Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece Edi

H e l io s
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 his: 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 humiger
Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in old Comedy 247

Ian Rufell
IV. Enlightenment
Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s hought 281

Fritz-Gregor Herrmann
‘Blessed is He, Who Has seen’: he Power of Ritual Viewing and Ritual
Framing in eleusis 309
Georgia Petridou
Notes on Contributors 343

Helios
eDiToR
steven M. oberhelman
e Di ToR iA l B oA R D
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
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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. heir 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 psycho-
logical 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.
H e l ios, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 1

Introduction
sU e B lU N D e l l , D o U G l A s C A i R N s , e l i z A B e T H C R A i K ,
NA N C y s o R K i N R A B i N oW i T z
his 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
speciic contexts such as art history or ilm 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.
his 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).
scientiic studies of visual perception carried out since the early 1960s have
provided a irm foundation for this approach. he 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 exam-
ple, 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 pat-
terns 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).
he 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 pro-
cessing 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:

4 H e l io s
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 oppor-
tunity 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. “he beholder must use on the painting such visual skills
as he has . . . and he is likely to use those skills his society esteems highly. he
painter responds to this: his public’s visual capacity must be his medium” (Baxan-
dall 1988, 40).
he cultural relativism underlying Baxandall’s analysis was echoed in many
contemporary studies. At the root of this thinking lay the age-old question (nota-
bly explored by both Greek and enlightenment philosophers) about the extent to
which we are justiied in relying on our senses for our knowledge of external real-
ity. 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 ocu-
larcentrism to describe the primacy that had been accorded to vision in modernist
culture (Jay 1988a and 1988b). his privileging of sight had generated as its late
twentieth-century antithesis a suspicion of the visual, which was expressed partic-
ularly 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). he 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 intensiication of political and social control.
his reaction against the cultural dominance of vision occurred during a period
when the deining media of the late twentieth century—photography, ilm, televi-
sion, 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. he question of agency—the degree of control the
viewer has over the viewing process—has always been signiicant 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 pop-
ular and the scientiic 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 dis-
tance between viewers and viewed objects created by the new media had the efect
of greatly multiplying our opportunities for voyeurism, for seeing and potentially
controlling others without being seen ourselves. “he physical distance between
subject and object, and the agency aforded the viewer in the visual process, makes
viewing a process of subjectiication (of the viewer) and objectiication (of the
viewed). his leads to mastery, not mutuality” (Morales 2004, 30). his issue of
objectiication was a particularly urgent one for feminist thinkers who were con-
cerned 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. he 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. he 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 irst 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 efect 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 inluential 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 ilms in the Hollywood
tradition involve a form of voyeurism that objectiies female characters. Not only
do such ilms focus on male protagonists, they also assume a male audience:
As the spectator identiies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look
onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protago-
nist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both
giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. (Mulvey 2010, 204)
hus, men are presented in these ilms 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 H e l io s
he cinematic dominance of this “controlling male gaze” (Mulvey 2010, 206)

means that women in ilm are constituted by their “to-be-looked-at-ness” and are
prevented from being seen as desiring sexual subjects in their own right. later crit-
ics 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 modiied some of her assertions to take account of a greater range of spectato-
rial 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 identiication 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: “he predominance of the visual . . . is par-
ticularly foreign to female eroticism. Woman takes pleasure more from touching
than from looking, and her entry into a dominant scopic economy signiies, 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 reac-
tive 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 horriied
gaze of the victim” featured in horror ilms. in this context the spectator may iden-
tify with a victim because the latter acts as a surrogate “for one’s own past victim-
ized self ” (Clover 1992, 175). in other studies, both geographical and architectural
spaces have been identiied as factors in the construction of the gendered gaze
(Colomina 1992, Bell and Valentine 1995, Rendell et al. 2000). other arenas for objec-
tiication 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. he 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, Rufell).
“ocularcentrism” (Jay 1988a and 1988b), however, is not solely a feature of
modernism. Ancient Greek ideas about vision have been regarded by many theo-
rists 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
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.
here 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 fun-
damentally, the special importance of the eye as both instrument and target of
visual attention in human social interaction is demonstrated by the unique evolu-
tion of the human eyeball, in which the whiteness of the sclera alerts conspeciics
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). he 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. he 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 coniguration of a
human face than they do at others that conigure the same elements in a diferent
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). his 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 (Meltzof and
Moore 1977) were replicated in neonates as young as 42 minutes old (Meltzof and
Moore 1983). his indicates, as Bruce and young (1998, 251) observe, that “he
baby must have some kind of ‘map’ to indicate which of its own facial muscles cor-
responds 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
ater that, infants begin to use eye contact to regulate their own arousal in interac-
tions: infants ive to ten months old exhibit increased pulse rate on making visual
contact with others, especially strangers, and control this by looking away.2 he
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. his pattern remains with us for the rest of our
8 H e l io s
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 he 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 (Meltzof and Decety
2003 and Decety and Meltzof 2011) suggest that the capacity for imitation estab-
lished by the experiments of Meltzof and Moore 1977 is linked to the existence of
the “mirror neurons” that have been identiied in macaque monkeys and postu-
lated (on the basis of analogous phenomena uncovered by fMRi scans) for human
beings. Much current research focuses on the search for neurobiological underpin-
nings 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 sug-
gestive 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 pro-
vides 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 dur-
ing imagining of one’s own action, imagining another’s action, and imitating
actions performed by a model” (Decety and Meltzof 2011, 70; cf. Preston and
Hofelich 2012, 29). Much work remains to be done on the relation between “mir-
roring” at the neural and somatic levels (e.g., mimicry of facial expressions), emo-
tional 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 speciic phenomenon, though
protocols of ocular interaction will of course be subject to contextual and cultural
modiication. it is not diicult to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the many dif-
ferences 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-
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 inluen-
tial 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 inluential 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. hese phenom-
ena have already been the subject of studies by Hellenists inluenced 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).
here 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 identiied 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 he 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 diference 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 objectiication of the female body in Athenian society.
indeed we learn something signiicant about the potential for and dangers of such
eroticization and objectiication from the very fact that the display of actual female
bodies was not practiced. he 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 rep-
resentation tells us something very signiicant 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 ofstage woman, the woman represented as the object of others’
10 H e l io s
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, ofstage, as a sacriice to the dead
Achilles makes it clear how, in many cases, it is the ofstage, 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 ofstage spectacle; the
narrative of his messenger-speech re-creates what he saw for the imagination of an
audience that sees it at second hand. his 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 oten 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 analo-
gous to the selection of detail and direction of audience response that are per-
formed in ilm by all the various aspects of the ilm’s design (lighting, coloring,
composition, shot selection, focus on the faces of protagonist and observers, cut-
ting and editing, etc.), which depend, ultimately, on the ilmmaker’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 nar-
rative. 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 evi-
dence 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. he secondary seeing of readers
and hearers is as important a topic as the direct viewing of the spectator; the lan-
guage, and indeed the concept of vision and viewing, are not restricted to what is
actually visual and visible.
he capacity to visualize unseen objects is also an element of our pan-cultural,
pan-human heritage. he 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. he mechanism is one of cognitive metaphor (lakof
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-
cal, and the seen onto the unseen. he 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 diference between
‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ amounts to no more than a shit in aspect of a single verbal
root (albeit one that is then enmeshed in diferent patterns of usage and seman-
tics). he cognitive metaphor that understanding is seeing is encoded in the forms
of the verb itself. he 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. he 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. hese 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 he it
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 resem-
bles (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 ofer a
unique guarantee of the bard’s powers of enargeia (de Jong 2001, 214–5; serra
2007, 34; Halliwell 2011, 85–6). hat 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 contribu-
tion to this collection, it was ancient Greek that gave us the language of ideas, invis-
ible objects of the mind’s insight. Gorgias and Plato vie for the honor of being the
irst 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 H e l io s
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 eface the distinction
as far as possible. here 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 sacriice 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 visualiza-
tion of the primary viewing experienced by a igure in the narrative.14
But if the legitimate extension of the notion of ‘viewing’ to include the phanta-
sia 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 view-
ing 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
diferent (though not necessarily incompatible) approach to cinema’s construction
of the audience’s visual attention emerges, for example, from David Bordwell’s bril-
liant 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 interac-
tants’ 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 impli-
cation in the murderer’s voyeurism and objectiication of his female victims only if
it also sympathizes with his victims in a way that he does not. he tension between
scopophilia and deeper forms of interest in cinematic characters is further probed
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. he 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, voy-
euristic observation gives way to a more profound interest in the lives of others.
in this regard, cinematic and literary iction appear to coalesce in the ways in
which their narratives engage the imaginative and afective capacities of their audi-
ences. he imagination, the capacity of phantasia, that allows us to enter vicari-
ously into the minds and worlds of ictional characters appears to draw on very
much the same capacities as allow us to imagine the minds and experiences of
other lesh and blood human beings in everyday life. he 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. he guards who see what she has done
are transixed 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 them-
selves (kai; pro; ojmmavtwn e{kasto~ to; pavqo~ lambavnwn w{sper aujtw`/ tolmhqe;n
e[fritte, 213). he 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 here is no absolute dis-
tinction 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
efectively if not more efectively by a purely verbal narrative. Modern cognitive
approaches to iction similarly group audience response to visual and verbal narra-
tive under the same head, and emphasize the link between both of these and the
14 H e l io s
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 scientiic or pseudoscientiic theory; but ancient Greek constructions of
vision and visuality also interact, at least in some cases and to some extent, with the
folk and scientiic 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 advan-
tage 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 cen-
tered on sex, gender, and status) in which vision is implicated.
he 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 scariication are exten-
sively 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. hese 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 ana-
tomical knowledge in the classical period remained rudimentary, based primarily
on dissection of animals. Physicians supplemented their limited anatomical knowl-
edge with theoretical postulates, thinking primarily in terms of the lux and ixa-
tion of bodily luids. he 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 afected if these ducts became
blocked or looded 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 lux from the
head to various parts of the body through various channels, including not only the
supericial blood vessels but also deep conduits between the head and the lower
body.23
in ophthalmology a distinction was postulated between noxious stuf (related

especially to phlegm) localized in and lowing from the scalp above the skull and
noxious stuf (related to vital luids) localized in and lowing from the brain below
the skull. Whereas the former was viewed as common and amenable to treatment
by cutting or burning the lesh 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 diicult to treat when the causal
lux was associated with deep inner pathways, rather than with more shallow outer
passages in or from the head. he most important deep route was via the spinal
luid. Diseases where this was implicated were commonly associated with excess of
sexual activity, semen and cerebrospinal luid being seen as allied. An encephalo-
myelogenic theory of seminal luid underlies the belief that infertility (not always
impotence) would result if an incision were made behind the ears.24 such an inci-
sion was a recognized treatment for diseases of the hip joint, caused by a lux of
peccant matter by the same route.25 in women, this lux of peccant matter might
afect the same joints as in men; in addition it might attack the genitalia and so, as
in men, have an efect on fertility (Mul. 2.114 [= vol. 8, p. 246 littré]).
Fluids in the eye and luids associated with fertility are viewed in the same way.
he supposition is made that in sex the eyes and genitals alike “sink” and are
drained, contraction of the eyes forcing out stuf from the brain; the proof is that
anointing the eyes is a treatment for infertity in women ([Aristotle], Pr. 4.2,
876a–b). his is to enhance production of (female) sperm. A related view is that in
cases of uterine sufocation, 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 preg-
nancy 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. he 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 ‘scientiic’ 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 eluences; 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. he active (emissionist) theory—that
the eyes see by means of the iery 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 inds expression in some scientiic optical theories (e.g., those of
16 H e l io s
Alcmaeon of Croton and euclid).30 Fire within the eyes also igures in the optical
theory of empedocles, where it coexists with a belief that the eyes receive physical
emanations from objects.31 he crucial question here is whether interocular ire is
actually emitted from the eyes, or is rather the mechanism by which emanations
are perceived once they have reached the eye. he former interpretation would
suggest that empedocles followed an interactionist theory (in which the rays emit-
ted 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 he 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 (emis-
sionist) and passive (emanationist) elements.35 he theories of the stoics are clearly
interactionist: vision involves a low 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 efected and information transmitted back to the
hêgemonikon.36
he 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, efects 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. his is
suggested, above all, by an example not of vision (of the eye’s undergoing a qualita-
tive change) but of a converse process, the eye’s causing a qualitative change. he
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 men-
struation) afects that of the air and the mirror.38 he change in the transparent
medium is qualitative (i.e., color), but still material. hus 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
hese folk and scientiic models are important because in their diferent ways
they are compatible with beliefs that the eyes may cause or lay one open to a variety
of profound and oten unwelcome physical changes. such, for example, is the belief
that diseases such as eye infections and epilepsy, and physical-cum-spiritual alic-
tions such as miasma (pollution), may be transmitted by sight.40 hey 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 he association between envy and the eyes was pervasive in antiquity.
he personiied igure of envy (zelos, Phthonos) is characterized by hateful or ter-
rible 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). he 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. he 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—oten no more than a projection of the subject’s
sense that her actions admit of evaluations on the part of their witnesses that difer
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 speciic
forms in theories of the evil eye, physiognomic lore on the identiication of the
envious, and the provision of spells and apotropaic devices, including eye amulets
and other representations of the open eye, to neutralize its efects.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) the-
ory makes its presence felt in frequent references to the ire, rays, or arrows that
emanate from the eyes of the beloved.44 his 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 indiferent to the lover’s intentions (e.g., Pindar, fr. 123.2–6, 10–2 Maehler).46
hough this model of infatuation, in which the lover is afected 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. he beloved
may be casting rays from his eyes, but the look that is charged with emotion is that
18 H e l io s
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 efects 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.
he 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 eluence (aporrhoê) of par-
ticles from the beautiful body that enter the lover’s soul via his eyes. 47 his passive
model is also the ‘scientiic’ 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 inlux through the
lover’s eyes of emanations from the object of the gaze.48 he erotic model of vision
can thus appropriate the emissionist point of view, but does so in a modiied and
asymmetric way: the beloved whose lashing rays melt the lover may sometimes
intend this efect, but the efect is the same whether he does or not, and the coun-
terpart of the (sometimes) active eye of the beloved is the passive, receptive eye of
the lover. hough the lover’s eye is a greedy eye that actively seeks out the beauti-
ful,49 it is at the same time the passive victim of the beloved’s beauty and generally
has no power to afect 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
afects 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 experi-
ence of being afected by the other’s beauty.50 he 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 his does
not mean that such relationships can never be mutual (as they are in the hetero-
sexual relationships portrayed in the novel), but only that my erôs is conceived as
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, espe-
cially 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 hough 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.
he power of this model—Konstan’s pederastic paradigm54—and the inluence
it exerted upon the application of folk and scientiic 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 sheield 2011).
his mutuality, however, does not entirely extend to erôs itself. he 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 inlames the lover can be so abundant that it lows back into the
beloved’s eyes and infects him, just as one is infected with ophthalmia, with a form
of erôs that is a relection (w{sper ejn katovptrw/, 255D) or “image” (eidôlon) of the
desire that the lover experiences in a stronger and more regular form. his elabo-
rate image clearly draws on the phenomenon of mutual gaze in intimate relation-
ships—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 he ideology
of erotic attachment exercises a decisive inluence upon the ways in which models
of erotic vision are deployed.
he supposed reality of the physical afections 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 aliction 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 pro-
vide a supposedly scientiic rationale for a belief that could be stigmatized as popu-
lar superstition but was clearly widespread.60 he 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 H e l io s
for in both cases we can be afected (via our own eyes) by others’ looks. But there
is also a distinct lack of it between erôs 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
inefective. he 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 he analogy of erôs is then introduced in a way that initially sug-
gests 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,
lows 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):
his is why we should be surprised, i think, that people believe that a person can
be afected 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 afected, as by looking
and being looked upon. such is the communication and the inlammation that
results from sight that one must consider altogether unacquainted with love
those who wonder at Median naphtha when it catches ire at a distance from the
lame. For the glances of the beautiful, even if they look back from a great dis-
tance, kindle ire in the souls of their lovers.
he disanalogy between phthonos and erôs is highlighted by the fact that in phtho-
nos 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 ills the
surrounding air with his malign quality (3.7.3); but in erôs the afection 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). he passive model of vision is credited with quasi-active emo-
tional powers in the case of phthonos, but not in that of erôs. he 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 efect on their target) and erôs (in which neither
party straightforwardly uses the eyes to transmit emotion). Although in very gen-
eral 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 condi-
tions, but does not determine, the presentation of the two emotions; the indepen-
dent folk theories of the emotions in question, even when they come into contact
with optical theory, remain in diferent 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 efects on their target. in
other cases, however, this potential is very oten ignored. he angry can occasion-
ally be credited with the power to harm which is more oten attributed to the envi-
ous (e.g., Apollonius of Rhodes, Arg. 4.661–73), but this potential cannot be
generalized.62 here are numerous passages from Homer on in which a character’s
eyes express anger.63 yet while part of the deinition of anger (as the Greeks under-
stood it) is that the patient of the emotion desires to inlict 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 indi-
vidual have any harmful efect on the target of her or his anger. in 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-of (that is, deliber-
ately look away) as a way of punishing an ofender’s lack of respect.64
We cannot, therefore, generalize from the physical eicacy or vulnerability of
the eye in some scenarios to an all-encompassing universal belief in the physical
efects of seeing and being seen. hese models of vision are enlisted in support of
cultural models of emotion where they it, modiied where they it less well, and
ignored when they do not it at all. hough models of vision as a haptic process are
doubtless intended to be applied across the board, their intersection with the pro-
tocols of ocular interaction in everyday life is limited to a few special cases. he
notion of the physicality of the gaze cannot, then, be said to permeate Greek mod-
els of ocular, emotional, and social interaction.
in the cases of erôs and baskania, where cultural models of vision and emotion
22 H e l io s
intersect, the phenomenology of the emotions concerned (erôs as a passive experi-

