secondary way, on the level of psychology or emotions or politics.40 I argue that of all the above plays it is in Euripides’s Bacchae that we find the most engaged reflection on the status of reality and the reliability of human knowledge, as well as a more radical version of skepticism.41 This stance is all the stronger for not being spelt out, but masterfully embedded within the plot of the play and within the idiom of the text as a whole. In the Helen, the phantom was the pivot around which a whole series of contradictions and doublings rotated; it is clearly placed in the middle as a philosophical 234 Helios problem. At the end of OT, Oedipus stands bare, so to say, and blind in front of the audience. In Bacchae, finally, we have a firm integration of the philosophical reflection on seeing and appearance into the fabric of the play; ‘seeing’ or ‘not seeing’ becomes an important feature of characterization, while the theme of exposure and concealment gains significance on a broader human level. In Bacchae, first of all, the motif of seeing is pervasive in quantitative terms: there are more references to sight and viewing than in any other Euripidean play. These references first allow an exploration of the broader themes of knowledge and understanding, which are at the core in a play where types of human and divine sophiai are systematically opposed and discussed.42 But they also play an important part in constructing human character in its idiosyncratic details, where different ways of viewing and being viewed, of becoming spectator or spectacle, contribute to the emergence of a landscape of human types and attitudes. The display of these multiple viewpoints within the drama is reflected in the (potentially) multiple receptions of the drama on the part of an audience. The status of the dramatic facts is left worryingly uncertain.43 At the end of our other examples—Ajax, OT, and even Helen—all spectators could describe what has happened in a univocal way. In Bacchae, instead, there are sections of the ‘script’ on which, after twenty-five centuries, there is still dispute as to what is actually going on. In all senses, at the end of the play we are uncertain about much of what has transpired in Thebes. With its combination of multiple viewpoints and sights, I would argue, and with a clouded unreliable visible world, the Bacchae offers the extreme end of Euripides’s epistemological reflection. The occurrence of words related to seeing in Bacchae is high compared to other plays, sometimes strikingly so.44 It is worth looking closely at these terms: verbs of seeing (oJravw and compounds,45 leuvssw,46 skopevw,47 ajqrevw48); organs of sight (tw; o[sse,49 ta; o[mmata50 [eyes]); types of viewing (o[yi~,51 qau`ma,52 qevama,53 kataskophv,54 all versions of ‘sight’ and ‘viewing’); different kinds of viewer (qeathv~,55 katavskopo~,56 dokeuvwn57); terms of appearing, seeming, and considering (dokevw,58 faivnw59/fanerov~,60 ejmfanhv~,61 ejpivshmo~,62 shmaivnw63); verbs of hiding and being hidden (lanqavnw,64 kruvptw65 and cognates); physical appearance (morfhv and cognates,66 skeuhv,67 ei\do~68); physical change and transformation (ajmeivbw,69 meqivsthmi,70 meqivhmi,71 ajllavssw,72 metabavllw73). These terms can be used in such a way as to become markers of the personality of the viewers. In this way, emphasis is laid on how a character’s ‘point of view’ in the literal, sensory meaning of the term reflects her or his inner disposition or beliefs and her or his role within the spectacle and its complex net of deceit and awareness. The ultimate effect is that the objectivity of the world disappears. Pentheus is the pivot of this disappearance of objectivity. His relationship to seeing molds the dramatic reality: his naiveté, his literal understanding of facts, and Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 235 his ultimate passivity. He turns from being an unfit viewer to being a ‘view’ in turn, a ridiculed and victimized spectacle. All these provide the structure through which the events of the play appear to the spectators. The Theban king’s understanding of reality is superficial and unsophisticated; notwithstanding repeated advice from others, he ‘cannot see.’ This is evident in the behavior of those around him. From the beginning of the play, characters appeal to his common sense by inviting him to see things or by appealing to the things he can see: Tiresias at 306 (e[t j aujto;n o[yh/ kajpi; Delfivsin pevtrai~ [You will see him [the god] also on the cliffs of Delphi, dancing]; see also 319–20); Cadmus at 337 (“You see [oJra`/~] the fate of Actaeon”). The messenger says to him at 713: I“ f you had seen this, you would have approached in prayer [the god]” (eujcai`sin a]n meth`lqe~ eijsidw;n tavde); at 737–8: “You could have seen [a Maenad]” (th;n me;n a]n prosei`de~); at 740, “You could have seen [ei[de~ . . . a[n] flying limbs.”74 Then, there is Pentheus’s insistence on visible proofs as a precondition for his trust and belief. At 469, he naively asks Dionysus whether he has seen the god face- to-face: “Was it by night or face to face that he conscripted you?” (povtera de; nuvktwr s j h] kat j o[mm j hjnavgkasen); he thereby questions the stranger’s self- proclaimed relationship with the god and contrasts dreaming with seeing. Here seeing is conceived as reliable perception, ironically opposed to Pentheus’s own faulty eyesight and (soon) to his own statement at 501, where his eyes (o[mmata) do not allow him to see the god. When Dionysus claims that the god is there, Pentheus insists he cannot see him (ouj ga;r fanero;~ o[mmasivn g j ejmoi`~ [To my eyes he is not in evidence, 501]), so that at 502 Dionysus teases him again: su; d j ajsebh;~ aujto;~ w]n oujk eijsora`/~ (Since you are a godless man you do not see him). Pentheus oscillates between belief in knowledge based on visible proofs, on the one hand, and a provisional, approximate judgement of reality, a guessing expressed by the verb dokevw (I seem, I believe), on the other. Dokevw is used by Pentheus himself of his own freedom, as he believes, to deliberate (a]n dokh`/ . . . bouleuvsomai [I myself shall deliberate . . . about what seems best, 843b]),75 and in various other instances indicating the man’s misjudgement.76 In this way, confusion and helplessness mark Pentheus’s visual perception, from his initial false opinion, through misunderstanding, to literal hallucination. We have, then, types of qualified, non-neutral seeing for Pentheus, a seeing that is shaped by his inner drives and dispositions: first, his desire to see certain things, often commented on as an instance of voyeurism; and second, a desire to spy and control as traits of his tyrannical character.77 Talking to Pentheus, it is first the god who often lingers on the idea of seeing forbidden things. Seeing, desire (a desire disguised as ‘duty’ to control and guard), and disposition to see are interconnected. At 811, Dionysus famously proposes, bouvlh/ . . . ijdei`n (Do you wish to see [the women]?); and in fact, at 814 Pentheus does awkwardly admit his desire to watch 236 Helios the women drunk on the mountains (luprw`~ nin eijsivdoim j a]n ejxw/nwmevna~ [I would see them drunk, however with pain/it would give me pain to see them drunk]). At 815, Dionysus continues, o{mw~ d j i[doi~ a]n hJdevw~ a{ soi pikrav… (And yet you would enjoy to see things that are bitter to you?). At 823, he warns Pen- theus not to risk being “seen as a man” by the women (h]n ajnh;r oJfqh`/~ ejkei`). At 912, again, he calls the king one who “wants to see things which should not be seen” (se; to;n provqumon o[nq j a} mh; crew;n oJra`n). At 914, Dionysus invites Pen- theus, all dressed up, to come and be seen by him (o[fqhtiv moi). At 940, he promises Pentheus he will be satisfied, once he has seen (o{tan . . . i[dh/~) how chaste the Maenads are. At 1062, he says, “I would see properly the disgraceful activities of the Maenads” (i[doim j a]n ojrqw`~ mainavdwn aijscrourgivan). In all these passages, Pentheus is revealed as unsophisticated and naïve about seeing, with no understanding of seeing as religious experience. In the interplay between the two characters, Dionysus and Pentheus, the king’s eagerness to see gains a practical significance. The oscillation is between the idea of a military expedition to an enemy territory, on the one hand, and the expression of voyeurism, the desire to look from afar, on the other.78 Pentheus’s sight, in fact, remains that of a katavskopo~ (spy), as in Dionysus’s words (916; 956; a fuvlax [a guardian] at 959; and masthvr [searcher] at 985) and in the negative words of the Chorus (at 981–3, he will be seen [dokeuvonta] “as he spies” by his mother). Yet the king, for his part, uses a cognate word innocently and without voyeuristic implications, in the sense of ‘inspection,’ at line 838: molei`n crh; prw`ton ej~ kataskophvn (I must first go to reconnoitre). The desire not to be seen while viewing has the paradoxical effect of fore- grounding Pentheus as ‘viewed,’ as unwitting, passive spectacle helplessly exposed. Here we reach the other pole of our subject-world spectrum. Not only is Pentheus enslaved to his subjective, flawed point of view, but he himself enacts the deceiving quality of a reality that is mere appearance. Pentheus is ambivalent about this as well. From the start, the main concern in his plan is to go to the mountains unno- ticed (e.g., 1050: wJ~ oJrw`/men oujc oJrw`menoi [to see without being seen]). He is concerned with secrecy and being hidden: at 954 (ejmo;n kruvyw devma~ [I will hide my body]); at 955 (kruvyh/ su; kruvyin h{n se krufqh`nai crewvn [You will be hidden in the way that you should be hidden]); at 816 (sigh`/ . . . kaqhvmeno~ [sitting . . . in silence]); at 817 (ka]n e[lqh/~ lavqra/ [even if you go secretly]); and at 840 (pw`~ di j a[stew~ ei\mi Kadmeivou~ laqwvn; [How can I go through the town without being noticed by the Cadmeians?]). On the other hand, Pentheus’s enjoyment of his own looks and appearances mean that he craves exposure: he wishes to be properly dressed for the disguise (e.g., 925: tiv faivnomai dh`t j [How do I look then?]) and to reach the best strategic position from which to watch (1058–62). Just as voyeurism is intricately connected to the king’s oppressive and con- Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 237 trolling viewing, so the desire for secrecy and privacy is contradicted or comple- mented by Pentheus’s lust for appearing, being acknowledged, and being made the object of attention, already apparent in the foolish pride he shows in his feminine attire. The god announces that Pentheus will beejpivshmo~ (conspicuous, 967) and the king himself, contradicting his previous concerns, declares he is available to go ejmfanw`~ (openly, 818), in almost a parody of the god’s will to be ejmfanhv~ (visible) in Thebes (22), which exposes all the more the limits and helplessness of mortals. Pentheus’s passivity in the unfolding of this process culminates in his actual exposure to the Maenads’ fury. We see it starting as early as 914, as he is put on show in his dressing up (e[xiqi pavroiqe dwmavtwn [Come out of the house!]); then, at 982–3 (mavthr prw`tav nin leura`~ ajpo; pevtra~ É h] skovlopo~ o[yetai [His mother first from a sheer cliff with keen eye shall catch sight of him]); and in his final position as ejfhvmenon (sitting on top) at 1074, at 1075 (w[fqh de; ma`llon h] katei`de mainavda~ [Rather than seeing the Maenads he was seen by them]), and 1095 (ei\don ejlavth/ despovthn ejfhvmenon [They saw my master perched on the fir tree]). To summarize, Pentheus ‘the viewer’ is unable to see facts; his vision is shaped by desire and repression, torn as he is between craving to see and to be seen and rejecting what appear to him as ‘shameful views’ and wanting to hide; he misun- derstands facts and the intentions of others and makes flawed presuppositions; he oscillates between exhibitionism and timidity, the wish to be exposed, and the craving for a hidden spot from which to spy on; his fate, ultimately, will be exposure and destruction through exposure. As Pentheus is the main ‘focalizer’ in the play (in the sense that his own perception of things, and his own idea of order, are placed at the center of the tragic events), this status as flawed ‘viewer’ and problematic, ambiguous ‘view’ leaves the spectator at a loss as to what the reality of the experience in the drama has really been. Reality is reduced to seeing and being seen: and when these are the experience of humans, with their hamartiai and imperfections, nothing is left on which one can rely. The final cry of Agave as she leaves for exile—mhvte Kiqairw;n e[m j i[doi miaro;~ É mhvte Kiqairw`n j o[ssoisin ejgwv79 (May neither Cithaeron see me, nor I Cithaeron with my eyes, 1384–5)— epitomizes the final collapse of the separation between subject and world: the defeated human character can only long to withdraw from seeing the world she has so badly misunderstood, and from being seen as part of it. The ‘characterful seeing’ of Pentheus has significance in the overall construction of the world of the play. First of all, there is an inability to ‘look together,’ to share a common level of perception that isolates him from other characters;80 this was also the curse of Oedipus in OT. At the same time, the reliability of an objective level of reality is challenged, with a bewildering effect for the audience too. What is actually happening onstage, or reported, cannot be taken for granted as 238 Helios real. Does the palace miracle (616–41) really happen? Is the favsma a ghost or a hallucination (630–1)?81 Did Dionysus transform himself into a bull, or is it only Pentheus’s hallucination that leads him to see the stranger in that form (920)? An unequivocal answer cannot be given. This is the bewilderment of Menelaus as he sees Helen upon his arrival in Egypt in the Helen; but in the Bacchae no subsequent revelation will offer a ‘reality check.’ Two lines of argument converge: the fore- grounding of the viewing subject, with its agenda, limitations, and desires; and the removal of the world of phenomena as grounded in a secure ontology. The result is an even more radical and despairing outcome than the philosophical criticism offered in the Helen. Even Oedipus in OT, however blinded, survived in his bodily objectivity. But Pentheus’s physical and visual annihilation, his sparagmos (1043–52), remains the only possible outcome for a subject who has entirely failed as ‘viewer’ and as ‘view.’ I proposed, at the beginning of this study, to consider the treatment of vision and knowledge in Greek tragedy not only synchronically, as the interlacing of themes that can be simultaneously present and have to do with the human relationship with sight and knowledge, as well as with the nature of ancient theater as performed, visual experience, but also diachronically, as reflection of a shift in philosophical thought in the second half of the fifth century.I n particular, we notice a radicalization of a strand of Sophistic thought, which reacts to a crisis of received ideas and traditional religious beliefs: a relativist, anthropocentric questioning of the phenomena that should constitute the object of knowledge and a mistrust in the reliability and communicability of knowledge itself. The unambiguous implications of light and darkness in Aeschylus, the focus on the knowing and perceiving subject in Sophocles, and finally, the challenge to the very concept of the world as knowable and sharable with others in the Euripidean Helen and Bac- chae, are three moments of an itinerary (not a linear succession, of course: coexistence and the intertwining of different stages always characterize cultural changes), which moves from Aeschylus’s identification of light with the clarity of political harmony and darkness with the blood vengefulness of family to the philosophical complications of ‘viewer’ and ‘view’ staged by Euripides. These three moments of reflection are spread over the whole spectrum of the epistemological relationship between subject and the world, summing up, at the same time, the scope and powers that are proper to theater.

Works Cited

Allan, W., ed. 2008. Euripides: Helen. Cambridge. Bardel, R. 2000. “Eidola in Epic, Tragedy and Vase Paintings.” In Rutter and Sparkes 2000, 140–60. Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 239

Bowie, A. M. 1994. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy. Cambridge. Bremer, D. 1976. Licht und Dunkel in der fruhgriechischen Dichtung. Bonn. Burnett, A. P. 1960. “Euripides’s Helen: A Comedy of Ideas.” CP 55: 151–63. Buxton, R. 1996. “What Can You Rely on in Oedipus Rex?” In Silk 1996, 38–48. ———. 1980. “Blindness and Limits: Sophocles and the Logic of Myth.” JHS 100: 22–37. Cairns, D. 1996. “Off with Her Aijdwv~: Herodotus 1.8.3–4.” CQ 46: 78–83. ———. 2009. “Weeping and Veiling: Grief, Display and Concealment in Ancient Greek Culture.” In T. Fögen, ed., Tears in the Graeco-Roman World. Berlin. 37–58. Calame, C. 1996. “Vision, Blindness and Mask: The Radicalization of the Emotions in Sophocles.” In Silk 1996, 17–37. Carey, C. 2000. “Old Comedy and the Sophists.” In D. Harvey and J. Wilkins, eds., The Rivals of Aristophanes. London. 419–36. Chaston, C. 2010. Tragic Props and Cognitive Function: Aspects of the Function of Images in Think- ing. Leiden. Devereux, G. 1970. “The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides’ Bacchae.” JHS 90: 35–48. ———. 1973. “The Self-Blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles: Oidipous Tyrannos.” JHS 93: 36–49. Di Benedetto, V. 2004. Euripide, Le Baccanti. Milan. Dover, K. 1968. Aristophanes, Clouds. Oxford. Dunn, F. 2007. Present Shock in Fifth-Century Greece. Michigan. Easterling, P. E. 1997. “Form and Performance.” In P. E. Easterling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge. 151–78. Ferrari, G. 1990. “Figures of Speech: The Picture of Aidôs.” Mêtis 5: 185–204. ———. 2002. Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece. Chicago. Flaumenhaft, M. J. 1994. The Civic Spectacle: Essays on Drama and Community. Lanham. Fraenkel, E. 1975. Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy: A History of Greek Epic, Lyric, and Prose to the Middle of the Fifth Century. Oxford. Goldhill, S. 1986. Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge. ———. 1999. “Programme Notes.” In S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge. 1–29. ———. 2000. “Placing Theatre in the History of Vision.” In Rutter and Sparkes 2000, 161–79. Gregory, J. 1985. “Some Aspects of Seeing in Euripides’ Bacchae.” G&R 32: 23–31. Heidegger, M. 1992. Parmenides. English Translation by A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz. Blooming- ton, IN. Henrichs, A. 1994. “Why Should I Dance? Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy.” Arion 3.1: 96–111. Jones, W. H. S., trans. 1918–1935. Pausanias, Description of Greece. 4 volumes. London. Instone, S. 2007. “Darkness, My Light: Enigmatic Ajax.” In P. J. Finglass, C. Collard, and N. J. Rich- ardson, eds., Hesperos: Studies in Ancient Greek Poetry Presented to M. L. West on His Seven- tieth Birthday. Oxford. 228–38. Marianetti, M. M. 1992. Religion and Politics in Aristophanes’ Clouds. Hildesheim. Michels, R. 1986. “Oedipus and Insight.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 56: 599–617. Onians R. B. 1988. The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate: New Interpretations of Greek, Roman and Kindred Evidence, Also of Some Basic Jewish and Christian Beliefs. Cambridge. Parsons, M. 1988. “Self-Knowledge Refused and Accepted: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on the Bacchae and the Oedipus at Colonus.” BICS 35: 1–14. Platter, C. 2007. Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres. Baltimore. 240 Helios

Revermann, M. 2006. Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Con- texts of Aristophanic Comedy. Oxford. Rocco, C. 1997. Tragedy and Enlightenment: Athenian Political Thought and the Dilemmas of Modernity. Berkeley. Rosenmeyer, T.G. 2002. “ ‘Metatheater’: An Essay on Overload.” Arion 10: 87–119. Roux, J. 1972. Euripide, Les Bacchants: Commentaire. Volume 2 of 2. Paris. Rutter, N. K., and B. A. Sparkes, eds. 2000. Word and Image in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh. Seaford, R. 2001. Bacchae. Reprinted with corrections. Warminster. Segal, C. 1969. “Aristophanes’ Clouds Chorus.” Arethusa 2: 143–61. ———. 1971. “The Two Worlds of Euripides’ Helen.” TAPA 102: 553–61. ———. 1997. Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae. Expanded edition, with a new afterward by the author. Princeton. Shapiro, G. 1986. “Archaeologies of Vision.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 55: 599–617. Silk, M. S., ed. 1996. Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond. Oxford. ———. 2000. Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy. Oxford. Sommerstein, A. 1998. Aristophanes, Clouds. Warminster. Taillardat, J. 1965. Les Images d’Aristophane. Paris. Theunissen, M. 2002. Pindar: Menschenlos und Wende der Zeit. Munich. Thumiger, C. 2007. Hidden Paths: Self and Characterization in Greek Tragedy. Bulletin of the Insti- tute of Classical Studies Supplement, 99. London. ———. 2010. “Metatheatre in Modern and Ancient Fiction.” MD 63: 9–58. ———. Forthcoming. “Hallucination, Drunkenness and Mirrors: Ancient Reception of Mod- ern Drama.” In A. Bakogianni, ed., Dialogues with the Past: Reception Theory and Practice. London. Wilson, P., and O. Taplin. 1993. “The ‘Aetiology’ of Tragedy in the Oresteia.” PCPS 39: 169–80. Wright, M. 2005. Euripides’ Escape Tragedies. Oxford. Zeitlin, F. 1994. “The Artful Eye: Vision, Ekphrasis, and Spectacle in Euripidean Drama.” In S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, eds., Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture. Cambridge. 138–96.

Texts Used

Diggle, J. 1981–1984. Euripidis Fabulae. 3 volumes. Oxford. Lloyd-Jones, H., and N. G. Wilson. 1990. Sophoclis Fabulae. Oxford. Page, D. L. 1972. Aeschylus, Opera. Oxford. Wilson, N. G. 2007. Aristophanes: Acharnenses, Equites, Nubes, Vespae, Pax, Aves. Oxford.

Translations Used (with Some Adjustments)

Kovacs, D. 2002a. Euripides, Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus. Loeb Classical Library, 495. Cambridge, MA and London. ———. 2002b. Euripides: Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes. Loeb Classical Library, 11. Cam- bridge, MA and London. Lloyd-Jones, H. 1994a. Sophocles, I: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus. Loeb Classical Library, 20. Cambridge, MA and London. ———. 1994b. Sophocles, II: Antigone, Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. Loeb Classical Library, 21. Cambridge, MA and London. Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 241

Sommerstein, A. H. 2008. The Oresteia by Aeschylus. Loeb Classical Library, 146. Cambridge, MA and London.

Notes

* I would like to thank wholeheartedly Sue Blundell, Douglas Cairns, and Nancy Rabinowitz for organizing the great conference panel from which this chapter comes, for their efforts to secure publication of the proceedings, and for their thorough and illuminating feedback on various drafts of my paper. I am also indebted to Anton Powell’s criticism of an earlier version which helped improve the piece substantially. Finally, I am grateful to the Humboldt Foundation that has supported my research during the final stages of the preparation of this essay. 1. See Rabinowitz in this volume. 2. See Michels 1986, 603 on “the quality of knowing that we (humans) associate with insight . . . vision is also the metaphor for knowledge of the future, long-term adaptation and wisdom.” 3. Zeitlin 1994, 141: “From the start, the tragic stage is organised in both its special and mental horizons around the dialectical relationship between what can be seen and what cannot, and it extends the problems of vision and visibility that belong to the conventions of its mise en scène into an epistemological concern with insight, knowledge, revelation and truth.” See Goldhill 1999, esp. 12–17 for a re-elaboration of various approaches to “gaze” and optics towards what one may call a “sociology of viewing,” which is mindful of ancient theater as civic and social moment and draws on the work of Bakthin, as well as anthropologists such as van Gennep and Turner. An interesting angle is offered by Chaston 2010, a study of the cognitive importance of ‘images’ with particular reference to tragic props. Chaston assesses the importance of opsis in tragedy also beyond literal performance, through the mechanisms of metaphor, semblance, and symbolism (see esp. 6–22). 4. See Sextus Empiricus, Adv. log. 1.60–4 on Protagoras and others on the relativity of knowledge; see Herrmann in this volume. 5. For a recent discussion on seeing in various aspects of Greek culture, see the essays in Rutter and Sparkes 2000, in particular Goldhill’s chapter (161–79) on Greek theater within a “history of vision”: “Vision itself, especially as it becomes enfolded with (mis)understanding and the problems of perception, so dear to the sophists, have repeatedly been articulated as part of tragedy’s thematic concern” (165). Goldhill (1986, 199–221) already offered an important account of the fift“ h- century enlightenment” in terms of epistemological evaluation of reality and human judgement, esp. in Sophocles’ OT. See Wright 2005, 264–78 for an account of the current philosophical debate with reference to Euripides’ “escape tragedies.” 6. A fundamental review of these motifs in Greek literature is still Bremer 1976, esp. on Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Pindar. Representatively on Pindar see also Fraenkel 1975, 360–3 and Theunissen 2002, 220–5. 7. The turn of the fifth century has always been identified as a crucial moment of dramatic political and cultural cataclysmic changes in Athens. Dunn (2007) describes this phase as one of “present shock,” in which the Athenians sought to come to terms with, and adapt to, the collapse of a familiar world. Along the same lines, one might interpret the epistemological issues I discuss here as another attempt to react to a crisis in the surrounding reality, by questioning human perception and the very status of the perceived world. 8. For an interpretation of the play in the light of this opposition as instantiating life against death, see Instone 2007. 9. I have partly used the translation in Instone 2007. 242 Helios

10. Compare the famous leaves image in Homer, Il. 6.140–9 and Mimnermus, fr. 2 West. 11. See Instone 2007 on “Ajax’s life is a life of death,” esp. 229, 232, 237. 12. Lines 854–8 are deleted, however, by J. F. C. Campe. 13. Buxton 1980, an exhaustive analysis of sight and blindness in Greek culture with relation to poetry, prophecy, and human transgression against the divinity and madness. See also Goldhill 2000, 165 note 15 on the importance of the motif of vision in Sophocles. 14. See Devereux 1973; Buxton 1980 and 1996; Goldhill 1986, 219–21; Parsons 1988; Calame 1996. Rocco (1997) offers an acute reading of OT as instance of the “dialectic of Enlightenment” of Dorkheimer and Adorno: “Yet if it is true that ‘as a negation of the possibility of a systematic order of knowledge, tragedy itself is one of the finest examples of this supposedly impossible order,’ then Oedipus Tyrannos is indeed one of the finest examples of that kind of tragedy . . . Sophocles’ contribution to just such an epistemology of disruption, a form of enlightened thinking that (like the play itself) sustains and celebrates the aims of enlightenment even as it exposes and opposes enlightenment’s tendency to discipline and normalize the subjects it seeks to empower.” 15. See Goldhill 1986, 217–8 for an exploration of the etymologies in the semantic area of knowledge and inquiry possibly activated by Oedipus’s name. 16. Cf. OT 293 (to;n de; drw`nt j oujdei;~ oJra`/ [Pearson] or to;n de; d j ijdovnt j oujdei;~ oJra`/ [MSS]) on how the man responsible or the witness of the killing of Laius is now nowhere to be seen; also 388–9, 413, 454, opposing Oedipus and Teiresias in terms of sight and blindness; 1183 (w\ fw`~, teleutai`ovn se prosblevyaimi), the refusal of light and sight on the part of Oedipus. See also 487–8, 528, 747, 1008, 1120, 1221–2, 1229, 1295, 1303–5, 1312, 1334–5, 1368, 1385, 1484, 1524. 17. The effect is there, with or without the probably interpolated lines at 1524–30:Y “ ou see, O citizens of Thebes, this Oedipus, who once knew [h[/dei] all the famous riddles . . .” 18. Disappearance from sight is a typical feature of hero-cult. See, e.g., the episode recalled in Pausanias 6.9.6–8 about Cleomedes of Astypalaea, who disappeared while seeking refuge from an angry mob in the sanctuary of Athena: “He entered a chest standing in the sanctuary and drew down the lid. The Astypalaeans toiled in vain in their attempts to open the chest. At last, however, they broke open the boards of the chest, but found no Cleomedes, either alive or dead. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask what had happened to Cleomedes. The response given by the Pythian priestess was, they say, as follows: ‘Last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea; honor him with sacrifices as being no longer a mortal’ ” (translation by Jones 1918–1935). 19. See Zeitlin 1994 for Euripides’ special interest in “thematising the implications both of vision and of the interplay between vision and reality” (142). 20. Chaston (2010, 19) also mentions the eidôla as one of the instances of “optical appearance” in tragedy. According to his study, such instances have a cognitive importance as “instances of thought” alongside the more often scrutinized “verbal reasoning.” 21. On Clouds see also Ruffell in this volume. 22. This is also part of the comic repertoire at the time, though Aristophanes stands out: see Carey 2000, 429 on satirizing the Sophists as part of the “comic Zeitgeist.” On the Helen and philosophical trends, see Wright 2005, Chapter 4, esp. 235–60 and, on Sophists and Gorgias, 268–78; cf. also Allan 2008, 46–9. 23. On Euripides’ sources, esp. Stesichorus’s so-called Palinode, as well as Herodotus’s Egyptian logos (2.12–20), see Allan 2008, 18–28. Wright (2005, 82–115) casts doubts on the Palinode as a source of Euripides or as authentic altogether. Cf. also Euripides, El. 1283 for a reference to the same version of the myth. 24. Bardel 2000, 140; see the whole chapter for a review of ghosts in Greek literature and vase paintings. Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 243

25. Cf. Sophocles, El. 501, 644; Euripides, Hec. 70. 26. Cf. also Sophocles, OC 109–10, Euripides, Phoen. 1543–5, Or. 407, Bacch. 630. 27. E.g., Euripides, Alc. 244–6: oujraniaiv te di`nai nefevla~ dromai`ou (O heavenly vortexes of running clouds), as the woman feels death approaching; see also Sophocles, OC 1081–2: ei[q j . . . aijqeriva~ nefevla~ kuvrsaimi (if only I could reach the airy clouds . . . ); Euripides, Supp. 961, for the Chorus in their abandonment: ti~ nefevla pneumavtwn u{po duscivmwn ajivssw (I am like a cloud, moved by cold winds); Aeschylus, Supp. 793. 28. A Homeric image: cf. Tallardat 1965, 364, who quotes polevmoio nevfo~ (cloud of war) at Il. 17.243. Examples are Euripides, Phoen. 250, 1311, where a cloud of death wraps the city of Thebes, and Hec. 907 (Ἑllavnwn . . . nefevlh). 29. For instance, at Or. 468 the hero invokes a nevfo~ to cover him in his shame when facing Tyndareus; at Sophocles, Trach. 831, a “cloud of death” (foniva/ nefevla/) surrounds Heracles in his agony; similarly, the choral passage at Euripides, El. 727–36, is dominated by the clouds of Zeus, sent to punish Atreus’s crime; at Hipp. 192 human life appears to be always constrained by a cloud of darkness (skovto~ . . . nefevlai~); at Med. 107, cloud of grief (nevfo~ oijmwgh`~); cf. also HF 1140 and 1216; Sophocles, Ant. 528; Aeschylus, Sept. 229. 30. The coexistence of internalized and externalized instances of the eidôlon/phasma/nephelê imagery is characteristic of the Greek representation of emotions and states of mind, typically depicted as stemming from the subject as much as affecting it from the outside (see Thumiger 2007, 3–18, for a summary of the question). The Greek tendency to conceive reality (here, the subject) as ‘wrapped’ into an event (an emotion, or an external affection) is illumined by Hei- degger’s controversial interpretation of the Parmenidean a-letheia (truth), as ‘un-concealment’ of the world before the thinker, an ‘un-veiling,’ not a datum present in reality (Heidegger, 1992, 16). Truth in this sense—and its knowledge—is defined by the German philosopher as a “coming to pass of concealedness,” and by nature a struggle, “in its very essence a conflict.” The net of eidôlon/ phasma/nephelê imagery can be suggestively analyzed in the light of the existentialist interpretation, as instances of the withdrawal of knowledge from man, a process of concealment. On imagery of veiling and covering as symbolic of emotions and interface between the objective and the subjective level, see Onians’s (1988) seminal remarks about imagery of veiling and ‘wrapping’ to express existential experiences and emotions (see in particular 153 on veiling and marriage, 423–5 on veiling and death); with a focus on aidôs, see Cairns 1996 and 2009; Ferrari 1990, 194 and 2002, 54–6, 72–81. 31. Dover 1968, lxvii. 32. Sommestein 1998, 173 ad line 330. See also Revermann 2006, 197–8 on clouds as linked to heavenly phenomena (metevwra) and the abstraction of Socratic “kainotheism,” as well as convey- ing “elevation and detachment from the ordinary world” and embodying qualities of general insubstantiality with their ability to change quick and easy. Cf. also Marianetti 1992, 87–8. 33. Segal 1969, 149–50, 155–8. 34. Bowie 1994, 125, also comparing evidence from myth and poetry to underline clouds as agent of punishment, negative feelings, and deceit, as in Euripides’ Helen (129–30). 35. Recent readers, however, have been increasingly inclined to emphasize the play’s “serious- ness” and to acknowledge its urgency as “tragedy of ideas” (Allen 2008, 47) against interpretations that highlight its comic potential or see it as a playful, romantic exercise. Burnett’s formula was “comedy of ideas” (1960); see Wright’s (2005, 228–36) criticism. For an important discussion, Segal 1971, 553–6 and for a summary, with a more nuanced account of the play’s “double world,” 612–4; more recently, for a welcome correction to the dichotomy between “serious” and “tragic versus “light” and “comic,” see Wright 2005, 26–7, 234–5 and Allen 2008, 66–72. 244 Helios

