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Home , Oeconomicus, Perictione, Themistoclea, Xanthippe

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71 •. r 4 The. Problem of Women philosophised is remarkahly small. Furthermore. I shall draw attention to nutjor methodological diffrculliesRichard involved Hawley in the study of the literary sources for the lives of these women. A pattern will develop that informs these sources, a patlern of women philosophers as anomalies whose depal1ure fro'." recognised social behaviour requires special explanation. These expla­ Philosophers in Ancient nations oflcn resort to the forniliar conccplUal link bclwcen women and the �orld of the senses, the physical, rather than that of the rational, the Greece· mtellectual. I shall confine my discussion to between the sixth century BC Hawley and the first century AD, thus avoiding Hypatia. The sources for Hypatia Richard are ate and bound up with the complexities involved in the study of any ! _ Chmtian ltterature of the period. As such she deserves to be studied sepa­ rately. Nor shall I discuss the complex and already well-documented case of Oh! There I met those few congenial maids . Instead, I shall turn my attention to 'forgotten' woinen.' . Whom love hath warm'd, in philosophic shades; There still Leontium, on her sage's breast, Found lore and love, was tutor' d and caress' d; VIEWS OF THE MALE PHILOSOPHERS And there the clasp of Pythia's gentle arms ·Repaid the zeal which deified her char!ns. It is possible lha1 lhc fir.s1 .school to have encouraged the study of philoso­ The Attic Master, in Aspasia's eyes, phy by womc was lhat of the Pythagoreans in the mid-sixth century BC. _ � _ Forgot the yoke of less endearing ties, The ph1losopl11cal bmgrapher Diogenes Laerlius (Jhird century ADJ tells us While fair Theano, innocently fair, that they believed Reason, which was the most impo11ant human character­ Wreath'd playfully her Samian's flowing hair, istic, was unaffected by gender.' Indeed the life by Iamblichus Whose soul now fix'd, its transmigrations past, (third lo fourth century AD) ac1ually records 17 women followers of Py­ Found in those arms a resting-place at last; thagoras, whom l)e describes as 'the most illustrious',of perhaps implying that And smiling own'd, whate'er his dreamy thought there were also others.' Croton, where Pythagoras founded his school, he In mystic numbers long had vainly sought, was said to have spoken lo the women specially. At . The One that's fonn'd of Two whom love hath bound, Pytlrngora.c; may also forni lhc st.irting-point for our examination of lhe Is the.bes_! number gods or men e'er found. recurrc111 commonplaces in classical discussions of women philosophers. For he i."i n:porlcd 1 ,_, have st1id I/Ii.JI vinu_c was a rci1lis1ic goal for girls as Thomas Moore, 711e _ well as boys, marned women as well as the elderly. His ,assimilation of Dream of the Blessed /s/a11ds . ·Moore;s romantic presentationGrecian of Greek Girl's women philosophers as 'those few children and married women with lhe elderly, a.s recognisably weak groups, congenial maids' encapsulates more vividly than perhaps he realised some can be panillcJcd el.,;,ewhcreamong male wr-iters: for example in ·, r' of the most prevalent of the images of the woman philoso­ Clement of Alexandria or Minucius Felix.' Pythagoras may believe women pher that I shall examine in this chapter. Firstly these women are 'few', merit inclusion among the philosophers. bul the expr.-ssion of that belief exceptions to the rule of antiquity. Secondly, and typical of the influential implicitly reveal., his acceptance of the common Greek view of women as attitude of that time towards the women of Greek literature, Moore depicts a distinct, separable and weaker group of society. them as charming, gentle, sensual. Their appeal is physical rather than The ascetic lifestyle led by 1he Pythagoreans was the butt of at least two intelleetual; they areeffectively mere appendages to their male mentors. In ancient comedies, by comic writers of the fourth century BC, Cratinus rhe this chapter I wish to explore these images of intellectual women and to Younger and Alexis;' which bore 1hc title IV0111a11 11 place them in their literary and philosophical context. I shall demonstrate The tilles refer le> a woman Pythagorean, 'J,;Jt. this need 1101 imply lhal they depicled a wonwn ac1uallyThe teaching11·/w,Pw!m .orise.r She how the theories of the male philosophers accommodate the possibility of (Pytlwgori�o11.w). female philosophers, while the number of actual cases of women who