ence, baskania as a danger posed by the eyes of others) plays a signiicant 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
speciic Greek understandings of the expressive, emotional, and social role of the
eyes in ordinary social interaction. hese 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 rit-
ual was as fundamental for the Greeks as it is for us. he 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 let us, as deeply dependent on strategies of
the gaze as in our own societies.
he role of the eyes in interaction ritual is a large subject that cannot be pur-
sued 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 deines 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). hese phenomena entail a delicate balance in the reciproc-
ity 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
deinition of status in social interaction. Typically, both rights were denied in
Greece to individuals (slaves, boys, women, kinaidoi) deined as inferior to free
men and forfeited by free men of impaired status. hese patterns, and their impli-
cation 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 speciically Greek framework of semantic categories,
social roles, practices, norms, and values. As the construction of the roles and sta-
tus of individuals, the protocols and display rules that deine those roles, and the
nature of the social emotions expressed in these scenarios all difer between Greek
societies and our own, so the speciics 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. he irst three contributions
explore from diferent angles the interface between written texts and the viewing of
material objects. Deborah steiner in her essay, “swallow his: A Pelike within late
Archaic song and Visual Culture,” ofers 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 irst of the vase’s two scenes, the other on the activity of sign
making—steiner’s diferently 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 audi-
ence 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 col-
lective gathering. By virtue of the invitation to engage in the images on the pelike,
the audience is further prompted to relect 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 view-
ing 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. he 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 igure from all angles, the
author of the Erôtes depicts a temple with only two doors: in order to view the god-
dess 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 prod-
uct 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. his new reading sites the viewing of a celebrated statue irmly
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 H e l io s
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 col-
lection 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. his account
taps into a long-running Greek debate about which medium is the more meaning-
ful: ‘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.” he problematics of viewing are probed and
explored in a section in which issues of visual subjectivity are seen to be inter-
twined with larger questions about authenticity and falsehood. Finally squire con-
siders how the Imagines its into a broader cultural history of Greek viewing, and
lags up the idea that Philostratus’s games with the mental imagination of his read-
ers 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 sub-
ject 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 heog-
ony, the monolithic visual power of zeus holds sway in contrast to the more frac-
tured and complex visual economies of other epic poems. he 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 pos-
sesses the assaultive gaze par excellence. lovatt believes that in the Works and
Days, despite the poem’s diferent narrative frame, the visual ield continues to be
dominated by the igure of zeus. in the heogony 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 irst 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 relect on poetic functions and
practices, adopting zeus himself as the guarantor of his own visual power.
he 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
that the novel, composed long ater 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 concep-
tions of Achaemenid rule. According to llewellyn-Jones, Chariton works con-
sciously to move his novel ever deeper into Persia, ultimately into the women’s
quarters and even the space of a carriage. hroughout the novel the Greek woman
Callirhoe is visualized through the eyes of ever more powerful men. his 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. he
representation of Callirhoe becomes part of the cliché of the erotic and exotic east.
he 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 experi-
ence. 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 speciically
at the ways in which female characters are represented as powerful and/or power-
less through their adoption of diferent viewing positions. in this overview of trag-
edy Rabinowitz questions Berger’s and Mulvey’s assertions about the ways in which
viewing is constructed, with powerful men looking at powerless women; she devel-
ops a much more nuanced picture of the diferent positions that women may
occupy in the viewing spectrum. in particular she identiies four diferent 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 sacriicial
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 humiger 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 signiicant elements in classical Athenian culture: the
tragic emphasis on knowledge and learning; the relationship of seeing to the theat-
rical experience; and, most importantly, the epistemological discussion taking
place in Athens during the same period. As humiger points out, a questioning of
the relationship between sense perception and knowledge had been sparked of in
the early ith century by the ideas of the philosopher Parmenides and was still of
crucial concern to Plato at the end of the century (heaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist);
for these thinkers, reaching a secure deinition of ‘real knowledge’ and ‘real being’
26 H e l io s
was primary. humiger, 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 Rufell 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 con-
cerned with political stratiication and defamiliarization, as much as with the rein-
forcement 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.
Rufell 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 oten from the perspective of the obscene language than from that of
the plays’ action. Rufell intervenes in those discussions by focusing on the ques-
tion of spectacle. Ater 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 mascu-
linity (Frogs, hesmophoriazusai, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusai). He then connects mas-
culinity back to the issue of political power.
he inal two articles explore diferent aspects of vision when it operates as a
route to enlightenment. in “ ‘Blessed is He Who Has seen’: he 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 recon-
struct 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 visu-
ality” in order to relect on the way in which ritual framing may have enabled the
mystai to see sacred visions beyond the constraints of secular visuality. he sources’
emphasis on ‘spectacle’ and ‘experience’ is, Petridou believes, the key to an under-
standing 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
goddesses. hrough 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 confron-
tation 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 inlu-
ence 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 visi-
ble beauty in this world—but perhaps not from that exercized by the absolute and
objective truth: “he 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, math-
ematical 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
exempliied by the demiurge of the Timaeus.”
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Notes
1. or, as Meltzof and Moore themselves put it: “he 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. he 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 indings and for further
developments, see Meltzof 2007a and 2007b and Decety and Meltzof 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. he 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 H e l io s
6. For an attempt at a more general overview, see Cairns 2005b. For more on status, hierarchy,
dominance, and deference, see below.
7. his 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 sexual-
ized and exposed female performers that were common in other performance contexts (e.g., sym-
posia), 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 com-
parison 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 vol-
ume. on phantasia, see Rosenmeyer 1986, Watson 1988, Manieri 1998, serra 2007.
14. on the Xenophon passage, cf. Goldhill 1998.
15. hough there do exist numerous studies of the diferential 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 ictional scenarios, see the various articles col-
lected in Coplan and Goldie 2011; for ancient Greek poetic perspectives on the emotional engage-
ment of readers and audiences with poetic texts and performances, see most recently Halliwell
2011; cf. oatley 2012 on modern ictional 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. he 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). he term can be used also of a ‘dream,’ a particular ‘vision.’
22. Alcmaeon of Croton 24 A 5 DK = heophrastus, Sens. 25.
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, heog. 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 shat, what is your plan, much-seer, ye mother of eyes); Aristo-
phanes, hesm. 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 scientiic 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. ht. 156A–B); Aristotle mentions empedocles and Tim. together at
Sens. 2, 437b11–2; for the interactionist interpretation, see Aristotle, Gen. corr. 324b26–35, heo-
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 heophrastus’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 lesh, on humors and on dietetics (A
33 DK [= Diogenes laertius 9.45–9]). Accordingly, there are ainities between his account of
visual perception and the medical theories of the physiology of the eyes discussed above. Accord-
ing to heophrastus (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 luid in its various manifestations (cerebral,
spinal, and seminal), and also to the luid 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); heophrastus, 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 beneicial gaze of the bird charadrios), 3.8.2 (the harmful gaze of the
36 H e l io s
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 relected back from corpses afect 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 eluence of beauty via his
eyes he becomes hot . . . Whenever [the soul] looks towards the boy’s beauty and receives the par-
ticles that it emits and that low 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 (“elux from the beautiful”), 5.13.4 and Heliodorus 3.7.5. on the
inluence 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 phenomenol-
ogy 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. his 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~ hJdeiài 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.
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. hat the notion of the material power of the gaze to harm is implicitly present in descrip-
tions 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-of as a strategy of taking ofence, 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 his: A Pelike
within Late Archaic Song and Visual Culture *
DeB oRAH 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 igures point upwards to a swal-
low (Fig. 1). Coming from the mouth of the youth seated on the let are the words,
“look, a swallow” [IDÔ XELIDÔN]. he older bearded man responds, “yes, by

42 H e l io s
Heracles” [NE TON HÊRAKLEA], while the boy to his side adds, “here it is
[HAUTÊI].” in between the last two igures the phrase “it’s already spring” (EAR
ÊDÊ) appears.
in recent decades, scholars have ofered 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’ igures ofer an instance of a mimêsis that is at
once visual and verbal,2 while Richard Neer notes that the vase confronts viewers
with three diferent modes of signiication: 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 ith centuries—the painters of the Pioneer
Group in particular—liked to engage in visual ambiguity, creating riddling scenes
that oscillate between diferent meanings, an efect 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 phe-
nomenon to which it refers. Most recently, Henry immerwahr has ofered an inno-
vatory discussion of the pelike, reading it as an illustration of a piece of love magic
irst 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
he analysis of the pelike that i ofer 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 let 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 read-
ing 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 igures perform
and the messages on the vase act much like formulae in epic song, as repositories
of a signiicance that goes beyond their denotative meaning on this particular
occasion and that encompasses both existing traditions informing acts of bird (and
speciically swallow) identiication and decipherment and the social practices typi-
cally 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
s T e i N e R—Swallow his 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 dii-
culty, presenting a potential dolos into which viewers, like the older man and boy
within the composition, are likely to fall. hird, 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 H e l io s
fourth, by combining speaking igures 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 con-
temporary 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 inal 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 loating status of these two vase types: “especially in the case of the iner
specimens with inscribed igure-scenes, it is hard to believe that they would not be
shown of to the drinkers of the wine” (snodgrass 2000, 28). his vase, for reasons
to be discussed below, belongs among such “iner 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 ofers 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’ ges-
tures would remain opaque: their upturned heads and pointing ingers tell us that
they have noticed the bird, but only their words indicate that they regard it as sig-
niicant, and what its signiicance 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 lying 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
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.
he 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 ele-
ments:13 irst 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. his maps very closely onto the sequence on the pelike. he swallow
appears in the sky, the igures perceive it and react with gesture and word (the older
man’s “yes, by Heracles” emphatically airms what the youth’s identiication implies
about the swallow’s ‘signifying’ character), and the statement “it’s already the
spring” supplies the gloss. he seemingly missing fourth item—assent or dissent on
the audience’s part—is something to which i will return.
he 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 ambigu-
ous. 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 occa-
sions 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 let 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 fortiications,16
Hector will not be guided by his cautionary words. instead he counters with a
wholesale rejection of ornithomancy, irst dismissing the traditional mode of deci-
phering 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 H e l io s
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 let toward the misty darkness. But let us
put our trust in the council of great zeus, who rules over all mortals and immor-
tals. one bird sign is best, to ward of on behalf of our country.
Much the same scenario occurs in Iliad 13.810–37. When Ajax predicts Hec-
tor’s ignominious light from the ield of battle (the Trojan praying all the while
that his horses might be “switer than hawks”) and a bird sign appears to conirm
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 ield 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 signify-
ing 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 signiicant. 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 signiicance of the preda-
tory 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 audi-
ence knows very well that the signiicance 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 mean-
ings that individual sign-readers assign to them. if we can class the snake devour-
ing 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
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 heoclymenus 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 lying
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 shit 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 conirm, portent-reading is an agonis-
tic activity, where rival seers compete and nonprofessionals can successfully reject
and revise an oicial account.20
Hesiodic and hymnal poetry conirm 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: “he noos of aegis-bearing zeus is difer-
ent at diferent times and for mortal men is hard to recognize” (Op. 483–4).21 he
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. he irst 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 indi-
cates 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 lying 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, apprehen-
sion 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 con-
cerned. it is futile, he remarks, to place one’s trust in “idly-chattering birds” since
only “oiônoi who bring fulillment” should be believed (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 543–7).
48 H e l io s
Conspicuously missing here is the necessary criterion for distinguishing the eica-
cious kind from the rest.23
Further complicating correct understanding of these scenes is the way in which
a inal determination of meaning by the internal audience depends not on any
inherent ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of the several readings on ofer (as we have no
way of establishing that), but on the status, perceived character, authority, and rhe-
torical 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 oicial 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 rhe-
torical 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 inal
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 inter-
pretative framework that bucks indeterminacy and forecloses on the possibility of
other narratives. As commentators note, the well-known Hesiodic hawk and night-
ingale 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 norma-
tive 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-
tors to follow his very diferent lead as a superior and divinely-appointed per-
former 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 tradi-
tions because they supply one of the principal ilters 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 diferent modes
of signiication or symbolization, which, following the poets, might introduce a
breach between things seen and things ‘igured’ in speech, a scene that displays a
potentially message-bearing oiônos and its decipherment is about the most eco-
nomical way to do this. he narratives found in the more demotic traditions not
only airm 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 irst 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 citiied 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. he inevitable snowstorm
follows, and seeing the same swallow lying dead, the youth ruefully relects 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 irst igure 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.)
he 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 H e l io s
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: “his man’s cloak shows that he needs a whole crowd of swal-
lows, which mark the onset of the time to dispense with a warm cloak.” As these
multiple interpretative eforts demonstrate, an allusion to a swallow carries in its
wake a rich and proliferating set of meanings.
Before returning to the pelike, let me ofer 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 oten come invested with a second- (and third-)
order signiicance. 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. he metope from the temple at her-
mon in Aetolia, dated to c. 630 (Athens, National Museum 13410), attests to the
early difusion of that myth; here two women lank a child lying between them, and
the igure on the let 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 ive varieties of swallows extant in ith-century Greece.
Aristophanes’ scene endlessly exploits the visual and corresponding hermeneutic
slipperiness or heterogeneity that poikilia describes: the preternaturally shity
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
grats new onto old: now you hear Alcaeus, now you don’t. he adjective then turns
out to have a double referent. First used of the swallow, Peisetaerus freshly under-
stands 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 lap on the piece of
clothing.27 his 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 igures’ himatia fall.
his 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
note given out by the bowstring plucked by odysseus (Od. 21.411), the sound car-
ries 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 swal-
lows ajmfivlaloi, this a glance not just to the frequent ith-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 lashpoint for debate and anti-
thetical views.30 With this in mind, we might return to the lacuna noted earlier, the
absence of the traditional verbal airmation or rejection of the meaning that is
assigned to the oiônos and is a precondition for the omen’s realization. As Jefrey
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 ofers. 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 diiculty 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 ilch 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~ <a]n> 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 H e l io s
Al. kai; tau`ta drw`n ejlavnqanovn <g j.> 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? he new season, a swallow!” And they’d look up, and in the meantime
i’d steal some of their meat.
Demosthenes: you clever bloke! hat 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 stuf up my crotch and swear by the gods that i was innocent.
(Translation by sommerstein 1981)
he 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 sug-
gests 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~), conirming 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 frag-
mentary 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 compan-
ions are examining the signs in a portentous object so as to steal sacriicial meat
unobserved. As Françoise lissarrague comments in passing, these scenarios fea-
tured in comedy—and the chronology its too, since the late sixth/early ith cen-
tury 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
he 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 ictive, 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
bird seems to ly up to the palmette, as though this decorative element were actual
foliage in which a real-world swallow might nest. (he 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 lew 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 igures on the pelike present a group clearly
stratiied by age: an older man lanked by a beardless youth and a pais, an arrange-
ment that precisely echoes the numerous images of erotic and not infrequently
sexually competitive groupings on red-igure pottery.34 he status of the boy,
sharply diferentiated 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 coniguration 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 irst
found in Mimnermus (cf. frr. 2 and 3) and then exploited by other poets airms,
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 igure on the let do regularly
court younger boys, and at exactly this period (see Fig. 3): “By the late sixth cen-
tury, the erastês is oten a beardless youth himself, and his erômenos also appears
younger, sometimes barely pubescent.”38 Further suggestive of the fact that the
54 H e l io s
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. he 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 igures’ pointing ingers 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 inely 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 irst of its two scenes: the swallow is, of
course, female in gender, and the boy’s auJtei? (here she is) underscores the point.
he oracle that Aristophanes’ lysistrata produces from beneath her himation like-
wise 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
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` naoiò celidovne~, oujkevti dovxei
o[rneon oujd j oJtiou`n katapugwnevsteron ei\nai.
But when the swallows take refuge in one place leeing the hoopoes’ pursuit, and
keep themselves far from phallicity, then there will be an end of troubles . . . But
if the swallows start to ight and ly 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 modiications)
As Jefrey Henderson’s (1991, 128–9, 147) discussion of the passage notes, we