36. Lines 728–33, explicit in dignifying the figure of a servant, are deleted by Willink; the intervention of the slave at 711–33 and 744–57, however, confirm the same picture. 37. The term nephelê also features literally in the Helen: the term means ‘ghost’ in a personal- ized way in the tragedy, with reference to the heroine and her double (at 705 [however deleted by Kirchhoff], 707, 750, 1219). 38. Segal 1971, 560. 39. Cf. Menelaus’s confusion at Euripides, Hel. 490ff. (“Could there be another Zeus, on the riverbanks of the Nile . . . ?”) and the confrontation between the two logoi at Aristophanes, Nub. 889–1114. The duplication of appearances undermines everything else: religion, authority, moral principles, and logics. 40. Segal 1971, 560–1: “In the Hippolytus and the Medea Euripides had explored this rift [between man and his world] in its psychological dimensions . . . in the Bacchae he was to explore radically its social as well as its psychological implications . . . in the Helen the psychological and social implications of these conflicts are marginal.” Segal’s subsequent work on Bacchae and metatheater (e.g., 1997) presupposes perhaps a revision of these views. 41. For “the motif of seeing [in the last Euripidean play] as imbued with a sophistic spirit of relativism” and its sociocultural implications, see Roux 1972, 11–71. 42. See Thumiger 2007, 74–9. 43. The exploitation of the motif of seeing in Bacchae has been linked by some readers to a play’s interest in metatheatricality, notably by Segal (1997, to mention the main work). For a counter-discussion see Thumiger 2013 and 2010 (for the problems raised by the notion of ‘metatheater’ more generally). 44. This is obvious with oJra`w (I see), which occurs 48 times in Bacchae (roughly 10 percent of all the verb’s occurrences in Euripides and the highest total for any Euripidean play). 45. In the Bacchae: oJravw: 6, 61, 210, 249, 306, 319, 337, 357, 394, 470, 477, 500, 506 (oJra`~ LP; o} dra`/~ Reiske), 591, 634, 680, 693, 740, 760, 811, 815, 823, 912, 914, 918, 924, 927, 940, 983, 1017, 1019, 1050 bis, 1058, 1062, 1063, 1075, 1095, 1172, 1175, 1203, 1228, 1238, 1244 (deleted by Wil- link 1966), 1258, 1307, 1329, 1384 (with Musgrave’s m j ejsivdoi before miarov~ or Kirchhoff’s e[m j i[doi). kaqoravw: 1075. eijsoravw: 252, 502, 510, 550, 624, 664, 713, 814, 927, 1077, 1165, 1265, 1311. 46. Bacch. 596, 1232, 1280. 47. Bacch. 257, 317; 1279, skevptomai. 48. Bacch. 1326. 49. Bacch. 236, 1060, 1167, 1385. 50. Bacch. 469, 501, 692, 1252, 1264. 51. Bacch. 1232, 1257. 52. Bacch. 248, 449, 667, 693, 716 (deleted by Dobree), 1063 (qau`m j P, to; qau`m j Dodds, qaumavsq j Nauck and Diggle). 53. Bacch. 760. 54. Bacch. 838. 55. Bacch. 829. 56. Bacch. 916, 956, 981. 57. Bacch. 984. 58. Bacch. 311, 312, 335, 480, 624, 638, 722, 843b, 918, 920, 927, 937, 957, 1262, 1350, 1390. 59. Bacch. 182 (deleted by Dobree), 629, 646, 925, 1017, 1031, 1283. 60. Bacch. 501, 992, 1006, 1011, 1199a. 61. Bacch. 22, 818 (ejmfanw`~ [openly]). Thumiger—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 245

62. Bacch. 967. 63. Bacch. 976. 64. Bacch. 840 (lanqavnw [I escape notice]), 817 (lavqra/ [secretly]). 65. Bacch. 723, 730, 954, 955 (kruvptw [I hide]), 888 (krupteuvw [I hide]); 955 bis (kruvyi~ [hiding, concealment]); 98, 549 (kruptov~ [hidden]). 66. Bacch.: morfhv (shape, form): 4, 54, 917, 1388 (in the coda, deleted by Burges); a[morfo~ (misshapen, ugly): 453; qeluvmorfon: 353; gunaikovmorfon (of female appearance): 855. 67. Bacch. 34, 180, 915. 68. Bacch. 53. 69. Bacch. 4, 65. 70. Bacch. 49, 296, 944, 1270. 71. Bacch. 254, 350, 451, 1071, 1264. 72. Bacch. 53, 438, 1331. 73. Bacch. 54, 1330; metabolhv (change): 1266. 74. The phraseology is here mostly idiomatic or conventional for messenger-reports, in our last examples. Involving the addressee/listener in the speaker’s autopsy is a typical ‘plausibility reinforcing’ device in messenger speeches. The repetition underlines, however, the paradox of Pen- theus’s inability to see the divine despite (literally) facing it, when contrasted with how the activity of seeing is described from the point of view of Pentheus. 75. Di Benedetto (2004, 138) notes how in the short passage at 918–58 Pentheus uses the verb dokevw with reference to himself with striking frequency (five times): this does not underline self- reflexivity, but a naïve predisposition to accept any new perception without scrutiny. See also dokeuvw (to look at closely, to spy) applied by the Chorus to Pentheus at 984. 76. In Tiresias’s mouth at 311 and 312—h]n dokh`/~ me;n, hJ de; dovxa sou nosh`/ É fronei`n dovkei ti (If you have ideas but unsound ones, you must not think you are wise)—and in Dionysus’s at 480; at 957: dokw` sfa~ ejn lovcmai~ o[rniqa~ w{~ (I imagine [the women] like birds caught in bushes’); or Pentheus’s full derangement and hallucination at 624 (dwvmat j ai[qesqai dokw`n [thinking that his house was on fire]), at 918 (oJra`n moi duvo me;n hJlivou~ dokw` [I seem to see two suns]), and at 920 (tau`ro~ hJmi`n provsqen hJgei`sqai dokei`~ [You seem to be going before me as a bull]). 77. Much has been written on Pentheus as a character repressed in his desires, esp. in a psychoanalytical key (notably by Segal 1997; cf. Thumiger 2007, 139–40, with 60 note 2 for a summary). 78. According to Gregory 1985, 27, Pentheus’s crime is not his voyeuristic weakness in itself, but the fallibility of his seeing, his inability to gain knowledge from his autopsy: “Men see what they are disposed to see” (28). Pentheus “never sees with the eyes of faith” (29), but applies secular parameters to divine matters. 79. At 1384 there is a lacuna between Kiqairwvn and miarov~. Kirchoff conjectures e[m j i[doi. 80. Flaumenhaft 1994, 66: Pentheus is “an isolate, outside communal, as well as private, com- binations. He wants to see, but his looking must be seen by no-one.” 81. The word favsm j is Jacobs’s emendation for LP fw`~, accepted by Diggle (Seaford retains fw`~ and attributes to it ritual overtones).

Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy*

Ian Ruffell

One of the principal attributes of Old Comedy, as much for modern critics as for ancient, is its aggression. From attacks on individuals, particularly historical individuals, to the behavior of its protagonists while pursuing their crazy schemes, the implications of such verbal and actual violence have proved in different ways problematic. The visual elements, in particular, have often proved troubling when set against the big political issues and self-proclaimed ambitions of the plays. While the resources of the comic stage have often been considered, the specific contribution of the spectacle of comic aggression has rarely been considered directly, even compared to obscenity, which has been treated primarily from a linguistic viewpoint.1 For some critics, this comic aggression is all too easily dismissed as slapstick, childish jokes, a ritual hangover, or the integration of elements of popular nonliterary comedy—all far from any serious dimension.2 Some critics, conversely, accept Aristophanic claims to be moving away from low comedy, despite patent evidence to the contrary. Others use the very crudeness of such humor to tell a simple story of power, in terms of genre-specific comic heroism or the straightforward expression of masculine power and male sexuality, common to other expressions of phallic aggression.3 It is certainly the case that the visual dimension of comic aggression puts issues of masculinity and power center-stage and that the visual dimension to aggressive humor offers a particularly immediate source of ideological engagement for the spectators. I shall argue here, however, that the spectacle of violence is an altogether more anxious one, and poses questions about the exercise of power and nature of authority in fifth- and early fourth-century BCE Athens. This paper falls in two parts. In the first part, I consider the violence of Old Comedy in relation to theories of humor that emphasize audience superiority, group solidarity, and the humiliation and social marginalization of targets. I shall argue that even in instances of comic violence and slapstick, a straightforward identification of victim with comic target is not always possible, that comic violence is less about social stratification than about political rivalry, and that the targets of violent humor betray as much political anxiety as they do triumphant heroism. In the second part, I develop these anxieties over masculine power within Old Com- edy by bringing into this account of violence the elements of sexual aggression and

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 247 248 Helios humiliation. I discuss the audience’s visual experience and pleasure, and its implications, by engaging with positions within feminist film theory: on the one hand, Laura Mulvey’s (1975) theory of the sadistic, dominant male gaze, and on the other, Kaja Silverman’s (1992) account of masculinity in crisis. Sexual aggression in plays of the 420s and earlier 410s use, I argue, sexual dominance as part of a process of ‘remasculinization,’ an attempt to cover up and compensate for the anxieties over masculine power.4 In the latter part of the fifth century and in the early fourth century, such remasculinization in any visual sense was considerably more question- able and the process of male humiliation gathered apace. The watching (for pleasure) of male abjection, impotence, and lack occurred in the sexual sphere but has acute implications for claims to power in other spheres, not least politics.

Political Violence and Comic Mastery

Physical violence and slapstick humor constitute the most direct expression of power on the comic stage, and as such, readily offer the prospect of being analyzed in terms of a superiority theory of humor. According to this theory, the audience focalize through the speaker or actor and are laughing, usually with them, at the target, butt, or victim. Such aggressive laughter certainly has a long history in Greek culture, going back most obviously to the fate of Thersites in Iliad 2.265–78 or the lesser Ajax in Iliad 23.773–84. They also had a place in ancient theories of comedy specifically, starting with the contemporary witness Ps.-Xenophon in his Constitution of the Athenians 2.18, where it is argued that the dêmos (the audience) exerts through Old Comedy a form of political and social control. Aristotle’s comments on comic character are in part about audience superiority in relation to the visual experience. In more modern times, a victim or superiority theory of humor is particularly associated with Henri Bergson, for whom aggressive comedy is a means of asserting social norms by attacking transgressors: “Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed” (1956, 187).5 Such humiliation, I shall argue, is certainly an important component of Old Comedy, but in its strongest, visual form, it is strictly limited and targeted. There are challenges to this emphasis on the theorization of comedy as attack, as the formation of in-groups and out-groups and the reinforcement of norms. Many linguistic, semiotic, and script-based models are centered instead on incon- gruity, and emphasize not only verbal, visual, and conceptual disjunctions, but also (implicitly or explicitly) productive connections and congruities. Such models can also, interestingly, be traced back to classical theory.6 In such models, the position of the victim or butt has been contested—whether or not, indeed, the victim is an essential part of the comic transaction (speaker–addressee–audience–butt), or is an Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 249 aspect of the comic transaction with sociological implications. Nor indeed does an audience’s pleasure derive (only) from superiority, but from processing those conceptual juxtapositions, from transgression, recognition, or even empathy.7 Even with the sort of visual humor in stage violence and sexual aggression, the butt is not always straightforward or stable. Audiences may find (or have found) violence funny, but that does not mean that the victim of the violence is necessarily the butt (or the only butt) of the joke. In terms of the original audience experience, it is also important to bear in mind the very open way in which the audience’s stance, expectations, and response are shaped from within the fiction, not least in terms of visual humor. On the one hand, a relatively stable collective identity and subject position is set up for the audience (male citizen body with occasional expansion). On the other, mutual watching is emphasized: fictional participants scrutinize their audience collectively and also pick out (notional or actual) targets within the audience.8 Reproached at times for gullibility and passivity (particularly in relation to other discourses), the ancient spectators were frequently confronted with the expectation of a critical interpretative stance, not least in relation to visual jokes.9 In Aristophanes, moreover, there is a particular deprecation of a kind of visual and violent humor (Vesp. 58–61; Nub. 537–44). These are mendacious claims, but as is well known, Aristoph anes can engage in apparently just that behavior, including in the same play (not least Clouds, as I shall discuss shortly). Whatever the truth value, such instances of comic metatheatricality emphasize the active, critical, and interrogative stance of the audience and of the comic gaze, rather than a passive and quiescent one.10 The mendacity, however, is less in the question of whether comic violence exists or not, than it is in the hard lines drawn between Aristophanes and his rivals (cf. the prologue of Frogs) and between violence and visual humor and conceptual humor. Certainly, the much-maligned instances of Heraclean gluttony, when they appear, are thoroughly implicated in the kinds of conceptual humor that Aristophanes professes to prefer.11 The same can, I argue, be said of Aristophanic violence. A good starting point is the ending of the revised Clouds, perhaps the most startling display of comic violence and the humor of Schadenfreude. After Strepsia- des’ attempt to use the techniques of Socrates’ workshop has spectacularly back- fired, with his son turning into a father-beater—and some at least of the beating is enacted (1321–5)—Strepsiades is told by the Cloud Chorus that this was all a punishment. Strepsiades concedes that he was at fault, but decides to burn down the thinking-shop (phrontistêrion) anyway (1452–66). He calls for a ladder, an axe, and a burning torch in order to bring down the roof on the students (1487–90). The audience clearly witness Strepsiades and Xanthias setting about this on the skênê roof (even if not to the extent of literally setting the skênê on fire), as students flee the scene: 250 Helios

kajgwv tin j aujtw`n thvmeron dou`nai divkhn ejmoi; poihvsw, keij sfovdr j ei[s j ajlazovne~. Maqhthv~ AV ijou; ijou St. so;n e[rgon, w\ da`/~, iJevnai pollh;n flovga. (Nub. 1491–3)

I am going to exact some penalty from them today even if they are really cunning devils. Student 1: Oh! Oh! Strepsiades: it’s up to you, torch, to set a great fire.

Strepsiades is quite explicit here: he is going to burn the students to death. This is both his desire and his expectation (1499–500).12 What of the audience? In a recent discussion (2006), Martin Revermann has argued that, uncomfortable as it is, such scenes of comic violence were intended for and received as audience enjoyment and that, as a corollary, the comic protagonist would not have been condemned for the use of violence in itself. I would not dissent from this, except to note that the questions of who is acting violently, and how, are of critical importance: Pheidippides’ father-beating would have been perceived, and was characterized, in strongly different terms from the assault on the thinking- shop. I would resist, however, Revermann’s (2006, 235) suggestion that the generic context renders the violence somehow safe and gives no meaningful direction to the audience: “The final violence has to be seen in its generic context as comic violence. . . .” This formulation is problematic in a number of ways. In a play that articulates its points through a series of extremely visual set-pieces—from Socrates on his dangling stool through the definition of the school and its students, the characterization of Socrates (blanket-stealing a specialty), and the two embodied logoi13—to deny similar meaningfulness to the final scene seems, to say the least, odd.L ike most scholars, Revermann is unwilling to accept Plato and pin the blame for Socrates’ death on Aristophanes; the suggestion that Aristophanes was encourag- ing fire-raising and assault (to any degree) sits uneasily with such a position. None- theless, Plato clearly expects his readers to remember the physical details of Socrates messing around in the air (perhaps Plato was wise to gloss over the ending). Certainly I do not want to suggest that the audience would have been likely to walk out of the Theater of Dionysus and lay hands on the nearest passing Sophist, but in both narrative and conceptual terms, the place of this spectacle is telling. It is important to find a space between direct and immediate imitation by an audience on the one hand, and ideological, moral, or political significance on the other. Here it is useful to consider, for a moment, modern debates over the effect of Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 251 watching violence (and associated moral panics) which have been a feature of public discourse since the development of mass media (particularly television). In these debates there has been considerable empirical study of the effect of watching the fictional enactment of violence, but it is such as to warn us against imposing simple models of audience engagement or effect. Commenting in the 1970s and drawing on empirical audience research, Stuart Hall (1976, 226–7) argued against simple behaviorist models (which are still problematic today) and commented on the effects of watching violence in Westerns:

Not only do children “learn” the conventions of the simple-structure Western, like the rules of the game, but the very conventionalization of its elements serves to “background” the actual violent content, displacing the focus of interest onto other elements. . . . Westerns, indeed, have a strikingly clear, though often skel- etal and over-simplified moral structure—a moral economy to which they strictly adhere. However strange it may seem, few violent actions are wholly gratuitous, meaningless or unexplained: they are always motivated in some way or another.

Violence, then, may be part of the repertoire of genres (old and new) and may accordingly be learnt as part of the rules of the game, as it were; but it is plugged into thematic, narrative, symbolic, and cognitive contexts, which may include superiority relations in the pragmatics of humor. Such contexts are critical in Clouds. First, in dramatic terms, the visual violence is tightly woven into the articulation of comic victory. This is a common element in the plays, looking beyond the end of the performance into the judging and beyond (P. J. Wilson 2007), although it is rarely presented in such terms of pure violence. Second, unlike comic violence without consequences, as in cartoons like Tom and Jerry,14 this violence has real effects within dramatic time and implicitly beyond. Unlike Tom, neither the students nor their masters will recover, or be seen to recover, within the fictional world. Third, this concluding spectacle serves as the punctuation mark for an unusually strong moral narrative in this play, which until almost the very end of the play is a profoundly negative one. Unlike other plays by Aristophanes, Clouds presents Strepsiades’ quest for personal salvation through the evasion of the debts incurred by his son as an immoral act from the beginning. No other characters query this intent, except for the hapless, hopeless, and compro- mised Stronger Argument, until the Clouds reveal that they do in fact stand for traditional notions of dikê and the traditional gods and that Strepsiades has been punished for his wickedness (1454–61). There are, then, plenty of reasons to see Strepsiades as far from an exemplary moral agent, and indeed as the butt of the joke (as he has been of Pheidippides’ fists). Indeed, his burning down the 252 Helios thinking-shop may indeed be drawing further attention to Strepsiades’ idiotic crudeness. The concluding violence, then, is multiply overcoded and motivated, and may suggest multiple targets for the on-looking audience, not only the victims of arson. The multiple comic motivations (and targets) are drawn from and reinforce the earlier explorations in this morality tale. In no other extant play is the role of violence so marked as the culmination or even the articulation of the action. Even in Clouds, though, the relationship between the collective audience position and the perpetrators and victims of violence is somewhat complex. Similar ambivalence in relation to the comic ‘hero’ is seen regularly elsewhere with respect to violence. Although traditional models of Old Comedy would have the audience focalize through the comic hero (where identifiable) and see the dominant and expected plot-structure of the plays as one charting the triumph of the comic hero, overcoming narrative and physical obsta- cles along the way, comic violence tells a rather different story with respect to both character and action.15 Above all, despite the strongly agonistic nature of the genre, the idea of physical mastery is relatively underdeveloped. The fantasies of empow- erment and transformation set up in the plays, particularly in prologues, are rarely achieved through physical prowess, and never individual prowess. Such violence as there is in these terms is reactive and directed almost exclusively at (other, rival) self-appointed political experts like sycophants and oracle-sellers.16 Indeed, the most significant physical action in plot terms is the rescue of Peace in Peace 458–519, which is very different in character—it is in fact not violent at all and is an example of collective, rather than individual, action. Just as, however, it is easy to overstate the extent to which the Old Comedy is physically and visually violent, the complexity of comic violence can be under- stated, particularly in relation to the rhetoric of authority, for one consistent target of comic violence are comic protagonists (or ‘heroes’) themselves. In however tran- sitory a fashion, the central characters of Old Comedy are as much victims as pur- veyors of violence, often indeed in the same play. The Chorus’s assault on Dicaeopolis in Acharnians or on Pisetaerus and Euelpides in Birds (356–63, 386–92), or Bdelycleon’s resorting to violence against his father Philocleon in Wasps (456–9) demonstrate less mastery than resistance and an attempt to be heard.17 In Knights, the Sausage Seller’s qualifications for dealing in verbal aggression, which is figured as physical violence (387–90; cf. 261–3, 450–9), stems explicitly from his own experience of violence (1236, 1239, 1242). In this respect, he is not so very different from other foci of comic plots. Such a fluid relationship between violence and authority is evident in what is the most extended display of comic violence—the torture scene in Frogs (605–73), which plays with both class and identity. Dionysus is wearing a blatantly implausible Heracles outfit for his trip to the Underworld—a lionskin and club over his Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 253 saffron gown (krokôton) and boots (kothornoi)—but the disguise is regularly taken seriously by the inhabitants of the Underworld, with dramatically good or bad results, which in turn prompts a series of costume swaps with his slave, Xanthias. As in other instances of incomplete disguise or transformation (discussed below), the butts are both the viewer and the viewed.18 The running joke escalates into a routine where the doorkeeper of the Underworld (Aeacus) looks to punish the person who killed his pet dog, Cerberus. Xanthias (as Heracles) cheekily offers his ‘slave’ Dionysus for torture, whereupon Dionysus claims immortality and suggests that Aeacus torture Xanthias (supposedly an immortal) who should not be able to feel it either. Aeacus ends up beating up both to see who screams first. The routine relies upon the default assumption on the comic stage that slaves deserve to be, are used to being, and can tolerate being beaten (cf. Clouds 56–60), even if that is not actually seen regularly elsewhere in the surviving plays.19 Diony- sus, on the other hand, has a track record of suffering and being poorly tolerant of physical discomfort, as in Eupolis’s Taxiarkhoi (A. M. Wilson 1974; Storey 2003, 253–7; Ruffell, 2011, 305–6) and earlier in the rowing competition with the frogs. The comedy is partly that of superiority and Schadenfreude, as both master and servant are beaten and Aeacus is misled and confused, but also depends upon a series of gags where Dionysus and Xanthias cover up their screams with increasingly creative but implausible explanations of why they have cried out (650–5):

mw`n wjdunhvqh~… Xa. ouj ma; Di j ajll j ejfrovntisa oJpovq j Ἡravkleia tajn Diomeivoi~ givgnetai. Ai. a[nqrwpo~ iJerov~. deu`ro pavlin badistevon. Di. ijou; ijouv. Ai. tiv ejstin… Di. iJppeva~ oJrw`. Ai. tiv dh`ta klavei~… Di. krommuvwn ojsfraivnomai. Ai. ejpei; protima`/~ g j oujdevn… Di. oujdevn moi mevlei.

Surely you didn’t feel it? Xanthias: No by Zeus: I just thought of when the festival of Heracles is happening at Diomeia. Aeacus: A holy man indeed. Right, time to go back over here again. Dionysus: ow! Ow! Aeacus: What’s up? Dionysus: i can see the Knights! Aeacus: Why did you yell, then? Dionysus: i can smell onions. Aeacus: Then you didn’t feel anything? Dionysus: i’m not bothered at all. 254 Helios

In terms of the wider strategies of the play, the violent humor of this scene affords a threefold problematization of authority in the figures of Aeacus, Xanthias (who goes further than any other character in Old Comedy in subverting master/slave relations20), and Dionysus. The abuse of Dionysus here comes on top of his manifest cowardice (271–331) and might be thought to undermine his authority to pro- nounce on anything, whether technical matters or the associated political question of how to save Athens. His creativity here, however, as in the competition with the frogs, is as significant as his victimhood. Dionysus is consistently this combination of patsy and wit, the embodiment of the comic,21 but that combination makes the quite strident claims to authority after the parabasis difficult to take entirely straightforwardly. The exploitation of violence for humor in Aristophanes implies a variety of relations between audience and fictional participants. The humor of Schadenfreude plays a part, but one consistently implicated with the ideological and literary positioning of the plays. While any comic character has the potential for treatment as a butt, there is a preference to select as victims rival participants in civic discourse, which suggests the consolidation of generic authority. Such instances require sympathy between audience and a comic protagonist, but audiences are not consistently aligned with one aggressor against a set of butts throughout a play, nor does comic victory require unequivocal comic domination. Indeed, the exploitation of violence may question hierarchies and the use of power as much as it consolidates them.

Voyeurism, Masculinity, and Power: From Ambivalence to Crisis

In this section, I explore further this ambivalence in comic violence by extending the scope of visual humor from (non-sexual) physical assault to forms of sexual dominance and humiliation. Enacted before the gaze of the ideologically (if not actually) male audience, the exercise of sexual power encompasses both an active, penetrating sexuality and an increasingly masochistic flavor, as citizen males are humiliated by men and women of every status. I shall engage with feminist film theory to argue that sexual power here stands as a proxy for political power. What can be seen in the earlier plays of Aristophanes as a recuperation of ambivalence and anxiety becomes increasingly symptomatic of a masculinity and political culture in crisis. One element in the comic grotesque certainly looks like the celebration and uncontrolled expression of aggressive male sexuality, displayed by and for men. Indeed, one might easily come to the conclusion that Old Comedy, perhaps most flagrantly and publicly of any ancient form, involves the fetishistic and controlling male gaze. Such a notion descends from Laura Mulvey’s classic psychoanalytic Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 255 reading of Hollywood cinema, in which she contends that women in films are either voyeuristically exploited as sexual objects or fetishized in terms of unattainable beauty, but not allowed their own identity as desiring subjects. Mulvey’s position has obvious attractions: it is easily assimilable to superiority theories of humor, is consonant with approaches to ancient humor which emphasize the pornographic aspects of ancient humor (both in terms of display and of sexual aggression and threat), and fits neatly the actual or supposed composition of the ancient audience.22 The character of Festivity (Theoria) is a good example of the way that such objectification works in Old Comedy. Theoria is one of the female characters in Old Comedy who act as markers of the attainment of a major character’s goals. As one of the handmaidens of the goddess Peace, who has been rescued and is herself displayed to the audience as a large statue,23 she is handed over to the council as a symbol of peace and male sexual desire, the two (as often in Old Comedy) being strongly related. Attainment of peace will be enacted in and through the sexual possession of Festivity (Pax 887–90):

boulhv, prutavnei~, oJra`te th;n Qewrivan. skevyasq j o{s j uJmi`n ajgaqa; paradwvsw fevrwn, w{ste eujqevw~ a[ranta~ uJma`~ tw; skevlei tauvth~ metewvrw ka`/t j ajgagei`n Ἀnavrrusin.24

Council, executives, look at Festivity. Look at all the good things I’ve brought to give you, so that you can immediately lift her legs up high and then celebrate a Release.

