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The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art Author(S): Jeffrey M The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art Author(s): Jeffrey M. Hurwit Reviewed work(s): Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 35-60 Published by: Archaeological Institute of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024580 . Accessed: 19/11/2011 11:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org The Problem with Dexileos: Heroic and Other Nudities in Greek Art JEFFREYM. HURWIT Abstract some 20,000 hoplites on each side.1The Spartanalli- A study of the well-knownDexileos stele, set above a ance is said to have suffered 1,100 dead (the Spartans cenotaph or heroon built for a young horseman killed in themselves only eight) , while the opposing coalition the Corinthian War in 394/3 B.C.E., leads to an exami- lost 2,800.2 It is to know how of those nation of the and function of in impossible many meaning nudity archaic were and classicalGreek art. Dexileos' and his fallen 2,800 Athenians, but among their number was, clothing a horseman enemy's nakedness defy traditional expectations and so very likely, 20-year-old from the tribe of undermine the notion of "heroic nudity,"a familiar but Akamantisnamed Dexileos.3 flawed explanation for the naked state of ideal males in Months later, after the campaign season ended and Greek art. Rather than dispense with the concept of he- winter fell Athens, Dexileos' ashes and charred roic we should that it is upon nudity completely, recognize just bones were in a wood box with the one among a number of different nudities in Greek art deposited cypress with a number of different roles, some of them contradic- remains of the other casualties from his tribe. This tory. These include a nudity of differentiation, a nudity and nine other coffins (one for each Athenian tribe) of youth, "democraticnudity," a nudity of status or class, lay in state for three days and were then conveyed by and a nudityof vulnerabilityand defeat (pathetic nudity). cart and buried at in a mass in public expense grave (or As the art of other ancient cultures,nudity is a costume in the whose is determined context and polyandreion) Demosion Sema, the state burial significance by subject that lined both sides of the rather than by abstractprinciple.* ground long, wide road leading from the Dipylon Gate to the Academy (one of the three in what was then DEXILEOSAND HIS STELE city's great gymnasia) Athens' most beautiful suburb (fig. 1). All this was In its broad outlines, the story is well known. On done according to what Thucydides calls the patrios a day in early summer, 394 B.C.E., on a coastal plain nomos,the "ancestralcustom."4 Uncustomarily, there where the Nemea Riverflows into the CorinthianGulf, were two monuments commemorating the casualties the Spartans and their allies met a combined force of the battle at the Nemea in the state cemetery, ap- of Boeotians and their allies (Athenians, Argives,Eu- parentlymade in the same workshop,inscribed by the boeans, and Corinthians), turned the Athenian flank, same hand, and presumablyset up in the same pre- and routed them all by nightfall.Fought in the second cinct, at the same time, in 394/3. One was a memo- campaignseason of the CorinthianWar (395-386) , the rial exclusively to the horsemen who had died at the Battle of the Nemea Riverwas at the time the largest Nemea and, a little later that summer, at Koroneia in battle that had ever been fought between Greeks,with Boeotia. This monument was undoubtedly set up by * assis- I have profited from the comments, advice, and strategicadvantage. tance of 3 many people, includingJ. Barringer,J. Boardman, Dexileos came from Thorikos,one of the three trittyesthat M. H.R. Goette, U. Kastner,K Lapatin,C.A. Picon, J. Pollini, made up the tribe of Akamantis;see also Martin 1886, 416; I True, and three anonymous readers for the AJA. am very Bugh 1988, 136. Rhodes and Osborne (2003, 42) believe that to all. C. Hallett's TheRoman Nude grateful (its introductory Dexileos fell not in the big battle of the Nemea (which they on Greek coversome of the same as I do pages nudity ground date to the end of 395/4 B.C.E.)but later (at the beginning of wasnot availableto me until afterthe of this here) completion 394/3), in a skirmishnear Corinth;see also Camp 2001, 137. articlein December2005. 1have tried, nonetheless, to takehis But see Aucello 1964, 31-6. viewsinto account in the notes. 