have not only a sounding of an equation conirmed 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. he 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 lute girls and hetairai
in attendance as well as youths and younger boys.
A very diferent element of the vase could further dispose audiences to read the
scene through an erotic ilter that implicates both the painted characters and the
external viewers, uniting them in a common and preeminently sympotic preoc-
cupation. 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.
here is no need to emphasize how frequently in Greek myth, poetry, and art wres-
tling 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 irst stasimon of sophocles’ Trachiniae, this within an ode celebrating the
invincible power of Aphrodite, imagines the wrestling bout between Heracles and
56 H e l io s
Achelous, the rivals for possession of Deianeira who forms the third igure present
at this freshly triangulated agôn, in language clearly evocative of a homoerotic sex-
ual 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 exer-
cise 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 palaes-
tra 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
he same setting in which Alcibiades stages his courtship manqué coincides
with many representations of homosexual courting scenes on Attic pottery, includ-
ing a red-igure 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 epi-
sode 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
hetis 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-igure neck amphora in Munich (Antikensammlungen
J1336); while the shoulders of the vase display two sets of wrestlers locked in com-
bat pose, each lanked by two youths, one side of the main body of the vessel por-
trays 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
Fig. 4: Munich, Antikensammlungen 2447; ARV 425.
several additional visual cues included by the artist, which signal repetition, relex-
ivity, and continuity between its diferent scenes.47 in addition to the inscriptions
that, in their diferent ways, decorate both faces, each image includes among its
characters a young boy and older youth, while the wreaths worn by the three swal-
low 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 let resembles that of the boy on the obverse, and have fur-
ther 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 pro-
leptic or analeptic ilter for interpreting the igures observing the swallow, its two
58 H e l io s
inscriptions serving by way of commentary or subtext to the actions and verbal

exchange on the other side. hose 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-igure 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 ini-
tiator of the dialogue, with an unseen respondent, and which traces out a course of
light in and out of the fourteen palmettes arranged around the space: “Nicolas is
handsome,” “Dorotheus is handsome,” “and so he seems to me, indeed.” “he other
boy is handsome, Memnon”; “he seems handsome to me too.”
his 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, wres-
tling 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 unex-
pected 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: “he 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 he 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
the older man (perhaps assuming that his age gives him authority) or to the three
igures as an ensemble,50 the remark more properly presents an independent ele-
ment. 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 inscrip-
tions, 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 lat 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 pro-
duced 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 loty social identities. hus, 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. he 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 H e l io s
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 ictions 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 he
gloss that the vase’s author-artist supplies is thus a projection of this more ictive
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 airmation 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 crats/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 ith 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 difer-
ent 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
ith-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
he 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 lies. he swallow on the pelike goes
from let 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. his willing embrace
of the bufoon’s role its 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,
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 mis-
shapen, fat dancers who ‘perform themselves’ by displaying their grotesque anato-
mies and launt upper-class decorum on contemporary komast vases,61 the painter
assumes a persona that ofers 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. he assumption that the declaration “it’s already
spring” likewise belongs to whoever in the company of drinkers articulates the
phrase gives the situation a diferent 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 signiicance. 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 H e l io s
his fellow symposiasts as the guest loses face. he 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 crat. he vase both demonstrates his originality—the subject matter
seems unprecedented and unparalleled in the extant Attic repertoire63—and dis-
plays a striking technical innovation. he swallow vase belongs among the very
earliest of extant red-igure 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 deined joint that formed a ridge) to the single piece variety.
Von Bothmer (1951, 47) further comments:
At irst 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 of
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 art-
ist’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 igures’
emphatically pointing ingers 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, pre-
cisely this arrangement occurs on a second red-igure pelike in Boston (Fig. 6),
whose two faces show jumpers executing their movements to the accompaniment
of a piper.64 he 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 irst examples of the single-
piece variety; here, too, a palmette pattern in a running band marks of 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
Fig. 6: Photo of sides A and B of a red-igure pelike showing a piper with two
jumpers. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1973.88. Both sides inscribed Leagros
kalos.
his technical mastery and illusionary element that the saint Petersburg vessel
includes also informs the pelike’s two scenes, turning them into self-relexive
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 cratsman-
ship, which uses tevcnh to transform the appearances of objects and to create illu-
sions of size, beauty, and radiance,67 empedocles describes painters as “men through
cunning well taught in crat” (ajnevre~ ajmfi; tevcnh~ uJpo; mhvtio~ eu\ dedaw`te,
fr. 23.4 D-K).68
he sympotic context foregrounded in the reading presented so far proves cen-
tral 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 irst
glance, the pelike seems seamlessly to blend pictorial representations and speech.
Creating the impression that the igures 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. he symposiasts would
further promote the illusion, ‘envoicing’ the pelike as they articulated the phrases
assigned to the diferent characters, with individual diners taking on the diverse
speaking roles. he subject matter further unites vision and speech: mantikê regu-
larly involves an attempt to gloss a visual phenomenon with spoken words.70
64 H e l io s
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 tempo-
rality 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 diferent 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 irst, 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 discus-
sion 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 irst 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 luid 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 efectively 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 tran-
sition 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 clas-
sical poets as well, the bird’s most salient feature is its distinctive call and the par-
ticular quality of its sound or song. Read against these literary accounts, and
juxtaposed with the human participants in the scene whom the artist so efectively
equips with voice, the singularly mute bird demonstrates the limits that the visual-
cum-graphic medium cannot transcend: human speech yes, bird song no. he 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 iguring silence: Philomela becomes the swallow precisely because, with her
tongue cut out, she is necessarily prohibited from generating not just coherent
speech, but any sound at all;71 only communication through graphic, pictorial
media—the tapestry that she weaves—is let 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 neces-
sarily 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 audi-
ence 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 decep-
tion,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 diferent parts of archaic and
classical Greece. hese songs—some popular, others more reined—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: “he presence of writing would have
its place in the atmosphere of convivial challenges, competitive recitation and sing-
ing, amorous discourse and table games which we know prevailed.”73
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———. 1992. “Graphein: écrire et dessiner.” in C. Bron and e. Kassapoglou, eds., L’image en jeu.
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———. 1997. “Correlating shape and subject: he Case of the Archaic Pelike.” in J. H. oakley,
W. D. e. Coulson, and o. Palagia, eds., Athenian Potters and Painters. oxford. 63–70.
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———. 1987. Aristophanes’ Birds. Warminster.
———. 1990. Aristophanes’ lysistrata. Warminster.
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steiner, D. 2009. “Pot Bellies. he Komast Vases and Contemporary song.” in D. yatromanolakis,
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sutton, R. F. 1992. “Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery.” in A. Richlin, ed., Pornography
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Notes
* his 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. his discussion appeared several years ater the initial delivery and revi-
sions of my account, and, as noted in § 2 below, overlaps closely with my reading on one very
central point. While i have proited from immerwahr’s rich analysis and, as the footnotes relect,
have drawn on some of the material that he includes, our larger arguments and conclusions remain
very diferent 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 read-
ing of Homeric formulae; for a detailed account of this, see Foley 1991 and the deinition that he
ofers 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 H e l io s
12. he 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. here are a handful of non-avian por-
tents, 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 princi-
ple 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). he very precision of the reading
shows what Bushnell calls its “unsystematic” nature; the omen could have been interpreted any
number of diferent 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, hemistocles sets himself up against the “profes-
sional interpreters” to ofer his own exegesis of the Delphic oracle concerning the wooden walls
(7.143).
21. Nagy (1990, 212) remarks on the signiicant 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 hompson 1895, 186–92.
25. it proves impossible to establish when the fables that appear under the name of Aesop, a
igure conventionally dated to the sixth century, irst 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 difusion 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 inter-
pretative diiculty 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. he 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 suc-
cinctly calls the composition “an erotic scene,” but does not elaborate on the statement there.
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 diferent ages of humankind, and the poets’ rueful observa-
tions 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 signiicance to
the position of the youth’s let 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 diferent argument.
38. shapiro 1981, 135. As he notes, both igures 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 diferentiation 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-igure 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 igure for the eventual capture of the youth. see too a red-igure 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. hese inscriptions are of a wholly diferent order from at least three of the notations on the
obverse; they are free-loating elements, whose author remains undeined, and that might be seen
as replicating actual graiti 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-igure 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 irst, 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 wres-
tling 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 diferent 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 H e l io s
53. immerwahr (2010, 574) describes the ornamented stools on which the youth and older
man sit as indicators of “aluence and leisure.”
54. Here i draw on the ine 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 crat, see Flower 2007, 91.
57. of possible relevance to this is the curious phenomenon identiied 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 discus-
sion of the inscription, see Collins 2002, 38.
59. his point should be qualiied insofar as the direction of the swallow’s light depends on the
‘point of view’ adopted here. if we observe the bird as spectators external to the vase, it does ly
from let to right; but for the internal viewers, that direction is reversed. his 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. he 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 fol-
lowed here.
63. As far as i know, there are no analogous scenes in either the black- or red-igure 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. his 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
M e l i s s A HAy N e s
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 signiicant 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 heomnestus 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. he entire piece
closes with an unabashedly erotic recasting of the agôn by heomnestus, patient
listener to the entire tale.
his dialogue on desiring subjects and desired objects situates its eroticism very
squarely within a revelatory story about viewing sculpture (Erot. 11–7).4 he 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 ofered by
the bodies of boys or of women. he initial terms of the central philosophical
debate (inscribed in semen) are read of Aphrodite’s ambiguous body.6
his erotic perspective on the goddess, front and back equated with female and
male, is a function of the position taken up by the viewer. hat 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

72 H e l io s
temple is depicted as a naos with two doors, front and back, communicating into
an interior sacred space. here is no ‘viewing in the round,’ but rather looking is
cathected along a very particular directional axis. it is precisely this speciic closed
temple structure with carefully designed openings onto that space that is a signii-
cant 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]. he 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 let naked, except insofar as she incon-
spicuously hides her private parts with one of her hands. . . . he 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. herefore, it was
decided to view the goddess in all her glory, and we went around to the back of
the sacred enclosure. hen, ater 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 afording 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 speciicity that lycinus gives to the experience of
viewing through an architectural frame has oten been ‘thought away’ as some-
thing not signiicant 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 efect, not the design of her architectural
HAy N e s —Framing a View of the Unviewable 73
enframement.” he 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. his strategy heightens the efect of
presenting her as available to view, but also forces the internal viewers to experi-
ence 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. hese 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 heomnestus’s ironic send-up of the serious philoso-
pher’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 signiicant in the Erôtes’ strategy
of ‘looking through a frame,’ it is necessary to irst assess the more common liter-
ary 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 relection or met-
onymic 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 god-
desses, such as Athena, who successfully masquerade as human or other-than-
divine, Aphrodite’s disguises are always inefectual, 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). he 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 ith Hymn, on the
bath of Pallas. Whereas Aphrodite is absorbed in her relection in preparation for
the Judgment of Paris (which she will win), Hera and Athena speciically do not
look at themselves:
74 H e l io s
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
he relective mirror is Aphrodite’s attribute, and kosmêsis—the preparation of her

body for display and sexual congress—renews and enacts her divine power.11
here 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 prom-
ises 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). he goddess had, in fact, pre-
pared 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). his
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
sanctiied 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 wor-
ship 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 fris-
son 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 he 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, attrib-
uted to Plato but most likely dating to the irst century BCe, describes the shrine
as periskeptos (able to be seen from every side):
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,
she cried out, “Where did Praxiteles see me naked?”
here 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. he conceit of this epigram empha-
sizes the special visual access aforded 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’ relection 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 situ-
ation 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), identiied 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 irst 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 preix. he contemporary viewer of the
image is recast as a second judge at the mythical beauty contest, but his visual
76 H e l io s
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 view-
ing experience. What is marked as special is the mimetic relationship of copy to
original, which is veriied by an appeal to some prior moment when Aphrodite the
goddess was put on view. his 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 irst prize for her beauty.
Praxiteles has set her up visible to all the Cnidians,
Having Paris’s vote as witness to his skill.
here is a subtle shit 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 irst, the statue or the goddess?
he 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. he sculptor’s artistic refashioning,
as the poet’s epigrammatic recasting, has made the goddess panwphvessan (visible
to all). he properly restricted and privileged experience of viewing Aphrodite’s
beauty has been transformed by the sculptor Praxiteles into a public and accessible
one. he 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 ofered by Pliny in his
Natural History. Many of the same themes emphasized in the epigrammatic tradi-
tion are picked up and ampliied—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
pudicum arbitrantes; reiectuam Cnidii emerunt, inmensa diferentia famae. . . .