It is further grist to this interpretative mill that Festivity actually refers specifically to spectating, with obvious application to the immediate performance context. The association of the audience gaze with active male sexuality is clearly very strong, and the division of sexual spoils—with Theoria going to the audience and Opora (Harvest Time) to Trygaeus—only serves to emphasize this association. Sexual dominance and collective cohesion seem to go unerringly together, unifying audience pleasure with the triumph of the comic protagonist. A series of such sexual trophies can be seen particularly in the earlier Aris tophanic comedies. Women, girls, and boys are all lined up for sexual penetration in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps, together with the closely related personified abstractions Opora and Theoria (Peace) and Basileia (Birds). Dicaeopolis’s victory, in particular, sees him exercising conspicuous sexual power over a number of participants, only one set of whom are his female prizes, his so-called girlfriends 256 Helios

(fivlai, 1217); these are preceded by arguably the most disturbing scene in Greek comedy, when the Megarian traffics his daughters to him, badly disguised as pig- lets, the visual enactment of an obscene pun, and reinforced by a sequence of agri- cultural fellatio jokes. The implicit violence is particularly strong in Knights (1384–95); we may contrast in Wasps the jokes that are as much at the expense of Philocleon’s aging apparatus as at the flute girls he has kidnapped from the symposium (1342–4). Such figures are also drawn upon or developed in Lysistrata, Thes- mophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae, but also in rather more complicated explorations of sexual power, as I shall discuss below. This aggressive desiring comic gaze is almost exclusively directed towards slaves and foreigners, male or female, personifications, abstractions, or even deities.25 The individuated Chorus of Eupolis’s Poleis (Cities), who are said to be being eyed by members of the audience, includes several of these categories.26 There is, however, a marked reluctance to involve citizen wives in this way, which fits with other well- known comic reticences relating to the representation and even naming of citizen wives, at least before Lysistrata (Sommerstein 1980a, Henderson 1987), and which will become, if anything, stronger in New Comedy. Other desires could certainly be discussed (as in Clouds, by both Arguments) and our image of comic objects of desire might perhaps change if we had more of Eupolis’s Autolykos I and II, but visual representation of male sexual desire remains largely consistent in Aristoph anes. It is a picture in which humor reinforces social hierarchies and norms and in which the audience, particularly if they focalize through the comic males, are complicit. This is, however, only a partial account of sexual dominance in Old Comedy, as can be observed on both theoretical and practical grounds. In theoretical terms, criticisms of Mulvey’s approach are well known. One criticism is over a lack of actual audience research—although that is necessarily a flaw of classicists’ studies as well. Two other objections are more fundamental. First, the options left for a feminist cinema (or audience) are narrow. Mulvey champions disruptive strategies long associated with the (male) avant-garde. This privileging of formalism over realism has been criticized as both restrictive and stuck within patriarchal categories and practice.27 As far as Old Comedy is concerned, those avant-garde and modernist strategies and audiences are precisely those with which Aristophanic metatheatricality has been compared, including that of the active spectator, which I discussed briefly in the first part of the essay. Second, Mulvey’s rigid construction of the gaze leaves very little space for strategies of rereading, contestation, and resistance. This, too, is problematic in relation to both the initial and subsequent reception of Old Comedy, where the possibility of dissident reading or even the attraction of new performances would be closed down. The continuing refactoring of the regularly revived Lysistrata is only the most conspicuous example of a prob- Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 257 lem from this perspective. The sadistic and fetishizing viewer cannot be a complete (or universal) explanation. The nature of the comic grotesque also means that a straightforward translation of Mulvey’s theory is not entirely feasible. If Mulvey’s main problem in narrative cinema is that of beauty, and if the goal for feminist cinema is the destruction of such beauty, in Old Comedy there is the reverse problem: everyone is ugly.28 This has important implications for the way the audience experiences the world of Old Comedy. While the grotesque comic bodies certainly do not obliterate difference, sectional distinctions in terms of ‘ugly’ versus ‘not ugly’ (or ‘realistic’) only develop over the course of the fourth century, largely at the expense of older men and slaves (Webster and Green 1978, 45–6; Green 1994, 34–8; Green and Handley 1994, 50, 58–61; Green 2002, 104–5). The convention of ugliness also makes it difficult to see the comic body in the first instance as an object of simple aggressive humor (to be laughed at) or as re-inscribing social norms; it is certainly far from the idealized and often highly class-based versions of the body found elsewhere in Athenian representations.29 Its anti-idealizing and its emphasis on the material and the real create a fictional environment that is both dislocated and firmly anchored.30 In that sense, there is the possibility of both disruptive carnivalesque liberation rooted in fundamental desires (and not only temporary license31) and (and for the same reason) the exaggeration of social norms, not least in the sexual realm. Furthermore, although the evidence for the fifth century is limited, male characters are if anything more ugly and distorted than female characters. Certainly, the phallus renders the male characters more obviously distorted, and that visual focus draws particular attention towards exaggerated male sexuality. That tendency in the comic body is reflected in the obsession of comic plots with male sexuality, both aggressive and otherwise. This obsession leaves little room for genuine female subjectivity, short of some determined reading against the grain. It does mean, however, that a translation of Mulvey’s approach lacks explanatory value in addressing the full ramifications of this concern for male sexuality. On the one hand, there is an excess of penetration in Old Comedy (or at least talking about, imagining, or anticipating it), which is at odds with cultural norms to the extent that it has arguably warped modern accounts of ancient sexuality.32 On the other, a particular problem with attributing to the audience of Old Comedy a sadistic male gaze is that the most extended instances of sexual and gendered dominance in the genre consist of violence directed at men. Let me explore this further by drawing on feminist explorations of masculinity, in particular Kaja Silverman’s study of nonstandard or deviant masculinities. Like Foucault, Silverman sees sexuality and the social order as implicated with one another, but argues for a more complex relationship between them, through a process of ideological facilitation and fantasy that she calls the “dominant fiction”: 258 Helios

“Male” and “female” constitute the dominant fiction’s most fundamental binary opposition. Its many other ideological elements, such as signifiers like “town” and “nation,” or the antithesis of power and the people, all exist in a metaphoric relation to those terms. They derive their conceptual and affective value from that relation. (1992, 34–5)

For Silverman, there is an excess of desire in even the most normative circumstances, but in non-normative contexts there is a much greater possibility of threatening or circumventing the social order. In the first instance, Silverman reads a number of post-World War II films, including the at first sight highly normative It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), as explorations of male lack, masochism, and impotence in the wake of the historical trauma of the war, with attempts in most cases to shore up male sexuality and its association with social power. If the dominant fiction’s “most privileged term is the phallus” (Silverman 1992, 2), the male symbolic order is particularly visible, and vulnerable, in Old Com- edy.33 As an example, consider, again, Acharnians. Here, the dominant phallus (in a social as well as a sexual sense) is only achieved by the atomization of the male social and sexual order, and a masochistic exploration of both sexual and nonsex- ual violence. What looks like phallic affirmation actually leaves potentially troubling questions about masculinity and the relationship between the sexual and political orders. Symbolic phalluses abound in the play. Once Dicaeopolis has enacted a personal peace with the Spartans, his celebration of the Rural Dionysia involves both a phallic procession, replete with normative gender roles, and a hymn to Phales, which features a rape fantasy. Set against these representations of masculinity in social and sexual spheres are the violent scenes that provide the frame, scenes in which the father and his allies are objects of violence. Thus Amphitheus, the supposedly divine character who arranges peace for him, is apparently dragged out of the assembly by the archers after spinning an extremely specious story of being a god and then demanding journey pay from the Athenian assembly (44–54). The joke is partly on the audience: it turns out that he can do what he claims after all. Dicaeopolis himself is at the mercy of the Chorus for most of the first half of the play. He is stoned by them on their first entrance (280–5); his subsequent recourse to a butcher’s block is a conspicuous reminder of that threat. His threat to “shaft them with words” (444) by means of the Telephus disguise certainly encourages the audience to see the Chorus as the butt of the joke, but it also draws attention to Dicaeopolis’s impotence at this stage in the proceedings, as the threat of manual violation turns out to be rather less effective than advertised. The relationship between sexuality, violence, and the political order is strikingly shown when Dicaeopolis strips Lamachus, the embodiment of the Big Man and Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 259 the personification of militarism,34 of his trappings of power: the shield (581–3) and helmet (584–8). As Lamachus worries about what Dicaeopolis is doing with his crests, Dicaeopolis’s final visual insult is to suggest thatL amachus service him sexually (587–92):

La. ou|to~ tiv dravsei~… tw`/ ptivlw/ mevllei~ ejxemei`n… ptivlon ga;r e[stin— Di. eijpev moi, tivno~ pote; o[rniqov~ ejstin… a\ra kompalakuvqou… La. oi[m j wJ~ teqnhvxei~. Di. mhdamw`~, w\ Lavmace, ouj ga;r kat j ijscuvn ejstivn: eij d j ijscuro;~ ei\, tiv m j oujk ajpeywvlhsa~… eu[oplo~ ga;r ei\.

Lamachus: Hey, you, what are you going to do? Are you going to use that feather to throw up? The feather’s — Dicaeopolis: Go on tell me, what on earth bird’s is it? A boaster’s? Lamachus: you are so dead. Dicaeopolis: No way, Lamachus, you’re not strong enough for that job; but if you’re feeling forceful, why don’t you peel me back? You’re going well equipped.

The pun on Lamachus’s equipment clearly references Lamachus’s phallus, no doubt revealed flamboyantly in this moment, and it seems to be an invitation to the general to display with it his prowess sexually on Dicaeopolis. The shocking suggestion (for a citizen male), amplified by stage action, is thus the punch-line to the routine that deconstructs a series of visual symbols of power. The precise action is less clear. The verb, ajpoywlevw, is elsewhere used, as of the Odomanti (161), of retract- ing the foreskin, through erection or circumcision. The sword/phallus metaphor plays on both sides, but the implication seems to be that Dicaeopolis is inviting Lamachus to stimulate him through anal penetration with or without additional masturbation.35 Either way, there is a progressive laying bare of Lamachus’s political and military power in a series of visual symbols, until it reaches the symbolic kernel, the phallus. The lack of political power that Dicaeopolis experiences in the prologue, and in which the audience is invited to share, is thus followed by a series of self- abnegations. In order to win his just outcome (on an optimistic reading of the play), Dicaeopolis has to be physically abused, make himself sexually available to the general, and adopt, however temporarily, a marginal socio-economic position. Indeed, both by the beggar costume and by apparently offering to be penetrated, 260 Helios

Dicaeopolis is drawing attention to the powerlessness of the ordinary citizen male, as if he were no citizen at all. Lamachus, indeed, is as shocked by the implied class relationship as anything, as he repeatedly comments on Dicaeopolis’s appearance as a beggar and cues Dicaeopolis’s rejoinder that he is in fact the honest citizen, not the political hack (577a, 593–7). The only power for the honest citizen, however, has been the verbal and conceptual facility that has persuaded the Chorus through arguments encapsulated in masquerade and shamelessness. Although there are a number of strategies used to encourage the audience to focalize through Dicaeopo- lis, it is entirely possible to overstate their social solidarity in watching this masochistic display: he is at times the object of humor here, as well as the agent of it, at the expense of the Chorus and Lamachus. By his facility in winning over or removing his opponents, Dicaeopolis is able to establish his new political, social, and mercantile order. In this new world order there is a recuperation of Dicaeopolis within norms of masculinity, at least as far as they concern him alone. Thus he now uses physical violence, against the regular comic target of the sycophant. He acquires both the Megarian’s daughters and the ‘girlfriends’ with which he returns from the priest’s dinner, in a realization of the hymn to Phales. As well, however, as having created the paradox of a polis of one within the Athenian polis, so too he seems to have created one male sexual order within another. After the parabasis, his is the only sexual power or pleasure to be seen. Indeed, as well as denying peace (and sexuality) to the men of Athens—the Chorus, Dercetes, and Lamachus—he puts sexual power, embodied in the peace ointment given to the bridesmaid, into the hands of the citizen wife (1059–66). In that dispensing of sexual power, there is an explicit opposition of violence and sexuality, a contrast between those responsible for war (other men) who are denied control of their sexuality, and those not responsible (women). This opposition between sexuality, in the figure of the remasculinized Dicaeopolis who enjoys peace, and collective violence, in the figure of Lamachus who has to go on campaign (1071–141) and returns injured (1174–97), is presented clearly through verbal and visual parallels in the final scenes of the play (1214–21):

La. lavbesqev mou, lavbesqe tou` skevlou~: papai` proslavbesq j, w\ fivloi. Di. ejmou` dev ge sfw; tou` pevou~ a[mfw mevsou proslavbesq j, w\ fivlai. La. eijliggiw` kavra livqw/ peplhgmevno~ kai; skotodiniw`. Di. kajgw; kaqeuvdein bouvlomai kai; stuvomai kai; skotobiniw`. Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 261

Lamachus: Hold me. Hold my leg; argh, hold tight, boys. Dicaeopolis: Take my cock, both of you, round the shaft: hold tight, girls. Lamachus: i’m dizzy—I was hit on the head by a stone and I’m fainting in the dark. Dicaeopolis: i too want to sleep and I’ve got an erection and I want to fuck in the dark.

The power relations between Dicaeopolis and Lamachus are clearly reversed. The civic violence directed towards Dicaeopolis and other citizens has turned into violence inflicted on the politician. The paratragic threats of Lamachus have turned into paratragic victimhood (Foley 1988, 41–6): unlike Dicaeopolis, he is unable to step outside of his own tragic discourse. The story of Dicaeopolis’s little polis could be said, in certain terms, to be one of justice. A contrast is drawn between the practice of Dicaeopolis’s polis, which removes civic nuisances, profits from civic enemies, and distributes peace to deserving parties, and the extremism of those deploying violence to narrow political engagement, close down debate, and commit to war. The distinctions are presented through a series of stark visual oppositions: Dicaeopolis and the assembly, Dicaeopolis and the butcher’s block, Dicaeopolis and Lamachus. The presentation of violence would then emphasize two very different sets of political ideas about the ends of power and to a large extent its means too.36 That would be a very cozy and tidy account, but Acharnians is less comfortable and more open-ended than that. Prospectively, within the fictional world, the political and sexual systems show no sign of reunification. Using the fictional city of one as a model for the actual city of many is, to say the least, problematic. Above all, if Acharnians is seen as a diagnosis rather than a suggested cure, it is hard to see the personal triumph of Dicaeopolis and his individual enjoyment of sexuality as entirely erasing the anxieties that are evident in the presentation of the male citizen in the sexual and political order of things. A similar dialogue between personal victory and an earlier exercise in humiliation can be seen to occur in most of Aristophanes’ early plays: Knights, Clouds, Wasps, and Birds (examples of which have been noted above). Political and social disruption in these plays is refracted through a crisis in masculinity, which is then shored up. Peace is the major exception in this as it is in other respects (Cassio 1985), such as the degree of coherence between major subject-positions: protagonist, chorus, and audience. Whether this challenge to masculine norms betrays a particular anxiety of the 420s—because of the developing nature of Athenian 262 Helios democracy, or because of the historical situation in the Archidamian War or the aftermath of the launching of the Sicilian expedition—is more unclear, given the lack of extant earlier plays that can be studied in similar detail. If Silverman is right to implicate the political and the sexual, then any significant designs on the “dominant fiction” are always liable to be expressed in terms of masculinity, vulnerability, and lack, whatever the historical circumstances. In the extant plays of Aristophanes from 411 to 390, however, there is a still more extreme form of crisis, a more sustained masochistic witnessing of men being humiliated onstage and far less shoring up of masculinity within the world of the play, and certainly not in the visual sense that is witnessed in Acharnians, Knights, or Birds. I have already discussed the extended flagellation in Frogs, in the context of scenes of humiliation and role-reversal, at the hands of both male and female characters (Aeacus, barmaids). Frogs can be seen as part of a pattern of material over these decades. In Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, and Ecclesiazusae the violence and humiliation have a much more strongly sexual sense. They share with Frogs the presentation of subverted power relations to the spectators without any effective visual counter. Thesmophoriazusae is unquestionably the most violent of all the extant plays, but one where the connections between masculinity and power are put into stark question, not least through their visual representation. Much has been written about the cross-dressing in the comedy and the associated play with fictionality through its parody of tragedy,37 but these are also implicated with violence and humiliation, in which audience enjoyment is overwhelmingly and certainly visually aimed at the representation and victimization of what looks like male, penetrating sexuality. The play begins with apparent assertion of such comic male sexuality, as Eurip- ides and his male relative, who might have been identified as “Mnesilochus,”38 seek Agathon’s assistance in infiltrating the women’s assembly. The relative, as a coarser foil to Euripides, has much in common with earlier comic protagonists such as Dicaeopolis or Strepsiades. When Agathon emerges, Mnesilochus’s initial response has all the hallmarks of unrefined masculine aggression, as he is erotically stimulated by Agathon’s appearance and music. Already, though, the aggressive sexuality is considerably mitigated: Mnesilochus’s own desire is anally rather than phallicly stimulated (130–3), while his confusion as to Agathon’s gender-blurring strength- ens the mixed messages.39 Such a response certainly reflects on Agathon’s (excessively seductive) music and sexual preferences, but also undermines considerably the claims to phallic power made elsewhere in this scene (157–8). That phallic power is more explicitly undermined in what follows, as Mnesilochus is black- mailed into infiltrating the women’s assembly himself and consents to being cross- dressed himself. Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 263

From an audience perspective, the economy of pleasure in this sequence is complex. The dressing scene is also an extended torture scene, as Mnesilochus is forcibly singed and plucked, with particular attention paid to the genital area. Even more than in Acharnians or Frogs, this relies on enjoyment of the abuse of the comic male (235–9):

Eu. oJra`/~ seautovn… Kh. ouj ma; Div j, ajlla; Kleisqevnh. Eu. ajnivstas j, i{n j ajfeuvsw se, kajkuvya~ e[ce. Kh. oi[moi kakodaivmwn, delfavkion genhvsomai. Eu. ejnegkavtw ti~ e[ndoqen da`/d j h] luvcnon. ejpivkupte: th;n kevrkon fulavttou nun a[kran.

Euripides: Do you see yourself? Mnesilochus: No by Zeus: Kleisthenes. Euripides: stand up so I can singe you. Bend over and hold still. Mnesilochus: oh what an unlucky bastard; I’m going to be a suckling pig. Euripides: someone bring out a torch or a lamp. Bend over—and watch out for the top of your dick.

The phallus in flight is as much the butt of the humor here as are the singed buttocks. There are, however, forms of enjoyment here other than Schadenfreude at the expense of Mnesilochus.40 This scene fits into a long cross-cultural tradition of forced cross-dressing narratives where force licences enjoyment on the part of the cross-dressed subject (cf. Garber 1993, 70). By extension, this may add a further vicarious connection between (male) audience and character. Visually, Mnesilochus in a frock has continuities with other unconvincing costumes in Old Comedy such as those of birds and beggars. There is a basic incon- gruity within the fiction, central to much modern drag in performance (Newton 1979), even as Mnesilochus attempts to pass and, incredibly, does so. The incon- gruity of his outfit engineers a superiority of the actual audience over the internal audience of the women at their assembly. There is also a male complicity between audience and character, as the unconvincingly female Mnesilochus details to the fictional women their faults. But it only stretches so far because the implausibility of the disguise is always in danger of tipping over back onto Mnesilochus, while the whole scene flirts with the possibility that he might be discovered. So the travails of Mnesilochus do not end with a very rough depilation. After jumping from the frying pan into the fire, his capture by the women entails further discovery, exposure, and humiliation, before both the women and the external audience. The search for Mnesilochus’s phallus is an extended routine (643–8) but only part of a wider process of forcible disrobing, prodding, and removal of any 264 Helios element of his former passing. He is finally, after two abortive attempts at escape, tied to a board for public (audience) display (929–33):

PRUTANIS o{d j e[sq j oJ panou`rgo~ o}n e[leg j hJmi`n Kleisqevnh~… ou|to~, tiv kuvptei~… dh`son aujto;n eijsavgwn, w\ toxovt j, ejn th`/ sanivdi, ka[peit j ejnqadi; sthvsa~ fuvlatte kai; prosievnai mhdevna e[a pro;~ aujto;n, ajlla; th;n mavstig j e[cwn: pai` j, h]n prosivh/ ti~.

Magistrate: so this is the crook that Kleisthenes was telling us about? you: why are you lurking there? Take him in and lash him, archer, to the pillory, and then set him up here watch him and allow no-one to approach him, but use the whip and, if anyone does approach, strike him.

The pornography of humiliation is nowhere else so blatant in Old Comedy. The violence is male (Scythian) on male, but much force (and pleasure) for the audience derives from (fictional) women watching an exposed and constrained man. It also derives from Mnesilochus’s embarrassment at public exposure: nudity, he says, would be better than being this source of mockery—an old man in a (by now thoroughly disheveled) frock and headband (939–42). Imprisonment cues escape rou- tines via the Andromeda and Palamedes, but the incongruous exposure and imprisonment and consequently visual humor continues for almost three hundred lines. Mnesilochus’s escapades thus provide frissons of excitement and pleasure, but pleasure in aggressive male sexuality barely registers beyond the opening scene. The handling of the archer, lured away from Mnesilochus by Euripides (again in drag disguise, 1199–1201) and his dancing girl, Elaphion, exploits both a female object of desire and the ridiculousness of male sexuality. That the Scythian stupidly ‘fucks away’ his prisoner (by fucking the slave girl Elaphion) is consistent with the treatment of male sexuality in the play. The phallus is central to the humor, but rather than signifying mastery, it signifies lack, weakness, submission, and subordination—in short, ridicule. In Thesmophoriazusae this presentation of (the limits of) aggressive masculinity is bound up with issues of fictionality, particularly tragedy. In the other extant plays of Aristophanes in which women are center-stage, similar visual pleasures of Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 265 humiliation are integrated into ideological concerns. In both Lysistrata and Eccle- siazusae the men are again targets of the aggressive gaze, not only from the women, but also from male characters and the (largely) male audience. While comic stereotypes of women abound in both plays,41 men are most consistently the butts of visual, aggressive humor. In Ecclesiazusae, there is a stark difference between the women’s cross-dressing and that of Praxagora’s husband Blepyrus. The emphasis of the women’s infiltration of the assembly is on passing. Paradoxically, even if they fail, they still pass as men,42 a joke that hits more at comic politicians, their fictional audience, and thence their actual analogues than at the fictional female activists. Blepyrus’s mis- adventures are of an entirely different order. His entry follows a hasty piece of sar- torial improvisation, throwing on his wife’s frock and footwear (317–9) to go outside and relieve himself (320–6):

ajll j ejn kaqarw`/ pou` pou` ti~ a]n cevsa~ tuvcoi… h] pantacou` toi nuktov~ ejstin ejn kalw`/… ouj gavr me nu`n cevzontav g j oujdei;~ o[yetai. oi[moi kakodaivmwn, o{ti gevrwn w]n hjgovmhn gunai`c j: o{sa~ ei[m j a[xio~ plhga;~ labei`n. ouj gavr poq j uJgie;~ oujde;n ejxelhvluqen dravsous j. o{mw~ d j ou\n ejstin ajpopathtevon.

Where, where on earth can anyone take a crap in private? Surely anywhere is fine at night? No-one will see me shitting now. Oh what an idiot I am, that as an old man I got married. How many lashes I deserve. She’s never gone out to do anything healthy. Still, I need to take that dump.

This cross-dressing, like that of Thesmophoriazusae, is a compulsion-narrative. By contrast with the women’s, the incompleteness is greater and the threat of exposure and attendant ridicule much stronger, and duly realized. In contrast to Mnesilo- chus, he does not seek to pass, and his anxieties lead straight to an extremely aggressive scatological routine, where they are fully realized in the eyes of his neighbor and a passerby, Chremes. This exercise in sustained visual humiliation is not the gratuitous humor that Aristophanes deprecates in Clouds. It is tightly wired into the thematic and argu- mentative structure of the play. Just as Praxagora is built up through internal explanations and intertextual echoes into a (for the time and the genre) plausible speaker 266 Helios

(Ruffell 2006, 78–82), so too her opposition is here substantially undermined. More significantly, the scene explores visually the question of male competence, a point of attack for Praxagora in her bid for power. Far from revealing its horrors, the sustained humiliation of men by men feeds the comic argument for gynaikokratia. The same applies to the fate of the young lover, Epigenes, the object of serial sexual assault by three old women as their plans come to fruition. Although the old women are undoubtedly grotesque, they are also the dominant agents: the butt is in large part the young man. The comic grotesque here certainly amplifies standard comic representations of age and gender, but that in itself is far less surprising or radical than the reversal in power relations (1093–101):43

Ep. oi[moi kakodaivmwn: ejggu;~ h[dh th`~ quvra~ ejlkovmenov~ eijm —j Gr. g. ajll j oujde;n e[stai soi plevon. xunespesou`mai ga;r meta; sou`. Ep. mh; pro;~ qew`n: eJni; ga;r xunevcesqai krei`tton h] duoi`n kakoi`n. Gr.g. nh; th;n Ἑkavthn, ejavn te bouvlh/ g j h[n te mhv. Ep. w\ triskakodaivmwn, eij gunai`ka dei` sapra;n binei`n o{lhn th;n nuvkta kai; th;n hJmevran, ka[peit j, ejpeida;n th`sd j ajpallagw`, pavlin Fruvnhn e[cousin lhvkuqon pro;~ tai`~ gnavqoi~.

Epigenes: oh god I’ve had it; I’m already close to the door dragged along. Old Woman 3: That’s going to be no use for you. I’ll be coming with you. Epigenes: No by the gods; It’s better to be afflicted by one than two evils. Old Woman 3: yes by Hekate, whether you want it or not. Epigenes: oh I’m triply done for, if I have to fuck a sagging old woman all night and all day, and then, when I’ve got free of her, to do an old toad with a death-jar already at her jaws.

The sexuality of older women is of course one object of humor here (as often), but laughter and the aggressive gaze are aimed equally, if not more so, at Epigenes, as he is dragged off. This scene forms part of a running joke of sexual and scatological humiliation that asserts and enacts female dominance and, conversely, male and therefore civic inadequacy.44 The hapless Blepyrus presents one (older, more everyday) masculinity, Epigenes one of the haughtier sort (tw`n semnotevrwn, 632) dep- Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 267 recated in earlier discussion.45 The net result is a far more ambivalent and less strictly ironic play than is sometimes supposed. In Lysistrata the achievement of goals is far less rapid than in Ecclesiazusae. The power struggle is mapped out by physical confrontations on stage, where successful aggression is directed exclusively at men by women. It is not that men do not seek to be violent or to initiate violence. Both the male semi-chorus and the proboulos make efforts to penetrate the gates and retake the Acropolis by force. This aggression reflects the male aggression in war, but its failure also echoes the sex strike in progress offstage.46 The men’s assault on the Acropolis and the attempt of the proboulos to control the unruly women meet with actual violence or sexual humiliation in return. This visual assault on male power and authority is as central to the plot as the economic and religious mastery attained in seizing the Acropolis or the sexual mastery that is enacted as the play progresses. The old men enter with a mixture of song and recitative that not only presents them as implausibly aged Marathonomakhoi (285), that is, at least 100 years old, but extends the joke further by pushing them back to the origins of the democracy and the Spartan occupation of the Acropolis (272–80).47 Their first encounter with the far more sprightly semi-chorus of women proceeds with the men making a series of threats of violence and the women countering (356–80), all of which leads to the punch-line of the old men finally making a move with their torches and being soaked by the women for their trouble. The decrepitude and physical inca- pacity of the old men, already pointed up in their entry, is reinforced by suggestions of impotence and incontinence, as they complain to the proboulos (399–402):

tiv dh`t j a[n, eij puvqoio kai; th;n tw`nd j u{brin… ai} ta[lla q j uJbrivkasi kajk tw`n kalpivdwn e[lousan hJma`~, w{ste qaijmativdia seivein pavrestin w{sper ejneourhkovta~.

What then if you heard of their outrageous act? They’ve assaulted us in every way and drenched us from their water jars, and so we need to shake our little cloaks as if we had pissed in them.

The entrance of theproboulos descends from the self-confident beginnings of democracy, a central plank in democratic propaganda, to the most recent constitu- tional tinkering after the Sicilian catastrophe. The association is made clear in the proboulos’s own comments on the iniquities of women (390–2). His recourse to violence—in ordering his slaves to break down the doors with their crowbars 268 Helios

(424–9) and, after Lysistrata has emerged to counter him, to attack the women’s leader—is again met with a forthright physical response from the reserve of market traders and barmaids (456–62). This brief but effective intervention plays, of course, upon well-established stereotypes, but also emphasizes that Lysistrata’s women are united not only internationally but also across age and class divides.48 The disempowerment of the proboulos’s slave bodyguard (with all its connotations) happens physically; that of the proboulos, verbally and symbolically. The visual dimension punctuates the debate and directs audience response just as it does later in Ecclesiazusae, although in Lysistrata the symbolism is a deliberate intervention rather than a consequence of male incompetence. The proboulos is fitted out (badly), first with the women’s dress and equipment (veil and basket, 531–8) and then with funeral attire (602–10). This enacts visually the claims (within the fictional world) of female power and the need for the proboulos first to learn from women’s experience and then to withdraw. It marks, too, the full assumption by Lysistrata of public speech and action: the claim that war will be women’s business (Lys. 538; cf. 520 and Homer, Il. 6.492) gains a stark plausibility. Despite the evidence that confronts them, and with ever-increasing implausibility, the old men of the Chorus continue to assert their claims to power through their democratic, anti-tyrannical, anti-Persian, and anti-Spartan credentials.49 As well as pushing their age back still further, the claims are wildly at odds with the power dynamic enacted visually in the play. In this parabatic/agonistic confrontation with the women’s semi-chorus, the sides strip for action, but it becomes clear that the men’s symbolic nakedness becomes a marker not of athletic vigor but of naked impotence, as the women will later gently suggest (1018–21):

Co.ge wJ~ ejgw; misw`n gunai`ka~ oujdevpote pauvsomai. Co.gu ajll j o{tan bouvlh/ suv. nu`n d j ou\n ou[ se periovyomai gumno;n o[nq j ou{tw~. o{ra ga;r wJ~ katagevlasto~ ei\. ajlla; th;n ejxwmivd j ejnduvsw se prosiou`s j ejgwv.

Old Men: yes: for I will never stop hating women. Old Women: Well, take your own time. Anyway, I won’t ignore your exposure. See how ridiculous you are. I’m coming over and putting your cloak back on.

The reversal of gendered codes of nakedness (Sommerstein 2009, 239–46), continues as the play reaches its climax in the second half of the play. The men’s claims to power echo even more hollowly as the women’s sex strike takes effect. The subsequent distribution of gazes reinforces the power dynamic that has been established. Although Myrrhine and then, particularly, Diallage (Reconcilia- Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 269 tion) are objects of male desire within the play and the latter the symbol of pro- spective (re-)union, the major comic focus is on the phallus as the source of vulnerability and weakness, as first Cinesias is teased and frustrated50 and then the ambassadors are forced into agreeing to a peace treaty (1081–3):

kai; mh;n oJrw` kai; touvsde tou;~ aujtovcqona~ w{sper palaista;~ a[ndra~ ajpo; tw`n gastevrwn qaijmavti j ajpostevllonta~:

I see our native sons over here looking like wrestlers holding their cloaks away from their stomachs;

The erect and uncontrolled phallus is a particular source of visual humor, only this time it is not slaves or non-Greeks who are demonstrating their lack of self-control but Athenian citizens (and citizens of other states, even the Spartans). As the focus for the male gaze and the major source and object of humor in this part of the play, the phallus not only is a marker of reversal but offers a commentary on the masculine exercise of power and thus is symbolically linked to the play’s central project.51 Equally a symbol of sexual and political aggression and domination, it demonstrates by its lack of control the vulnerability, weakness, and need for correction that the women are bringing. Both Myrrhine’s toying with Cinesias and Lysistrata’s manipulation of the ambassadors show the limits of male power. Throughout Lysistrata there is a disjunction between claims to (male) power, authority, and legitimacy, through the male semi-chorus as custodians of the past, through the proboulos as an incarnation of contemporary power, and through the ambassadors as the instantiation of foreign policy, and the visual dismantling of such claims through either direct violence or sexual humiliation. Even more than in Ecclesiazusae, the visual dimension serves to support systematically the women’s intervention and to diagnose the nature of the masculine power. There is, to be sure, a restoration of marital relations in Lysistrata, just as ultimately the new regime in Ecclesiazusae is for the benefit of men and just as Mnesilochus and Euripides survive in Thesmophoriazusae; but there is in none of these plays anything like the visual shoring up or reassertion of male sexuality and power as we see in Acharnians. As a play aimed primarily at an Athenian audience, the specifically Athenian claims are the most targeted. As nowhere else in Aristophanes, Lysistrata explicitly addresses the way that Athenian democracy constructed and memorialized its past to validate its present. The male semi-chorus, in particular, provides a full tour of foundation myths for the Athenian democracy—from the period of the Peisistratids 270 Helios through Marathon and the Persian invasion—myths that were pervasive in visual and verbal accounts of the Athenian democracy. The emptiness of these myths is shown not through the implausible age of these ancient democrats in itself, but through their startling lack of power. Even compared to the treatment of the fanati- cal Chorus of Wasps, the visual undermining of verbal claims is striking. If ideology is concerned to hide the workings of power, Lysistrata smashes apart verbal claims and material reality, above all visually through the comic gaze. Clearly, given the political context in 411 BCE, this is not a neutral act, but the implications are not spelt out. With the parallel treatment of the proboulos and the ambassadors, it is difficult to see in this ideological deconstruction any partisan position in relation to the events later that year. Rather, the stage presents a crisis in democracy, whose symptoms include both an increasingly toothless attachment to the past at the expense of the present and a failure of both collective and individual leadership. In all three plays, the pleasure of the audience is in the watching of citizen male humiliation in violent and/or sexual terms. If the phallus is the distinguishing feature of Old Comedy, it is not, in these plays, in the spirit of aggressive male penetrative sexuality, but as a symbol of the complexities and vulnerabilities of both sexuality and power. In Thesmophoriazusae, the deconstruction of penetrative power is the corollary of the literary and metaliterary games that are pursued there; in Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae, not only does the male body (mal)function in such a way as to undermine opponents of the protagonist, but male sexuality as an allegory of male political power is tightly intertwined with the main conceptual and political ideas of the play. The visual dimension provides one of the ways in which the presentation of these ideas through otherwise marginal figures is con- solidated. The resulting interplay is a prime engine of humor, incorporating and transcending the simple pleasures of humiliation, domination, and audience superiority. Masculine and civic power, considered as and through the phallus, seems to show in these plays a particular sense of crisis. Although an anxiety over power is a primary feature of Old Comedy in general, the plays of the later Peloponnesian War and the postwar period, including Frogs, all seem to present this anxiety visually at a much greater level, and that is regardless of the degree to which political troubles are an explicit theme. It is tempting to associate this particular anxiety over masculine power, embodied in the phallus, as a product of the historical trauma of the years after the failure of the Sicilian expedition, with its substantial casualties and the loss of Athenian military power, followed ultimately by the loss of Athenian political and imperial power at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The anxiety that has been evident but covered over and shored up (however inade- quately) in the earlier plays of the Peloponnesian War is now given free rein and Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 271 emerges into a sense of palpable crisis. This was not to last. Only four (or five) years later, Aristophanes’ Wealth will proceed to marry an apparently subversive political scheme to a far more conventional and comforting display of masculine power and of the sadistic gaze, as Chremylus or his proxy Carion humiliate or physically mal- treat a series of characters, in particular Poverty, the sycophant (929–45), and the old woman (1196–207). The times as well as the genre may be changing.