70 Richard Ha wley 73

Women in Ancient Sociei ties of the sect wh ich ' own wife, , was not : niay well hare simply followed the curious d etar y recorded as a ph ilosopher. Her attention But a woman purpose in later ph i losophic writings was to highl seem to have been a more common focus of com ic . _ ight the ideal Stoic pa­ a doub le an omal y. tience of her husband . If Socrates cou is still chosen for her comic potential: she is therefore ld tolerate Xanthippe as the most elf studied phi­ difficult of women The biogr aphical tradition records that Pythagoras hi ms (chalepotate) that ha ve been, are or ever will be, he can • Here we enco unter · toler ate anything . Xanthippe therefore becomes an id losophy un der the Delphic priestess, Themistoclea. ealised ex tr eme. the priestess as teacher. But ii is lo the te xts by Pl at o (fou rt h century BC) that we another biographical commonplace: the image of must turn for ' in Pla10 s Sympo­ more direct thought (whether genuinely Socratic or Platon ic) on We natur ally recall Socr ates and Diotima, hi s 'teacher : the ques­ a lite rar y mventmn. tion of women . Bluestone (1987) ha s shown how in sium 208c (four th century BC) . Diotima herself may be past scholarship these easily under stood . As poets could speak te xts ha ve been misunderstood or just ignored. But 's message has at · The story about Pythagoras can be Del ph i could act least clear ou tlines. Essentially, the soul is immater with the divine authority of the Muses , so the priestess of ial, eternal and non­ teacher (whe ther in sexual; on ly our bodies ar e different. The souls of men as the mouthpiece for . By hav ing her as his and women can of her authori ty . Ancie nt eq ually study philosophy. The wise man or woman should try reality or in legend), Pythagoras could partake to separate had to woo dhe rents to body an d so ul, so removing se xual diffe philosophy was often a competitive activ ity: one � rence. For Plato, is 's importance m the story , essential for the acquisition of and ought to s s i de and away from other s. Themistodea be the same for boys and one' _ r priestess , not m her girls." 8111 even Pl ato cannot escape f om the therefore , lies in her role as the authoritati ve De lphic deeply-rooted Greek view of may also· be fell in the tradition (perh up the natural inferiority of women. This ph ysical weakness requires them gender . Apolline connections � to goras the son of Apoll o. to wor k lon ger ac hieve lhe same level . local, perhaps Samian) which actually made Pytha as me n: a woman cannot. for o explain why trad•U n example, ass ume any civic office Pythagoras ' adv cation of monogamy may well � until she is 40, while a man may do so . 12 osophy , for fnendsh 1p at 30. recorded that he had a wife who also studied phil interests withi n a p art ne rship. Once agai n, Nonethe less, we do hear of women connected with Plato's Academy. . theories oft�n advocated common i dictates the form of Fi rstly, there was a trad as with so much of this type of mater al , the philosophy ition that Pl ato's mother, Perictione, was a philoso­ pher. '' But we may explain this as Plato's lf the biography . . terary connation of Diotima many ways an ideal with the metaph The mar riage between Theano and Pythagoras is in ors of midwifery used by his Socrates, whose own mother, n importance, th is is Phaenarete, Pythagorean marriage , for althou gh the wi fe has her ow was said to be a midwife." Pericti one's name is given as that of with Py tha gorean the auth subordinated to the union as a whole in due accord ance or of a later Neopythagorean work, but this on ly I.e lls us that the But I shall discuss Th ean o in more de tail in my next tr dition was alre ady established by the ti me of that later teaching on marriage. � _ work. Secondly, Diogenes Laert section. ,us records two women, Ax iothea and Lasthenia, who were ia is recorded as pu pils of Among the Sophists of the fifth century BC , only Aspas Plato and of his successors. The notoriety of the discussion of the ce ptiona l charac ­ eq ualit a 'woman ' (sophist riu),' but she is altoge ther an ex y of the sexes in Plato's R,·1mblic may account 'ro r. the story that x l terary reasons Axiol ter and I shall not discuss her here. for ther e are co mple i he a was inspired by that work to dress as a man to study · at the make accu rate Academ that dictate her image in the anecdotal traditio n, which y." of th e sophist The appeal assessment of her historical role imposs ible. In the eyes to the male writers of anecdo tal sources'of a strange woman. 9 these were defined dressing as a man , women could ach ieve vi rtue , but even to enter a male world, is of course irresistible. The story 10 be though t of . in tenns of gender . It was not unti l Socra tes that a woman was the male dress is so convincing and conventional in these contexts that it equally capable, by nature , of attaining wisdom. may be an invention. We recall, for example, how much transvestism is a inte res t in . The texis we possess , written by hi s pu pils , re veal Soc rates · source of humou r in the plays of lhe comic playwright of the fifth century i by these the p<>sition of women. But this in_ teresl is treated in d fferent ways BC, . Th is humorous and perhaps titillating notion is another Oeconomi cus , learn­ writers. , for example , in his limits wo men's of our rec urrent pallerns, for Hippa rc hia, the wife of t_he Cynic Crates, is n only 16 ing to domestic duties. Later , Theophras tu s was al so to allow wome also sa id lo ha ve stud ied ph ilosophy in male dress. The Stoic Zeno advo­ gement enough knowledge of letters as was necess ary for house ho ld mana cated one dress for both sexes, but we may again assume that the women {oikqnomia). w were lo assume male dress und 1101 vice versa.17