aedicula eius tot aperitur, ut conspici possit undique eigies deae, favente ipsa,
ut creditur, facta. nec minor ex quacumque parte admiratio est.
here are works of his at Athens in the Ceramicus, but irst 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 ofered at the same price as the
other—judging it to be earnest and chaste. he 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. he 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 ofer 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. he
two statues are made at the same time, put up for sale at the same time, and cost
the same price; the only diference is the state of nudity. in this account, any cultic
signiicance to Aphrodite’s speciic form has no bearing on her plastic representa-
tion.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 signiicance.
on a trip to Cnidus, Apollonius is made aware of a young man who has fallen in
love with the statue. he 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 sacriice: ‘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”). he error on the part of the Cni-
dians is a conlation of visual attraction as a celebrated object and the requirements
for a cult to Aphrodite.16
What temple is itting for such a powerful material manifestation of the god-
dess? Pliny’s answer mirrors that suggested in the epigrammatic tradition—the
physical situation must ofer 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 H e l io s
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. he 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 implica-
tion 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
his literary resonance between the Cnidia’s nude body and her open temple set-
ting is a particular management of the lirtation 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 inluence, 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 signiicant 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
temple’s interior space. on the simplest reading, this dream temple of Aphrodite is a
metaphor for the body of leucippe; the doors ofer 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 speciicity with respect to describing the architectural frame is an
extension and reinement of the mirroring between the temple and the statue.
Unlike Pliny or the epigrammatists, the Erôtes presents speciic 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 ofered 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.
he 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. he very deci-
sion 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. Ater
securing lodging, the travel companions then wander through the city admiring
other landmarks and eventually make their way to the temple, which not all mem-
bers 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 wom-
anly site/sight; it would have been more pleasurable for him, i believe, to
exchange the Cnidian Aphrodite for the eros at hespiae.
80 H e l io s
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 hespiae or the Cnidia is to want to ‘go and see’ an erotically
charged and desirable body, gendered male or female respectively.
he implicit coordination between the religious space of worship and the god-
dess herself is made manifest when the three friends inally 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 lowering garden.19 he 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)
When we had taken enough pleasure in the gardens, we entered the shrine
[naos]. he 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 let naked, except insofar as she incon-
spicuously hides her private parts with one of her hands. he sculptor’s skill has
succeeded to such an extent that the unyielding hardness of the stone was made
naturally itting to each of her limbs.
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 sim-
ply 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 let. he direct
frontal view, with eyes turned away and obscuring hand, seems to shield the god-
dess from view. yet an oblique move to the statue’s let side allows a viewer to
capture both her gaze and a look at what her protecting hand covers. his modern
‘look’ at the Cnidia projects both a viewer (stage let) in direct visual communica-
tion 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. his visual and physical repositioning locates the move
around the Cnidia’s body in the attempt to catch her eye and a look at the
inefable.
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 geni-
tals. 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.
he 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 sug-
gests that contact with this statue may infect the lover with a reciprocal immobili-
zation. he Athenian pederast remains silent, but still amazed (sigh`/ d j ejfestw;~ oJ
Kallikrativda~ kata; nou`n ajpeqauvmazen.) Any shit from excluded look to
direct gaze is lost in the desire to physically connect with the statue. Moreover, the
subtle shit in position from voyeur to viewer does not adequately account for the
next move in lycinus’s story—around to the back; a radical shit in perspective,
viewing, and erotic which modern accounts of looking do not fully accommodate.21
At irst, 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 H e l io s
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)
he 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. here-
fore, it was decided to view all of the goddess, and we went around to the back
of the sacred enclosure. hen, ater the door was opened by the woman respon-
sible for keeping the keys, a sudden amazement at her beauty seized us.
here 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 efusive exclamations about the body on display.
he 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 lanks,
what a handful to embrace! How well modeled is the lesh 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 leshy 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 ixed, unmoving (uJpo; tou` sfovdra qavmbou~ ojlivgou
dei`n ejpephvgei). in both instances, the Cnidia statuies, albeit briely, her admir-
ers. Aphrodite’s charm as an attractive ‘boy’ is assured by her limbs’ perfect

rhythm.23 he 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 scholar-
ship, this ancient description redirects the male viewer’s gaze away from the
invested act of looking a goddess in the face. hat 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 efected 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 con-
tains are itted together. in order to move around the goddess, one has to move
around the structure that houses her. here 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. his
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). he pragmatic and logical lycinus is willing to believe that Praxiteles skill-
fully hid the mark, but the temple attendant has another tale to tell about the ori-
gins of the stain. he 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 let a mark from
his lovemaking on the marble.
Pliny the elder briely 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 [hey 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 deiler of the statue, but omit any
speciic 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 H e l io s
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 let
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, reconig-
ured as marriage to the statue, connived in by the Cnidians themselves.
he most expansive version of the tale is that found in the Erôtes (15–6), and
the speciic architecture that has just limited the viewing experience of the three
friends in accessing the Cnidia’s beauty serves to limit and deine 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—oten 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.
he 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 graiti 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)
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, qui-
etly hiding from those present he slipped in behind the door and invisible he
stood without moving or breathing in almost the innermost part. Ater the tem-
ple attendants closed the door from outside as usual, inside a new Anchises was
enclosed.
he 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 per-
formed by the three friends, although intensiied. he architectural ‘idea’ of an
enclosed space is critical to the narrative—the rear door ofers special access. he
drama of the young man’s assault on the goddess is only efective if he must break
in to the inner space of the temple. He does this very speciically through the same
privileged access point ofered by the rear door. in the present of lycinus’s descrip-
tion, 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 signiicant 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 ater sunset, and sitting the whole day straight in front of
the goddess, he would ix his unbroken gaze on her.
in order to perform his attempted consummation with the statue-goddess, he must

shit his body and his gaze from the front to the rear. he 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.’ he pederast’s own transgendering description
86 H e l io s
of the goddess’s lanks, buttocks, and thighs is fulilled in the act of love perpe-
trated by the young man.
he author of the Erôtes constructs a series of carefully managed viewing epiph-
anies of the statue-body of Aphrodite. he strategy of architectural framing, parti-
tioned viewing, and potential sexual contact in lycinus’s description ofers 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
fulillment of that promise is delayed or shited. he true epiphanic moment must
always be deferred, as the viewing is itself a ‘memory’ retold, by the attendant to
lycinus and by lycinus to heomnestus. here 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.
he terms applied to this moment of union and its atermath make very clear
what is at stake in moving from looking to touching: Aphrodite’s irresistible visibil-
ity 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. he
youth pushes through the restraining architecture, that same physical barrier that
now constrains the travelers’ view, into this ambiguous interior space. in his break-
ing through, however, epiphany becomes anti-epiphany. He becomes invisible
(ajfanhv~).
he 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 pat-
rimony.24 he 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 abso-
lutely invisible, Erot. 16.7). he 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. here 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
equally the love of women and of boys,25 that Charicles and Callicratidas begin
their formal debate over the best object of erotic attention. he Corinthian makes
his case for the superiority of women based on mutual physical pleasure and the
biological need to reproduce. he staunch Athenian pederast couches his argu-
ments in the rehearsed language of strictly philosophical love; there is deep emo-
tional 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. he dizzy-
ing 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 inal 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 heomnestus. our visualization as an external audience
(reading or listening) is coordinated with that of heomnestus as he listens as an
internal audience to lycinus’s account. he very presentation of the visual is medi-
ated at the level of the dialogue through language; we ‘see’ the statue, the goddess,
and her shrine as a verbal projection. he 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. his 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, heomnestus 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 irst kiss, kissing turns into groping, and inally you get to the
thighs and “strike your target.” heomnestus 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 H e l io s
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 irst 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 ingers, 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 inish meeting completely so that no cause for suspicion
is let behind. hus, adjusting to what is permitted he melts into ever more per-
sistent embraces, sometimes gently opening the mouth; no idleness of the hands
is allowed—open embraces through the clothes unite desire. or languidly slid-
ing a furtive right hand to the chest he presses nipples swollen more than nor-
mal, and evenly explores with his ingers the whole expanse of the irm stomach,
then the lower of youth in its early down. And . . .
“Why must i recount things better let 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.”
heomnestus 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 heomnestus, looking without touching is not an end
point, rather it is the irst step on his ladder of pleasure. He directly reworks and
responds to the idea of “sitting directly in front” (ajpantikru; kaqevsqai), but
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, heomnestus 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 inishes his presentation of the
correct, sexualized approach to the body of a desired boy, heomnestus 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 inish 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 heomnestus, become in
retrospect the sweet conversation of the erômenos listened to attentively by his
lover. in recasting the terms of pederastic love, heomnestus also forces an erotic
reassessment of the positions, both listening and speaking, implicit in the dialogic
format.
he move to eroticize the relationship between lycinus and heomnestus,
rhetor and audience, is not only prefaced in the pederastic model that Callicratidas
irst espouses in his part of the agôn, but in the relationship between viewers, lov-
ers, 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 ix 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 ixed as an erastês just as
90 H e l io s
both Callicratidas prescribes and heomnestus does. in his own tongue-in-cheek

self-positioning in front of lycinus and engagement with the erotic scenario argued
for by Callicratidas, heomnestus forces a rereading of this central Cnidian narra-
tive. Just as in the scenarios of seduction detailed in the debate and framing dia-
logue, 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 heomnestus’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 signiicantly, heomnestus’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 irst approach that heomnestus 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. he mark on Aphrodite’s thigh proves an attempt at sex-
ual union, but also of breaking through the architectural constraints that limited
the acts of viewing. he 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 heomnes-
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 . . .
his 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 tem-
ple, in lycinus’s account, cannot be entered except through looking, but that, as
heomnestus makes clear, is not the same erotic experience.
Moreover, the very act that resulted in the stain cannot be seen, and will not be
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 afront of that unspeakable night?, Erot. 16.5). heomnestus performs a
similar move. As he maps pleasure onto the body of his erotic object, he stops just
short and delects description with a quotation. his erotic epiphany proves just as
illusory and susceptible to deferral as that of the divine. yet the joke is not quite
inished and heomnestus 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 ofers his audience access to the body of the goddess through
an imaginative visual narrative that extends in unexpected ways the simple meta-
phor 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. he 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 heomnestus 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 let out some part of your voyage around Aphrodite, don’t cover it
over; make your sacriice to Heracles complete, Erot. 3.7). in constructing the
Cnidia as a desired body in parts and reviewing those erotic parts from diferent
perspectives, lycinus and heomnestus have contrived a rhetorical, aesthetic, and
erotic sacriice, whole and perfect.
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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.
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Goldhill, s. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality. Cambridge.
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Patroclus Homoerotic? he View of Apollonius Rhodius.” Hermes 133: 120–3.
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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
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Religion. Cambridge.
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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. “he 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. he Art of the Body. oxford.
stewart, A. 1997. Art, Desire and the Body in Ancient Greece. Cambridge.
Taylor, R. 2008. he Moral Mirror of Roman Art. New york.
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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
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.
Buière (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 consider-
ing 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 allu-
sions. 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 ofered 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
ofered 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 classi-
cal 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 speciically 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, speciically a ‘boyish’ one, which can be used for sexual satisfac-
tion (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 irst contestant—Charicles, the lover of women—generally keeps
his arguments to this theme and addresses the unique pleasures ofered in penetrating a female
body. Callicratidas, the Athenian pederast, shits 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. he 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 irsthand
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 H e l io s
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. he formulation with perifainomevno~ 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 discus-
sion 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 irst 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 diferent reading of the
pudica gesture and this visual exchange, see salomon 1997 and, for an overview of all these ‘posi-
tions,’ 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 ofer 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. his is the only exclamation addressed to Heracles in lycinus’s enframed narration (Erot.
11–52). he entire dialogue between heomnestus and lycinus is set on the morning of a festival
in honor of Heracles, and ends with the two friends leaving to see the bonires on Mount oeta
(Erot. 54). Mossman (2007) discusses the god’s place in the framing dialogue as a self-aware refer-
ence to old Comedy. he 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 heomnestus’s position of akolasia more
speciically; 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 oten into the sanctuary).
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. he 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. here 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
M iC HA e l s QU i R e
sed quemadmodum si litteras pulchras alicubi inspiceremus, non nobis suice-

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 artiicem; 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

suice 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 ishes] 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
his volume investigates the many ways in which modes and practices of viewing
were conceptualized in the ancient Greek world. he 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 conven-
tions of twenty-irst-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