Conclusion

The role of aggressive visual humor in Aristophanes is far from straightforward, indeed is far less straightforward than Aristophanes himself would have us believe. While some of the aggressive humor is used to reflect or construct marginal or transgressive groups or individuals (particularly slaves and foreigners), it does so in ways that cannot be explained with reference to simple sociological or behaviorist models or to an abstracted carnivalesque. Rather, there is a constructive use of both violence and its viewers, where the enjoyment of comic domination, overlaid with other forms of humor, serves to enhance or reinforce the conceptual humor of the plays, or even, as in the case of Lysistrata, serve as a central plank in the conceptual scheme. The implication of the phallus with the social and political order means that anxieties, tensions, or crises in the latter are presented manifestly in the former. To gaze at the comic phallus is more often than not to encounter comic inadequacy and a comic lack rather than comic mastery. The comic gaze in Aristophanes certainly has a dimension of a controlling desire, but it is also ambivalent, interrogative, and frequently self-critical, less an expression of sadism than of masochism. Taking comic pleasure in violence and humiliation is less an expression of individual or collective male mastery than the exposing and limiting of excessive or problematic power.

Works Cited

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Notes

*Thanks to Douglas Cairns, Anton Powell, Nancy Rabinowitz, CatherineS teel, and the journal’s anonymous referee and editor for their comments on drafts of this paper, and to the panel at the Celtic Classics Conference in Cork, 2008, for discussion. 1. Obscenity: Henderson 1991a and Robson 2006, 70–94; cf. de Wit-Tak 1968. 2. For Aristophanes in the context of Greco-Roman popular comedy, see Murray 1972. He at least sees “in the better comedies” (189) the use of these elements for illustration of themes and vividness. 3. Comic heroism: Whitman 1964; see also Henderson 1993 and 1997. Sexuality and power: see esp. Zweig 1992; for aggression and sexual domination in ancient humor, Richlin 1992. Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 275

4. For remasculinization see the discussions of post-Vietnam films by Jeffords 1989 and of New Korean Cinema by Kim 2004. 5. For Aristotle, see esp. Poetics 1449a32–7 (comic characters worse than the norm); cf. Poetics 1448a1–18; Plato, Resp. 395E5–396A6, 606C2–5 (behavior not to be imitated). For detailed treatment of laughter in Plato and Aristotle, see Halliwell 2008, 276–302, 307–31; in relation to the visual dimension, Foley 2000, 307–11; for Ps.-Xenophon and social control, Ruffell 2011, 10–1. Eco (1987) sees the comic involving the implicit assumption of norms. 6. For a survey see Attardo 1994. For linguistic, semiotic, and script-based theories, see Raskin 1985, the first half of Freud 1991, and the semiotic and narratological formulation of Palmer 1987, which includes analyses of purely visual gags in silent cinema. The productive aspect of jokes can be traced back to Aristotle on witticisms (asteia, including puns: Rhet. 1412a9–b3). For fuller discussion, see Ruffell 2011, 82–3. 7. Note, e.g., Pirandello’s (1974, 186) distinction between the humorous and the comic in terms of whether or not the audience feels empathy for the victim. 8. E.g., the different trades at Pax 543–9. On tragedy, see Rabinowitz, this volume. Contrast the anonymity of the modern audience in the darkened cinema and (usually) theater. 9. Explored by Slater 1993 and 2002 in relation to Acharnians. In Peace, the expectation is that the comic audience will speculate about the meaning of the (mostly visual) joke that is the dung- beetle (43–8); see also Slater 1999. 10. Traditional models of fictionality and dramatic illusion tend towards passive audiences; cf. Ruffell 2008. 11. Heraclean gluttony is certainly relevant to the plot but also to broader comic points both in Av. 1579–90 and in Frogs. 12. This particular conclusion to the play seems to be one of the clearly identifiable changes to the original version; see Hypothesis VI in the edition of N. G. Wilson 2007. 13. This would be all the more so if they really were represented as fighting cocks, but even anthropomorphized logoi are still making a strong visual statement. 14. For the fluidity of Tex Avery’s oeuvre in relation to violence and its consequences (amongst other characteristics), see Wells 1998, 146–7. 15. For the traditional formal model, see Pickard-Cambridge 1927 and, more recently, Gelzer 1976 and 1993. For the recasting of this model in Proppian terms, see Sifakis 1992. 16. Sycophants: Ach. 818–33, 910–58; Av. 1410–69; Plut. 850–958; Eupolis, Demes, fr. 99.79– 120. Oracle-sellers and seers: Pax 1115–21 (Hierocles), Av. 959–91. The repertoire is extended in Birds to a series of political polypragmones, where Pisetaerus hits out at an inspector, a decree- seller and a town-planner (Meton). For the first in the sequence, see Av. 990, with Dunbar 1995 ad loc. The violence against Socrates in Clouds and even the ejection of Poverty in Wealth at the end of the agôn, may fall into the same category of displacing rival self-appointed experts. See also the Phrynis and Pyronides vase (Salerno Pc 1812), which suggests violence against a poet in Demes. 17. Later in Wasps, Philocleon is violent offstage (1389–91, 1417–8), but the actual display of violence is mutual, between father and son (1386–7, 1442–4), which reflects their lack of mastery. The only agôn to end in violence between characters is the unusual instance of Wealth, where an ideological impasse has been reached (see Ruffell 2006, with bibliography). 18. So Dicaeopolis as Telephus in Ach. 480–625 and “Mnesilochus” in Thesmophoriazusae (see below). The joke is more at the expense of the viewed character in Birds: first Tereus (92–107) and then Pisetaerus and Euelpides (801–8). 19. For threats against slaves, see Dover 1993, 43–4. In fact, the most blatant routine involving 276 Helios violence against a slave, in Peace (255–62), involves not humans but an appropriately violent pair of gods: Polemos (War) and Kudoimos (Mayhem). 20. For possible historical reasons, see Dover 1993, 43–50 on Xanthias, esp. in relation to Arginousai. For comic reticences in relation to slaves, see Vidal-Naquet 1986, with some comments in Ruffell 2000, 491–2 and note 86. 21. It is difficult to see these early scenes as learning experiences, despite the arguments of, in particular, Lada-Richards 1998, 69–109. Dionysus is not the only god to be treated in such an ambivalent fashion: see esp. Birds, where Heracles (and, in his own way, the Triballian) undermines Poseidon, while Prometheus’s mission skulking under an umbrella is a significant visual joke (1493–512). 22. For perspectives on women in the audience, see Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 264–5; Hender- son 1991a; Goldhill 1994. Henderson is, I think, right to argue that the balance of evidence supports the presence of (some) women in the audience, but its collective identity is overwhelmingly male, as Goldhill emphasizes. See also now Roselli 2011. 23. Pax 520; the statue is mocked by Eupolis, Autolykos, fr. 62 and Plato Comicus, Nikai, fr. 86. 24. The point of the play on ajnavrrusin is unclear; see Olson 1998 ad loc. The image of the sacrificial victim’s head being pulled back suggests a number of sexual positions, not least from behind. 25. Pisetaerus’s threats towards Iris in Birds are followed by him shooing her off with some exclamations that hint at physical encouragement: eujra;x patavx (1258). The latter word is suggestive of patavssw (I strike), but it may only be a further echo of Pisetaerus’s sexual threats towards Iris without any physical contact; see Dunbar 1995 ad loc. 26. Eupolis, Poleis, frr. 223, 245–7; for discussion, see Rosen 1997 and Storey 2003, 218–20. 27. See, e.g., de Lauretis 1984, 58–69 and 2007, 26–30. Mulvey responds to some criticisms of her work in a later essay (1981). Rabinowitz (this volume) discusses the background to Mulvey’s work and offers a critique in relation to Greek tragedy. 28. For raw material, see Trendall 1967, Webster and Green 1978, L. M. Stone 1984, Pickard- Cambridge 1988. 29. Winkler 1990, which is the starting point for the detailed treatment in Foley 2000. 30. This position insists on both elements in Bakhtin’s “grotesque realism.” For the Bakhtinian grotesque, see esp. Goldhill 1991, Edwards 1993 and 2002, von Möllendorff 1995, and for carnival Carrière 1979. Pelling (2000, 125–6) suggests that the major difference between carnival and Aris- tophanic Comedy is that the latter starts from reality; whatever the truth of this in plot terms, it is false in visual terms. 31. Most recent scholars have preferred temporary license to the more optimistic formulations of Bakhtin. Foley (2000) emphasizes the obviously costume nature of the comic body as an engine for license; Revermann (2006, 145–59) stresses humor and license. Halliwell’s (2008, 262–3) “insti- tutional shamelessness,” in which he emphasizes the phallus, apparently reduces to a form of temporary license. 32. Davidson (2001 and 2007) traces Foucault’s model of ancient sexuality back to Dover 1978, which was heavily influenced by comedy. Stehle (2002, 377 note 301) suggests comedy operates on a Manichean hierarchy of penetration and, rather like Mulvey, attributes it to privileging heterosexuality. 33. Given Silverman’s Lacanian underpinnings, this would actually be a triple metaphor: theatrical/fictional phallus for the male penis for the Lacanian phallus as signifier of male power. 34. Whatever the reality of Lamachus’s politics, his name contributes a useful pun. 35. Olson (2002 ad Ach. 591–2) envisages purely anal stimulation, whereas Sommerstein Ruffell—Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in Old Comedy 277

(1980b ad 592) envisages Lamachus masturbating Dicaeopolis while penetrating him. On the verb, see also Henderson 1991b, 110. 36. It would be going, perhaps, too far to compare the distinction between repressive (civic) violence and enabling power proposed by H. Arendt 1970, but there are two distinct modes here. 37. Intersecting as it does the overlapping but hardly isomorphic or homogeneous discourses of feminism, queer theory, and transgender activism. See, e.g., the differing perspectives in Ray- mond 1980, Butler 1990, and S. Stone 1992. For treatments of gender in the play, see esp. Zeitlin 1981; Taaffe 1993, 74–102; and Stehle 2002, all with further bibliography. 38. He is unnamed, but Mnesilochus has intertextual form as a comic character (Telecleides, fr. 41). 39. Parsing effeminacy or cross-dressing as indicative of hypersexuality is common enough (cf. Garber 1993, 301–3, 309–11); what is striking is Mnesilochus’s own physical response. 40. In the discussion at Cork, the possibility of actual penetration or revelation of an actual orifice was raised. Both are unlikely. The actor’s actual (as opposed to fictional) body is not explicitly indicated anywhere else in Greek comedy, while discomfiting an actor does nothing for comic timing or performance quality. As Louise Welsh (2002, 152) puts it, “Other possible side effects include . . . piles, and a punch in the face for inflicting too much pain.” In other dramatic traditions, graphic physical violence up to and including apparent anal penetration can be represented without literally breaching the fictional or indeed actual body. Marlowe’s Edward II often features enthusiastic renderings of death-by-poker, most famously in the 1990 Royal Shakespeare Com- pany production at the Swan in Stratford, with Simon Russell Beale as Edward II; see Forker 1994, 113–4 and, in relation to queer politics, Potter 2004, 273–5, with further bibliography. 41. In particular, the sex and drink jokes of Lysistrata, esp. in the prologue and attempted escape from the Acropolis, and the women’s attempts at public speaking in Ecclesiazusae. 42. The comments on Praxagora’s appearance at 418–9 only serve to make her a more plausible politician, given the setup at 110–4. 43. Similar language is deployed of the old women as of old men like Philocleon (esp. saprov~: Vesp. 1343, 1380 and Eccl. 884, 926, 1098), although that is not always reflected in critical vocabulary. 44. For older women in Old Comedy, see Henderson 1987; also Henderson 1991b, 99–104. 45. There are signs that he is also the sort to have signet rings (tw`n sfragi`da~ ejcovntwn, 632). The old woman’s criticism of him for not being democratic (941–5) may simply be tactical, but may also point to social status. Epigenes’ suggestion that he will have to pretend to be a merchant (e[mporo~ ei\nai skhvyomai, 1027; that is, a metic) suggests that he is a citizen of wealthy background. 46. For the sexual symbolism see Revermann 2006, 250–4. The reciprocal analogy is one of the ways in which the play’s two plot strands (Vaio 1973) are intimately related. What is not represented analogically onstage is the possibility of marital rape, which is addressed frankly, if rather breezily, in Lys. 162–3. 47. So they are at least 120; later they become still older (616–35, 664–70). 48. Cf. the more explicitly sympathetic focalization through a market trader at 559–64. 49. Leipsydrion: 664–70; tyranny: 616–9; tyrannicides: 630–5; Sparta: 620, 628; Artemisia: 675; Amazons: 678–9. The Stoa Poikile is specifically referenced in 678–9. 50. Cinesias’s only exercise of power is to encourage (verbally but probably also physically) his baby to cry and so elicit sympathy from Myrrhine (Lys. 878–9). 51. It is surprising that Revermann (2006, 251) does not address this at all, but only the potential penetration.

I V. Enlightenment

Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought

Fritz-Gregor Herrmann

The layperson may not have read any of Plato’s dialogues, but everyone will know what Platonic love is. Platonic love, in common parlance, is a love not of the body, but of the mind. The concept of Platonic love is derived from a passage in Plato’s Symposium, to be discussed below, in which a priestess explains to Socrates that beauty can be found not only in the body, and not even primarily in the body, but that beauty as such is the same wherever we encounter it, and moreover that there is a beauty far beyond that which is visible and can be perceived by our senses. This characterization of beauty, however, which seems to underlie much of Plato’s philosophy as explicated in the dialogues of his middle period, must be seen against the background of a culture that was focused, not to say fixated, on the body and its beauty. Athenian culture, the aristocratic culture of those with whom Socrates associated himself, had as its ideal the kalokagathos—the excellent, accomplished, capable citizen and gentleman.1 This excellence could in theory always be analyzed as being composed of its two constituent aspects of being kalos and agathos: to be agathos is to be ‘good,’ whatever may count as good, but to be kalos is to be fine, handsome, and ‘beautiful.’ And often at the beginning of a dialogue Socrates is portrayed as deeply affected and attracted by the physical beauty of a young man or boy. The dialectic of physical beauty and the beauty of the mind will be my starting point. In Section I, I look at a few well-known passages from Plato’s early and middle period dialogues: Lysis, Charmides, Meno, Republic, and Protagoras. The familiar picture arises of Socrates as an individual who, as is the case with the society he is part of, is captivated by, and to an extent erotically obsessed with, physical beauty; but the example from the Republic demonstrates that the souls of those who are subject, and in that way subjected, to physical beauty are as liable to be dictated in their thoughts and actions by ugly sights. But at the same time, Socrates from early on sets this vision of physical beauty in relation with a putative beauty of the soul and the mind; the philosopher who can see this beauty can free himself from the tyranny of the senses. In Section II, I provide the theoretical foundation of this assertion in looking at the Symposium, where the eternal form of the beautiful is introduced as the ultimate aim of all our striving, love, and friendship. But in the very act of the philosophers’ freeing themselves from all that is mortal, including their subjection to the senses, and the sense of sight above all, they subject

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 281 282 Helios themselves, as demonstrated in Republic and Phaedrus, to a new rule—the rule of and determination by those eternal forms—so that the philosopher appears to be in no better a position than the ordinary lover of sights and sounds in respect of freedom and autonomy. In Section III, I attempt to deconstruct this picture through an interpretation of passages from Timaeus, which are read, as Plato intended them to be read, as allegorical. In Section IV, I conclude with a tentative suggestion of the consequences of this deconstruction for a new understanding of the dynamics of the metaphysics of both intellectual vision and the physical gaze in Plato’s thought.

I begin with some examples of the attractiveness of physical beauty and its power over the viewer.2 Near the beginning of the dialogue Lysis, the eponymous young hero is first encountered in a palaestra, or wrestling school (206E9–207A3):

T1 w|n dh; oJ Luvsi~ h\n, kai; eiJsthvkei ejn toi`~ paisiv te kai; neanivskoi~ ejstefanwmevno~ kai; th;n o[yin diafevrwn, ouj to; kalo;~ ei\nai movnon a[xio~ ajkou`sai, ajll j o{ti kalov~ te kajgaqov~.

Among them was also Lysis, and he stood among the boys and youths, being wreathed and outstanding to look at, worthy to hear not only the habitual kalos estin, but the designation kalos kagathos.

It is interesting that Socrates reports this as his first impression, when he seesL ysis from afar. Lysis is not just handsome, he has an ‘aristocratic’ appearance. Here, having seen Lysis from afar and having heard about him in advance, Socrates is prepared for the boy; and as Lysis is modest in his behavior, Socrates can deal with the physical beauty of Lysis without being subjected to it, in contrast with Hip pothales, the young man who is helplessly in love with Lysis without being able to achieve what he desires. Things develop very differently in a parallel scene from another early dialogue. At the beginning of Charmides, Socrates has returned to Athens from a military campaign abroad. After an initial exchange of greetings, Socrates enquires after the state of philosophy and after the youths. Critias, Plato’s aristocratic uncle, is full of praise for his cousin Charmides. Socrates reports (154B–155D):

T2 kai; a{ma tau`t j aujtou` levgonto~ oJ Carmivdh~ eijsevrcetai. ejmoi; me;n ou\n, w\ eJtai`re, oujde;n staqmhtovn: ajtecnw`~ ga;r leukh; stavqmh eijmi; pro;~ tou;~ kalouv~—scedo;n gavr tiv moi pavnte~ oiJ ejn th`/ hJlikiva/ kaloi; faivnontai—ajta;r ou\n dh; kai; tovte ejkei`no~ ejmoi; qaumasto;~ ejfavnh tov Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 283

te mevgeqo~ kai; to; kavllo~, oiJ de; dh; a[lloi pavnte~ ejra`n e[moige ejdovkoun aujtou`—ou{tw~ ejkpeplhgmevnoi te kai; teqorubhmevnoi h\san, hJnivk j eijshv/ei—polloi; de; dh; a[lloi ejrastai; kai; ejn toi`~ o[pisqen ei{ponto. kai; to; me;n hJmevteron to; tw`n ajndrw`n h|tton qaumasto;n h\n: ajll j ejgw; kai; toi`~ paisi; prosevscon to;n nou`n, wJ~ oujdei;~ a[llos j e[blepen aujtw`n, oujd j o{sti~ smikrovtato~ h\n, ajlla; pavnte~ w{sper a[galma ejqew`nto aujtovn. kai; oJ Cairefw`n kalevsa~ me, tiv soi faivnetai oJ neanivsko~, e[fh, w\ Swvkrate~; oujk eujprovswpo~; uJperfuw`~, h\n d j ejgwv. ou|to~ mevntoi, e[fh, eij ejqevloi ajpodu`nai, dovxei soi ajprovswpo~ ei\nai: ou{tw~ to; ei\do~ pavgkalov~ ejstin. sunevfasan ou\n kai; a[lloi taujta; tau`ta tw`/ Cairefw`nti: kajgwv, Ἡravklei~, e[fhn, wJ~ a[macon levgete to;n a[ndra, eij e[ti aujtw`/ e}n dh; movnon tugcavnei proso;n smikrovn ti. tiv; e[fh oJ Kritiva~. eij th;n yuchvn, h\n d j ejgwv, tugcavnei eu\ pefukwv~. prevpei dev pou, w\ Kritiva, toiou`ton aujto;n ei\nai th`~ ge uJmetevra~ o[nta oijkiva~. ajll j, e[fh, pavnu kalo;~ kai; ajgaqov~ ejstin kai; tau`ta. tiv ou\n, e[fhn, oujk ajpeduvsamen aujtou` aujto; tou`to kai; ejqeasavmeqa provteron tou` ei[dou~; pavntw~ gavr pou thlikou`to~ w]n h[dh ejqevlei dialevgesqai. . . . oJ d j ejlqw;n metaxu; ejmou` te kai; tou` Kritivou ejkaqevzeto. ejntau`qa mevntoi, w\ fivle, ejgw; h[dh hjpovroun, kaiv mou hJ provsqen qrasuvth~ ejxekevkopto, h}n ei\con ejgw; wJ~ pavnu rJa/divw~ aujtw`/ dialexovmeno~: . . . ejnevbleyen . . . ga;r . . . moi toi`~ ojfqalmoi`~ ajmhvcanovn ti oi|on kai; ajnhvgeto wJ~ ejrwthvswn, kai; oiJ ejn th`/ palaivstra/ a{pante~ perievrreon hJma`~ kuvklw/ komidh`/, tovte dhv, w\ gennavda, ei\dovn te ta; ejnto;~ tou` iJmativou kai; ejflegovmhn kai; oujkevt j ejn ejmautou` h\n kai; ejnovmisa sofwvtaton ei\nai to;n Kudivan ta; ejrwtikav, o}~ ei\pen ejpi; kalou` levgwn paidov~, a[llw/ uJpotiqevmeno~, eujlabei`sqai mh; katevnanta levonto~ nebro;n ejlqovnta moi`ran aiJrei`sqai krew`n: aujto;~ gavr moi ejdovkoun uJpo; tou` toiouvtou qrevmmato~ eJalwkevnai.

And while he was speaking Charmides came in. You mustn’t judge by me, my friend. I’m a broken yardstick as far as handsome people are concerned, because practically everyone of that age strikes me as beautiful. But even so, at the moment Charmides came in he seemed to me to be amazing in stature and appearance, and everyone there looked to me to be in love with him, they were so astonished and confused by his entrance, and 284 Helios

many other lovers followed in his train. That men of my age should have been affected this way was natural enough, but I noticed that even the small boys fixed their eyes upon him and no one of them, not even the littlest, looked at anyone else, but all gazed at him as if he were a statue.3 And Chae- rephon called to me and said, “Well, Socrates, what do you think of the young man? Hasn’t he a splendid face?” “Extraordinary,” I said. “But if he were willing to strip,” he said, “you would hardly notice his face, his body is so perfect.” Well, everyone else said the same things as Chaerephon, and I said, “By Heracles, you are describing a man without an equal—if he should happen to have one small thing in addition.” “What’s that?” asked Critias. “If he happens to have a well-formed soul,” I said. “It would be appropriate if he did, Critias, since he comes from your family.” “He is very distinguished in that respect, too,” he said. “Then why don’t we undress this part of him and have a look at it before we inspect his body? Surely he has already reached the age when he is willing to discuss things.” . . . In the end he came and sat down between me and Critias. And then, my friend, I really was in difficulties, and although I had thought it would be perfectly easy to talk to him, I found my previous brash confidence quite gone. . . . [A]nd he turned his full gaze upon me in a manner beyond description and seemed on the point of asking a question, and when everyone in the palaestra surged all around us in a circle, my noble friend, I saw inside his cloak and caught on fire and was quite beside myself. And it occurred to me that Cydias was the wisest love-poet when he gave someone advice on the subject of beautiful boys and said that “the fawn should beware lest, while taking a look at the lion, he should provide part of the lion’s dinner,” because I felt as if I had been snapped up by such a creature. (Translation by Sprague 1997)

The urbane manner Socrates displays in his reporting implies among other things an ironic distancing on the part of the speaker from his own behavior as related in the story. Most of all, though, the preoccupations of all the participants and bystanders are designed, in the first place, to characterize the upper- class environment and values that Socrates will have to confront in the conversation that ensues. On the level of Socrates’ report, though, the effect that the physical beauty of Charmides has on Socrates evokes that of the Gorgon Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 285

Medusa whose gaze turns the viewer into stone,4 and this despite Socrates’ having been prepared for the encounter. Socrates, as the one exposed to the sight of Char- mides, is captivated and almost overpowered. Vision here is out of the control of the viewer, and the one in command of beauty possesses power over all those whose gaze he attracts, and all those who meet his gaze. In this context, it should be noted that Socrates eventually overcomes the paralyzing effect of Charmides’ beauty: but it is clear that Socrates is here the exception rather than the rule. Hip- pothales could not escape Lysis; and while this is not spelt out, Charmides exercized his power over others to the extent that he became, with Critias, one of the leaders of the Thirty Tyrants who held sway, and were responsible for the death of many, in Athens in 404 BCE. In this respect, the portrayal of the unbridled obsession with beauty of this nature is, in the final analysis, an indictment of the values and the whole way of life advocated by the elite in fifth-century Athens. But if this is in the text, it is not on the surface. The image evoked in the opening of the Char- mides is intelligible when taken at face value. In the Meno, a dialogue completed shortly after the Charmides, Socrates comments on physical beauty and its power, making a show of succumbing to it, as others would succumb to it in earnest (76A8–C2):

T3 SW. uJbristhv~ g j ei\, w\ Mevnwn: ajndri; presbuvth/ pravgmata prostavttei~ ajpokrivnesqai, aujto;~ de; oujk ejqevlei~ ajnamnhsqei;~ eijpei`n o{ti pote levgei Gorgiva~ ajreth;n ei\nai. ME. ajll j ejpeidavn moi su; tou`t j ei[ph/~, w\ Swvkrate~, ejrw` soi. SW. ka]n katakekalummevno~ ti~ gnoivh, w\ Mevnwn, dialegomevnou sou, o{ti kalo;~ ei\ kai; ejrastaiv soi e[ti eijsivn. ME. tiv dhv; SW. o{ti oujde;n ajll j h] ejpitavttei~ ejn toi`~ lovgoi~, o{per poiou`sin oiJ trufw`nte~, a{te turanneuvonte~ e{w~ a]n ejn w{ra/ w\sin, kai; a{ma ejmou` i[sw~ katevgnwka~ o{ti eijmi; h{ttwn tw`n kalw`n: cariou`mai ou\n soi kai; ajpokrinou`mai.

Socrates: You are outrageous, Meno. You bother an old man to answer questions, but you yourself are not willing to recall and to tell me what Gorgias says that virtue is. Meno: After you have answered this, Socrates, I will tell you. Socrates: Even someone who was blindfolded would know from your conversation that you are handsome and still have lovers. Meno: Why so? Socrates: Because you are forever giving orders in a discussion, as spoiled people do, who behave like tyrants as long as they are young. And perhaps 286 Helios

you have recognized that I am at a disadvantage with handsome people, so I will do you the favor of an answer. (Translation by Grube 1997)

As was the case in the Charmides passage where Socrates reported events, so here in direct conversation he introduces the issue of age, the age of the parties involved. Socrates’ characterizing himself as an old man frequently is itself a conceit in Pla- to’s dialogues,5 notably in the Phaedrus, the dialogue on love and beauty, where Socrates assumes the persona of an older lover or erastês, and forces a willing Phae drus to assume the persona of the beloved boy or erômenos. In the Phaedrus, erotic love is intellectualized from the start, and power shifts swiftly from the beloved to the lover; and it is the lover whose manipulations are explored in the speeches of the first half of the dialogue.6 In the Meno, Socrates apparently comments on the power of the beautiful person alone. Beautiful people have the ability, solely by virtue of their beauty, to make others do their bidding, but there is a subtext to this that links the passage to the political aspects underlying the description in the Charmides. Meno is a member of the Thessalian nobility. And quite apart from Thessaly’s dubious position during the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth century, Thessaly was not a democracy at Socrates’ time either. Power was in the hands of a few family clans, and Meno’s family in particular had a diplomatic connection with the Persian court. But, though the details are not clear from the sources, Thessaly was also the place of ‘exile’ for Critias at some stage during the Peloponnesian war, and Critias is even said to have written a Thessalian constitution (88 A1, B31 DK). The reference in theMeno passage to the tyrannical power exercised by the beautiful is thus, with historical hindsight—that is, from the point of view of Plato’s first-generation readers—another reference that evokes the bloody rule of the Thirty Tyrants headed by Plato’s maternal relatives Critias and Charmi- des.7 But this political reference that links the cult of beauty with the terror of oli- garchy is again veiled by the urbane tone of Socrates’ conversation. What is explicit is just a casual, jocular reproach of Meno’s impetuous conduct. While Socrates is in control in this passage of the Meno, his explicit reflection on the power of beauty seen does not in itself constitute a breaking of the spell of beauty, as can be observed not only in the case of Hippothales in the Lysis and Socrates himself in the Charmides, but also from the example of a different type of captivation, the result of the gaze’s being drawn to the sight of an object against the viewer’s will. A case in point is that of Leontius, who thinks that it would be good to do one thing, but then goes on to do another, an example of what could be labelled with the Aristotelian term akrasia.8 Socrates reports the story (Resp. 439E5–440A4):

T4 . . . wJ~ a[ra Leovntino~ oJ Ἀglai?wno~ ajniw;n ejk Peiraiw`~ uJpo; to; bovreion tei`co~ ejktov~, aijsqovmeno~ nekrou;~ para; tw`/ dhmivw/ keimevnou~, a{ma me;n Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 287

ijdei`n ejpiqumoiv, a{ma de; au\ dusceraivnoi kai; ajpotrevpoi eJautovn, kai; tevw~ me;n mavcoitov te kai; parakaluvptoio, kratouvmeno~ d j ou\n uJpo; th`~ ejpiqumiva~, dielkuvsa~ tou;~ ojfqalmouv~, prosdramw;n pro;~ tou;~ nekrouv~, ‘ijdou; uJmi`n,’ e[fh, ‘w\ kakodaivmone~, ejmplhvsqhte tou` kalou` qeavmato~.’

[The story] how Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was coming up from Piraeus, close to the outer side of the north wall, when he saw some dead bodies lying near the executioner, and he felt a desire to look at them, and at the same time felt disgust at the thought, and tried to turn aside. For some time he fought with himself and put his hand over his eyes, but in the end the desire got the better of him, and opening his eyes wide with his fingers he ran forward to the bodies, saying, “There you are, curse you, have your fill of the lovely spectacle.” (Translation by Lindsay 1992)

Leaving aside the issue whether it was the nakedness as such of the corpses alone or a more than voyeuristic desire in addition which forced Leontius to look at the corpses, he is overcome, and the object seen exercises its power not only over Leontius’s senses, but also over his better knowledge, judgement, or conviction, and although he is angry with himself for it, his gaze is fixed on the sight seen. This example confirms the power of the object viewed over the viewer. Does it matter that what is seen is ugly, at least commonly considered to be ugly? It does, because the very possibility of being overcome by a desire to see something ugly and thus behave in a shameful way raises the question of the status of the beautiful objects seen, and of their entitlement to holding body and mind of the viewer in thrall. But before this issue can be considered more fully, we must turn to another passage from an early dialogue that compares admiration of a beautiful body with admiration of a beautiful mind.9 At the beginning of the dialogue Protagoras, Socrates is in conversation with an unnamed friend (309A1–D2):

T5 ἙT. povqen, w\ Swvtrate~, faivnh/; h] dh`la dh; o{ti ajpo; kunhgesivou tou` peri; th;n Ἀlkibiavdou w{ran; kai; mhvn moi kai; prwv/hn ijdovnti kalo;~ me;n ejfaivneto ajnh;r e[ti, ajnh;r mevntoi, w\ Swvkrate~, w{~ g j ejn aujtoi`~ hJmi`n eijrh`sqai, kai; pwvgwno~ h[dh uJpopimplavmeno~. SW. ei\ta tiv tou`to; ouj su; mevntoi Ὁmhvrou ejpainevth~ ei\, o}~ e[fh cariestavthn h{bhn ei\nai tou` uJphnhvtou, h}n nu`n Ἀlkibiavdh~ e[cei; ἙT. tiv ou\n ta; nu`n; h\ par j ejkeivnou faivnh/; kai; pw`~ prov~ se oJ neaniva~ diavkeitai; SW. eu\, e[moige e[doxen, oujc h{kista de; kai; th`/ nu`n hJmevra/: kai; ga;r polla; uJpe;r ejmou` ei\pe bohqw`n ejmoiv, kai; ou\n kai; a[rti ajp j 288 Helios

ejkeivnou e[rcomai. a[topon mevntoi tiv soi ejqevlw eijpei`n: parovnto~ ga;r ejkeivnou, ou[te prosei`con to;n nou`n, ejpelanqanovmhn te aujtou` qamav. ἙT. kai; tiv a]n gegono;~ ei[h peri; se; kajkei`non tosou`ton pra`gma; ouj ga;r dhvpou tini; kallivoni ejnevtuce~ a[llw/ e[n ge th`/de th`/ povlei. SW. kai; poluv ge. ἙT. tiv fhv/~; ajstw`/ h] xevnw/; SW. xevnw/. ἙT. podapw`/; SW. Ἀbdhrivth/. ἙT. kai; ou{tw kalov~ ti~ oJ xevno~ e[doxen soi ei\nai, w{ste tou` Kleinivou uJevo~ kallivwn soi fanh`nai; SW. pw`~ d j ouj mevllei, w\ makavrie, to; sofwvtaton kavllion faivnesqai; ἙT. ajll j h\ sofw`/ tini hJmi`n, w\ Swvkrate~, ejntucw;n pavrei; SW. sofwtavtw/ me;n ou\n dhvpou tw`n ge nu`n, ei[ soi dokei` sofwvtato~ ei\nai Prwtagovra~.