4Thuc. 2.34. See also Clairmont(1983, 11 n. 16), who sug- 1Salmon to 1984, 352. According Xenophon (Hell 4.2.9- gests the ceremony was probablyheld in Pyanopsion (Octo- the and theirallies had 1 700horse- 23) , Spartans 3,500hoplites, ber/November) . The AcademyRoad was almost 1 ,500 m long and the coalitionhad men, and 700 archers slingers; opposing and in places well over 30 m wide. See also Clairmont(1983, and horsemen. to Diodoros 24,000 hoplites 1,550 According 12-15) and Stupperich (1994, 93, 100 n. 3) for the problem Siculus the forces numbered foot sol- (14.83), Spartan 23,000 of dating the origin of the patriosnomos (Clairmont favors a diersand 500 cavalry. Kimoniandate, Stuppericha Kleisthenic). A date ca. 470-460 2Diod.Sic. Xen. Hell 4.3.1. The 14.83; Spartanvictory was, B.C.E.seems the consensus today (see Frangeskou1999). however,only technical; they did not win or pursue a clear 35 AmericanJournal of Archaeology111 (2007) 35-60 36 JEFFREY M. HURWIT [AJA 111 be confident, was a relief showing mounted Athenians battling their foes. But this memorial was not the precinct's official tombstone. The state monument that marked the grave of all those who died at Corinth and Koroneia, hippeis and hoplites alike, stood close by. This was the tomb of "thosewho fell near Corinth"that Pausanias noted as he walked through the Kerameikos.7And it was there, some scholars optimisticallybelieve, that Lysiasdelivered his Epitaphios,a conventional, deco- rous funeral oration glorifyingthe Athenian dead and putting them in the same heroic companyas those who had, once upon a time, repulsed the invasion of the Amazons,aided in the burial of the Seven againstThe- bes, defended the suppliant Herakleidae, and, more recently, defeated the Persians. In fact, all we can say about the date of the Epitaphiosis that it was written sometime during or just after the Corinthian War. It is not even clear whether Lysias,a noncitizen, would have been allowedto give the speech himself.8Still, the polyandreion and state funeral of 394/3 B.C.E.would have been a good place and time to deliver something like it, and to tell the relativesof the dead and the citi- zens of the city for which they had died that: their memorywill never grow old, and their glory is enviedby all men. Those who are mournedas mortal in their nature are praisedas immortalsfor their ex- cellent virtue. They are granted a state funeral, and contests of strength,wisdom, and wealth are held in Fig. 1. Plan, Demosion Sema, Athens (after Clairmont1983, their honor, because those who have died in warare fig. 5). worthyof the same honors as the immortals.9 All that is left of the funerary monument itself is the hippeis themselves in an act of self-promotion (as part of a battle relief showing an unidentified horse- well as political self-defense).5 The part that survivesis man and a hoplite attackinga fallen foe (at least one an elaborate lotus-and-palmetteanthemion, or floral more horse and riderwere originallyshown on the left, crowning ornament, 2.24 m wide, with a plain band though just the tail of the horse survives), with a frag- inscribed with the names of the fallen horsemen; mentary inscription that originally listed all the dead Dexileos' name is listed among the 11 who died "at by tribe (fig. 4).10The qualityof the relief is fine, but Corinth" (figs. 2, 3).6 Below the anthemion, we can the iconographyis boilerplate:the poses of the figures 5 Infran. 21. to the yearsof the CorinthianWar, and suggestsLysias might 6AthensNM 754;Tod 1948, no. 104;Clairmont 1983, 212- have written it for another to deliver.Connor (1966, 9-10) 14, no. 68b; Bugh 1988, 13-37; Spence 1993, 219; Boardman and Dover (1968, 193), like most scholars today,accept the 1995, 115, fig. 121;Kaltsas 2002, 158-59, no. 312;Rhodes and authenticityof the oration,andTodd (2000, 25-7), assuming Osborne 2003, 40-3, no. 7a. The inscriptionis complete, so (as others do) that the metic Lysiaswas prohibited from deliv- apparentlythe losses suffered by the Athenian cavalryat the ering the oration himself, suggestshe wrote it as a rhetorical Nemea- and in the entire campaignseason of 394 B.C.E. (a exercise. Thucydides (2.34) does not specificallysay that an 12th horseman is listed as having fallen at Koroneia)- were Athenian citizen must give the funeral oration, only that the not particularlysevere. See Rhodes and Osborne (2003, 42), oratormust be a man noted for his wisdomand reputation.
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