98 H e l io s
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 irst 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 represen-
tation: 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 remark-
ably 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 ith 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 phe-
nomenological 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 ater the igurative image of pictures was to engage with only
their surface form: reading channels a diferent and more profound mode of intel-
lectual understanding, one quite distinct from aesthetic responses to visual
stimuli.4
in this article, i explore the symbiotic rapport between voice and vision in con-
nection 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 cen-
tury Ce.5 he two books of the Imagines purport to describe some 65 paintings,
gathered together in a gallery on the bay of Naples. hrough the very art of exegetic
description, though, Philostratus also acts out some salutary lessons in the episte-
mology 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
s QU i R e —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 diiculties 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 diferent theories
of vision, i proceed instead in ive interrelated stages. First i introduce the rhetori-
cal, critical, and intellectual stakes of ‘bringing about seeing through hearing’—the
phenomenon that Greek rhetoricians came to theorize as ekphrasis speciically.
Ater sketching that epistemological background, i turn to Philostratus’s own
games of seeing and hearing and explore how these iguratively 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 depic-
tion through description, and with the most amazing self-referentiality. his takes
us, fourth, to some of the text’s broader mises-en-abîme, whereby the problematics
of viewing are relected in those of hearing and reading. What this might mean
within the wider cultural history of Greek viewing is the subject of a brief inal
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 relect and comment upon a particular shit 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-
tion,”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 H e l io s
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 grand-
son (known today as Philostratus the younger), the earlier work is explicitly deined
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 speciically 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 deinitions of ekphrasis: where earlier
rhetoricians found little room for described objects among the subjects of ekphra-
sis, 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 diferent rhetorical handbooks, the so-called Progymnasmata, include dis-
cussions of ekphrasis, attributed respectively to heon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius,
and Nicolaus, and dated to between the irst and fourth centuries Ce.18 Although
we know relatively little about these authors (even their dates are disputed),19 and
for all their diferences in emphasis and explanation, the analyses of ekphrasis in
the Progymnasmata are striking for their common conceptual deinitions. heon
probably preserves the earliest explanation, perhaps writing in the irst 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 he deinition 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 pro-
cess with a transformative efect: although derived from speech (lovgo~), it has a
visual consequence, turning the object portrayed from something iguratively
shown (to; dhlouvmenon) into a sort of literal apparition (uJp j o[yin).
heon, like other rhetoricians, is somewhat elusive about how this transforma-
tion takes place. But for heon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus alike, a
single adverb is used to describe the process: enargôs, translated above as ‘with
visual vividness.’22 his 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
he 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 mak-
ing to appear.”25 his idea of iction 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 sug-
gestions of illusiveness, however, the various Progymnasmata leave little doubt
about the consequences of ekphrasis: the magical efect is to see actual images of
the thing that is verbally described.
such theories of ekphrastic seeing through hearing did not develop in an intel-
lectual 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, phan-
tasia 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 deinitions 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 irst cen-
tury Ce, Ps.-longinus described phantasia as “thought productive of logos”
(ejnnovhma gennhtiko;n lovgou, 15.1), he put his inger 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 ater Ps.-longinus, Quintilian is still more explicit about the ekphrastic
stakes. For Quintilian, even more than for longinus, phantasia could be deined in
102 H e l io s
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 imag-
ines 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 underly-
ing 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 inal aspect of related ekphrastic theory. Ater 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 ques-
tion permeated almost every attempt to theorize vision in the ancient Greek world.
on one level, we ind it implicated in opposing models of extramission and intro-
mission (the question of whether vision stems from light rays emitted irst 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 diferent material forms in its attempt to get at the
idea of something wholly more incorporeal and abstract?36
his question evidently also engaged the author of the Imagines, who know-
ingly reframes the dialectic between sight and understanding around the corre-
sponding 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 he 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 diferent turn: For how, Apollonius asks, are we to make
sense of the apparently mimetic images drawn in the sky—the semblance of cen-
taurs, 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” per-
formed 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 diferent sorts of ‘painting,’ the irst 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 pic-
ture of a horse or of a bull, unless he had formed an idea of the picture repre-
sented. 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 irst an idea or notion of Ajax, and had entertained
104 H e l io s
the probability that ater killing the locks 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 ani-
mals 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 diference between the representation and the thing
represented.
his distinction between ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in’ proves a itting introduc-
tion 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 igure for contemplating, indeed ‘seeing,’ the
hermeneutics of vision itself.46
he fact that Philostratus uses words to mediate images is of critical importance
here. Because the visions of the Imagines are projected through a knowingly rhe-
torical and verbal lens, they are both like and unlike those of material pictures.
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 he very title of Philostratus’s treatise (Eikones in Greek)
iguratively describes the paradox: if Philostratus’s project delivers ‘pictures,’ those
igurative visions are nonetheless transformed into codiied 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 ixate on
this issue: in the absence of real panel paintings, Renaissance painters raided the
textual descriptions in their efort 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 ive terraces” [stoav ti~ ejxw/kodovmhto . . . ejpi; tettavrwn,
oi\mai, h] kai; pevnte ojrofw`n, praef.4])53—this very duality between reality and
iction mirrors the mimetic ictions 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
he 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 epideic-
tic addresses (with some notable interjections in between)56—Philostratus lays out
the rationale of his project, posing as a house-guest in Naples. he 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 he proem also explains the spe-
ciic 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 H e l io s
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 irst 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 contribu-
tion to wisdom (sophia);60 with tongue irmly 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 false-
hood.61 But the proem nonetheless conjures up a decidedly ambiguous picture of
the present project. if Philostratus’s justiication 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 pro-
gression 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. he 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. Ater 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. his 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 respond-
ing 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
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 indi-
vidual 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
lower (the visual form of its letters replicating an “Ai Ai” cry), for example, a paint-
ing 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 oferings 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-relexivity 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 con-
cept of phantasia explicitly, Quintilian likewise talks about how rhetoric can sum-
mon up images that are absent. it cannot be accidental, then, that these same ideas
recur amid the very tableaux that Philostratus ekphrastically evokes. he self-
awareness of the gesture is revealed towards the end of the proem: before launch-
ing into the irst 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 inluential a concept. At several points, the speaker talks about the “vividness
of the cratsmanship” (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 H e l io s
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 reveal-
ing is the painted Bacchant who, “in her love for Dionysus, imagines him and pic-
tures 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 igurative 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 igured ater
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 simultane-
ously does and does not afect 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. his 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 vol-
umes about the respective failures of imagery. Were pictures all that were required
for us to see, ater 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. his 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 ind described images igured ater literary texts.
he very irst 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 intro-
duces the Homeric derivation, he appears to tell the boy to look away from the
image (ajpovbleyon), instructing him “to see the things from which the descrip-
tion/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 signiicant 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-diferences between words and pictures, or indeed privileging
one medium over the other, the game is about diferent sorts of ‘seeing’: just as the
painting mediates Homeric poetry, so too is our access to the painting now medi-
ated 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 irst 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 mate-
rial 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 con-
text of the irst 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 eforts 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,
crated ater 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.
he 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 H e l io s
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.
he (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 ofer 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 crated 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 diferences, 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 pic-
tures 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 artiice” (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 he 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. he 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
paintings are integrated within the opening ictitious 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 dif-
ferent viewpoints.93 As i have said, one of the benchmarks of ekphrasis is its cham-
pioning of visual subjectivity. he 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 individ-
ual 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 diferent
‘looks,’ so that the objects of sight themselves metamorphose into viewing sub-
jects. his 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 igure and champion the subjective share of the
beholder. in the context of images that are ekphrastically described, moreover, all
this takes on a metavisual signiicance: 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.
his 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 H e l io s
better, our view of the text) able to distinguish between reality and ictitious
appearance?
Amid the fantastic gallery of the Imagines, the make-believe of the paint-
ings appears their single most deining feature. While knowingly representing pic-
tures 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 representa-
tions, but at the very referents that the pictures represent. As i have argued else-
where, 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 oferings 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 irst 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 deines successful image-making around its verisimilitude—its capacity to
trick the eye.95 in Philostratus’s imaginary gallery, though, the simulations of paint-
ing 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 ind
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 lat 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`~ aJrpavzv ei~, 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 (representa-
tion 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 rep-
resentation, 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 Ater an opening description, the speaker suddenly stops in
his tracks. he painting has fooled us, he declares: this is not a real scene of hunt-
ing, 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 igures 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 H e l io s
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 ictions 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 iction: the tableau concludes by evoking an additional igure
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 igure is painted (and so too is the ictional painting represented
by the present description). inside the iction of the tableau, though, the painted
igure should not seem ictitious at all, otherwise the painterly illusion would be
broken; likewise, within the iction of the ekphrasis, the igure should not appear
described, but instead painted. he replications keep on self-replicating: we are
said to look at (that is to say, read of) a speaker before a ictitious painting, who
sees (speaks about) make-believe characters, who are themselves said to be looking
upon a igure 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 iction perpetually shule and shit.105 At each moment, moreover, the
described make-believe of the tableau serves as a literal and metaphorical igure for
the ictitious 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. he 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 efort at speech be
addressed to him, but you others follow, not only agreeing, but also asking ques-
tions, 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
movnon, ajlla; kai; ejrwtw`nte~, ei[ ti mh; safw`~ fravzoimi,’ praef.5).109 he efect is
to make the written speeches themselves a representation of sorts, one aware of its
own iction 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 repre-
sent 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. he irony for us readers is that the
very act of speaking, the very gesture of exposing the pretence, would simultane-
ously perpetuate the ictions 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
iguring the limits of their own verbal replication, for the Imagines is always con-
cerned with the interwoven ictions of both seeing and reading. he 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). he tension between ‘seeing as’ and ‘seeing in’ con-
sequently mirrors the complex dynamics of reading represented speech: in this
mise-en-abîme of representations, the iction of seeing paintings through language
replicates the artiice of reading the spoken words as written text. By drawing atten-
tion to the believability, and indeed the deceit, of pictorial graphai, the Imagines
lags 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 relec-
tions on the described mirror-painting of Narcissus (1.23).111 “he pool paints/
describes Narcissus,” begins the description, with the customary pun on graphein,
116 H e l io s
“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 relects the ekphrastic games of the Imagines writ large:
the (description of the) painting igures 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 igurative mirror for the illusion both of visual representation
matching reality and of verbal representation matching image, it also relects the
illusion of written text capturing live oral speech.112
How, then, to tell in this tableau fact apart from iction, and iction apart from
text?113 Ater 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 paint-
ing’s claim to “wisdom” (sofiva).115 But the direct address also implicates the
reader within the games of painterly-cum-written iction described; for just who is
the “child” (meiravkion) addressed here? hrough 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 relection), 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 audi-
ence (fooled by the mirroring graphê of both the ekphrastic words that replicate
image, and the writing that replicates speech). he relected relection of Narcissus
serves as a igure for relecting 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 speciically (1.23.3):
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.
he orator chastizes Narcissus for thinking that the watery mirage should engage
him in conversation. And yet the apostrophic address of this description simulta-
neously acts out the iction that it itself evoked: the speaker’s conversation with the
ictional painting replicates Narcissus’s own imagined conversation with his ic-
tional relection. he replicatory ramiications ripple and recede. Ater all, the dia-
logue 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
relection, 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