Friend: Where have you just come from, Socrates? No, don’t tell me. It’s pretty obvious that you’ve just been hunting the ripe and ready Alcibiades. Well, I saw him just the other day, and he’s certainly still a beautiful man— and just between the two of us, ‘man’ is the proper word, Socrates: his beard is already filling out. Socrates: Well, what of it? I thought you were an admirer of Homer, who says that youth is most charming when the beard is first blooming—which is just the stage Alcibiades is at. Friend: So what’s up? Were you just with him? And how is the young man disposed towards you? Socrates: Pretty well, I think, especially today, since he rallied to my side and said a great many things to support me. You’re right of course: I was just with him. But there’s something really strange I want to tell you about. Although we were together, I didn’t pay him any mind; in fact, I forgot all about him most of the time. Friend: How could anything like that have happened to the two of you? You surely haven’t met someone else more beautiful, at least not in this city. Socrates: Much more beautiful. Friend: What are you saying? A citizen or a foreigner? Socrates: A foreigner. Friend: From where? Socrates: Abdera. Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 289

Friend: And this foreigner seems to you more beautiful than the son of Clinias? Socrates: How could superlative wisdom not seem surpassingly beautiful? Friend: What? Have you been in the company of some wise man, Socrates? Socrates: The wisest man alive, if you think that the wisest man is— Protagoras. (Translation by Lombardo-Bell 1997)

The language of viewing in the realm of cognition is, of course, old—the notion of a mental vision, seeing with the mind, ranking among the oldest metaphors. And while the prehistory of ancient Greek is of no concern here,10 as early as Homer we find expressions of the following sort (Il. 21.53–63: Achilles is meeting in battle for a second time a man he had previously captured and sold into captivity):11

T6 ojcqhvsa~ d j a[ra ei\pe pro;~ o}n megalhvtora qumovn: w] povpoi h\ mevga qau`ma tovd j ojfqalmoi`sin oJrw`mai: h\ mavla dh; Trw`e~ megalhvtore~ ou{~ per e[pefnon au\ti~ ajnasthvsontai uJpo; zovfou hjerovento~, oi|on dh; kai; o{d j h\lqe fugw;n u{po nhlee;~ h\mar Lh`mnon ej~ hjgaqevhn peperhmevno~: oujdev min e[sce povnto~ aJlo;~ polih`~, o} poleva~ ajevkonta~ ejruvkei. ajll j a[ge dh; kai; douro;~ ajkwkh`~ hJmetevroio geuvsetai, o[fra i[dwmai ejni; fresi;n hjde; daeivw h] a[r j oJmw`~ kai; kei`qen ejleuvsetai, h\ min ejruvxei gh` fusivzoo~, h{ te kata; kraterovn per ejruvkei.

Disturbed, Achilleus spoke to his own great-hearted spirit: “Can this be? Here is a strange thing that my eyes look on. Now the great-hearted Trojans, even those I have killed already, will stand and rise up again out of the gloom and the darkness as this man has come back and escaped the day without pity though he was sold into sacred Lemnos; but the main of the great sea could not hold him, though it holds back many who are unwilling. But come, he must be given a taste of our spearhead so that I may know inside my heart and make certain whether he will come back even from there, or the prospering earth will hold him, she who holds back even the strong men.” (Translation by Lattimore 1951)

Within ten lines Achilles contrasts, in direct speech, seeing, looking at something, with his eyes, and knowing in his heart. The verb for seeing in line 54 is the 290 Helios common oJravw (see); but what Lattimore translates as “I may know inside my heart” is in Greek o[fra i[dwmai ejni; fresi;n (so that I may see within my mind).12 It is not least against the background of this old, well-established metaphor—which Plato himself uses ubiquitously, but especially in Phaedo, with its distinction of the visible and the thinkable realms, to horaton and to noêton, in Symposium, Republic, and Timaeus—that one must read Socrates’ remark in the Protagoras. Just as one can see with the mind as well as with the eyes, so what one sees with the mind can be beautiful, just as what one sees with the eyes can be beautiful; and beauty of the mind, for Socrates, is wisdom. The pattern of thought is the same we encountered in the Charmides passage above (T2), where Socrates had said:

“By Heracles, you are describing a man without an equal—if he should happen to have one small thing in addition.” “What’s that?” asked Critias. “If he happens to have a well-formed soul,” I said. “It would be appropriate if he did, Critias, since he comes from your family.” “He is very distinguished in that respect, too,” he said. “Then why don’t we undress this part of him andhave a look at it before we inspect his body? Surely he has already reached the age when he is willing to discuss things.”

Here as well, Socrates proposed to look at the soul,13 to see whether it was well- formed—that is, in the context of the Charmides, whether he was modest, decent as well as moderate and of sound mind, whether he had sôphrosynê. Beauty of body and beauty of mind correlate to vision through sense perception and mental vision, seeing with the eye of the mind and with one’s mind. We next turn to the Sympo- sium, the Republic, and the Phaedrus, where the language of seeing receives a further dimension.

One notable advance in the field of Plato studies over the past century has been an enhanced understanding of the nuances of Platonic diction. The last two generations in particular have seen a number of dedicated investigations devoted to the literary and cultural contexts from which Plato drew his vocabulary and against which he developed it for his own literary as well as philosophical purposes.14 One result of these studies has been the systematic detection and interpretation of the language of mysteries and, related to it, the language of religious theôria, especially in Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus. The organization of mysteries and the practice of theôria—travelling from one’s home town to participate in the spec- Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 291 tacle of a cultic festival—have as one of their features an established vocabulary of viewing. In combining it with accustomed expressions of mental vision, Plato drew on the language of religious vision in the Symposium,15 where Diotima, a priestess from Mantinea, initiates Socrates into the mystery of love by telling him the true nature and power of the god Eros. Here, she describes successive experiences of a lover (210A–212B):

T6 dei` gavr, e[fh, to;n ojrqw`~ ijovnta ejpi; tou`to to; pra`gma a[rcesqai me;n nevon o[nta ijevnai ejpi; ta; kala; swvmata, kai; prw`ton mevn, eja;n ojrqw`~ hJgh`tai oJ hJgouvmeno~, eJno;~ aujto;n swvmato~ ejra`n kai; ejntau`qa genna`n lovgou~ kalouv~, e[peita de; aujto;n katanoh`sai o{ti to; kavllo~ to; ejpi; oJtw/ou`n tw`/ ejpi; eJtevrw/ swvmati ajdelfovn ejsti, kai; eij dei` diwvkein to; ejp j ei[dei kalovn, pollh; a[noia mh; oujc e{n te kai; tajuto;n hJgei`sqai to; ejpi; pa`sin toi`~ swvmasi kavllo~: tou`to d j ejnnohvsanta katasth`nai pavntwn tw`n kalw`n swmavtwn ejrasthvn, eJno;~ de; to; sfovdra tou`to calavsai katafronhvsanta kai; smikro;n hJghsavmenon: meta; de; tau`ta to; ejn tai`~ yucai`~ kavllo~ timiwvteron hJghvsasqai tou` ejn tw`/ swvmati, w{ste kai; eja;n ejpieikh;~ w]n th;n yuchvn ti~ ka]n smikro;n a[nqo~ e[ch/, ejxarkei`n aujtw`/ kai; ejra`n kai; khvdesqai kai; tivktein lovgou~ toiouvtou~ kai; zhtei`n, oi{tine~ poihvsousi beltivou~ tou;~ nevou~, i{na ajnagkasqh`/ au\ qeavsasqai to; ejn toi`~ ejpithdeuvmasi kai; toi`~ novmoi~ kalo;n kai; tou`t j ijdei`n o{ti pa`n aujto; auJtw`/ suggenev~ ejstin, i{na to; peri; to; sw`ma kalo;n smikrovn ti hJghvshtai ei\nai: meta; de; ta; ejpithdeuvmata ejpi; ta;~ ejpisthvma~ ajgagei`n, i{na i[dh/ au ejpisthmw`n kavllo~, kai; blevpwn pro;~ polu; h[dh to; kalo;n mhkevti to; par j eJniv, w{sper oijkevth~, ajgapw`n paidarivou kavllo~ h] ajnqrwvpou tino;~ h] ejpidhteuvmato~ eJnov~, douleuvwn fau`lo~ h\/ kai; smikrolovgo~, ajll j ejpi; to; polu; pevlago~ tetrammevno~ tou` kalou ` kai; qewrw`n pollou;~ kai; kalou;~ lovgou~ kai; megaloprepei`~ tivkth/ kai; dianohvmata ejn filosofiva/ ajfqovnw/, e{w~ a]n ejntau`qa rJwsqei;~ kai; aujxhqei;~ kativdh/ tina; ejpisthvmhn mivan toiauvthn, h{ ejsti kalou` toiou`de. peirw` dev moi, e[fh, to;n nou`n prosevcein wJ~ oi|ovn te mavlista. o}~ ga;r a]n mevcri ejntau`qa pro;~ ta; ejrwtika; paidagwghqh`/, qewvmeno~ ejfexh`~ te kai; ojrqw`~ ta; kalav, pro;~ tevlo~ h[dh ijw;n tw`n ejrwtikw`n ejxaivfnh~ katovyetaiv ti qaumasto;n th;n fuvsin kalovn, tou`to ejkei`no, w\ Swvkrate~, ou| dh; e{neken kai; oiJ e[mprosqen pavnte~ povnoi h\san, . . . ejntau`qa tou` bivou, w\ fivle Swvkrate~, e[fh hJ Mantinikh; xevnh, ei[per pou a[lloqi, biwto;n ajnqrwvpw/, qewmevnw/ aujto; to; kalovn. o} ejavn pote i[dh/~, ouj kata; crusivon te kai; ejsqh`ta kai; tou;~ kalou;~ pai`dav~ te kai; neanivskou~ dovxei soi ei\nai, ou}~ nu`n oJrw`n ejkpevplhxai kai; e{toimo~ ei\ kai; su; kai; a[lloi polloiv, oJrw`nte~ ta; paidika; kai; sunovnte~ ajei; aujtoi`~, ei[ pw~ oi|ovn t j h\n, mhvt j ejsqivein mhvte 292 Helios

pivnein, ajlla; qea`sqai movnon kai; sunei`nai. tiv dh`ta, e[fh, oijovmeqa, ei[ tw/ gevnoito aujto to; kalo;n ijdei`n eijlikrinev~, kaqarovn, a[meikton, ajlla; mh; ajnavplewn sarkw`n te ajnqrwpivnwn kai; crwmavtwn kai; a[llh~ pollh`~ fluariva~ qnhth`~, ajll j aujto; to; qei`on kalo;n duvnaito monoeide;~ katidei`n; a\r j oi[ei, e[fh, fau`lon bivon givgnesqai ejkei`se blevponto~ ajnqrwvpou kai; ejkei`no w|/ dei` qewmevnou kai; sunovnto~ aujtw`;/ h] oujk ejnqumh`/, e[fh, o{ti ejntau`qa aujtw'/ monacou` genhvsetai, oJrw`nti w|/ oJrato;n to; kalovn, tivktein oujk ei[dwla ajreth`~, a{te oujk eijdwvlou ejfaptomevnw/, ajlla; ajlhqh`, a{te tou` ajlhqou`~ ejfaptomevnw/: tekovnti de; ajreth;n ajlhqh` kai; qreyamevnw/ uJpavrcei qeofilei` genevsqai, kai; ei[pevr tw/ a[llw/ ajnqrwvpwn ajqanavtw/ kai; ejkeivnw/; tau`ta dhv, w\ Fai`drev te kai; oiJ a[lloi, e[fh me;n Diotivma, pevpeismai d j ejgwv:

“A lover who goes about this matter correctly must begin in his youth to devote himself to beautiful bodies. First, if the leader leads aright, he should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of any other and that if he is to pursue beauty of form he’d be very foolish not to think that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same. When he grasps this, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies, and he must think that this wild gaping after just one body is a small thing and despise it. After this he must think that the beauty of people’s souls is more valuable than the beauty of their bodies, so that if someone is decent in his soul, even though he is scarcely blooming in his body, our lover must be content to love and care for him and to seek to give birth to such ideas as will make young men better. The result is that our lover will be forced to gaze at the beauty of activities and laws and to see that all this is akin to itself, with the result that he will think that the beauty of bodies is a thing of no importance. After customs he must move on to various kinds of knowledge. The result is that he will see the beauty of knowledge and be looking mainly not at beauty in a single example . . . the lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until, having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge, and it is the knowledge of such beauty . . . Try to pay attention to me,” she said, “as best you can. You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors: . . . Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 293

And there in life, Socrates, my friend,” said the woman from Mantinea, “there if anywhere should a person live his life, beholding that Beauty. If you once see that, it won’t occur to you to measure beauty by gold or clothing or beautiful boys and youths—who, if you see them now, strike you out of your senses, and make you, you and many others, eager to be with the boys you love and look at them forever, if there were any way to do that, forget- ting food and drink, everything but looking at them and being with them. But how would it be, in our view,” she said, “if someone got to see the Beau- tiful itself, absolute, pure, unmixed, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beauty itself in its one form? Do you think it would be a poor life for a human being to look there and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it? Or haven’t you remembered,” she said, “that in that life alone, when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen—only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue (because he is in touch with the true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.” This, Phaedrus and the rest of you, was what Diotima told me.I was persuaded. (Translation by Nehamas-Woodruff 1997a)

Plato composed this description of beauty itself, the form of beauty, more or less at the time when he also wrote the Phaedo, with its division of the world into a “visible part or realm” (horaton), distinct from the “thinkable realm” (noêton), which is not open to the senses but open to the mind. The language of the vision of beauty in the Symposium appears particularly striking against this distinction between the physical and perishable as visible, and the invisible as thinkable and eternal, a distinction that underlies much of Plato’s ontology from the Phaedo onwards.16 Vision is no less important in Plato’s Republic, where there is a direct link between vision and power. The constitution or society or city state that Socrates and his companions envisage in the Republic is tripartite: first, the mass of free producers and merchants of all sorts, who do more or less what they want, have families and accumulate wealth, within certain limits; second, a small group of soldiers-cum-police-force; and third, arising out of the second group, a very small executive, either a single ruler or a handful of qualified individuals. The whole state is a few thousand strong, that is to say, a society in which more or less everybody knows everybody else. In this society, the obvious link between vision and power is that those who have the power (the small executive) qualify and are selected for 294 Helios office because they have ‘seen’ the truth along the lines drawn by Diotima. This vision of the truth is exemplified in an extended allegory at the center of the book, the ‘allegory of the cave,’ the pedagogical and psychagogical story that follows the epistemological and ontological similes of the sun and the line. In the simile of the sun, Socrates attempts to make plausible the suggestion that unless we know the good, whatever the context, all else, all other knowledge, is worthless and useless. Socrates says that while he cannot give an account of the good as such, he can talk about the ‘offspring’ of the good that is the sun: when we look around us, we see that all we see we see with our eyes; but in order for something visible to be seen, we require, in addition to sight and the visible thing, also the medium of light; and the source and cause of light is the sun; the sun, however, is not only responsible for the trees and the grass and the bees and the cows to be seen, the sun is also responsible for what they are and for the fact that they are, their existence, their being, in the first place; up to this point, then, Socrates provides a scientific explanation of the realm of what can be seen, the visible. Now, when it comes to all the things that can be thought and understood rather than seen with the eyes and perceived with the senses, things like justice and equality and so on, just as the sun is responsible for and cause of our seeing the tree, but also for the tree’s being there in the first place, so the good is cause of our understanding what justice is; but the good itself is also cause of there being justice in the first place, not least because justice is a good thing. This is a very brief report of an already compressed image. What the simile of the line does may be illustrated as follows: it is one thing to look at a photograph and say, “That’s a tree”; another, to look at a tree and say, “That’s a tree”; yet another to be able to explain photosynthesis and the reproductive cycle of plants; and yet another to understand the rather complex mathematics that underlie the possibility of the existence of life as we know it, together with the causality that brought life about; but obviously all these things are somehow related. Having clarified these points, Socrates moves to the allegory of the cave. The allegory of the cave extends over five Stephanus pages (514A1–519A7), where there are over eighty instances of words and phrases that refer to seeing, sight, light, darkness, vision, blindness, spectacle, perception, and appearance. Within any given section of the passage, these words are used both literally and metaphorically/metonymically. The image evoked is meant to provide an allegory for the predicament of all human beings. Socrates asks his interlocutors to imagine that we are all chained to our seats deep in a cave, with the only source of light a fire that throws shadows on the wall we face, of objects carried past behind us. Few are freed from this captivity and led up the cave, past the fire and the figures whose shadows had been perceived, to the entrance of the cave and outside into the light. When their eyes get accustomed, they can make out the shadows of things outside, the things themselves, the light of the stars, sunlight as reflected, and eventually the Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 295 sun as the source of all light and vision. This process will take time, as will the process of adjusting their sight when they return into the cave to tell others about the real world, so that at first they will appear blind and ignorant to those who have never left their seats.17 The following is the description of the experience of a man dragged out into the light of the sun (516A5–C2):18

T8 sunhqeiva~ dh; oi\mai devoit j a[n, eij mevlloi ta; a[nw o[yesqai. kai; prwvton me;n ta;~ skia;~ a]n rJa`/sta kaqorw`/, kai; meta; tou`to ejn toi`~ u{dasi tav te tw`n ajnqrwvpwn kai; ta; tw`n a[llwn ei[dwla, u{steron de; aujtav: ejk de; touvtwn ta; ejn tw`/ oujranw`/ kai; aujto;n to;n oujrao;n nuvktwr a]n rJa`/on qeavsaito, prosblevpwn to; tw`n a[strwn te kai; selhvnh~ fw`~, h] meq j hJmevran to;n h{liovn te kai; to; tou` hJlivou. pw`~ d j ou[; teleutai`on dh; oi\mai to;n h{lion, oujk ejn u{dasin oujd j ejn ajllotriva/ e{dra/ fantavsmata aujtou`, ajll j aujto;n kaq j auJto;n ejn th`/ auJtou` cwvra/ duvnait j a]n katidei`n kai; qeavsasqai oi|ov~ ejstin. ajnagkai`on, e[fh. kai; meta; tau`t j a]n h[dh sullogivzoito peri; aujtou` o{ti ou{to~ oJ tav~ te w{ra~ parevcwn kai; ejniautou;~ kai; pavnta ejpitropeuvwn ta; ejn tw`/ oJrwmevnw/ tovpw/, kai; ejkeivnwn w|n sfei`~ eJwvrwn trovpon tina; pavntwn ai[tio~.

“Yes, I fancy that he would need time before he could see things in the world above. At first he would most easily see shadows, then the reflections in water of men and everything else, and, finally, the things themselves. After that he could look at the heavenly bodies and the sky itself by night, turning his eyes to the light of the stars and the moon more easily than to the sun or to the sun’s light by day?” “Su re l y.” “Then, last of all, I fancy he would be able to look at the sun and observe its nature, not its appearances in water or on alien material, but the very sun itself in its own place?” “Inevitably,” he said. “And that done, he would then come to infer concerning it that it is the sun which produces the seasons and years, and controls everything in the sphere of the visible, and is in a manner the author of all those things which he and his fellow-prisoners used to see?” (Translation by Lindsay 1992)

For the present purpose, it is not decisive whether translated into a modern allegory the comparison of those inside the cave would be with people watching 296 Helios situation comedies like Friends or soap operas like Neighbours, Eastenders, or Des- perate Housewives, and talking about the characters and their problems as if that were talking about real things in real life, or whether the projection on the wall would be more of the nature of an animated cartoon like SpongeBob SquarePants or the Simpsons. What is important is the dialectic of power developed in the allegory. Ultimately, the vision of the real world not only enables those who have seen the light to have power and rule over the others; it entitles them to do so. But conversely, the vision of the things themselves and of the sun is purely passive: what can be known is fixed, and human beings are subject to what they see; what is in one’s vision determines what one can think and know. The power is with the object seen, here as in the Symposium. That is to say, just as the non-philosopher who lacks sôphrosynê (moderation) is powerless at the sight of a beautiful body, so the philosopher, who can overcome the temptation of physical beauty, is subject to the beautiful eternal forms he sees with the eyes of his soul, and is powerless when faced with this spectacle. But this deprives human beings of all autonomy and, ultimately, all individuality, which is one of the principal modern objections to the Platonic view of the world thus constructed. This view is beautifully elaborated on in the myth of the dialogue Phaedrus, where the soul of the individual, god or human alike, is pictured as a charioteer commanding a team of horses. The winged charioteer and horses strive to ascend to heaven, leaving the earth and all things corporeal behind. Few reach the boundary of heaven and can see beyond and outside (247C3–E6):

T9 to;n de; uJperouravnion tovpon ou[te ti~ u{mnhsev pw tw`n th`/de poihth;~ ou[te pote; uJmnhvsei kat j ajxivan. e[cei de; w|de—tolmhtevon ga;r ou\n tov ge ajlhqe;~ eijpei`n, a[llw~ te kai; peri; ajlhqeiva~ levgonta—hJ ga;r ajcrwvmatov~ te kai; ajschmavtisto~ kai; ajnafh;~ oujsiva o[ntw~ ou\sa, yuch`~ kubernhvth/ movnw/ qeath; nw`/, peri; h{n to; th`~ ajlhqou`~ ejpisthvmh~ gevno~, tou`ton e[cei to;n tovpon. a{t j ou\n qeou` diavnoia nw`/ te kai; ejpisthvmh/ ajkhravtw/ trefomevnh/, kai; aJpavsh~ yuch`~ o{sh/ a]n mevlh/ to; proshvkon devxasqai, ijdou`sa dia; crovnou to; o]n ajgapa`/ te kai; qewrou`sa tajlhqh` trevfetai kai; eujpaqei`, e{w~ a]n kuvklw/ hJ perifora; eij~ taujto;n perienevgkh/. ejn de; th`/ periovdw/ kaqora`/ me;n aujth;n dikaiosuvnhn, kaqora`/ de; swfrosuvnhn, kaqora`/ de; ejpisthvmhn, oujc h|/ gevnesi~ provsestin, oujd j h{ ejstivn pou eJtevtra ejn eJtevrw/ ou\sa w|n hJmei`~ nu`n o[ntwn kalou`men, ajlla; th;n ejn tw`/ o{ ejstin o]n o[ntw~ ejpisthvmhn ou\san: kai; ta\lla wJsauvtw~ ta; o[nta o[ntw~ qeasamevnh kai; eJstiaqei`sa, du`sa pavlin eij~ to; ei[sw tou` oujranou`, oi[kade h\lqen. ejlqouvsh~ de; aujth`~ oJ hJnivoco~ pro;~ th;n favtnhn tou;~ i{ppou~ sthvsa~ parevbalen ajmbrosivan te kai; ejp j aujth`/ nevktar eJpovtisen. Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 297

The place beyond heaven—none of our earthly poets has ever sung or ever will sing its praises enough! Still, this is the way it is—risky as it may be, you see, I must attempt to speak the truth, especially since the truth is my subject. What is in the place is without shape and without color and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman. Now a god’s mind is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge, as is the mind of any soul that is concerned to take in what is appropriate to it, and so it is delighted at last to be seeing what is real and watching what is true, feeding on all this and feeling wonderful, until the circular motion brings it around to where it started. On the way around it has a view of Justice as it is; it has a view of Self-control; it has a view of Knowledge—not the knowledge that is close to change, that becomes different as it knows the different things which we consider real down here. No, it is the knowledge of what really is what it is. And when the soul has seen all the things that are as they are and feasted on them, it sinks back inside heaven and goes home. On its arrival, the charioteer stables the horses by the manger, throws in ambrosia, and gives them nectar to drink besides. (Translation by Rowe 1986)

This image, more than anything else, has formed and informed popular impressions of Plato’s ontology and metaphysics as postulating two separate worlds, the world of stuff and things perishable below, and the eternal unchanging world of forms above. To what extent this is tenable will briefly be discussed in the next section. Here, it must be reiterated that, as regards the freedom of the individual, power relations are consistent throughout the dialogues. The common man—and to some extent certainly that applies to all of us—is dictated in his thoughts, feelings, and resulting actions by the beauty seen with his eyes. The philosopher, and in that sense the divine man, is dictated in his thoughts by the vision of the eternal; that may give him power over those who have not had this vision, but it does not set him free: the greater and more extensive one’s acquaintance with the forms, the less room there is for divergent thought or opinion. Ultimately, all those who see the truth become identical, and identically determined in their thinking.

III

At first glance, this picture is confirmed in Plato’s Timaeus. But it is further extended there, in that not only men and, as in the Phaedrus, the gods of traditional mythology are thus bound by reality, but even the creator of this world order that we call kosmos is constrained, not to say determined, by his vision of the unchanging which he re-creates in the visible realm of stuff. Timaeus, Socrates’ 298 Helios main interlocutor, and the narrator of the main part of the dialogue, prefaces his story with the comment that it can only be a story and comments (Timaeus 28C):

T10 to;n me;n ou\n poihth;n kai; patevra tou`de tou` panto;~ euJrei`n te e[rgon kai; euJrovnta eij~ pavnta~ ajduvnaton levgein:

Now, to find the maker and father of this universe is a task, and for the one who has found him to tell everybody is impossible.

But he then goes on to describe this creator of order as a spectator, a spectator of the unseen who imposes the power of the unseen on the seen. Here is a description of part of this process of ordering (39E–40A):

T11 kai; ta; me;n a[lla h[dh mevcri crovnou genevsew~ ajpeivrgasto eij~ oJmoiovthta w|/per ajpeikavzeto, to; de; mhvpw ta; pavnta zw`/a ejnto;~ auJtou` gegenhmevna perieilhfevnai, tauvth/ e[ti ei\cen ajnomoivw~. tou`to dh; to; katavloipon ajphrgavzeto aujtou` pro;~ th;n tou` paradeivgmato~ ajpotupouvmeno~ fuvsin. h|/per ou\n nou`~ ejnouvsa~ ijdeva~ tw`/ o} e[stin zw`/on, oi|aiv te e[neisi kai; o{sai, kaqora`/, toiauvta~ kai; tosauvta~ dienohvqh dei`n kai; tovde scei`n. eijsi;n de; tevttare~, miva me;n oujravnion qew`n gevno~, a[llh de; pthno;n kai; ajeropovron, trivth de; e[nudron ei\do~, pezo;n de; kai; cersai`on tevtarton. tou` me;n ou\n qeivou th;n pleivsthn ijdevan ejk puro;~ ajphrgavzeto, o{pw~ o{ti lamprovtaton ijdei`n te kavlliston ei[h, tw`/ de; panti; proseikavzwn eu[kuklon ejpoivei, tivqhsivn te eij~ th;n tou` krativstou frovnhsin ejkeivnw/ sunepovmenon, neivma~ peri; pavnta kuvklw/ to;n oujranovn, kovsmon ajlhqino;n aujtw`/ pepoikilmevnon ei\nai kaq j o{lon.

Prior to the coming to be of time, the universe had already been made to resemble in various respects the model in whose likeness the god was making it, but the resemblance still fell short in that it didn’t yet contain all the living things that were to have come to be within it. This remaining task he went on to perform, casting the world into the nature of its model. And so he determined that the living thing he was making should possess the same kinds and numbers of living things as those which, according to the discernment of Intellect, are contained within the real Living Thing. Now there are four of these kinds: first, the heavenly race of gods; next, the kind that has wings and travels through the air; third, the kind that lives in water; and fourth, the kind that has feet and lives on land. The gods he made mostly out of fire, to be the brightest and Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 299

fairest to the eye. He made them well-rounded, to resemble the universe, and placed them in the wisdom of the dominant circle, to follow the course of the universe. He spread the gods throughout the whole heaven to be a true adornment for it, an intricately wrought whole. (Translation by Zeyl 1997)

Taken at face value, this extract, as indeed any of a number of such extracts from the Timaeus, is unambiguous as to the power and the limitations of this divine craftsman, the Demiurge. Just as in the cave of the Republic, where the few who have seen the light and who have returned to govern are guided and determined in their actions by what they have seen outside, the immutable reality, so here the divine craftsman, the god, is guided and determined by the paradeigma (model) he has in front of him. But interpretation must take into account the nature of this story. To begin with, the concluding sentence of the first paragraph is translated rather too loosely above. Perhaps one should say: “Now, in what way mind conceived kinds being in that which is living [a living being], of what sort and how many there are in it, such and so many it reasoned also this [living being, i.e., this created world] must have.” That is to say, there is a shift from the divine craftsman to mind (Mind?), which previously may or may not have been the same as the creator god. Next, although only the beginning of the creation of the heavenly gods is reproduced here, one can already discern the principle according to which mind creates:

The gods he made mostly out of fire, to be the brightest and fairest to the eye. He made them well-rounded, to resemble the universe, and placed them in the wisdom of the dominant circle, to follow the course of the universe. He spread the gods throughout the whole heaven to be a true adornment for it . . .

The repeated “to be” indicates purpose. But in this context that seems to presuppose, at the same time, freedom: the purpose is fixed, but the means and, importantly, the form is not. But what is the purpose: the purpose, as is clear from the context and from the dialogue as a whole, is order, as spelt out at Timaeus 29D–30A:

T12 levgwmen dh; di j h{tina aijtivan gevnesin kai; to; pa`n tovde oJ sunista;~ sunevsthsen. ajgaqo;~ h\n, ajgaqw`/ de; oujdei;~ peri; oujdeno;~ oujdevpote ejggivgnetai fqovno~: touvtou d j ejkto;~ w]n pavnta o{ti mavlista ejboulhvqh genevsqai paraplhvsia eJautw`/. tauvthn dh; genevsew~ kai; kovsmou mavlist j a[n ti~ ajrch;n kuriwtavthn par j ajndrw`n fronivmwn ajpodecovmeno~ ojrqovtata ajpodevcoit j a[n. boulhqei;~ ga;r oJ qeo;~ ajgaqa; 300 Helios

me;n pavnta, flau`ron de; mhde;n ei\nai kata; duvnamin, ou{tw dh; pa`n o{son h\n o{rato;n paralabw;n oujc hJsucivan a[gon ajlla; kinouvmenon plhmmelw`~ kai; ajtavktw~, eij~ tavxin aujto; h[gagen ejk th`~ ajtaxiva~, hJghsavmeno~ ejkei`no touvtou pavntw~ a[meinon.

Very well then. Now why did he who framed this whole universe of becoming frame it? Let us state the reason why: He was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible. In fact, men of wisdom will tell you (and you couldn’t do better than to accept their claim) that this, more than anything else, was the most preeminent reason for the origin of the world’s coming to be. The god wanted everything to be good and nothing to be bad so far as that was possible, and so he took over all that was visible—not at rest but in discordant and disorderly motion—and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order, because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder. (Translation by Zeyl 1997)

To assess the extent to which creation of order in the Timaeus is predetermined, we must travel a longer road. While there is an emerging consensus that the Timaeus and the stories within it are governed by various traditions of storytelling, among them those concerning the depicting of good men and god doing good set out by Plato himself in Republic Books 2–3 and 10,19 and that an important dimension of the dialogue between Socrates and Timaeus, Critias and Hermocrates, is perhaps primarily ethical in the widest sense,20 the consequences of this for an interpretation of the much-discussed status of the eikôs mythos, the ‘(be-)seeming story’ told by the character Timaeus, are often not pursued radically or far enough. The view most prevalent seems to be that for all Timaeus’s and our human limitations, the account provided is the best that can be given for the present purpose— whether the rationally-ordered visible cosmos is taken as an image that can be viewed with the eyes so as to provide a model for the vision of the forms, which latter brings us closer to “becoming like or similar to god” (homoiôsis theôi),21 or whether it is suggested that “[t]he account is a mythos partly because it is an account of the kind of thing that could have happened when the world was created, but you and I, unlike god, do not know whether this is what happened,” that “[the] likelihood [of Timaeus’s account] should be assessed on the basis of the extent to which the account represents the way in which God would act if he set about creating the universe,” and that “it is by showing the good order of the world that we show both the extent to which God had good intentions in creating the cosmos and the extent to which he was successful in carrying out those intentions.”22 Such Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 301 statements have in common that they move to a large extent within the world of images created by Plato, however conscious a decision this may be on the part of the modern authors. Although most readers of Plato are happy to assume that, for example in the myths found in many of the dialogues, not everything Plato says about things superhuman needs to be taken literally or as intended as a factual account, few modern readers would envisage the possibility that everything Plato says about these things is said in the form of metaphor and allegory.23 And while readers of Plato, beginning with the generation of his associates and pupils, have often called into question whether the bringing about of the ordered universe by the Demiurge, the divine craftsman, the god who creates order, is to be read as a temporal or as a metaphorical account, fewer have asked what exactly would follow if the demiurge stood for something else, be it nous (understanding; mind?),24 the form of the good,25 or “nothing other than the conversion of a state of non-ordered being-in-motion to a state of order.”26 The starting point for an answer to this question must go beyond the status of the story told by Timaeus, the eikôs mythos, and ask for the status of its narrator, the character of Timaeus.27 Timaeus is introduced in the dialogue as, among other things, a capable astronomer (27A), if one follows what is laid out in the Republic as someone who practices the most advanced form of mathematics (522C–530C).28 Praise of Timaeus as the most astronomically-minded of their number, though, may be double-edged, for both at that place in the Republic and at the previous place to which it refers—the distinction between different forms of cognition in the simile of the line at Republic 509C–511E—the mathematician ranks below the dialectician, in that mathematics works with certain hypotheseis, things (assumptions) posited without being questioned or proven independently. Notably, mathematicians use terms such as ‘odd and even,’ ‘triangle,’ etc., without going beyond these hypotheseis, without asking for the principle behind them. Mathematics for Plato is an advanced branch of philosophy; allegedly, an inscription at Plato’s Academy read, “No one who does not know mathematics may enter here.” But, at the same time, mathematics was just a necessary propaedeutic and protreptic to the most advanced form of investigation, analysis and synthesis, the pursuit of what Plato calls dialektikê (dialectic). Mathematics engages dianoia (the intellect), the second highest cognitive faculty. Only dialectic, the exercise of nous (understanding; mind?), may see the form of the good which is the highest and greatest of all that can be known, and which is in dignity and power beyond anything that can be given a rational definition. In the Timaeus, Timaeus turns out to be exactly this sort of excellent mathematician, astronomer, and scientist envisaged in the Republic. Indeed, he is acquainted with the terminology of Socratic/Platonic philosophy when he speaks not only of the opposition of being and becoming, but also of the cause behind becoming, 302 Helios which must be assumed as something in itself, and even of sameness and difference.29 But apart from the acquaintance with parts of Plato’s philosophical terminology, Timaeus, the Pythagorean from Locri in Italy, is open to all the criticism directed in Republic 7 against (the unnamed) Archytas, the Pythagorean from Tarentum in Italy.30 Timaeus does not go beyond his triangles. His vision of the cosmos is guided by his knowledge of mathematics and the natural sciences; his images are drawn from them. What he sees is what the listener gets. The account of the work of the Demiurge of Timaeus’s story is a descriptive account by a philo- sophically aware scientist; it is not an analysis of the conditions of the science and the scientific method employed. But in what way is this relevant? It is relevant, inter alia, because large portions of the Timaeus are devoted to a rational account of the phenomena of the natural world, animals, the human body and soul, their faculties, etc. In each case, the existence, properties, and qualities of the phenomena are explained in terms of their function, as we have seen; their function is what they are good for. This attempted explanation as it is presented is based throughout on Timaeus’s analysis of the intentions of the ordering mind and of the physics of the natural world, an analysis that asked for the underlying nature of the four elements fire, water, air, and earth, but did not ask for the underlying nature of the triangles that made up those elements. From the point of view of the dialectician of the Republic, there is thus the following question: If indeed, as Timaeus assumes, there is a world out there that is beautiful when it is in good order, and if it is possible, even if only for a few, to know what is good, then, given the nature of the world out there, with its necessary causality but also its possibility to be ordered, what would be the best order? And with a fundamental understanding of unity and plurality, identity and difference, stability and change,31 a rational explanation of how order is achieved is possible through a definition of the respective function of whatever there is in the world as a whole; in the world, you know what something is if you know what it is good for, and vice versa. What this amounts to is the explanation or definition of Platonic forms through accounts of what they are, that is, knowledge of a form is here not knowledge by acquaintance. There is no vision, effable or ineffable, of the realm of the forms in the manner of the journey of the souls of the Phaedrus: there is a simple, rational explanation that does the same job and fulfils the same function.32 But this calls into question the whole assumption of a collective of individual forms: Are there forms for the mind to see?33 Or is it after all the power of the mind to define how the world is structured? But if one were entitled to ask these questions, one must be aware that they do not aim at a revision in the Timaeus (or Parmenides or Sophist) of what was said in the Republic (and Phaedo, Symposium, and Phaedrus). Rather, the questions aim at the allegorical nature of all of Plato’s Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 303 discussions of ‘what is,’ the language of all the passages concerning the forms, being, and an explanation of why the world is as it is, and is good as it is.

There may, therefore, be no forms tosee as such: what the mind perceives is what the mind conceives. Reason is thrown back on to itself. What hope remains for the inquis- itive mind? We began with a reflexion on Platonic love. In the course of our discussion, Plato’s conception of love of beauty, which was portrayed as the result of the vision of the beautiful, has been elucidated in a number of its aspects. At the same time, the further we progressed, the more it seemed as if the spectacular vision for which the mind could hope and strive in the Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus had been reduced to knowledge of the good, which cannot be articulated, and rational accounts for whatever else there may be. Many of these accounts will concern mathematical structure. Indeed, many of the issues discussed in the dialogues most readily accessible to modern readers, including modern philosophers, concern questions of mathematics. Especially in the dialogues that are now considered as having been written in the last decades of his life, notably perhaps in the Theaetetus and in the Timaeus, discussion of concrete mathematical problems seems to reflect advanced discussion in Plato’s Academy. The ontological model of the physical world of the Timaeus is based on a complex nonmaterial stereometry. Instantiated in the receptacle, which would otherwise change in an aimless, timeless flux, are mathematical figures of two and three dimensions. These figures are characterized by their regularity and symmetry. For many, it is the highest achievement of the mind to understand this structure of the all which can be called a cosmos, and the philosophical life is a constant striving for the vision of this eternal mathematical beauty, which exercises its power over the viewer who is thus in constant danger of letting all else slip from his mind. For them, Platonic love can truly be conceived as love of the Platonic bodies. For those, however, who go beyond the nature of these bodies, there is at once much less and much more, for all else can be reduced to an account of mathematical clarity and precision; but in order for all else to find its rational account, one will have to know what is good. And since what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is good, and since the good is such that one can no longer ask, “What is it?,” in the expectation of a further account and explanation, the true philosopher will, after all, strive in his mind and with his soul for the vision Diotima promised Socrates. But on the reading of Plato’s dialogues suggested here, this vision then has no longer a restricting and determining force, exercising its tyrannical power over what can be thought. Contrariwise, a vision and understanding of what is beautiful because it is what is good enables the human being who is capable of dialectic thinking to make sense of the world in the way exemplified by the 304 Helios demiurge of the Timaeus. And in this sense, unexpectedly, for Plato, too, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Works Cited

Allen, R. E., ed. 1965. Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics. London. Bluck, R. S. 1956. “Logos and Forms in Plato: A Reply to Professor Cross.” Mind 65: 522–9. (Reprinted in Allen 1965, 33–41) Cairns, D. L. 2012. “Vêtu d’impudeur et enveloppé de chagrin. Le rôle des métaphores de ‘l’habillement’ dans les concepts d’émotion en Grèce ancienne.” In F. Gherchanoc and V. Huet, eds., Les vêtements antiques: s’habiller, se déshabiller dans les mondes anciens. Paris. 149–62. Classen, C. J. 1959. Sprachliche Deutung als Triebkraft platonischen und sokratischen Philosophie- rens. Munich. Cooper, J. M., ed. 1997. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis. Cornford, F. M. 1937. Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato; Translated, with a Running Com- mentary. London. Cross, R. C. 1954. “Logos and Forms in Plato.” Mind 63: 433–50. (Reprinted in Allen 1965, 13–31) Gadamer, H.-G. 1974. “Idee und Wirklichkeit in Platons Timaios.” Sitzungsberichte der Heidel- berger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 2. (Reprinted in H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6: Griechische Philosophie, II [Tübingen, 1985] 242–70) Goldhill, S. 1998. “The Seduction of the Gaze. Socrates and His Girlfriends.” In P. Cartledge, P. Millet, and S. v. Reden, eds., Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens. Cambridge. 105–24. ———. 2002. The Invention of Prose. Oxford. ———, and S. v. Reden. 1999. “Plato and the Performance of Dialogue.” In S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, eds., Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge. 257–89. Grube, G. M. A., trans. 1997. “Meno.” In Cooper 1997, 870–97. Hackforth, R. 1936. “Plato’s Theism.” CQ 30: 4–9. (Reprinted in Allen 1965, 439–47) Hare, R. M. 1965. “Plato and the Mathematicians.” In R. Bambrough, ed., New Essays on Plato and Aristotle. London. 21–38. Herrmann, F. G. 2003. “Phthónos in the World of Plato’s Timaeus.” In D. Konstan and N. K. Rutter, eds., Envy, Spite and Jealousy: The Rivalrous Emotions in Ancient Greece. Edinburgh. 53–83. ———. 2007a. “The God of the Philosopher.” In D. Ogden, ed., A Companion to Greek Religion. Oxford. 385–97. ———. 2007b. “The Idea of the Good and the Other Forms in Plato’s Republic.” In D. Cairns, F.-G. Herrmann, and T. Penner, eds., Pursuing the Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic. Edinburgh. 202–30. Hobbs, A. 2000. Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness and the Impersonal Good. Cambridge. Huffman, C. A. 2005. Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher and Mathematician King. Cambridge. Irwin, T. 1995. Plato’s Ethics. Oxford. Johansen, T. K. 2004. Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias. Cambridge. Jones, M., and J. Morgan, eds. 2007. Philosophical Presences in the Greek Novel. Ancient Narrative Supplementum, 10. Groningen. Lattimore, R., trans. 1951. Homer, The Iliad. Chicago and London. Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 305

Lindsay, A. D., trans. 1992. Plato, The Republic. With an Introduction by A. Nehamas and Notes by R. Bambrough. New York–London–Toronto. Lombardo, S., and K. Bell, trans. 1997. “Protagoras.” In Cooper 1997, 746–90. McCabe, M. M. 2000. Plato and His Predecessors: The Dramatisation of Reason. Cambridge. Morales, H. 2004. Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon. Cambridge. Nehamas, A., and P. Woodruff, trans. 1997a. “Symposium.” In Cooper 1997, 457–505. ———, trans. 1997b. “Phaedrus.” In Cooper 1997, 506–66. Nightingale, A. W. 2004. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context. Cambridge. Ni-Mheallaigh, K. 2007. “Philosophical Framing: The Phaedran Setting of Leucippe and Clito- phon.” In Jones and Morgan 2007, 231–44. Pender, E. E. 2000. Images of Persons Unseen: Plato’s Metaphors for the Gods and the Soul. Interna- tional Plato Studies, 11. Sankt Augustin. Repath, I. 2007. “Emotional Conflict and Platonic Psychology in the Greek Novel.” In Jones and Morgan 2007, 53–84. Riedweg, C. 1987. Mysterienterminologie bei Platon, Philon und Klemens von Alexandrien. Berlin and New York. Rowe, C. J., ed. and trans. 1986. Plato, Phaedrus (with Translation and Commentary). Warminster. Schefer, C. 2001. Platons unsagbare Erfahrung. Ein anderer Zugang zu Platon. Basel. Sedley, D. 1999. “The Ideal of Godlikeness.” In G. Fine, ed., Plato, II: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul. Oxford. 309–28. Sprague, R. K., trans. 1997. “Charmides.” In Cooper 1997, 639–63. Szlezák, T. A. 2003. Die Idee des Guten in Platons Politea: Beobachtungen zu den mittleren Büchern. Sankt Augustin. Taylor, C. C. W. 1967. “Plato and the Mathematicians: An Examination of Professor Hare’s Views.” PhilosQ 17: 193–203. ———. 1969. “Forms as Causes.” Mind 78: 45–59. Vlastos, G. 1969. “Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo.” PhR 78: 291–325. (Reprinted in G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies, second edition [Princeton, 1973], 76–110) Wieland, W. 1982. Platon und die Formen des Wissens. Göttingen. Zeyl, D. J., trans. 1997. “Timaeus.” In Cooper 1997, 1224–91.

Notes

I should like to thank David Robinson for discussion of many of the issues touched on in this chapter. 1. The abstract noun kalokagathia, the adjective kalokagathos, and the adjectives kalos (k)agathos (fine-and-good), paired as a hendiadys are found a few times in the Hippocratic Corpus and the fifth-century authors Aristophanes, Antiphon the Sophist, Lysias, Andocides, Isaeus, Herodo- tus, and Thucydides, but are considerably more frequent in the fourth-century authors Isocrates, Xenophon, and Aristotle. There are, however, dozens of instances in Plato’s dialogues, which may be part of his conscious characterization of the period and the circles he was writing about, but may well in addition reflect oral usage he would have encountered in his youth in late fifth-century Athens. An exhaustive explanation of kalokagathia is Bourriot 1995, but better discussion in Classen 1959, 138–50. A starting point for resolving the claimed tension between kalos and agathos which comes to the fore in Callicles’ argumentation in Plato’s Gorgias is Hobbs 2000. 306 Helios

2. A decade ago, Goldhill produced three studies on the gaze and performance that have a bearing on the passages from Plato’s early dialogues discussed in this section: Goldhill 1998; Goldhill and von Reden 1999; Goldhill 2002, esp. 80–98. Goldhill’s different perception of the tone of Socrates and, on a different level, of Plato leads him to an assessment in many respects different from mine, especially regarding elements of subversiveness in the dialogues; that should not deflect, though, from the many nuanced observations concerning the language of Socrates (and the language of Plato) and its role in the structure of argumentation at every level which Goldhill, through imaginative comparisons, teases out of the Socratic texts by Plato and Xenophon, for our purposes especially in relation to the Charmides, the Lysis, and the story of Leontius in the Republic. 3. This striking notion is taken up in the Phaedrus (251A6), and through widespread reception of the Phaedrus, but to some extent also through direct reception of the Charmides, found its way into Greek novelistic literature of the Roman Empire. See Morales 2004, esp. 50–68; Repath 2007; Ni-Mheallaigh 2007 on the Phaedrus and the mind. 4. Cf. Plato, Resp. 336D5–7. 5. There are interesting parallels in this respect in some of the philosophical passages in the Augustan poetry of Virgil and Horace. 6. For a different aspect of the relation between vision and beauty in the Phaedrus, see § II below. 7. None of this is straightforward. Even if the late reports of Critias’s stay in Thessaly (88 A1 DK = Philostratus, VS 1.16) have a historical foundation, it is not clear in what capacity Critias would have been there. Nor is the one alleged fragment of Critias’s ‘Thessalian Constitution’ (88 B31 DK = Athenaeus 14.662F) sufficient to allow us to draw any firm conclusions regarding the content and tendency of the whole. What is said about the way of life of the Thessalians, out of context as it is, is potentially damning. If this reading is correct, the irony lies in the fact that Cri- tias, who criticizes the Thessalians for their friendship with the Persians, inflicted even greater atrocities not just on other Greeks, but on his fellow Athenians. 8. See, e.g., Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 7.1–11, esp. 7.6, 1148a4–11; from the point of view of a different type of psychology, akrasia amounts to ‘weakness of will.’ 9. Socrates had made this connection explicitly in the Charmides passage (see below), and the Charmides as a whole is about the mind much more than about the body. 10. The common verb for ‘knowing’ (oida, eidenai) shares the Indo-European root *u̯ id- with the common aorist for ‘seeing’ (eidon, idesthai), and in the nouns eidos and idea; in the sense of ‘knowing’, this root is also found in Germanic languages, e.g., English ‘wit’; in the sense ‘seeing,’ e.g., in Latin video, videre. While etymological efforts in Greece in the Classical period were altogether impressionistic, as demonstrated in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, Greek poets have always been sensitive to the sounds of words, and thus we find collocations of similar sounding words of different stems but derived from the same root from the Iliad onwards. In the present context, though, the degree of etymological awareness in fifth- and fourth-century Greece is irrelevant.S ‘ eeing’ metaphors in the realm of cognition draw on a wide range of words for ‘seeing,’ ‘viewing,’ and ‘gazing,’ irrespective of their etymologies and irrespective of the sound of these words. 11. Lycaon’s response to Achilles (Il. 21.108–9) happens to be the first passage cited in Goldhill 1998. 12. My point here is not whether to translate phresin with ‘heart’ or with ‘mind.’ 13. The parallel ‘stripping of the soul’ in the myth of Plato’s Gorgias cannot be discussed here; see, though, Cairns 2012, 153 with note 19. 14. For present purposes, see first and foremost Classen 1959, esp. Chapter 4, “Metaphern des Sehens für geistige Vorgänge als Grundlage für Gleichnisse” (Visual Metaphors for Mental Pro- Herrmann—Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s Thought 307 cesses as Starting Points for Similes), 43–71; besides Goldhill and von Reden cited in note 2 above, see Riedweg 1987, Pender 2000, Schefer 2001, Nightingale 2004; also Szlezák 2003, 23–38. 15. See Nightingale 2004, 83–6. 16. On one level, it could be argued, the introduction of the verb theasthai, the verb cognate to theôria (spectacle), just serves to disambiguate between mental vision and physical perception; cf. Phaedo 66E, 111A. 17. For a detailed analysis of the language of viewing in the Republic, see Nightingale 2004, 94–138. 18. This should be read in the wider context of Republic 514A1–519A7. 19. E.g., Johansen 2004, 29–47, 64–8. 20. For a recent sensible account of the Timaeus, see Johansen 2004, esp. 22–3, 66–8, 198–200. 21. This seems to be the view of Nightingale 2004, 179–80; cf. Sedley 1999. 22. Johansen 2004, 66–8; cf. 91. The three quotations, though, cannot do justice to the differentiated nature of Johansen’s explication; see also 198–200, which may or may not be intended to suggest, in a veiled way, that the author has not spelled out everything he was thinking about this issue at hand. 23. A notable exception is Cross 1952, 31: “It has to be remembered, perhaps at times with regret, that Plato has an affection for the material mode of speech, and for existential propositions. If we ourselves are to understand his meaning, we must discount these to some extent, though to what extent is a difficult point.” See also Herrmann 2003, 66–75. 24. E.g., Hackforth 1936. 25. E.g., Rowe 2007, 263–4. 26. Gadamer 1974, 247, referring to Cornford 1937; see also Herrmann 2007a. 27. Two apparently independent analyses along these lines are those by Gadamer 1974 and Rowe 2007, 255–65; of the two, only Gadamer attempts the further question of what follows for the various individual items of Timaeus’s account other than the Demiurge. The comparative material necessary for a sufficient treatment of the issue, however, is also provided by Nightingale 2004, 168–80. 28. The reader of the Timaeus is prepared for the subject of mathematics by the opening words of the dialogue: “One, two, three: . . .” Within the Timaeus, this is then immediately followed by “But where have we got the fourth . . .?,” a question that has given rise to all manner of speculation as to the identity of that person, who may have been a real dialectically capable philosopher, who could have explained everything to everybody’s satisfaction. But before the educated reader reaches this second clause, he is aware that the first words of the dialogue Timaeus, “One, two, three,” are at the same time an allusion to Republic 522C, the beginning of the passage relevant for an assessment of the character of Timaeus, where arithmetic is defined as “understanding the one and the two and the three.” 29. See Gadamer 1974, 246. 30. See Huffman 2005, 84. 31. These are the concepts discussed in Plato’s Parmenides and Sophist. 32. Cf. Cross 1952, esp. 27; pace Bluck 1954 and Hare 1965; indirect support for Cross in Taylor 1967, esp. 202–3, with interesting parallels, concerning contingent facts, to Gadamer 1974; cf. also Vlastos 1969, 91–2 note 44; Taylor 1969; Irwin 1995, 376 note 35. 33. See Wieland 1982, 223; cf. also Gadamer 1974, 268 and Herrmann 2007b, 222–5.

‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’: The Power of Ritual Viewing and Ritual Framing in Eleusis*

Georgia Petridou

o[lbio~ o}~ tavd j o[pwpen ejpicqonivwn ajnqrwvpwn: o}~ d j ajtelh;~ iJerw`n, o{~ t j a[mmoro~, ou[ poq j oJmoivwn ai\san e[cei fqivmenov~ per uJpo; zovfw/ eujrwventi. Hom. Hymn. Cer. 480–2

o[lbio~ o{sti~ ijdw;n kei`n j ei\s j uJpo; cqovn j: oi\de me;n bivou teleutavn, oi\den de; diovsdoton ajrcavn. Pindar, fr. 121 Bowra

wJ~ trisovlbioi keivnoi brotw`n, oi} tau`ta dercqevnte~ tevlh movlws j ej~ Ἅidou: toi`sde ga;r movnoi~ ejkei` zh`n e[sti, toi`~ d j a[lloisi pavnt j e[cein kakav. Sophocles, fr. 837 Pearson-Radt

“Blessed is he, who has seen these, among the mortal men who live on earth; but he who is not initiated in the sacred rites, who has had no share in them, he does not have a lot of similar things when he is dead under the vast darkness,” says the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. These lines have traditionally been interpreted as referring to the spectacles offered to the initiates in the course of the secret initiation of the megavla musthvria of Eleusis, often referred to as telethv by our sources.1 Analogous emphasis on the visual aspect of the spectacle is also given by several other sources, which are conventionally taken to refer to the secret initiation ceremony of the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis: Sophocles, fr. 837 Pearson- Radt (“Thrice-blessed among the mortals are those who having seen these sacred rites enter Hades: for them alone there is life, but for the others all is evil”); and Pindar, fr. 121 Bowra (“Blessed is he who having seen these things has gone under the earth; he knows the end of life; but he also knows the god-given beginning”).2 None of these or any other of our sources gives us a detailed and reliable account of what the muvstai saw or, as a matter of fact, how the things seen conferred this

HELIOS, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 309 310 Helios sense of blessedness, and in what ways this blessedness eased the pain (or was it the fear?) of entering the chambers of Hades, and made the after-death existence endurable. Scholarly speculation on the nature of the things seen (and undoubtedly heard too) by the initiates is abundant.3 A collage of textual evidence (consist- ing primarily of testimonies from late Christian and, therefore biased, authors) and iconographical evidence (not necessarily any less ambiguous) has been constructed and reconstructed in almost every possible way; and yet no account can be privileged without the essential leap of faith. Although a summary of some of the most learned reconstructions will be given here, the primary focus of the present essay is not so much on the nature of the things seen, as on the possible ways they were perceived by the initiates and the culturally defined scopic regimes that informed that perception.4

Vision, Visuality, and “Ritually-Centred Visuality”

A particular focus of this paper will be to introduce, and test the efficacy of, some recent and some more or less well-established developments in the disciplines of art history and visual culture in the study of the mysteric cults in general, and the study of the initiatory process (telethv) in the musthvria of Eleusis in particular. Effectively, I argue that, when studying the sources that speak of the process of mystic initiation in Eleusis, more may be gained if we shift our focus from the idea of unqualified and unmediated visual experience (vision) onto the cultural construct that mediates between the eye of the beholder and the things seen (visuality). The point of this exercise is to show that even if we could actually look at what happened within the telesthvrion, it is quite unlikely that we would be able to see what the initiates saw, as it is extremely difficult to reconstruct with any certainty the complex nexus of sociopolitical and cultural discourses that shaped their gaze, their ways of viewing. Furthermore, I examine Jaś Elsner’s notion of “ritual-centred visuality,” not as a possible conceptual framework for understanding the gaze of the pilgrim in the Imperial era, but for considering how ritual framing allows the muvstai in the Eleusinian telesthvrion to see sacred visions beyond the constraints of secular visuality. What exactly is “ritual-centred visuality”? Elsner (2007, 25) defines as follows:

This ritual-centred visuality may be defined in many ways—as the putting aside of the normal identity and the acquisition of a temporary cult-generated identity, or as the surrendering of individuality to a more collective form of subjectivity constructed and controlled by the sacred site, or as the provision of a deity as a vessel into which individual pilgrims can pour their devotions and aspira- tions. But its positive definition (which is always open to contestation, depend- Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 311

ing on how much of an insider’s or an outsider’s view one takes) is less important than what this kind of visuality negates. . . . It constructs a ritual barrier to the identification and objectification of a screen of discourse and posits a possibility for sacred vision, which is by definition more significant since it opens the viewer to confronting his or her god.5

This concept of “ritual-centred” or “ritual-sensitive” visuality is in harmony with the deep-seated Greek belief in a special sort of visual ability that can only be provided by the divine, usually in a highly charged spatiotemporal context of mortal-immortal communication such as that of sanctuary or sacred festival.6 It is this much sought after god-sent and god-controlled vision that the initiates were given access to in the course of the initiatory process; it was these divinely inspired spectacles, restricted to a few privileged, which the muvstai took a solemn oath not to reveal to uninitiated (Gagné 2007). Notwithstanding the difficulty in determining the precise nature of what the muvstai saw, I have embraced the idea that divine epiphany must have taken place at some climactic point in the secret ceremony— an idea that has been put forward by many students of Eleusis, such as Walter Burkert, Kevin Clinton, George Mylonas, and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood—and argue further that the initiates experienced visions of Demeter and Korê, the two principal deities in Eleusis, in the form of visually assimilated members of the priestly personnel. It is knowledge and power that they earn from this experience: the knowledge of what is in store for them in the afterlife, and the power that comes from being allowed to view and being viewed by the divine. This essay is not simply an attempt to introduce the so-called pictorial turn in an area of research that has been primarily dominated by the ‘linguistic turn’ (note here the prevailing metaphor of ‘reading’ the iconographical along with the textual evidence).7 Rather, I endeavor to respond to the emphasis laid by our primary evidence on the notions of ‘spectacle’ and ‘experience’ of the mysteric initiation in Eleusis,8 while simultaneously being aware of the problematics and dynamics of different models of spectatorship and visuality—this awareness being the fruit of the pioneering work of scholars who have worked on ancient visuality, such as Elsner, Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Simon Goldhill, Helen Morales, Verity Platt, and Ian Rutherford.9 Before advancing my argument any further, I need to examine briefly what is meant by ‘visuality,’ as opposed to ‘vision,’ and why I think being constantly aware of this antithesis may prove to be a useful heuristic tool in our quest for things seen in both the secret and the public segment of the Mysteries of Eleusis and their perception by the initiates. Norman Bryson, one of the leading art historians, has defined the difference between vision and visuality in the context of naturalistic art as follows: 312 Helios

When I look, what I see is not simply light but intelligible form . . . For human beings collectively to orchestrate their visual experience together it is required that each submit his or her retinal experience to the socially agreed description(s) of an intelligible world. Vision is socialized, and therefore deviation from this social construction of visual reality can be measured and named, as hallucination, misconception, or ‘visual disturbance’. Between the subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses which make up visuality. (Bryson 1988, 91; my emphases)