here 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 diferent paradigms of vision and representation. on the one
hand, the Imagines lirts with rhetorical theories of ekphrasis, even to the point of
depicting them amid the paintings described (and in the most self-relexive ways).
on the other, the text’s games with seeing and hearing are themselves to be under-
stood against a larger intellectual backdrop. he 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 ques-
tions about the efectiveness of written language as a mode of mediating both spo-
ken discourse and the visual imagery that that discourse represents.
it should be noted here that Philostratus’s irst readers seem to have been sensi-
tive to those underlying ideological stakes. As i have mentioned, a text that imi-
tates the mode and manner of Philostratus’s Imagines, and which associates itself
118 H e l io s
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, ater 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 deined the work around the trait of “truthfulness” (ajlhvqeia), more-
over, this later work expressly defends the genre by way of its “sweet . . . deception”
(hJdeià . . . ajpavth).118 Replicating the replicatory games of his alleged grandfather,
Philostratus the younger will take them to a new level of self-referential complex-
ity.119 his is most spectacularly relected in the verbal evocation of a visual paint-
ing that is itself modelled, at least in part, ater 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 ater a text
that itself provided the paradigmatic example of ekphrastically representing vision
in words.120
let me conclude by returning to the speciic 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 relects, the elder
Philostratus’s Imagines draws on philosophical theories of vision which stretch the
length and breadth of Greek critical thinking. And yet the speciic 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 shit 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 igurative 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-
tion.”121 By the early fourth century, some objects would even combine diferent
representational systems, and in the same single monument, inviting their audi-
ences 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 diferent sorts of visual
modes, constructed by and relected in the Arch’s diferent physical components.122
his 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
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 diferent
sensory forms diferently 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 lagging 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 inefable 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 intel-
lectual 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., Mafei 1991, 591–3; Carson 1992; sprigath 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 igure the (liter-
ally) literal shape of the objects evoked: cf. squire 2011a, 231–6, along with luz 2010, 327–53 and
Kwapisz 2013 (non vidi). he 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 igure-poems; for bibliog-
raphy, 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 inally booming. in what follows, i chiely use the
Greek text of Bendorf and schenkel 1893 (although some of the mistakes in numbering are cor-
rected), following the 1968 critical commentary of schönberger and Kalinka; a new edition by
luca Giuliani and oliver Primavesi is eagerly awaited. he 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 shiting 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 arrange-
ment 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 ind 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 H e l io s
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 ig-
ured ater 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 hesen 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 inden
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”)! suice 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 efet, non seulement les ekphraseis
font partie intégrante, codiiée, 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. he celebrated deinition is that of Hefernan 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 speciic discussion of the descrip-
tion of sculpture and painting into his Progymnasmata in the ith century”; cf. elsner 2009, 10.
17. For a guide to bibliography, see squire 2009, 142–3 note 199. he 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.
18. he most pertinent passages are conveniently collected in Webb 2009, 197–211: heon,
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 heon (not in the irst century but rather the
ith) 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. heon, Prog. 118.7 (see Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, 66).
21. Hermogenes, Prog. 10.47 (see Rabe 1913, 22).
22. he Progymnasmata generally use the adverb ejnargw`~, except for Hermogenes, who pre-
fers an adjective (ejnarghv~). on enargeia as literary critical trope, see esp. zanker 1981 and 1987,
40–1, and Manieri 1998. here is a large bibliography, but i have particularly beneitted 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 specula-
tive and, as vendors of a particular method, they are interested irst and foremost in stressing the
power that the word is able to wield through enargeia and ekphrasis.” Webb’s subsequent conclu-
sion 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. he 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 H e l io s
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 inluence
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 inluen-
tial 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: “he 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 diferentiate between mimêsis and phantasia
elsewhere in Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius (cf. Birmelin 1933, esp. 392–414, on VA 6.19): discuss-
ing 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 diferences and contradictions
between them, show an interest in the purely internal functioning of the imaginative or image-
making faculty . . . he 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,”
ofering 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 “shited 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: “he 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
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. he 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 igure 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
ictif des tableaux fonctionnerait donc comme une métaphore qui exprime la qualité visuelle de ces
discours.” his explains why we also ind 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 deined by the Progymnas-
mata) such as the description of places and landscape, the evocation of particular times and sea-
sons 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 efet, 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. he title Eijkovne~ 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 signiicance. 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 iction behind Philostratus’s transcribed declama-
tion (cf. Quet 2006, 32–5 and Graziani 2006).
50. he 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. he 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 speciically, 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. he 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 öfentliche Galerie, sondern um die private sammlung seines
132 H e l io s
Gastfreundes” [228]). Cf. also schönberger 1995, 164: “Mit ziemlicher sicherheit hatten sie [sc. die
Gemälde] auch Titeltäfelchen und den einzeliguren beigeschriebene Namen.” in my view, such
responses eface the ontological games of the text.
53. observe not only the vagueness of the architectural structure (as if challenging future read-
ers like lehmann-Hartleben into attempting a reconstruction!), but also the qualifying oi\mai (i
think). his 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 preigured 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; Mafei 1991, esp.
261; Boeder 1996, 145–9; Abbondanza 2001; hein 2002; Graziani 2006. he 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 signiicance of the phrase, which leaves it ambiguous as to whether it is the paint-
ings 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 signiicance 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 ictions
with an ekphrastic description of a painting: where longus’s Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tati-
us’s Cleitophon and Leucippe open with irst-person accounts of paintings, using these (ictional
descriptions of) painted ictions to set up the ictional 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. he Gymnasticus, most likely attributable to the same author, opens with a similar discus-
sion of sophia. For analysis, see esp. Mafei 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. he opening association of painting with ajlhvqeia
forges another connection with, e.g., VA 2.22, where Apollonius and Damis likewise deine paint-
ing in terms of its “truthfulness.”
62. on the signiicance of this transition, see esp. Michel 1974, 465–6: “Philostrats ejpainei`n
beschränkt sich nicht auf ein explizites lob der Technik, der ‘Aufassung’ des Gegenstandes,
sondern äußert sich zuerst in dem Bestreben, mit dem lovgo~ des Bildes die jeweils angemess-
ene . . . Bildsprache aufzuinden” (466).
63. he best discussion of the opening sentence is Mafei 1991, concluding that “l’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.
he 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 [= hilo and
Hagen 1923–1927, 2.11]). Needless to say, Augustine would view and read things diferently, as can
be seen/read in my opening epigraph.
65. he igures are based on the concordance of Benndorf and schenkel 1893, 166. By contrast,
note how the term zôgraphia, used to refer to painting speciically, is only used in the proem
(although the noun ‘painter,’ zôgraphos, is used 22 times). Perhaps most signiicant of all is the fact
that the work’s very inal 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 inal 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. “[he 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. here 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 boundar-
ies 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 tab-
leau 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. his 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 H e l io s
embodying Aesop’s Fables, itself therefore personifying a text, is said to be “clever” precisely
because of its literal personiications 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’efet 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
igure est une iction, 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 ater 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 lit-of ” 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. he fact that the very irst word of the irst sentence of this irst tableau begins with a direct
address in the second-person singular (e[gnw~) is signiicant. 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 conidential, account of his visit. instead, we are thrust into the
background as eavesdroppers on another speech, addressed to a diferent person, the Boy” (Webb
2006a, 118; cf. Webb 2010, 352).
77. even this instruction, however, is perhaps more complex than it at irst 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 let 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. he 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 efects, 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 know-
ing awareness of their diferent medial resources.
81. he opening recourse to scamander is only one of many allusions to Homer: in addition to
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 art-
ist—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 diferent liter-
ary 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 con-
taining 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 ind 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 proper-
ties of the soul at Xenophon, Mem. 3.10.
But there is still more going on here, i think. his is relected 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 identiied with teasing reference to Xeno-
phon’s text: lucian, Imag. 10, 20). like Philostratus, lucian uses the occasion to deliver a sophisti-
cated representation of the ontological challenges of ekphrastic representation (cf. steiner 2001,
295–306; Cistaro 2009, 113–47): ater lycinus’s lengthy ekphrastic description of a woman mod-
elled ater (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 ofers 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 H e l io s
proem’s opening declaration of the shared sofiva of painting and poetry (praef.1; cf. Pigeaud 2010,
28–30). he subjects of sofiva and its cognates recur in the proem, not only in the irst 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 ind it to be a recurring
theme amid the tableaux, so that in each case the sofiva of the painting relects 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 efect 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 hemistocles, for instance, we ind a Greek text telling of an image which itself repre-
sents people listening to a non-Greek speech. in this case, we are invited to look at the eyes of
those listening to hemistocles speaking in Persian: “if 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~ <to;> eujxuvneton ejpishmaivnousi toi`~ o[mmasin). To hear hemistocles, in
short, one has to look (or better, to look at those looking at hemistocles talking); indeed, the audi-
ence 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
hemistocles’ 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 paint-
ing 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 speciic 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; homas 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 Mafei 1994 (on lucianic ekphrasis more generally).
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. here 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. his interest in the subjective look
explains why so many objects in the gallery are themselves furnished with eyes: from the igurative
“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, iconograia e lettera-
tura,” see now the independent analysis of Moretti 2010, 347–54, discussing the Philostratean tab-
leaux at 350–4.
95. Cf. Pollitt 1974, 125–38, although i ind Pollitt’s (63–7) association of this trait with “popu-
lar criticism” somewhat problematic.
96. he 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 signiicance of the description, cf. Manieri 1999, 117. he phrasing might remind
us of Vitruvius’s condemnation of what modern scholarship has interpreted as the “hird style” of
Pompeian wall painting, which represents “things that are not, are not able to be, nor have been”
(haec autem nec sunt nec ieri 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 diferent 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 H e l io s
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
cratsmanship” (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 lowers.
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): “he 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: “his, Phaedrus, is what is strange about writing, and what makes it
truly analogous to painting. he 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. he
same holds true with words: you might think that they speak intelligently, but ask them a question,
wishing to ind 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 there-
fore a representation, a mimetic process that produces from the painting another artifact. hat
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 dia-
logue 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. he 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; Hefernan 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
of an inscribed Greek couplet (in the “Casa di Properzio” at Assisi)—cf. squire 2009, 270–3, along
now with Valladares 2011.
112. he 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 relects 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 relecting 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 personiied 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). he key dis-
cussion remains snell 1924.
117. on the signiicance of the term here, cf. Pugliara 2004, 13–4.
118. Praef.4: “he 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?” (hJdeià 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: “hese remarks apply
equally to the reader’s own involvement in the whole scene in the gallery, in the dynamic of com-
munication between non-existent sophist and non-existent boy.” But they also return to the criti-
cal language of theorizing ekphrasis, phantasia, and enargeia, placing the objects of representation
in an ontological paradox between presence and absence. he 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, ater 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 sup-
posed . . .” (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: “he word-pictures
140 H e l io s
merely frame and transform into prose well-known poetic texts, so that the pictorial medium’s
ability to encode speciic information is quite let 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 confer-
ence. 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
H e l e N l oVAT T
he 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 he 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. hey watch out for judgements and wicked deeds, clad in
invisibility, walking everywhere upon the earth.
his 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
his article investigates the theme of vision and power in the Hesiodic poems,
and is an ofshoot of my project on vision in epic from Homer to Nonnus, he 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
144 H e l io s
and objectifying the other; the beautiful body of the hero; the blazing eyes of ber-
serk 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 stron-
ger 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
inluential, yet always on the sidelines.5 he Iliad 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 dif-
ferent parts of the Hesiodic corpus with each other.6
one of the biggest diferences between the Homeric and Hesiodic poems is
their treatment of the divine audience. in the Iliad, the gods oten 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 his connection is self-consciously under-
lined 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
he 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. he ultimate spec-
tacle of the Titanomachy (heog. 674–86) appears (e[fainon, 677) but has no one
to watch it. he cosmos itself feels rather than sees the battle; trembling, shudder-
ing, 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`/. (heog. 674–86)
hey took up their positions against the Titans in baleful conlict, holding enor-
mous 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
l oVAT T—Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 145
strength together. he 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 shats 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 efects.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 heogony the
cosmos echoes, but no one within the text is there to hear it. When zeus ights
Typhoeus later on in the heogony, the ireworks are more prominently on display,
though there is a similar emphasis on sound and fury, and there is at least an audi-
ence, 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~. (heog. 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)
he audience from hell is the closest we come to a divine audience in the heogony,
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 ilter down from above. he 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 spectacu-
lar poem (the heogony) takes the gods as its main protagonists. Perhaps also it
relects a diferent theological perspective, one that takes the gods, zeus espe-
cially, a great deal more seriously than the Iliad.14 Visual power, however, remains
very important in the heogony, as well as in the Works and Days and the Shield.
zeus in particular possesses visual power, if in a diferent sense: the power of cor-
rectly observing, understanding, and revealing. he theme of deception, revelation,
146 H e l io s
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 con-
tain 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, heog.
466–7). is this the ultimate consumptive gaze? or is it a preiguring of the decep-
tion to come?15 he battle between zeus and Cronus is entirely displaced onto the
moment of his birth, so that zeus’s irst 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. (heog. 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 hereater,
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.
he mh`ti~ of Gaia and the concealment of Rhea make zeus’s irst 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, oten 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 git of
“thunder and the blazing thunderbolt and the lightning,” which had previously
been concealed by Gaia (heog. 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 his
key word underlines the visual construction of zeus’s supreme power. he 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
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/. (heog. 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 fulilled, 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 crat.
(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
unspeciied 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. his play on know-
ing 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 emo-
tional impact of the deception, apparently contradicting his earlier omniscience.
zeus’s visual power seems to be compromized still further by Prometheus’s thet of
ire. he moment of deception and the moment of zeus’s realization are linked
when the ire is described as a “far-seen gleam” (thlevskopon aujghvn) at 566 and
569, emphasizing the way zeus both did and did not see it—irst when it was con-
cealed 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
afected by what he sees, even if not actually vulnerable through viewing.24
Continuing through the heogony, zeus holds a frighteningly literal assaultive
gaze. he term assaultive gaze is used in ilm theory to describe a visual connection
that leads to violence and killing, exempliied by the ilm 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 oten structures battle narratives and leads from
148 H e l io s
one killing to another (see, e.g., slatkin 2007, 19–20). Achilles and Hector share a
blazing gaze and the ability to clear the ield by visual terror alone; Achilles in par-
ticular becomes metaphorically ire, star, and thunderbolt.25 in the heogony this
assaultive gaze is particularly prominent in zeus’s battle with Typhoeus; but already
in the Titanomachy the victory is one of ire 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. (heog. 696–705)
he hot blast encompassed the earthly Titans, and an immense blaze reached
the divine aether, and the brilliant gleam of the lightning bolt and lash blinded
their eyes, powerful though they were. A prodigious conlagration took posses-
sion 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.
his passage is the climax of the Titanomachy, when zeus inally 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). he visual battle seems to
stand in for the actual battle; they are blinded, even though they are strong.26 he
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
ejrcomevnwn a[mudi~: mavla ken qrasukavrdio~ ei[h

o}~ tovte ghqhvseien ijdw;n povnon oujd j ajkavcoito.
he 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. hat man would have to be very bold-hearted
Who could be cheerful and not stricken looking on that struggle.
his passage describes the reaction to the aristeiai of idomeneus and Meriones,
stirred up by Poseidon to defend the ships. he 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 lame. 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. he blinding of the Trojans does not
seem to have any speciic efect; in fact, they all continue ighting, whereas zeus’s
blinding of the Titans in the heogony seems to cause, or immediately anticipate,
their defeat. in the Iliad, too, there is another more distant viewer, a notional audi-
ence, as it were, other than those actually involved in the battle, whose horror
ofers a model response to the battle as a whole. yet surely we should be more hor-
riied 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 refer-
ence 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
lames 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 heogony 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 ampliied the topos of ire,
150 H e l io s
thunderbolts, and blinding your enemies to literalize it in the enormous, ultra-epic

universe of gods ighting.
he battle with Typhoeus is even more strongly conigured as a visual battle, a
battle of the gazes. Typhoeus combines the monstrous, the heroic, and the divine.31
he ire 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: (heog. 826–8)
And on his prodigious heads ire sparkled from his eyes under the eyebrows,
and from all of his heads ire burned as he glared.
As with Hector and Achilles in the Iliad and countless other heroes, anger, vio-
lence, and destructiveness are igured as ire in the eyes; and just as this image oten
borders on the literal, expressing and making sublime the visual power of the
hero, so Typhoeus becomes literally iery. he ire that started in the eyes grows
beyond control, threatening the cosmos. Typhoeus’s ire 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; toiò pelwvrou
prhsthvrwn ajnevmwn te keraunou` te flegevqonto~: (heog. 844–6)
he violet-dark sea was enveloped by a conlagration from both of them—of

thunder and lightning, and ire from that monster of typhoons and winds, and
the blazing thunderbolt.
his conlict between two iery powers matches one sort of ire 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: (heog. 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.
Here again we have ojxu; novhse, the iliadic phrase of divine vision and comprehen-
sion: zeus sees and understands the signiicance of this threat. hese 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 igured as a potential zeus, who might
move from monster to god and take over the cosmos. he counterfactual possibil-
ity 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). he
narrator’s knowledge of this counterfactual plot, the potential other universe
within the text, mirrors zeus’s knowledge both of the need to ight Typhoeus and
of the prophecies about Metis’s children (886–900). hese connections work in the
opposite direction when zeus blasts Typhoeus into the ground and is compared to
a cratsman making tin or iron (859–68). Here zeus is like a cratsman 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~. (heog. 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 ratiied; 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
he heogony as a text focuses supremely on zeus, on his feats, achievements,
and power; however, zeus continues to dominate the visual ield in the other Hesi-
odic poems. he 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 con-
cealed from human beings, Op. 42). here is a surprising amount of continuity
152 H e l io s
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 epi-
thet 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 lower.
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. oten even a whole city sufers 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.
his sense of the divine gaze as the measure of human actions takes a strikingly
iliadic igure of zeus and its him irmly into the didactic scheme of Works and
Days: rather than intervening in speciic events, pushing along a narrative, showing
the moral complexity of life by imitating it, zeus’s gaze is generalized, creating a
sartrean ield of vision, which terriies and objectiies all of humanity.35 here is a
recapitulation of this passage in lines 280–5 which links this more general divine
gaze to Hesiod’s speciic 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 ater times his family is let more obscure; whereas the
family of the man who keeps his oath is better in ater 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, itting 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. he 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 hetis (Il. 18.368–467), and in the Aeneid Vulcan’s housewifely demeanor
further problematizes divine authority (Aen. 8.407–15), and the cosmic signii-
cance of Achilles’ victory is less pronounced.
154 H e l io s
he opening lines of the Shield also ofer 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
diferent vertical perspective on Mount Phicion while he plots how to sleep with
Alcmene. Hesiod avoids the self-consciously visual erotics that we ind 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 diferent 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 ine-girdled woman; he quickly reached Typhaonium, and
from there the counsellor zeus went up to loty 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 fulilled 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 hetis, for the sake of security of
power, so his seduction and deception of Alcmene is represented as a plan to pro-
duce 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 heogony; 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-
fully from under their eyebrows, heog. 910–1). Here, as it oten does, the gaze
works both ways, combining power and powerlessness, objectiication and subject-
hood, intromission and emission, in the representation of the erotic charms of the
Graces.36 he power of fury and the power of love are both located in the eyes, and
the efect of looking at the Graces becomes an active gaze from them, sending out
erôs with an assaultive gaze.37 Pandora, too, in both the heogony 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 individual-
ity, including a name and the ability to act, in the Works and Days.39 it is in the
heogony, however, that she is treated much more as a visual treat, a crated 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 ajgaqoiò,