‘Cultural specific visuality’ and ‘culturally inflected visual practices’ have displaced the notion of vision in an array of different scientific disciplines.10 At the risk of oversimplifying a sophisticated and interdisciplinary dialogue that started with philosophy, psychology, and the visual arts—and has in the last twenty five years or so been grafted onto the historical research of the viewing processes in the fields of classics and ancient history—one may venture to say that the greatest benefit of this dialogue is the questioning of the unfounded belief in the universality of visual experience and the understanding of the ways culture informs both our perceptual and our conceptual cognition. As an example let us take the male Athenian citizen of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, who was actively participating in ta; koinav. His gaze, his scopic regimes, would have been nuanced (undoubtedly in complex ways) by his presence and participation in the dikasthvrion, the ejkklhsiva, and the qevatron—the three trademark institutions of Athenian democracy.11 But, most importantly, as Gold- hill (1996) has convincingly argued, the very act of viewing public debate and decision-making (the Athenians are called qeatai; lovgwn in Thucydides 3.38), along with the act of viewing the glory of the polis in the course of eye-capturing religious festivals, like the ejn a[stei dionuvsia and their complementary theatrical productions (a spectacle par excellence), constitute acts of active participation in the Athenian political practice. Similarly, the gaze of the female Athenian spectator may have been shaped in analogously intricate and hard to account for ways, not of course through their participation in public affairs, but through their active involvement partly in exclusively female festivals and ritual spectacles (such as the qesmofovria), and partly in festivities and ritual displays common to both sexes.12 However, it is of great significance that the Greek word “for official participatory attendance as spectator in the political and religious rites of the state” (Goldhill 2006, 6) is qewriva,13 preferably translated as ‘contemplative viewing’ or ‘meditative spectatorship.’14 In a sense, then, qewriva was a model of spectatorship common to both sexes. More importantly, it was also common to non-Athenian Greek-speaking spectators, who would be thronging to visit and visually contemplate the great Panhellenic sanctuaries, such as that of Eleusis, during the specific dates defined as Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 313 sacred by the city’s calendar. One can also consider that since initiation into the cult of the two goddesses was open to men, women, Athenians, foreigners, and even slaves, the question of unified visuality arose naturally: How was it possible to lead all these viewers (with their diverse gender, sociopolitical, cultural, and even diverse ethnic identity and, thus, diverse visuality) to see the same things? Were there any means or processes of unifying or homogenizing such varied scopic regimes? This is a question to which I shall return in due course. When considering the complexity and the subtlety with which sociopolitical and cultural contexts define the gaze of their subjects in classical Athens and beyond, one must not forget that the connection between the realms of knowledge and viewing is built into the Greek language and culture (cf. ijdei`nÉeijdevnai and ei\donÉoi\da), and how, as we saw above, it was a commonplace that visual data were, generally speaking, more trustworthy than auditory data.15 Nonetheless, it is possible that this reliance on the powers of perceptual cognition would have been severely challenged by the current philosophical debate on the mechanics (as pio- neered, e.g., by Democritus’s ei[dwla, the little images an object of viewing sends to the eye) and the accuracy of vision in particular and the validity of sensual data in general (as exemplified in the writings of Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Heraclitus, Plato, and Protagoras, among others).16 This debate was not limited to the circles of the philosophers.I n a number of contemporary theatrical plays, physical vision and, consequently, the power to acquire information with one’s eyes are compared to, and quite often are judged as inferior to, another kind of intellectual or mental vision: tuflo;~ tav t j w\ta tovn te nou`n tav t j o[mmat j ei\ (You are blind in ears, in mind, in eyes), Sophocles’ visually capable Oedipus taunts the blind Teiresias (OT 371).17 Teiresias replies (esp. in lines 407–28) by reproaching his king, whose physical sight fails him in compre- hending the fatal web of errors that has been built all around him: su; kai; devdorka~ kouj blevpei~ i{n j ei\ kakou`, É oujd j e[nqa naivei~, oujd j o{twn oijkei`~ mevta (You may be able to see, but you cannot see the calamity that has befallen you; neither can you see where you live, nor who you live with, OT 413–4). Elsewhere, physical blindness is paralleled to lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, madness, and even intellectual darkness and death. One may think here of the triptych of mental darkness (madness), actual darkness (blindness), and intellectual darkness (ignorance) as one of the basic underlying ideas in Sophocles’ Ajax.18 The whole play, but especially the superb opening scene (1–133) with Athena as the prologivzwn qeov~, demonstrates with sinister sincerity that, in the Greek conceptual universe, clear and impartial vision in particular, and sensory perception in general, are the privileges of the gods. Whether we think of Athena as onstage or offstage at this point, what we have here is an unparalleled piece of stagecraft, with bloodshed, and a deranged Ajax not being 314 Helios able to see the sensible and orderly Odysseus, who in turn cannot see the, in all likelihood, invisible goddess. Ajax, on the other hand, whose perceptual cognition has been controlled by Athena, salutes the goddess, as if he was able to see her, but cannot see his human adversary, who stands next to him.19 This piece of stagecraft creates a mental and visual focus on the partial vision and knowledge of the mortals, versus the complete and impartial vision and knowledge of the immortal.20 Only the gods and a limited number of those dear to the gods, who are often called qeofilei`~, can see clearly. Athena allows Odysseus, her protégé, to see, but distorts the visual capacity of his enemy, whilst, in the process of doing so, she offers the play’s viewers a spectacle they will never forget. Gods control sight and it is up to them to bestow or to withdraw it. This is an idea that goes back to Homer. For example, Athena raises the mist (ajcluv~) from the eyes of Diomedes and allows him to perform his ajristeiva (Il. 5.115ff.).21 The goddess removes the mist that prevents him from distinguishing between mortal and immortal fighters: o[fr j eu\ gignwvskh/~ hjme;n qeo;n hjde; kai; a[ndra. Note here that Athena uses gignwvskein, not ijdei`n. The gods can regulate both conceptual and perceptual cognition in humans by, among other things, casting or raising a thick mist before their eyes. The results range from slight misconception—Poseidon pours mist before Achilles’ eyes, so that the latter can no longer discern Aeneas any more (aujtivka tw`/ me;n e[peita kat j ojfqalmw`n ceven ajclu;n, Il. 20.321)—to complete distortion and deception with rather dramatic consequences, as in Hector’s case, who, deceived by Athena, expects to see his brother Deiphobus coming to his aid, but soon realizes his folly and meets his death (Il. 22.294). True and clear sight, then, can only be granted by the gods either when they choose to manifest themselves out of their own volition, or when humans invoke their presence in a ritualized context. It is those mortal men who have seen the spectacles of the secret ceremony at Eleusis that become blessed, as stated in the first of our three epigraphs; and a couple of lines further on we read that the truly blessed (mevg j o[lbio~) is he whom the two goddesses love most earnestly (profronevw~ fivlwntai, Hom. Hymn. Cer. 483–4). Participation in the sacred rites opens up a channel of intimate communication with the divine, which in the Iliadic world is a given for the heroes; by contrast, in the mundane world of the everyday man or woman, such a path of close interaction with the divine is only accessible through ritual and otherwise unattainable. Simultaneously, participation in the sacred rites opens up divine vistas that have the power to grant blessedness to their spectators, perhaps allowing them to see the gods as they really are: both very similar and very different to them. It is with the privilege of allowing him to see sights restricted to the initiated and their o[nhsi~ (benefits, advantage) that Dionysus lures Pentheus to his per- verted initiation and effectively to his own death.22 Like Oedipus earlier on, Pen- Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 315 theus is able to see, but somehow his eyesight betrays him. Essentially, his error lies in mistaking sacred spectacles for secular ones, as Justina Gregory (1985, 27) has argued. Both Pentheus and the Chorus of Dionysus’s devotees are looking at the same things, but end up seeing completely different things. The vision of the unbe- liever is contrasted with the vision of the believer. The scopic regime of the religious outsider is contrasted with that of the ritually minded insider. Nowhere is this more apparent than the palace miracle scene: the sacred spectacle of thunder and lightning around Semele’s tomb (589) is interpreted, on the one hand, by the ritually minded Chorus as signs of divine epiphany, while Pentheus, blind to the divine nature of the Stranger, thinks that this is a casual case of arson (624–6). Similarly, the pious Chorus looks at an earthquake, but sees signs of Dionysus’s divine presence (591ff.), while Pentheus does not even acknowledge the physical damage. Later on, when the Stranger comes back onstage to calm the terror- and awe-stricken Chorus and to tell of all that happened in the prison-like stables of the Theban king, Pentheus is confronted with various epiphanies of the protean god. First he sees a bull (618), which he mistakes for his prisoner god, and tries, most unsuccessfully, to put back in chains. Later on, as soon as he rushes into the court, he is confronted with a favsma (630),23 another of Bromius’s prolific illusionary creations. Throughout Pentheus’s psychosomatic ordeal, the god’s priest, or rather the disguised god, has been standing nearby calmly observing the Theban prince’s physical and mental effort to ‘grasp’—literally and metaphorically—the divine essence of the being he is confronted with. Pentheus looks at Dionysus, but he sees an imposter. In lines 501–2 the mortal asks the immortal: “And where is he, then, that god of yours, eh?” The god answers: “Here by my side, but you can’t even see him.”24 What the young Pentheus lacks is the knowledge to distinguish between secular and sacred vision; what his viewing lacks is the appropriate ritual framing. What Pentheus’s vision lacks is essentially what Elsner (2007, 25) calls “ritual- centered visuality”; this allows the viewer to put aside his normal identity and temporarily acquire a new cult-generated identity one whose aim is to undermine a culturally engendered secular visuality, and to prepare, usually through a process of physical and mental purification, the self for the possibility of a meeting with the divine. To be sure, by using Elsner’s ritual-centered visuality to refer to the ritual- sensitive viewing and framing that allows the viewer to see the divine in the conceptual framework of mystery cult, we are taking it out of its original context—its conceptual birth place being the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and the scopic regimes of the pilgrim Pausanias in his periegetic travelling and of Lucian’s viewer in Dea Syria (Elsner 2007, 1–26). But, as I will show in the next few pages, there is scope for introducing the same concept in the study of material that comes from much earlier times and is essentially related to the sacred sights seen by the 316 Helios muvstai and the members of the priestly personnel in the course of the initiatory process at Eleusis.

Ritual Viewing and Ritual Framing in Eleusis

Controlling sight and the interplay between vision and blindness seemed to have been of paramount importance in the course of initiation to some of the best attested mystery cults of the ancient world, e.g., the mysteries of Eleusis and the Kabeiric Mysteries of Samothrace.25 At least this is what the evidence from key terminology attested in these two mystery cults suggests. Compare here the following terms: (1) muvsth~ (from muvw) is the one who closes his eyes or his lips (that is, the one who is ritually blindfolded or keeps ritual silence), as opposed to (2) ejpovpth~, the one who sees;26 and (3) ta; iJerav (the sacred objects), which were shown to the initiates by (4) the iJerofavnth~, whose task is ta; iJera; faivnein, that is, revealing the sacred objects (or, possibly, making the divine beings appear).27 Finally, the very word musthvria means the festival of the muvstai, that is, of those who have their eyes closed or walk around blindfolded led by the mustagwgoiv.28 Regardless of the obvious differences in terminology, one may be correct in claiming that the passage from ritual blindness to ritual sight, the transformation from being a muvsth~ (being sightless and blind to true knowledge) into being an ejpovpth~ (that is, an insightful and sensitive viewer), was the basic conceptual framework for a number of other cults of the Greco-Roman world, such as the mysteries of Dionysus (e.g., at Athens), the Andanian Mysteries of Messenia, the Mysteries of Hagna at Lycosura, and the Mysteries of Demeter Eleusinia in Phe- neus in Arcadia.29 Here, however, I focus primarily on the power of ritual viewing and framing in allowing the initiates to see in the musthvria of Eleusis. A brief look at the literary sources containing either allusions or extensive references to the visual aspect of the initiatory experience supports this assertion about the centrality of seeing and its lack (whether we call it sightlessness or blindness) in the context of some of the best-known mystery cults of the Greek-speaking world. Dio Chrysostom (12.33–4), for instance, makes references to “mystic spectacles and mystic voices” (polla; me;n oJrw`nta mustika; qeavmata, pollw`n de; ajkouvonta toiouvtwn fwnw`n), and some spectacular “alternation between darkness and light” (skovtou~ te kai; fwto;~ ejnalla;x aujtw`/ fainomevnwn) as being a major part of the initiatory experience.30 In another of his orations (4.90), Dio speaks of “apparitions of great number and various nature” (favsmata polla; kai; poikivla) apparently of a terrifying nature that the goddess Hecate sent to tor- ment those who undergo an initiation or a purification ritual.31 Proclus in his commentary on Plato’s Republic (11; p.108, 17–30 Kroll) also mentions terrifying (visual?) experiences of divine origin (tou;~ me;n tw`n teloumevnwn kataplhvttesqai Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 317 deimavtwn qeivwn plhvrei~ gignomevnou~) as an integral part of the initiatory experience. Analogous references to “holy apparitions” (fasmavtwn aJgiw`n) and “uncut, simple, non-trembling and blessed apparitions” (ojlovklhra de; kai; ajtremh` kai; eujdaivmona favsmata muouvmenoiv te kai; ejpopteuvonte~ ejn aujgh`/ kaqara`/) are also made by Plutarch (fr. 178 = Stobaeus 4.52.49) and Plato (Phdr. 250C), respectively.32 Notwithstanding the ambiguous and often late nature of these literary sources, which also strive to refrain from divulging the secret rites they refer to, they show amply that the juxtaposition between vision and blindness and between light and darkness was of paramount importance in the context of initiation ritual in some of the most well-known mystery cults. More significantly, as Andrea Wilson-Nightingale has very convincingly argued, Plato’s concept of philosophical qewriva (contemplative viewing) is based on the notion of religious qewriva at the festival of the Greater Mysteries at Eleu- sis.33 This is especially evident in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus: the philosopher’s viewing of the Forms is compared to the sacred spectacles of the secret initiation ceremony at Eleusis; termini technici from the Eleusinian cult are used (e.g., Symp. 209E–210A). There is an unmistakable focus on the movement from both literal and metaphorical darkness to both literal and metaphorical light; and, above all, the climactic viewing of the sacred visions carry both salvific and epistemic connotations. Private religious qewriva as a widespread Greek cultural practice involved travelling abroad to a Panhellenic sanctuary to witness an event or to see a spectacle (Rutherford 2001). The journey to the sacred location, along with the physical and mental preparation for it and along with its dangers, pleasures, and difficulties, was as significant as the sacred event or the spectacle that the qewrov~ had set out to witness.34 The theôric journey to a sacred panhvguri~ is essentially a journey to the unknown and the unfamiliar with a distinctively religious and ocularcentric dimension:

Theôria, in short, brings an individual into contact with what is foreign and different: it is an encounter with otherness. In the case of festival theôria, in fact, the theôros not only encounters foreign peoples and places but also interacts with the god who presides over a given festival or shrine (by participating in the sacrifices, prayers, and rituals). Here the theôros approaches the ultimate and most distant ‘Other’, a divine being. (Wilson-Nightingale 2005, 163)

This last observation is extremely important for our purposes, because it shows clearly that the expectation of encountering the ultimate ‘Other’—the deity or the deities that presided over the religious festival or the sanctuary—was embedded within the viewing modality of private qewriva at a festival. Hopes and expectations 318 Helios create focus, and focus creates reality. Effectively, this kind of culturally nuanced visuality of the sacred provides the right conceptual framework for the spectacle to come. Given the explicit eschatological preoccupations of the cult of the two goddesses in Eleusis (at least from the sixth century BCE onwards, if not before), it is likely that the qewroiv to Eleusis expected an encounter with the two goddesses, and perhaps even with other underworld deities, at some climactic point of the initiatory process.35 Besides a direct encounter with the divine in one form or the other was the ultimate goal for some of the best-known mystery cults of the Greek- speaking world.36 A face-to-face encounter with the two goddesses presiding over the Mysteries of Eleusis features on what is often interpreted as the third and climactic scene of the Lovatelli urn (more on this artefact below): Heracles, the exemplary mythic initiate, approaches Demeter, who is seated on a kistê with an advancing Korê right behind her holding a large torch.37 This scene in turn brings to mind the mythological tradition that has Heracles being initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis as part of his psychological and physical preparation for his visit to Hades to steal Cerberus.38 This is what Heracles himself declares proudly to Amphitryon in Euripides’ Heracles (610–3):

Ἀmfitruvwn h\lqe~ ga;r o[ntw~ dwvmat j eij~ Ἅidou, tevknon; Ἡraklh`~ kai; qh`rav g j ej~ fw`~ to;n trivkranon h[gagon. Ἀmfitruvwn mavch/ krathvsa~ h] qea`~ dwrhvmasin; Ἡraklh`~ mavch/: ta; mustw`n d j o[rgi j eujtuvchs j ijdw`n.

Am. Did you really go down to the chambers of Hades, my son? Her. yes, indeed, and I brought back to the light the three-headed beast. Am. Did you defeat him in a fight, or was your victory the gift of the goddess? Her. i n a fight. And I had the good fortune to witness the sacred rites of the mystae.

In another much-quoted extract from a rhetorical exercise of the Hadrianic period, Heracles argues with the dadouchos as follows:39 ajpovkleison th;n Ἐleuseivna kai; to; pu`r to; iJero;n, dadou`ce, . . . musthvria pollw`/ ajlhqevstera memuvhmai . . . th;n Kovrhn ei\don (Lock up Eleusis and the sacred fire, dadouchos. I have experienced far truer mysteries . . . I have seen Korê). Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 319

Both passages imply that the muvstai saw during their initiation what they expected to see after their death, and that these visions may have included visions of underworld deities and especially visions of Persephone or Korê.40 The underlying idea may have been that proper ritual behavior in the course of initiation determines afterlife experience and existence.41 Passages from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (480–2) and Aristophanes’ Frogs (154–7) support the idea that the initiation into the Great Mysteries may have prepared those initiated for the House of Persephone (Persefovneia dwvmata) by means of ritual rehearsal. The following epigram by Antiphilus (Anth. Pal. 9.298) alludes to an initiation into mysteries presided by the two goddesses:42

skivpwn me pro;~ nho;n ajnhvgagen o[nta bevbhlon ouj mou`non teleth`~, ajlla; kai; hjelivou: muvsthn d j ajmfotevrwn me Qeai; qevsan: oi\da d j ejkeivnh/ nukti; kai; ojfqalmw`n nuvkta kaqhravmeno~: ajskivpwn d j eij~ a[stu katevsticon o[rgia Dhou`~ khruvsswn glwvssh~ o[mmasi tranovteron.

My staff led me to the temple, uninitiated as I was, In both the secret ceremony and the light of the sun. The goddesses initiated me into both, and that very night I truly saw Having being purified from the darkness of my eyes. Without my staff I walked down to the city proclaiming the sacred rites Of Demeter more vividly with my eyes rather than my tongue.

Denys Page (Gow and Page 1968, 116) is right in remarking that in this particular epigram: “Great pains have been taken to tell a quite complicated story in about three dozen words.”43 On the night of the speaker’s initiation into the mysteries of the two goddesses (most likely a reference to the Mysteries of Eleusis), he left behind both the actual darkness of his blindness and the metaphorical darkness of his ignorance of the Mysteries; the same night the initiand welcomed both the light of the sun and the light of knowledge. Note here the conspicuous position of the verb oi\da in line 3, which oscillates between the semantic fields of ‘vision’ and ‘knowledge.’44 The cultural metaphor of ‘purification’ has been utilized here in a twofold way: initiation into the mysteries of Demeter and Korê offered the initiate not only purity from the actual darkness of his blindness, but also cleanness from his intellectual and ritual darkness. In this context, mystic enlightenment coincided with, and perhaps even facilitated, the acquisition of his physical vision. Could this image of purified vision be read as a rhetorical trope referring not simply to the new enhanced visual capacity, the new and clear vistas offered by an 320 Helios initiation presided over by the two goddesses themselves, but also to the process of purifying the initiates’ visuality from the secular side of it, the screen of signs from ordinary life, to put it in Elsner’s words? But then again, if indeed the blindness itself is real, and not another metaphor for ordinary human (as opposed to divinely ordered) vision, how are we to imagine the process of shaping the visuality of a blind person? Was a vision of the two deities the first thing he (or is this the testimony of a female initiate?) saw right after he regained his sight, and what did they look like? Interesting questions with no definite answers. Perhaps the most interesting feature in this epigram is that the speaker remains confident that he can proclaim the sacred rites of the goddess better with his eyes than with his tongue! “Seeing comes before words”—that is for sure (Berger 1985, 1). But what we have here is an intentionally ambiguous reference to both the religious prohibitions regarding the secret ceremony (the qewrov~ is not allowed to speak about what he saw), as well as the difficulties of putting the unique visual experience of the secret segment of the mysteries into words (the author of the epigram makes a self-conscious and self-referential comment on the limitations of the linguistic dynamic as opposed to the visual dynamic of the spectacles he saw).45 The word a[rrhta could refer to both the things or experiences that one should not speak about, or the things or experiences that were impossible to speak about. A third possible interpretation of this cryptic statement could be that on his return to the city the speaker’s newly found physical vision would act as the most reliable testimony to his newly acquired permanently illuminated vision through his participation in the mysteries. In this way his cured blindness (if indeed this is a case of physical disability) would be perceived as the most obvious confirmation of the goddesses’ powers and the efficacy of their mysteries. This juxtaposition between the true vision acquired in a mystery initiation and the physical and intellectual blindness of the uninitiated is also prominent in two of the best-known iconographical exempla, which depict initiation ceremonies traditionally discussed in relation to the Mysteries of Eleusis—namely, the Torre Nova sarcophagus and the Lovatelli urn, where the paradigmatic initiate (on the urn it is Heracles) is portrayed as temporarily deprived of his sight while seated on a stool with his head veiled.46 In both cases a priestess approaches the neophyte from behind: on the Lovatelli urn she is holding a livknon (winnowing fan) over his head, while on the sarcophagus she is holding a large burning torch upside down and dangerously close to his hand.47 Both the downturned torches and the winnowing fan symbolize purification, according to Clinton (2003, 59), who reminds us that both these images reflect Eleusinian imagery only “indirectly and impre- cisely.” It is possible that in covering themselves with a veil, the initiates follow the example of Demeter, who in the homonymous Homeric Hymn (lines 194–7) is said to have sat silent and sad on a stool given to her by Iambe while holding her veil Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 321 over her head.48 This short-term sightlessness must have had a profound effect on the initiate’s psyche, who sat there blind, helpless, and frightened, surrendered to the hands of his mustagwgoiv.49 This physical blindness simultaneously symbol- izes the neophyte’s intellectual blindness prior to his initiation and provides him with an essential visual and intellectual vacuum, which prepares him for the new and true vision that will be granted by the deities presiding over the ceremony and their sacred officials. Any spectacle that follows a period of extreme and terrifying sensory deprivation is bound to be perceived as outstanding and, indeed, as liber- ating, but that must have been especially true regarding light, which featured prominently in the secret ceremony and apparently accompanied the appearance of the hierophant to the muvstai in a truly epiphany-like manner.50 Moreover, given the cultural equation of light to life and knowledge and of darkness to ignorance and death (on which see above), this externally imposed temporary blindness may also have been thought of as a kind of symbolic death of the initiate, which will be subsequently negated by his symbolic rebirth.51 We do not know exactly at what point in the ceremony the blindfolds were removed from the initiates’ eyes, but it is not unreasonable to assume that this may have taken place at some point before their entrance to the Anaktoron.52 Physical ability to see and illuminated mystic vision in the course of an initiation into the Mysteries of Demeter may also be closely connected in the case of a marble votive plaque found in the area of the Eleusinian Telestêrion (Fig. 1).53 It depicts a pair of eyes with the nose and eyebrows and is accompanied by the following inscription: Dhvmhtri Eujkravth~ (Eucrates [dedicates] to Demeter). One could say that this votive relief resembles those found in the famous healing sanctuaries,54 if it were not for the remarkably beautiful image of a radiant Demeter with red rays springing out from her head, her hair, and her neck, and attached to the top of the plaque. This striking artefact is unique in having the paint almost intact on its surface of white marble. We can even see the red paint on the right eye, the lips, and the eyes of the goddess. Her hair, on the other hand, is painted in a red-brown color. The flat area that surrounds the nose and the eyes in the lower part of the relief must have also been painted in a bright red-orange color. This vision of a light-emanating Demeter may very well allude to what Eucrates saw in the Telestêrion.55 Demeter was perceived in a similar way, as emitting light and radiance that are compared to those of lightning, by Metaneira in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (lines 189–90); and then again in lines 277–9:

. . . th`le de; fevggo~ ajpo; croo;~ ajqanavtoio lavmpe qea`~, xanqai; de; kovmai katenhvnoqen w[mou~, aujgh`~ d j ejplhvsqh pukino;~ dovmo~ ajsteroph`~ w{~. 322 Helios

Fig. 1 Marble votive plaque found in the area of the Eleusinian Telestêrion depicting a radiant Demeter (after Clinton 1992, 90, Fig. 78)

. . . and a radiance shone afar from the immortal Body of the goddess; fair locks bestrewed her shoulders, And the well-built house was filled with radiance That resembled that of lightning.

In the extract from the Homeric Hymn the luminosity (fevggo~) comes from the body and hair of the goddess, not from anything she wears (clothes, jewelry, etc.). These lines could almost be read as a commentary on Eucrates’ relief, where once again the main source of the vibrant glow (expressed artistically by both the painted rays and the vibrant color used) is the body of the goddess not her acces- Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 323 sories. Alternatively, this Demeter imbued with light may have been Eucrates’ very first sight after his blindness was cured, hence the similarities with the healingex votos. The connection between the Antiphilus epigram and the Eucrates relief is an easy one to make: they both seem to pose the same sort of questions; and they both paint the image of cured physical blindness as being the structural counterpart of cured intellectual and ritual blindness. Although it is possible that this votive pair of eyes commemorated Eucrates’ recovery from blindness in the course of his initiation or even independently, an equally plausible reading of the artefact would be to take it as an ex voto com- memorating his initiation into the mysteries of the two goddesses. Both alterna- tives point in the same direction: the dedicant of this striking artefact saw Demeter in the form of a beautiful woman enfolded in light at some climactic point during the secret ceremony. His votive relief has captured beautifully a unique moment of visual intensity, when the mortal viewed the immortal, and commemorated it for both the eyes of the goddesses who preside in the sanctuary, and the eyes of the other qewroiv who would visit Eleusis in the future.56 Folkert T. Van Straten (1981, 122) has suggested that Eucrates dedicated the artifact to the goddess to commem- orate not his recovered o[rasi~, but his attaining of ejpopteiva, which is essentially an intensified visual experience. An even more interesting reading of the artifact would be to take it as illustrating not the moment that the initiate sees the deity, but the moment the initiate was viewed by the deity, and thus as portraying Demeter’s intense and commanding gaze. Whichever interpretation one adopts, the Eucrates relief seems to be a powerful testament to the centrality and intensity of the ocularcentric processes that informed the initiate’s experience at Eleusis. If there is, however, one artifact that exemplifies the reciprocal gaze between human and god, it would be the votive relief of Fig. 2. It was found by John Travlos in a series of excavations north of the Olympieion at Athens and published for the first time by Eugene Vanderpool in 1960. Found face-down in the area of one of the fourth-century CE houses, the artifact is dated by Evelyn Harrison (1965, 95) on the basis of its stylistic details as early Antonine.57 Despite its late date, this artefact is extremely useful to us, because it copies fifth-century BCE models and contains the only positively identified portrait of an Attic iJerofavnth~ that has survived so far.58 It is also of interest that the relief was made to order, was delivered to the house of the hierophant, but, for unknown reasons, never quite made it to a sanctuary of the two goddesses. It never met the eyes of either the two deities or the eyes of the other qewroiv. The inscription at the bottom of the relief reads: Qesmofovroisi Qeai`~: Ἁgnouvsio~ Ἱerofavnth~ (To the Thesmophorois Goddesses [this is dedicated] by the hierophant from the deme of Hagnous).59 The hierophant of our relief is a man of mature age clothed in his elaborate ceremonial outfit (stolhv, skeuhv, or ejsqhv~) 324 Helios

Fig. 2 Attic votive relief with a iJerofavnth~ from Hagnous (after Vanderpool 1960, 268, Fig. 17) and hairstyle; he appears to be directly confronting, and perhaps even conversing with, the two deities.60 Nevertheless, it is not clear whether the encounter is meant to take place in this life or in the afterlife, or perhaps in both, especially if we assume that the whole initiation ceremony was meant to prepare the participants for what they would have to face in the other world. Of the divine duo, the deity closest to the mortal is Korê, who usually looks like a youthful version of her mother Demeter. Demeter, on the other hand, is depicted enthroned on the far left of the relief. The modern viewer of the scene is constantly under the impression that if the seated goddess were to stand up, she would no longer be comfortably accommodated by the boundaries of the schematic naiskos. Her head would touch the roof quite likely in the way that Demeter’s head reached the rafters when she first stepped onto Metaneira’s threshold (Hom. Hymn. Cer. 188–9). Surprisingly enough, the human figure of the hierophant is only slightly smaller than the two divine ones. The iconographic norm in this sort of representation of mortals encountering the divine is that the human figures are usually of a much smaller scale. Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 325

We may compare the much smaller votaries depicted on the Triptolemus relief (Fig. 3). In this votive relief from Eleusis (dated to c. second half of the fourth century BCE), Demeter is also portrayed in her usual maternal attire, as an older— albeit heavier both physically and in terms of her clothing—version of the more youthful Persephone, who stands on the far left holding two large torches.61 The two goddesses are simultaneously separated and linked by Triptolemus, who is enthroned on his winged snake-driven chariot and possibly holds ears of corn in his hands. This image does not necessarily mean that the three deities central to the iJero;~ lovgo~ of Eleusis were viewed by the initiates in that order or in that same attire, but it does give us a reasonable idea of how they were visually conceptualized by their votaries and perhaps even how they were imagined as presiding over their initiation ceremony. The goddess Demeter stands closest to a group of worshippers on a much smaller scale, depicted on the far right of the relief. Due to the fragmentary state of the goddess’s head, it is hard to determine with any certainty whether the goddess engages with the worshippers’ gaze. Judging from the remains of her neck, however, I would be inclined to agree with Van Straten (1993, 252), who thinks that Demeter does not address the presence of the votaries and is meant to look aloof. This notion of aloofness is further intensified by the uneven distribution of space in the schematic naiskos: the three larger-than-life divine figures occupy two-thirds of the surface of the relief, leaving the mortal figures to make a token appearance in the remaining space. They seem to be mostly interested in each other (Korê is looking at Triptolemus and Demeter’s gaze is most likely meeting that of Triptole- mus), wrapped up in a world of their own, quite distinct from the human votaries. George Mylonas (1961) may be right in arguing that monuments like that depicting initiands in the presence of the goddess(es) are quite common from the fourth century BCE onwards, and that we should ‘read’ them with caution: not so much as depicting an initiation but more as a mémoire of the initiands’ pilgrimage to Eleusis or even as “a devotional act of worship.” But the differences between the Triptolemus relief and that of the hierophant from Hagnous are remarkable. The size of the hierophant, who is portrayed as being almost as big as the two deities, so unlike the miniscule votaries of the second relief, is only the most obvious. The most arresting difference is undoubtedly the superbly illustrated reciprocity between the gaze of the mortal and the immortal. If one were to draw a straight line starting from the eyes of the enthroned Demeter, the line would surely meet with the eyes of the standing hierophant. It seems as if both sides have made a conscious effort for this meeting to happen: the goddess has sat down to reduce her size and to line up her optical path with that of the hierophant, while the human devotee seems equally devoted to this supreme privileged moment of viewing the 326 Helios

Fig. 3 Votive relief from Eleusis depicting Persephone, Triptolemus, and Demeter in the presence of worshippers divine. This reciprocal process of viewing is so unlike the atmosphere in the Trip- tolemus relief, where the divine figures appear to be disconnected from their human votaries wrapped up in their own world. When looking at the relief from the Athenian Olympieion, one is constantly under the impression that one has been granted the same kind of privilege of looking at the two goddesses. Essen- tially, the external viewer of the relief has acquired along with the internal viewer an insider’s visuality. He or she is able to see Demeter and Korê as they are seen by both the members of the priestly personnel and the initiates. On the other hand, the onlooker of the Triptolemus relief is offered more of an outsider’s view of the divine. In my mind, the hierophant relief provides the clearest illustration of what ritual-sensitive visuality can offer to both the devotee and the deity honored:

[I]n ritual-centered viewing, the grounds for a direct relationship have been prepared. The viewer enters a sacred space, a special place set apart from ordinary life, in which the god dwells. In this liminal site, the viewer enters the god’s world and likewise the deity intrudes directly into the viewer’s world in a highly ritualized context. The reciprocal gaze of this visuality is a kind of epiphanic fulfillment both of the viewer-pilgrim, who discovers his or her deepest identity Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 327

in the presence of the god, and of the god himself, who receives the offerings and worship appropriate to his divinity in the process of pilgrimage rites. (Elsner 2007, 24)

Of course, we must remember that the hierophant of our relief is not a simple initiate; he is a sacred official who must have served the two deities for many years and perhaps anticipates a special treatment after he has left the world of the living behind. The fact that the priest from the deme of Hagnous is portrayed as being almost as big as Demeter and Korê may simply be an iconographical expression of his elevated ritual status. I wonder whether the same could be said about the fact that he appears to be directly confronting the divine. The hierophant from Hag- nous has been granted the privilege of divinely-ordered vision; he has been allowed to view, and to be viewed by, the two goddesses. Then again, it is likewise possible that the female figures represented here are not the goddesses, but members of the priestly personnel who are made to look like the deities they serve—hence the unusual spectatorial intimacy between the hierophant and the two female figures, who could portray two female members of the priestly personnel, such as the two hierophantides (one was the hierophantid of Demeter and the other of Korê, who were known as iJerovfanti~ th`~ presbutevra~ and iJerovfanti~ th`~ newtevra~.62 However, as I will argue in the next section, the ritual practice of visually assimilating a member of the priestly personnel to the deity they served is a well-established cultic practice in the Greek-speaking world, and thus the demarcation line between the actual deities and their priestesses acting as such would have been much harder to draw in the eyes of the participants in the secret segment of the sacred rites of the two goddesses. It is the power of ritual viewing and ritual framing that allows the initiates to see beyond their (certainly beyond our) culturally imposed identifi- cations and restrictions.

The Power of “Ritual-Centered Visuality”

When thinking of the two hierophantides as possible candidates for the ritual impersonation of the two goddesses, I follow Clinton’s (2004, 88–90) suggestion that the two aforementioned sacred officials played Demeter and Korê in the course of a dravma mustikovn, which some of our sources mention as having a piv- otal role in the Eleusinian initiation process. To be sure, some of our late sources attest to a dramatic representation of the sacred myth of the cult which was meant to be viewed by the muvstai.63 The phrase dravma mustikovn is usually translated as ‘secret drama’; but perhaps more appropriate would be a more literal rendering such as ‘dramatic performance appropriate for the muvstai.’ Clement of Alexandria, in particular, tells us that the two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, were the 328 Helios subject matter of this dravma mustikovn, and by way of elucidation he adds, “And Eleusis celebrates with torches the wanderings, the abduction of the daughter, and the sorrow of the mother.”64 There are several theoretical reconstructions of the exact nature of the mythical events dramatized for the eyes of the muvstai, but, essentially, they can be summarized as follows: We can either assume with scholars like Nicholas J. Richardson that Demeter’s sufferings were simply narrated to the initiates at some stage during the sacred rites, and that even if there was some sort of reenactment of the mythical events, it would have been more of a formal and symbolic nature;65 or we can look at other students of the Eleusinian musthvria, like Burkert, Clinton, Mylonas, and Sourvinou-Inwood, who maintain that the reenactment of the divine sufferings was of a mimetic nature, and that both priestly personnel and initiates participated in that mimetic ritual. There is, of course, also the view of scholars like Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1931–1932, 473–4), who think of Clement’s reference to the dravma mustikovn as purely metaphorical. That the initiates must have viewed a reenactment of some aspects of iJero;~ lovgo~ of Eleusis, and perhaps even actively participated in it, seems to be supported by the sources, which place extra emphasis on the role of the priestesses of Demeter and Korê in the acting out of the sacred myth of the abduction of Per sephone, Demeter’s quest for her daughter, and their final joyous reunion. Tertullian, in particular, reports that the priestess of Demeter was abducted during the sacred reenactment.66 This (admittedly late) source, then, makes it possible, if not probable, that Demeter’s priestess reenacted the sufferings of the goddess. The problem is, Which goddess? From all we know, it was not Demeter who was abducted, but Korê. Mylonas (1961, 310) made a reasonable and yet problematic suggestion: the priestess of Demeter was carried off while impersonating Persephone. Claude Bérard also thinks that the priestess impersonated Korê in her climactic epiphany and maintains that such an apparition would perfectly suit the Platonic description of the initiates’ experiences as eujdaivmona favsmata (blessed apparitions).67 But if the priestess of Demeter impersonated both the mother and the daughter, it would not have been possible, as Clinton (1992, 131) and Sourvinou-Inwood (2003, 29) have rightly objected, to have the climactic scene of their reunion reenacted. More plausible solutions include the iJerovfanti~ of Demeter playing the goddess and Demeter’s priestess impersonating Korê, or, as Clinton (1992, 131) has suggested and as mentioned above, both goddesses being impersonated by their iJerofavntide~. The truth is that the lateness, the fragmentary state, and the cryptic character of our sources do not allow us to rise above the level of speculation. Nonetheless, Sourvinou-Inwood (2003, 40) is right in claiming that emotional involvement with the ritual and the deities was a sine qua non in the process of creating the strong emotional experiences of the muvstai and perhaps even the ejpovptai. The minimum Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 329 that can be established from the above discussion is that Demeter and Korê’s divine epiphanies were part of the sacred drama of Eleusis. We can only speculate about which of the sacred officials performed which part.68 The question is, What made the initiates ready to believe that they were encountering two deities instead of two of their fellow human beings? The easy way out is to claim that the representational strategy, whereby a human being is assimilated to the god or his statue as his facsimile and the living embodiment of his power, is attested in both Greek art and cult from Archaic times onwards. In a number of cults the members of the priestly personnel were intentionally made to resemble the deity’s most popular anthropomorphic image, and enacted the part of the deity on festive occasions.69 This view was further supported through the innovative work of scholars like Joan Connelly and Jeremy Tanner, who showed how throughout the Greek-speaking world this blurring of boundaries between the god and his human body is most clearly reflected in the prerequisites for becoming a priest or a priestess of a deity. The ritual practice of visually assimilating a priest or priestess to the deity he or she served is also recog- nizable in cases where a deity manifests herself or himself in the likeness of a member of her or his priestly personnel in the context of a theatrical play. Aeschylus, for instance, had Hera appearing on stage disguised as her own priestess;70 and, as seen before, Euripides made his Dionysus manifest, in the eyes of both the characters and the audience, in the likeness of his priest.71 Furthermore, in iconography this close visual link of the deity with her or his ritual servant is often denoted by portraying the latter as the mortal look-alike of the former.72 There is something missing, however, in this sort of interpretation. We are still not fully answering the question of why initiates would be ready to believe they were confronting the divine when all that stood before them was yet another human being. How were these performers different from the performers they may have seen in the theater? While it is important to acknowledge the longevity and the cardinality of the cultural topos of recognizing a deity in a member of the priestly personnel in a festive context, it does not answer the question, “How could the initiates look at mortals and see immortals?” A far more interesting question to ask would be, “How could they not?” How could they not see the two goddesses, when the quest of encountering the divine is firmly embedded in the very notion of a spectatorial model of private religious qewriva (see previous section)? How could they not see the two goddesses and probably other deities related to the iJero;~ lovgo~ of Eleusis, when in all likelihood they had been psychologically precondi- tioned from their early childhood for this kind of viewing by looking at artifacts with an Eleusinian thematography, and by listening to stories about the spectacles of Eleusis and the punishment of those who tried to divulge its secrets?73 How could they not have encountered the divine when they had been preparing for this 330 Helios spectacle at least since the fourteenth of Boêdromion (the initiation would have taken place on the night of the twentieth)—if not much earlier, from the month of Anthestêrion when the Little Mysteries at Agrae would have taken place? How could they not have laid eyes on Demeter and Korê, when they would have participated in the spectacular procession to Eleusis with joyful Iacchus leading the way; when they would have fasted for a day and prepared themselves through kaqarmoiv, and purified their visual filters from the mundane visuality of the ordinary with ritually imposed blindness; when they would have entered the complex of sacred buildings in Eleusis with its unique architecture, specifically designed for purposes of viewing, with its numerous inscriptions, epigrams, and votive offerings (such those of Eucrates and the hierophant from Hagnous) which commemorated previously attested visions of the divine?74 Finally, how could they not have encountered the divine when they would have laid eyes on the hierophant and the torchbearer’s elaborate and visually arresting costumes, which were apparently very similar to the ones used in the theater; when they would have witnessed the dazzling light, both in the form of fire and the torches held by the ejpovptai?75 These are only some of the conditions and factors that would have nuanced the initiates’ visuality, would have provided the essential ritual framing, and unified their diverse (due to their different gender, ethnic and political identities, socioeco- nomic status, etc.) scopic regimes. These regimes, in turn, would have produced what we called earlier on “ritual-centred visuality” or “ritual-sensitive” visuality (which is essentially an insider’s visuality) and would have enabled them to encounter the divine in Eleusis. In their majority, these visuality-shaping factors, these culturally determined conditions, are either at best partly known or at worst completely lost to us, who are trying to see what the initiates saw with the eyes of an outsider. It goes without saying that this list is by no means all exhaustive; it cannot be otherwise. After all, it is a list made by an outsider.

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Notes

*I am indebted to the editors of this volume for organizing the conference at which a version of this paper was first presented and for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the printed version. I am also grateful to P. R. Scade and R. A. S. Seaford for reading the manuscript and suggesting several useful improvements. I would also like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and Philip van der Eijk for their generous financial support. All mistakes are, of course, my own. 1. On the names of the different initiatory steps in Eleusis, see Dowden 1980 and Clinton 2003 and 2007. 2. See, e.g., Clinton 2007, 72 and Wilson-Nightingale 2005, 175. 3. The emphasis on the visual rather than the auditory aspect of the secret segment of the musthvria of Eleusis is partly determined by the subject matter of this volume, and partly by the emphasis that Greeks as a culture laid on the value of autopsy and the superiority of visually obtained data. Cf. here Herodotus’s much-quoted formulation (1.7.2): w\ta . . . tugcavnei ajnqrwvpoisi ejovnta ajpistotevra ojfqalmw`n. Similar ideas are found in Heraclitus B 101a DK; Aeschylus, Pers. 266; Sophocles, OT 6; Euripides, Supp. 684. 4. I have borrowed the term from Jay 1993, but I am using it to denote ‘a way of seeing.’ 5. On visuality in general, see Jay 1988, Bryson 1988, Warwick and Cavallaro 1998, and Harris and Fairchild Ruggles 2007. 6. More on this in Mylonopoulos 2006 and below. 7. On the “pictorial turn” as opposed to the “linguistic turn,” see Mitchell 1987 and 1995 and Elsner 1998. 8. Spectacle: the three passages quoted and discussed on the opening page above are certainly telling, but quite a few more of those will also be discussed shortly; cf. Aristotle, fr. 15; Plutarch, Mor. 47A, 943C with Burkert 1987, 89–95, 109–10, 113–4 and Sourvinou-Inwood 2003, 40. 9. See the entries in the Works Cited. 10. More on these fundamental theoretical issues in Jay’s introductory chapter in Brennan and Jay 1996. 11. Godhill 1996, 18–20. On the dangers of over-politicizing qewriva, see Wilson-Nightingale 2005, 158–9, esp. note 15. 12. It is a matter of debate whether any female viewers were admitted to the theater of classical times. See, e.g., Henderson 1997, Goldhill 1997, and Katz 1998 with primary and secondary bibliography. 13. I will shortly return to this term, for qewriva at Panhellenic religious festivals is central to our discussion of the visual aspect of the secret segment of the musthvria of Eleusis. 14. On pilgrimage in the Greco-Roman world, see Rutherford 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001; Graf 2002; the introductory chapter in Coleman and Elsner 2003; Wilson-Nightingale 2004, chapters 3–4, and 2005; Elsner and Rutherford 2005; Scullion 2005. 15. Gregory 1985, 27. More on ocularcentric Greek literature and culture in Morales 2004, 8–9, with more examples from primary sources and secondary bibliography. 16. More on vision and viewing in Plato and the Presocratics in Hermann, this volume. 17. Cf. Buxton 1980 and Cairns 2009. 18. On Ajax and veiling, see Cairns 1993, 228ff.; 2001; 2006. 19. See the discussion in Garvie 1998 and Hesk 2003 ad loc., with bibliography; cf. also Pucci 1994, 22–3. 20. Athena’s brief but decisive interaction with Ajax can be read as a miniature theatrical pro- Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 337 duction (a mini-play within our play) which has turned the deluded hero into the main spectacle and Odysseus into the internal spectator. Having ended her little play, the goddess invites Odys- seus to comment on what he has just seen, introducing her question unsurprisingly enough with a verb that denotes not only vision but also knowledge—for now finally Odysseus is offered the clear, divine view of the events that preceded the opening of our drama: oJra`/~, Ὀdusseu`, th;n qew`n ijscu;n o{shÉ (Do you see, Odysseus, the greatness of the strength of the gods?, 118). Athena has opened her protégé’s eyes not only to a vista of true and utter horror, but a complex nexus of limited human perceptual and conceptual cognition and divine determinism. Surprisingly enough, Odysseus does not exult at the sight of his deluded enemy, for he expresses nothing but pity (121–6), and he says that he thinks of himself when he looks at the pitiable spectacle of Ajax having dealt with Athena’s distortion of his visual capacity. This statement may indeed suggest that he now envisages himself not only as a possible victim of the vengeance of the gods, but also as spectacle for a spectator or an audience with larger vision and therefore knowledge than his own. Falkner (1994, 36) rightly argues that this produces a domino effect for the audience who may start thinking that they themselves may be watched by another spectator or audience with larger vision and therefore knowledge than their own: “That sudden self-consciousness we may have in the process of watching a dramatic representation: our awareness that other spectators are doing what we are doing, and with it the fear that we may ourselves be characters in another story . . . and so on in a kind of infinite regress.” 21. When invoking Athena, the hero is careful to emphasize his patrimonial qeofiliva. The goddess offered his father Tydeus constant assistance and protection on the battlefield, and, therefore, she is obliged to provide his son support and friendship. On the notion of qeofiliva, see Dirlmeier 1935 and Konstan 1995. 22. Euripides, Bacch. 472–4. On viewing in the Bacchae see Scott 1975, Seaford 1981 and 1998, Gregory 1985, Graf 1993, Lada-Richards 1999, Cole 2003, and Thumiger in this volume. 23. The reading favsma is not certain in our text. It is Jacob’s conjecture, adopted by Murray and Diggle, which makes sense in terms of both meter and content, and is supported by a passage from Suda (s.v. Mevlan), where Dionysus appears to the daughters of Eleuther as a favsma holding a black shield. The young women failed to recognize the divinity of the god’s favsma and were driven mad. The oracle advised their father to initiate the cult of Dionysus with the black shield as the antidote to their mental affliction. Contrast Seaford 1994, who adopts the reading in L and P and gives fw`~, although, as he maintains in one of his earlier papers (1981, 259), both the Diony- siac and the Eleusinian mysteries were associated with favsmata. More on favsma in Petridou (2007, 55–61). On the similarities between the Dionysiac and the Eleusinian mysteries, see Seaford 1981. Clinton (2007), most surprisingly, thinks that we cannot refer to the Dionysiac cults as mysteries, despite the fact that, at least in my mind, they fit perfectly his definition of mystery cult. Cf. Clinton 2003, 55: “A mystery cult (1) presupposes mystai . . . , (2) normally requires that they undergo a death-like experience or at least an experience of suffering, and (3) holds a promise of prosperity in this life and usually also in the afterlife.” 24. Dodds 1960, 140: “Vision demands not only an objective condition—the god’s presence— but a subjective one—the percipient must himself be in a state of grace.” 25. Nock 1941 and Clinton 2003. 26. More on the terminology of the stages of initiation in literary and inscriptional evidence in Dowden 1980 and Clinton 2003. 27. Clinton 2004, 85. 28. Clinton 1992, 86. 29. Graf 2003 with bibliography; cf. also Jost 2003 and Clinton 2004 and 2007. 338 Helios

30. It is unclear which mysteries Dio has in mind. It is possible that the reference is to the Mysteries of Eleusis, since he compares his more grandiose initiation of the whole human race into the musthvria of the cosmos with the smaller scale initiation that took place in the small building the Athenians built (Telestêrion?) for the reception of a small number of initiates (34). Contrast Edmonds 2006, 348–9, who quotes and comments on the whole passage, but, strangely enough, omits the reference to the Athenians. The ritual seating (qronismov~) of the initiate mentioned in the same passage is attested for the Corybantic rites by Plato, Euthphr. 277D, while it has also been conjectured for the Kabeiric mysteries in Samothrace by Nock 1941, 577–8. A form of ‘enthrone- ment’ (albeit functionally and structurally different) is also attested as a constituent ritual element in Eleusis, as argued by Burkert 1983, 268–9; Lada-Richards 1999, 249; and others. For recent informative discussion on the terms of qrovnwsi~ and qronismov~ and their meaning in the different cultic contexts, see Edmonds 2006. 31. Once again there is no clear indication exactly to which cultic context Dio refers. More on Dio and viewing the sacred in Betz 2004. Some commentators have suspected certain Platonic influences here. 32. Plato repeatedly uses the language of vision and visuality to refer to the Philosopher’s quest for knowledge; cf. Plato, Phdr. 244E. On the use of mystery terminology in Plato, see Linforth 1946, de Vries 1973, Riedweg 1987, Morgan 1990, Wilson-Nightingale 2005, Evans 2006, Herr mann in this volume. 33. Wilson-Nightingale 2005, 173–80; see esp. 177: “Just as initiation at Eleusis transformed the individual so that he would achieve salvation in the afterworld, the initiation of the philo- sophic theôros, Plato claims, purifies and transforms the soul and guarantees it a blessed destiny. Plato’s philosopher, then, has much in common with the initiate at the Mysteries: in both cases, the theôros ‘sees’ a divine revelation that transforms his soul”; cf. 2004, 14–22. 34. On the dangers of the theôric journey, see Rutherford 1995. On qewriva and pilgrimage, their similarities and differences as cultural practices, see in general Rutherford 2000 and 2001; Graf 2002, in which he reviews Dillon 1997; Elsner and Rutherford’s introduction in their 2005 volume; Scullion 2005. On the mental and physical preparatory regimes and its consequences on the visuality of the qewrov~, see Petsalis-Diomidis 2005. 35. Sourvinou-Inwood (1983, 45–8, followed by Cole 2003, 193ff.) rightly notes that in the world of the polis—unlike that of epic—death ceases to be a public affair; it becomes more of a private matter and the anxiety that surrounds it seems to have been intensified. Cf. also Parker 1981 and 2005, 354–5; Albinus 2000; Sourvinou-Inwood 2003, 40; 1981; 1983; 1995. 36. Cf. Burkert 1987, 90: “In religious terms, mysteries provide an immediate encounter with the divine”; and Graf 2003, 255: “But to prepare for and be allowed direct contact with a divinity is a function of most mystery cults.” On the morphology of the divine in mysteric cult context, see Petridou 2007, 212–22. 37. Burkert 1983, 94, Fig. 4. 38. Cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.25 with Mylonas 1961, 205–6 and Richardson 1974, 211–3. 39. P Milan. (1937), no. 20, pp. 176–7. 40. Other narratives—such as a passage from Plato’s Phaedo (69C) and Proclus’s commentary on the Republic (In R., vol. 2, p. 108, 17–30 Kroll) mentioned above—also contain allusions to the idea of the initiand being in the presence of the gods during their initiation as part of the preparation for their after-death encounter with the gods of the underworld. None of these, however, can be identified with any certainty as alluding to the Mysteries of Eleusis. Contrast Clinton 2003, 55, who thinks that the hJmi`n in the Phaedo narrative “can, to an Athenian audience, hardly not refer to the Eleusinian Mysteria.” Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 339

41. More on this in other mystic cults, and esp. Bacchic initiation, in Seaford 1996, 318–26 and 1997. 42. GP 39; see also Clinton 1992, 86 note 127. On viewing in the Greek Anthology, see Squire in this volume; on viewing the body of the goddess, see Haynes also in this volume. 43. Gow and Page 1968, 116. 44. Cf. the use of oi\da in Pindar, fr. 121 Bowra, the second of my epigraphs. 45. On the difficulty of putting a religious experience into words, see the excellent study by Pernot 2006. 46. On Heracles as an archetypical initiate along with the Dioscuri, see Xenophon, Hell. 6.3.2–6. 47. Torre Nova Sarcophagus: Bianchi 1976, no. 47 (= Lexicon Iconographicorum Mythologiae Classicae, Ceres 146). Lovatelli urn with veiled initiate: Bianchi 1976, no. 50 (= Lexicon Icono- graphicorum Mythologiae Classicae, Ceres 145). Cf. Burkert 1987, Figs. 2–4. 48. Cf. Burkert 1983, 268. On veiling and its profound consequences on the human psyche, see Cairns 2009. 49. More on this in Cairns 2009, 53–4. 50. Sensory deprivation and visions: Ustinova 2009. Outstanding light or fire in Eleusis: IG II2, 3811.1–2 (= Clinton 2005, no. 637.1–2): w\ muvstai, tovte m j ei[det j ajnaktovrou ejk profanevnta É nuxi;n ejn ajrgennai`~; Plutarch, De prof. virt. 10: oJ d j ejnto;~ genovmeno~ kai; fw`~ ijdw`n oi|on ajnaktovrwn ajnoigomevnwn; Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.40 .Cf. also Clinton 2004, 95–6 and Seaford 2005. 51. Eliade 1968. 52. Clinton 1992, 86 and 2003, 50. 53. Dimensions: height 0.192m., width 0.17 m., thickness 0.18 m., now in the National Archae- ological Museum; for the inscription see IG II² 4639 and Clinton 2005, 105 (plate 47) with bibliography. Demeter at Eleusis was not ordinarily a healing deity, but at times the blazing light of the climactic revelation had the power to cure even physical blindness in addition to the ritual blindness of the unitiated, as Clinton (2005, 110) argues. More on ritual blindness in Clinton 1992, 86–90. On Demeter as healing deity see Rubensohn 1895. Demeter’s healing identity and her relationship to Asclepius is a topic I hope to revisit on a future occasion. 54. For a good example of the kind of votive plaques I have in mind, see the bronze plaque with eyes from the Asclepieion of Pergamum in Petsalis-Diomidis 2005, 215, Fig. 12. 55. Clinton 1992, 90. 56. On the visual dynamic of votive offerings in sanctuaries, see Petsalis-Diomidis 2005, 187–8 and Mylonopoulos 2006, 87. 57. The exact location of its discovery is indicated on Travlos’s plan of area in Vanderpool 1960, 265. 58. Fifth-century BCE models: Vanderpool 1960, 268; Attic hierophant: Clinton 1974, 32. 59. Clinton 1974, 32: “The name is the hieronymous form of the name of a hierophant from Hagnous, with the demotic placed metri causa in front of the name of the hierophant instead of aft e r it .” 60. More on literary and iconographical evidence on the costume of the hierophant and the dadouch in Clinton 1974, 197. 61. Now in the Eleusis Museum Inventory, no. 5061. Cf. Süsserott 1938, 123f., plate 25.1; Mylo- nas 1961, 195, Fig. 74; Peschlow-Bindokat 1972, 152; Schwarz 1987, 201, Fig. 32. 62. Clinton 1974, 86. The exact title of the hierophantid of Demeter does not appear in the literary sources, but by the law of analogy it should read as above. 63. E.g., Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 39.4: “Nor have we any abduction of some maiden nor does 340 Helios

Demeter wander, nor brings in addition [ejpeisavgei] Keleous and Triptolemous and Dragons, and some she does while others she suffers [ta; me;n poiei`, ta; de; pavscei]; Lactantius, Div. Inst. Epit. 23: his etiam Cereris simile mysterium est, in quo facibus accensis per noctem Proserpina inqui- tur et ea inventua ritus omnis gratulatione et taedarum iactatione finitur; Apollodorus FGrHist 244 F 110b: ejpei; oJ tou` calkou` h\co~ oijkei`o~ toi`~ katoicomevnoi~. fhsi;n Ἀpollovdwro~ Ἀqhvnhsi to;n iJerofavnthn th`~ Kovrh~ ejpikaloumevnh~ ejpikrouvein to; legovmenon hjcei`on. kai; para; Lavkwsi, basilevw~ ajpoqanovnto~, eijwvqasi krouvein levbhta. Sourvinou-Inwood (2003) offers a most informative discussion of these sources and a very plausible reconstruction of the spectacles the muvstai saw. For other very different, but equally learned reconstructions, see Clinton 1992, and with some differences Clinton 2004 and 2007. Burkert (1983, 287 note 63) lays extra emphasis on the fact that the majority of our sources for the violation of the mysteries in 415 BCE refer to a mock performance, not simply imitation. These sources not only testify to the performative character of Greek festive ritual, but also probably point towards a mimetic ritual taking place at some climactic point in the ceremony. Mylonas (1961, 260–312) offers an extremely respectful and sensible view on what Clement’s dravma mustikovn, and remains an imperative reading. 64. Clement, Protr. 2.12: Dhw; de; kai;; Kovrh dra`ma h[dh ejgenevsqhn mustikovn, kai; th;n aJrpagh;n kai; th;n plavnhn kai; to; pevnqo~ aujtai`~ Ἐleusi;~ dadoucei`. 65. Richardson 1974, 24–5. This view is based on a passage from Isocrates, Panygericus (4.28), where we are told about Demeter’s gifts to the Athenians. These are gifts “of which only the initiated may hear” (a}~ oujc oi|on t j a[lloi~ h] toi`~ memuhmevnoi~ ajkouvein). The fact that the orator refers to things that only those initiated could hear does not necessarily mean that the muvstai were only listening to sacred words spoken. Isocrates simply makes a self-reference and reminds his initiated listeners why he does not go into depth about the mysteries; so he would not commit sacrilege by revealing anything to the non-initiates. He only speaks of listening because this is the only possible danger he faces: revealing the mysteries by uttering something inappropriate. 66. Tertullian, Ad nat. 2.7: cur rapitur sacerdos Caereris, si non tale Caeres passa est? 67. Bérard 1974, 97; Plato, Phdr. 250C. 68. In Clinton’s (2003, 88–90) most intricate reconstruction, every sacred official has a different role: the two hierophantides would be impersonating the two goddesses, the hierophant would play the role of Triptolemus, and the dadouch would impersonate Eubouleus. It is quite surprising, however, that the most prestigious eponymous priestess of both Demeter and Korê has been left aside and is given no part. 69. Connelly 2007, 105–15. On “enacted epiphanies” in general, that is, on the representational practice whereby a human being is visually assimilated to a god or a goddess and is perceived as his facsimile and/or the living embodiment of her or his power in a cultic context, see Petridou 2007, 31–9. For iconographical parallels of the visual assimilation of the deity and their cult statue, see Van Straten 1995, Figs. 4, 13, 111. 70. Aeschylus, fr. 168 Radt (= Plato, Resp. 381D) attributed to his Cavntriai. Cf. also the Schol. ad Aristophanes, Ran. 1344 (v. 16f.); Plato, Resp. 381D; Pausanias 8.6.6. 71. Euripides, Bacch. 465ff. Cf. also Callimachus 6.42–4 Pfeiffer: Callimachus’s Demeter takes on the likeness of her priestess Nicippe in order to warn and chastise Dryops in the homonymous hymn. 72. Cf., e.g., the sacrificial scene from the black-figure kalpis by the Nikoxenos Painter, pres- ently lost and known to us from a drawing, which can be seen in Kroll 1982, Fig. 11a and Shapiro 1989, Fig. 10c. Athena is dressed just like her priestess and attends a sacrifice in her honor while seated on a diphros holding a phialê. The helmet in her left hand, the spear that lies next to her, and Petridou—‘Blessed Is He, Who Has Seen’ 341 the large snake crawling in her feet differentiate the divine figure from her mortal facsimile. Athena reciprocates the sacrificial offer by manifesting herself. 73. More in Gagné 2009. 74. On the visual dynamic of the architecture of a sanctuary and its votive offerings, see Petsalis-Diomidis 2005. On the visual dynamic of the Telestêrion, see Clinton 2004 and 2007. 75. Athenaeus 1.21E. The ceremonial costume of the hierophant from Hagnous (Fig. 2) provides a good illustration of Athenaeus’s point, with the possible exception of his boots, which do not look like the ones worn by actors. More on this in Clinton 1974, 33.

Notes on Contributors

Sue Blundell is an independent scholar who formerly taught classical studies at the Open University and at Birbeck, University of London, and architectural history at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She has written a number of books and articles about women in the ancient world and their visual representations, including Women of Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA, 1995). Her most recent published work is “Greek Art and the Grand Tour” in T. Smith and D. Plantzos, eds., A Companion to Greek Art (London, 2012).

Douglas Cairns was appointed to the Chair of Classics at the University of Edin- burgh in 2003. He is the author of Aidôs: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford, 1993), Bacchylides: Five Epinician Odes (Cambridge, 2010), and Sophocles: Antigone (London–New Delhi–New York–Sydney, 2014), and has edited or co-edited a number of volumes on Greek literature, thought, and society. He is currently working on the role of metaphor in ancient Greek concepts of emotion.

Melissa Haynes is Lecturer in Classics at Princeton University and recently held an ACLS New Faculty Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research focuses on the intersection between text and material objects, as well as gendered representation and the aesthetics of ancient sexuality. In addition to forthcoming articles on statues in Ovid and Babrius, she is working on the nineteenth-century reception of the Venus de Milo as an anatomical body. Her current book project, Figures of Desire: The Poetics of the Statue in Imperial Litera- ture, examines the literary representation of the statue in imperial texts as an exploration of anthropomorphism, materiality, and personification.

Fritz-Gregor Herrmann is Reader in Ancient Philosophy and Literature at Swan- sea University. He is the author of Words and Ideas: The Roots of Plato’s Philosophy (Swansea, 2007) and articles and chapters on Greek philosophy and literature. He has edited New Essays on Plato: Language and Thought in Fourth-Century Greek Philosophy (Swansea 2006), and edited, with D. Cairns and T. Penner, Pursuing the Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic (Edinburgh, 2007) and, with P. Destrée, Plato and the Poets (Leiden, 2011). His current research interests include Aeschylus, the political psychology of fifth- and fourth-century Greece (from Thucydides to Plato), and philosophical aspects of the Greek novel.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh. He has published five books, co-authored two other books, and edited and co-edited volumes on women’s clothes and dress in the ancient world. He is currently writing a monograph called King and Court in Ancient Persia for Edin- burgh University Press, as well as working on a sourcebook of Greek texts and images of ancient Persia for Routledge, and editing a volume on ancient history in popular culture for Blackwells.

Helen Lovatt is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She has published The Epic Gaze: Vision, Gender and Narrative in Ancient Epic (Cambridge, 2013) and Statius and Epic Games (Cambridge, 2005) and has edited, with Caroline Vout, Epic Visions (Cambridge, 2013) on visual readings and receptions of epic, as well as various articles on Greek and Latin literature and their reception. She is currently editing Oxford Readings in Flavian Epic (with Antony Augoustakis), and writing a cultural history of the Argonautic myth.

Georgia Petridou is Research Fellow in the Programme “Medicine of Mind, Phi- losophy of the Body—Discourses of Health and Well-Being in the Ancient World,” at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Her project is entitled “Medicine and Mysti- cism in Aelius Aristeides’ Sacred Tales.” She has forthcoming from Oxford Univer- sity Press a book, Theoi Epiphaneis: Contextualising and Conceptualising Epiphanic Narratives in Greek Literature and Culture, and from Brill’s Religions of the Graeco- Roman World Epiphany: Encountering the Divine in the Ancient World (coedited with V. J. Platter). She is currently working on a book entitled Patient: Religions, Medicine, and Rhetoric in Aelius Aristeides’ Hieroi Logoi.

Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College. Author of Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women (Ithaca and London, 1993) and Greek Tragedy (Malden, MA, 2008), she has edited, with Amy Richlin, Feminist Theory and the Classics (London, 1993) and, with Lisa Auanger, Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World (Aus- tin, 2002). She is one of the co-editors and translators of Women on The Edge: Four Plays by Euripides (New York, 1999). In progress are articles and collections, one on teaching difficult subjects in the classics classroom and one on ancient sex and gender.

Ian Ruffell is Lecturer in Classics in the School of Humanities, University of Glasgow. He is the author of Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible (Oxford, 2011). He works closely with his colleague Costas Panayotakis in working on popular comedy in a way that bridges Greek and Notes on Contributors 345

Roman, classical and modern. His work on Greek tragedy includes Aeschylus, Pro- metheus Bound (London, 2012) and forthcoming work on tragedy as a genre in the light of the theory and practice of radical democracy. He has also published on Roman comedy and Roman satire and popular verse.

Michael Squire is Lecturer in Classical Greek Art at King’s College, London. His books include Panorama of the Classical World (with Nigel Spivey) (second edition, London, 2008), Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 2009), The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae (Oxford, 2011), and The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy (Oxford, 2011). He was elected to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for the academic year 2012–2013, where he is com- pleting a book on Philostratus’s Imagines (co-authored with Jaś Elsner), and editing a volume on “Sight” for Acumen’s The Senses in Antiquity series.

Deborah Steiner is the Jay Professor of Greek at Columbia University. She is the author of books on Pindar, myths of writing in early Greece, the place of statues in the archaic and classical imagination, and of a Cambridge commentary on Odyssey 17 and 18. Many of her articles treat exchanges between poetry and visual culture and she is currently working on choral projection and archetypal choruses in lyric poetry, aligning these with painted images of choreia and the actual sites where choruses performed.

Chiara Thumiger is Research Associate at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, where she works within a project on ancient medicine supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (“Medicine of the Mind, Philosophy of the Body”). Her current research focuses on mental life and mental (in)sanity in fifth- and early fourth-century medical texts. Her previous work has dealt with the representation of character and mental processes in tragedy, in particular Euripides’ Bacchae: Hid- den Paths (London, 2007).