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. (heog. 585–9)
hen 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 artiice exuding and inspiring desire. Pandora is
woman objectiied, 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 (heog. 571–2;
Op. 59–68).44 Her adornment parallels heroic arming scenes; it is her accoutrements
156 H e l io s
not just her person that inspire awe, just as the armor of heroes terriies their ene-
mies.45 he climax of the description in the heogony is an ekphrasis of her head-
band (578–84), also called thauma idesthai (581), a mise-en-abîme of the Hesiodic
cosmos and poetry. he 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]). his 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 heogony, making it a relection 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
efect, even if she has to wait until the Works and Days to gain a voice or a name.
he agency of art is already in play at this early stage in the tradition: the efect that
artistic creation has on its viewer, and the way this can change the world, is a self-
conscious theme for relection in Hesiod.47 Further, themes of deceptive appear-
ance are important in these two episodes (heog. 585, 589; Op. 65–8, 83, 104) as
well as being at the very heart of the Hesiodic moral universe: the poet is poten-
tially deceptive, a version of his all-powerful divine protagonist, but also equally
(perhaps) fabricated by the Muses.
he Hesiodic poems have their share of erôs, then, but are they fundamentally
misogynistic in comparison to Homer? he 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 oten ofering an alternative perspective.49 in the microcosm of epic battle rep-
resented 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)
he 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. he women are
lamenting, while the old men pray for their sons, with whom they are strikingly
contrasted. he passage draws attention to ekphrastic disobedience (sound and
movement) from the women, also marked by the topos of marvel. his 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 personiica-
tions: the Gorgons (230–7) and the Kêres or Fates (Clotho, lachesis, Atropos) and
Achlus (Death Mist), all characterized as feminine. hese 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 inal focus is the way Hesiod uses vision in relecting on poetic functions
and practices. i have suggested above that Hesiod as poet igure 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. he ‘kings
and singers’ passage from the beginning of the heogony airms 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: (heog. 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
low soothingly from his mouth. All the populace look to him as he decides
disputes with straight judgements.
hough zeus is a model of the ideal king, Hesiod also sets up the king as a poet.
he 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 his
visually constructed favor is mirrored in the gaze of his subjects who literally look
towards him, presumably accepting and welcoming his judgments.51 hus the
value of poetry and eloquence in ruling relects in turn on the importance of
poetry and the legitimacy of the Muse-sponsored poet. Continuing the comparison
158 H e l io s
of the diferent Hesiodic works, a famous passage from the beginning of the Works
and Days builds further on this visual poetic. he two strifes (Erides) at 11–26
seem to correct an earlier genealogy of a single strife (Eris) at heogony 225. he
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 cratsmen, 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, cratsmen,
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 suc-
cessful others will try to outdo him. hese passages at the beginning of the heog-
ony and the Works and Days bespeak poetic self-conidence and a strong belief in
the social force of poetry.
he end of the Shield, however, seems to ofer a more pessimistic, and more
Homeric, relection on poetry and monumentality. he Shield, which has told the
story of the battle of Heracles and Cycnus, inishes with Heracles and iolaus strip-
ping 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;~ naiòn povlio~ kleitou` basilhò~,
Ἄnqhn Murmidovnwn te povlin kleithvn t j Ἰawlko;n
Ἄrnhn t j hjd j Ἑlivkhn: pollo;~ d j hjgeivreto laov~,
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. he 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 fail-
ure of monumentality sets a striking challenge to the logic of epic: the igure 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 diferences between Hesiodic and
Homeric epos, as well as the heogony, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles. he
diferent aims and emphases of advice-poetry and the divine subject matter of the
heogony make for structural diference from Homer, yet visual battles, battles of
the gaze, remain very important. he monolithic visual power of zeus strikingly
dominates Hesiodic poetry, and in this the Works and Days is more similar to the
other Hesiodic poems than one might have expected. his contrasts with Homeric
poetry where divine audiences and the divine gaze are multiple and fractured. his
observation reveals a self-conident visual poetic that implies that the poet is an
avatar of zeus and socially eicacious, 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 oten suspect, not to be relied
on, and our inal 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 H e l io s
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Mulvey, l. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3: 6–18.
osborne, R. 2005. “ordering Women in Hesiod’s Catalogue.” in R. Hunter, ed., he Hesiodic Cata-
logue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge. 5–24.
Pratt, l. 1993. Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek
Poetics. Ann Arbor.
Prier, R. A. 1989. hauma idesthai: he Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek.
Tallahassee.
Pucci, P. 1977. Hesiod and the Language of Poetry. Baltimore.
———. 2002. “heology and Poetics in the Iliad.” Arethusa 35: 17–34.
Reed, J. D. 2007. Virgil’s Gaze: Nation and Poetry in the Aeneid. Princeton.
Reeder, e., ed., 1995. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. Princeton.
Rood, N. 2007. “Hesiod’s Metallurgy simile: heogony 861–7.” CCJ 53: 112–23.
Rosen, R. 1997. “Homer and Hesiod.” in i. Morris and B. Powell, eds., A New Companion to
Homer. leiden. 463–88.
salzman-Mitchell, P. B. 2005. A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image and Gender in Ovid’s Metamorpho-
ses. Columbus.
sartre, J. 1966. Being and Nothingness. New york.
schein, s. 1984. he Mortal Hero. Berkeley.
scodel, R. 2007. Review of M. Horster and C. Reitz, Wissensvermittlung in dichterischer Gestalt
(stuttgart, 2005). BMCR 2007.01.05.
sharrock, A. 1991. “he love of Creation.” Ramus 20: 169–82.
slatkin, l. 2007. “Notes on Tragic Visualizing in the Iliad.” in C. Kraus, s. Goldhill, H. Foley, and
J. elsner, eds., Visualizing the Tragic: Drama, Myth and Ritual in Greek Art and Literature.
oxford. 19–34.
smith, R. A. 2006. he Primacy of Vision in Virgil’s Aeneid. Austin.
snell, B. 1953. he Discovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA.
syed, y. 2005. Virgil’s Aeneid and the Roman Self: Subject and Nation in Literary Discourse. Ann
Arbor.
Vernant, J.-P. 1974. “la Mythe prométhéen chez Hésiode.” in J.-P. Vernant, Mythe et société en
Grèce ancienne. Paris. 178–94.
Volk, K. 2002. he Poetics of Latin Didactic. oxford.
West, M. 1966. Hesiod: heogony, Edited with a Prolegomena and Commentary. oxford.
———. 1988. Hesiod: heogony, Works and Days. oxford.
Notes
1. he assaultive gaze is a concept of an aggressive gaze that leads to violence; see, e.g., Clover
1992, passim.
his article, much labored over, has been greatly improved by those who have heard and read
162 H e l io s
it. hanks 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. heir 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. here 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: “he conspicuous diferences between the poems of Hesiod and
between Hesiod and Homer existed in tension with the uniied 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 heogony 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 ofers 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. Griin 1978 is the classic treatment of this theme in Homer; see also Griin 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 watch-
ing; 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 chang-
ing relationship between gods and men from the heogony to the Iliad to the Odyssey relects their
settings at diferent times in mythic history: “Whereas in the Iliad the gods must constantly be
reminded not to ight 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). his 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. his might explain the changes in the representation of the divine
audience from the heogony 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 oten 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 difer-
ence between seeing and hearing: hearing can only be passive, while seeing, in ancient thought and
modern, is oten 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 heogony and 17.424–5 in
the Iliad brings out these structural diferences. As the mortals ight on ater the death of Patroclus,
the narrator comments on Achilles’ lack of knowledge (Il. 17.403–11). he 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]). he narrative immediately moves to an
audience response: irst 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. here is an iliadic connection here too; see West 1966, 349 for the similarity with Iliad
20.54–66. his passage follows on from a divine council (20.4–30) in which zeus speciically
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 extraordi-
nary Achilles is in his visual power, both active (in his blazing eyes) and passive (in the efect 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 Griin 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 ire 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 oten in antagonism to zeus: 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 speciically mentioned, but the blurred boundary between intellectual
awareness and vision makes it diicult.
14. Graziosi and Haubold 2005, 68: “he gods in the heogony 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 conlict of the gods in Hesiod’s heogony . . . the struggle for ascendancy is a
struggle to consign one’s opponents to perpetual darkness. To be the passive victim of concealment
164 H e l io s
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.” his
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: “he semantic range of noeô in the Iliad includes not only ‘taking
note of ’, ‘observing’, but ‘having in mind’, ‘bearing in awareness.’ ” snell (1953, 13) deines 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. he 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 signiicance 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 diiculties. zeus seems both to see and not to
see, just as his omniscience oten seems to have at least temporary gaps. For a theoretical perspec-
tive on omniscience and narrative, see Culler 2004.
22. his 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 qualiication (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. he 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. hough this quotation inishes with sound, the visual side returns at the end of the section,
summing up the climactic moment of the Titanomachy: “he deed of supremacy was made mani-
fest” (kavrteu~ d j ajnefaivneto e[rgon, heog. 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 inal collapse of the sky onto the earth, but instead to
the primordial sexual union between sky and earth.” he 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.
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: “he lashing eyes
of a serpent are another typical feature.” in my exploration of this phenomenon, blazing eyes char-
acterize 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 ire: his
ire, like the moon’s, is but a relection of a greater ire, in this case the ire of the thunderbolts
bursting from his body. his interpretation seems rather strained. West (1988 in his translation)
allows but does not enforce this interpretation: “A conlagration held the violet-dark sea in its grip,
both from the thunder and lightning and from the ire of the monster, from the tornado winds and
the laming bolt” (28).
34. in contrast, the Titans’ exclusion to the other side of gloomy Chaos emphasizes their loss
in a sort of perpetual concealment (heog. 813–4), as does that of Typhoeus in Tartarus (868),
although he has an etiological aterlife as the force of the winds.
35. sartre (1966) envisages the self as alienated in a hostile ield 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 heogony and a form of
enlightenment. Although not explicitly concerned with ‘the gaze,’ she uses closely associated femi-
nist terminology: “he heogony introduces through the making of Pandora the very experiences
of objectiication” (36).
39. Clay 2003, 122–4: “in the heogony, 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 efect upon men. Her speech above all constitutes the vehicle of seduction and decep-
tion.” 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 crated (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) identiies the thauma as wonder mixed with fear of the new, or
displaced wonder at the beauty of the cosmos.
166 H e l io s
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
woman.”
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): “he 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 beneicial gazes of muses, gods, and subjects, see Cairns 2005, 132.
51. Cf. Od. 8.167–79, with Martin 1984.
52. Griith (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
l l oy D l l eW e l ly N - J o N e s
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 revela-
tions, 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 look-
ing at women. hese 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
ictional 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, inally, back
again). he climactic and most intimate viewing of Callirhoe takes place within the
Persian empire, at Babylon, inside the royal palace’s seraglio of queens and concu-
bines; here she is seen by the Great King Artaxerxes alone, afording 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 ide 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. hese stories, concocted
long ater 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.
168 H e l io s
By the irst century Ce, the seraglio motif had embedded itself so irmly 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 compo-
sition 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 iction.3 like many of the early novels
(the Alexander Romance, the fragmentary Ninus, and Metiochus and Parthenope),
Callirhoe is best classiied as historical iction. he 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 igures 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 conirms 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 irst 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 herefore we can say that Chariton intended a pre-
cise literary-historical equation and that the novel is set in the last decade of the
ith century BCe.
he irst 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 his idea has now generally been
discounted in favor of viewing the novel as a genre arising from, but diferent to,
historiography (although the crossover points between the genres can oten be let
deliberately blurred).8
hanks 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 irst two centuries Ce Persia, now under Parthian rule, contin-
ued to play a decisive role in Roman international politics and that for many Greek
l l eW e l ly N - J o N e s —‘Empire of the Gaze’ 169
authors, the Achaemenid past found its relection 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 ith 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 irst century Ce.
he 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 ith 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 cen-
tral 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: irst there is Dionysius, the leading man of ionia, fol-
lowed by Mithridates and Pharnaces, the powerful Persian satraps, and inally 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 inluence of erôs upon Persian political life.10 in his-
torical 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,
efect over the Persian nobles’ ability to rule efectively: even the Great King, as
conceived of from Herodotus onward to be the supreme arbiter of justice, falters in
judgment because of the powerful efects of erôs and Callirhoe combined. Erôs
goes on to subvert other royal exploits: the King’s hunt, the symbol of his mascu-
line military prowess, becomes tainted when Artaxerxes loses himself in voyeuris-
tic 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 speciic about conirming the location of the dramatic high-
lights 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 H e l io s
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 forbid-
den space of the inner quarters of the royal palace itself. his has a major impact
on our engagement with Callirhoe’s story, for suddenly we ind ourselves in the
hidden, rareied 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 difers 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 sera-
glio—for her own protection, he hastens to add.
in the seraglio Callirhoe meets with the Persian Queen who treats her kindly
and ofers her jewellery and ine clothing, which Callirhoe modestly rejects (5.9).
he 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). he King’s chief eunuch, Artaxates, persuades Artaxerxes to keep Callirhoe
as a concubine within the conines of the royal palace (6.2). he King goes hunting
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. he 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 ater
him, with Callirhoe in tow.
‘Once upon a Time in a Kingdom far away’: Chariton’s Seraglio

here 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 lavor 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. his particular sort of orientalism is not necessarily of the familiar
form identiied by edward saïd in his seminal 1978 study, Orientalism: Western
Conceptions of the Orient and followed thereater as a main line of argument in
contemporary classical scholarship, at least in relation to studies of ith-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 iction du despotisme asiatique dans l’Oc-
cident classique (published in 1998 in english as he Sultan’s Court: European Fan-
tasies of the East), Grosrichard, unlike saïd, focuses his attention on the dominance
of literary iction 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 iction, with its focus on the sexual-
political fantasy of ‘oriental Despotism’ and the oten cruel mechanisms of abso-
lute 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 H e l io s
form of gratiication 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, inds 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. his setting of the sera-
glio becomes the ultimate space of narrative, the place in which, and about which,
tales are told.15 it is the itting venue for the most dramatic sequence of Chariton’s
romantic iction.
What Chariton conveys about the reality of women’s lives at the bona ide his-
torical 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 deinite social sta-
tus would have called for a codiied hierarchical structure that must have been
relected 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 liting 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
afords 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. herefore,
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
Persian empire as an attempt to ponder on the nature of despotism and the efem-
inacy of barbarian rule. in Callirhoe we see the seraglio as the place from which
power originates and where power ends.
he Oriental(ist) Gaze
he Persian scenes in Callirhoe invite the gaze. he reader views the pageantry and
splendor of Persia in its heyday, although it is an exotically ictionalized 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 ele-
ment 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:
here is a very speciic thing in Persian law, which is that the law of the state
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), ofered an elaborate investigation into
the issues surrounding the succession of a safavid prince to the throne of Persia:
he 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 . . . he 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 . . . hen with one hand he opens the eyelids and
with the other he takes his dagger by the tip and rips out the pupils one ater
another . . . and takes them of 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 his, according to Grosrichard, is the ultimate orientalist sce-
nario. 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 H e l io s
intoxicated, drugged, or diseased, if he has his sight, then he is an undisputed ruler.

hus, 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 under-
standing the Greek imaginative construction of the Achaemenid empire, in litera-
ture both contemporary with, and subsequent to, its period of greatest inluence. 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 ixated 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
oicial 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 cruciixion (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 prison-
ers (F26 §4 = Plutarch, Artax. 14–7). Xenophon too recalls that, as he marched
through the Persian empire, he oten 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
he Greek authors are correct to identify this particular form of Persian pun-
ishment 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 of 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). he same fate is reserved for the traitor
Tritantaechmes (Cicantakhma) the sagartian (DB ii §33).28 in this Darius is con-
sistent with a general Near eastern practice, since successive eastern civilizations
regarded blindness as the lowest type of degradation that could be inlicted upon
an individual; the gouging out of the eyes of an enemy prisoner (sometimes specii-
cally only the right eye, which rendered a soldier useless, since the shield was held
over the let 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. hus, a text by Ashurnasirpal ii recounts how, “i
captured many troops alive: i cut of some of their arms and hands; i cut of 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 his is a standard practice, since the public display of
rebels, either as mutilated corpses or as living prisoners awaiting the inal death
penalty, signiied the serious nature of rebellion and acted as a warning to other
subject peoples. hat “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 unsee-
ing 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),
[he King] himself, so it is said, established himself at susa or ecbatana, invisi-

ble to all, dwelling in a wonderful palace with a surrounding wall lashing 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 fortiied 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 he act of proskynêsis, the tightly
codiied 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 suppli-
ants threw themselves on the loor and kept their gaze strictly lowered.33
even favored courtiers in the privileged position of dining with their mon-
arch were unlikely to gaze directly upon the Great King. Heraclides of Cumae
reports that
176 H e l io s
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. he 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 he 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.
hese 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 hand-
some.” Not content with the physical trappings of dress, Cyrus allegedly “encour-
aged 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,
he 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
beauty and the King shits 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 ixation 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 irst 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-fulilling prophecy (2.7.1).
he 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
igure, but “she draws the people to her” not by rhetorical speaking skills, but sim-
ply 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 ill of looking at her, and climb to their rootops 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 loor, their eyes
cast down or closed tightly; even children are afected in this way (4.1).40
he constant public gaze on the ravishing beauty of the heroine is without ques-
tion designed for erotic efect. he 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. he opera-
tion of this all-encompassing masculine gaze is exempliied in Book 1.14, where
Callirhoe, sold into slavery, is unveiled to her stunned buyer and, simultaneously,
to the reader: “heron . . . unveiled Callirhoe’s head [and] shook loose her hair . . .
178 H e l io s
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.
here is, however, an ambiguity surrounding the ability of the male gaze to dom-
inate, 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). hus, 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 he
Greek veil heightens that sexuality, as it covers and conceals the body and keeps it
chaste and secure; but in concealing the igure, the same veil also highlights the
body’s sexuality and makes it desirable. Veiling temporarily denies men access to
women’s sexuality, but the rebuf 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 oten viewed
as desirable. hus, towards the end of Chariton’s novel, Chareas is reunited with
Callirhoe:
so Chaereas crossed the threshold into the room. he 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 fur-
ther inland away from the coast of Asia Minor, it is interesting to note how Cal-
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 regu-
larity. he 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 per-
mitted to view her. in efect 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” (hem. 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 justiication 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). hese “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] hid-
den” (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).
he 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 sta-
tus augmented their high social position by separating themselves from the
180 H e l io s
common gaze through the use of curtained litters. he 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 harma-
maxa” (hem. 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. here fol-
lowed the iteen so-called harmamaxae 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 bat-
tles 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. he 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 chal-
lenges her to the duel of loveliness, Chariton notes (5.3.8):
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 irst to see and get as near as possible.
he 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 it for a slave” (3.1). But what is it about concubi-
nage (pallakia) that Callirhoe so fears? is it that the concubine is little more than a
man’s sexual possession? hat she is open to the enslaving view of others?51
With its setting in the orient, Callirhoe conjures up the ‘exotic’ yet historically
veriiable 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): “hey
marry many wives and also maintain a number of concubines for the sake of hav-
ing 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 git exchange, or were brought to Persia as war booty or gited 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 igure of the
captive concubine for dramatic efect. he allure of the seraglio concubines proves
to be irresistible to Greek writers. hus, the story of Aspasia, the Greek-born
182 H e l io s
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 gratiication, and Greek texts reveal a particular
preoccupation with the sex life of the Persian monarch. Heraclides of Cumae for
instance records:
hree hundred women watch over [the Great King] . . . hese 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, conirming that “[Artaxerxes ii] had . . . no fewer than 360 concu-
bines, 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? hree hundred and sixty nubile concu-
bines parading themselves around the King’s bed in a yearlong carousel of loveli-
ness—there to looked at, to be ogled; and there for the King to ‘take his pleasure’
with. it is a very titillating image. hese 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 hese 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
afording his reader the ultimate male voyeuristic fantasy: the female beauty contest.
his 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). he Persian Wars are now seen to be escalating into a battle of
beauty, and an international incident emulating from the seraglio threatens to
ensue: “he 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 her-
self outside the conines 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.
he 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 privi-
leged ‘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. hus, 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 con-
cepts 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. his 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 wom-
en’s status, honor, and invisibility, but expands on their dramatic potential to help
184 H e l io s
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 sug-
gestion of appearing before men who are not of her blood-kin group, nor even
slaves of her own household, Vashti refuses to appear and rebufs the King’s com-
mand. But, unjustly, the Queen’s concern for self-honor and her consequent rebuf
of the King’s perverse orders bring about her swit divorce, downfall, and disgrace
as the humiliated Ahasuerus enacts his revenge.59 his story, reminiscent in many
ways of the Herodotean tale of Gyges and Candaules’ wife (Herodotus 1.8), inds
further relection 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. he reader of the Book of esther, i suggest, is solicited by the
author to sympathize with Vashti’s plight, and consequently we ind 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: “he 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). his 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 conirms that she is a com-

pliant wife who obeys royal protocol (as indeed does her circumspect husband).
Her heightened sense of prestige is magniied by her invisibility because, ater all,
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 none-
theless, 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 com-
parison with the Greek heroine at the beauty contest; and while the assembled
Persian noblewomen acknowledge stateira’s supremacy, when the idea for the con-
test is irst suggested by them, they realize the impossibility of the situation by
crying out, as one, “if only you could be seen, mistress!” (5.3). his 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 compel-
ling cliché of the royal seraglio. he 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. he 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 briely, into the domestic heart of the
palace, and used the harem as a place to chronicle the family rivalries and com-
ment on the political tensions of the Achaemenid dynasty.62 By and large, the his-
torical 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 H e l io s
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yamauchi, e. 2008. “Vashti.” in T. longman and P. enns, eds., Dictionary of the Old Testament:
Wisdom, Poetry, and Writings. Downers Grove and Nottingham. 826–8.
yeazell, R. B. 2000. Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature. New Haven and
london.
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. he story is set in
a precise location (susa: Est. 1:2), at a speciic 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. here are several marks of history writing in esther, and
the book actually opens with the phrase “it came to pass” (Est. 1:1). he 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 relections 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. he 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 H e l io s
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 ith-century Athenian
empire, the Persian institution was copied, with the Athenians calling their inspectors episkopoi or
‘overseers.’ his 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 evi-
dence 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. he 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. he locus classicus for the power of kallos is the chariot myth in Plato, Phdr. 246A4–7; for
its efect in the Greek novel see Heliodorus 3.7.5. see Cairns 2005 for full references.
42. e.g., Pindar, Ol. 6.6 and heognis 1331–3; see discussions in Maclachlan 1993, 32–3,
69–70, 109–10. he 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, hem. 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.
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 ind.” 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 con-
cubines is diicult to say; see Henry 1985, 73f.; Konstan 1987; Allan 2000, 167–72; also scheidel
2009, 289–93. it would appear that in Athenian literature, the term pallakê was somehow associ-
ated 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. hey
could be bought as slaves (Herodotus 8.105; Plutarch, hem. 26.4), or were received as gits and
tribute from diferent 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 cap-
tured from rebellious subjects (Herodotus 4.19, 7.83, 9.76, 9.81). Herodotus (6.32) conirms that
ater 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 num-
ber of Persian women, of high status, at Damascus in 333 BCe. hese 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 plea-
sure, for it had signiicant political meaning. its consequences—the production of ofspring—
afected 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.” his 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*
NA N C y s o R K i N R A B i N oW i T z
he project of this article, and of this volume as a whole, must be situated in con-
temporary 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 hus, following existentialism and sartre in particular, lacan recog-
nizes that there is another gaze or look outside that of the subject’s own (lacan
1981, 67–78, 84; sartre 1956, 252–66). hat external gaze is also signiicant in Fou-
cault’s notions of discipline and spectacle exempliied 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).
hese concerns are also of central interest to feminists who, since the time of
Mary Wollstonecrat, have engaged with the problem of women as objects of the
male gaze.3 As is oten 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. his determines not only most relations between men and
women but also the relation of women to themselves. he surveyor of woman in
herself is male: the surveyed female. hus 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 fur-
ther, 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 spec-
tatorial positions for women in the audience.5 in a subsequent collection of her
essays, Mulvey modiied some of her early statements by putting them in the
196 H e l io s
context of particular moments in feminist politics (1989a, vii; 1989c; see the excel-
lent summary in stewart 1997, 13–9).6 hese hypotheses about the masculinity of
the ilmic 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 the-
ory 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 diferent 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 deined 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 . . . he 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 Gof 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 ofer 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 representa-
tion of women’s active gaze—negates neither the relegation of women to the
domestic interior nor the prescription of downcast eyes. Rather, women outside
R A B i N oW i T z —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.
he 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;
inally, the ways in which sacriicial heroines are represented as both to be looked
at and looking. At the end i will try to address the question of the efect of this
structuration of viewing on the audience.
Tragedy is obviously a privileged location for thinking about Athenian visual
and performance culture. hough 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 prob-
lems of vision and visibility, of revelation and knowledge (zeitlin 1994, 141; Rehm
2002, 3–6; humiger, 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 oten plays the role of an onstage viewer, and the
messenger speeches describing something that took place ofstage have a visual
dimension as well.11 he 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 sufering of women (e.g., Alcestis, Medea). he 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 efects;
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 deine the chorus in general as a potential narrator or
narratee just as the other characters, while looking carefully at speciic 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). hus, 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 efect on the audience, but they do not thus eliminate the efect.
198 H e l io s
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 signiicance of the looks that
are reported (see below on iphigenia). hus, in my discussion i will consider nar-
rated 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. he ideological signiicance of looking and being looked
at does not depend only on the audience’s view of what is literally taking place
before the skênê.
he 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 dis-
play (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 deined a citizen (Goldhill 1996, 19; 1998; 1999; see 2000 for extended discus-
sion 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 citi-
zens. he 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-
hat 1994, 69). And as is oten mentioned, the open air theater, with daylight per-
formances, 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.
he 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.
he theater was especially important in ancient Athens, but it was part of an
overall culture that also prioritized looking. in the Funeral oration, hucydides
(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 citi-
zens’ efect on one another and that such a jealous gaze could inlict 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’
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 inluence of a disciplinary regime in the sense that Fou-
cault has described in Discipline and Punish (1977, 200–9).13
his 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 hat is, in tragedy women were not the physical object of
the male gaze since male actors played the roles of women, a convention that fur-
ther 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 of and
return to normal life (zeitlin 1996; loraux 1995; on satyr drama, see Hall 1998).
he practice also perhaps kept those dangerous emotions associated with women
somewhat in check. hus, 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 proces-
sion, as basket bearers at least (Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 61 with note 5; Flaumen-
hat 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 “irst fruits” in the baskets suggest their role in reproduction
(see also sourvinou-inwood 1994, 271).
here has historically been considerable debate about whether women were in
the audience that was so much a part of the Athenian community. hat is, we don’t
know for sure what women saw. he evidence from Plato (Gorg. 502B–D and Leg.
658C–D) strongly suggests that women were present, but comedy is less clear. in
Aristophanes’ hesmophoriazusae 390–7, 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. heater leads to surveillance. But does that mean that women were not also
in attendance? he ancient evidence is not conclusive, and frustratingly enough the
200 H e l io s
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 ambi-
guity; 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 corrobo-
rate Mulvey’s notion that the gaze constitutes male power, since in antiquity the
woman, as object of the gaze, was represented as powerful. his is not surprising
given that, in one of the Greek conceptions of erotic, desirability emanates from
the eye of the beloved.18 he 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? hus, for instance, Aeschylus has his Chorus punningly point out in the
Agamemnon: “Whoever named you thus completely truly? . . . Helen ittingly
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 he 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 sot 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
because she fears he would not be able to resist his desire for his wife: “Avoid look-
ing 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. he 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 gits (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 heseus 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 sufering.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 of by a woman’s look.25 he mod-
ern parallel of the veil and debates about its cultural signiicance 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 hus, 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 dichoto-
mies is strongly marked in several plays that begin with a sufering woman ofstage.
202 H e l io s
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. he 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). hey elicit infor-
mation 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).
his 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. his deception could only work if Alcestis
were veiled and looking down, not looking at her husband.29 he ending of the
play, i would argue, restores Admetus to power over his objectiied 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, com-
pletely 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 inally
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 sufering 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). hese
expressions of longing for springs and hunting lead the Nurse to wonder at her and
to call her mad (223–7). And like other women, Phaedra will go inside to kill her-
self (loraux 1987, 21–2). hus, 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 diferent fear of blame above). in this instance, the awareness of other wom-
en’s gossip controls her.
euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis stages the arrival of iphigenia and Clytemnestra at
Aulis where iphigenia will be sacriiced 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). he trope is highlighted since her mother argues with her,
labeling her modesty as inappropriate delicacy (habrotêi) or excessive holiness
(semnotêtos) (1343, 1344).31 he 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. he energy of their
looking is underlined with many verbs of seeing and intensiied 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). hough 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. hus,
she states the norm of chaste modesty even as she is an example of its rupture.
204 H e l io s
here 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 speciically 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 he git 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 vali-
date 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.
he gaze is also implicated in women’s dangerous desire and revenge. he
Greek conception of the visual nature of Desire (personiied 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, ater 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;
ater the Nurse has convinced her to speak about her desire, but before heseus
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). he Chorus of the Iphigenia at Aulis moves from praising the pos-
session 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 efects of the desiring female gaze are
deadly. hus, 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 see-
ing him because he was handsome (987–9; cf. Gorgias, Hel. 19, cf. 15).
he 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
description of her “man-counseling heart” (11), is enacted in part through her abil-
ity 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’ ilial 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. hey 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 signiicance:
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 oten articulate the cultural norms that they are breaking; women who
possess the gaze either of desire or of aggression are viewed as doing harm. hus,
the way tragedy represents women looking can be seen as oscillating between
empowering and disempowering them.
Sacriicial Heroines as Objects and Subjects of the Gaze

he sacriicial 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 signiicant 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 H e l io s
he sacriice 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 repre-
sented 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). he 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 sacriice my daughter, who is a treasure [agalma, 208] of the house or abandon
the navy” (212)? hat word, agalma, points out subtly that as the daughter of the
house iphigenia is an inappropriate ofering; 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 gits). he 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 sacriicer of his daughter (Ag. 224).
he Chorus also describes the actual scene of the sacriice, up to the point at
which they say they did not see (eidon, 247) any more. he language here is very
diicult to understand, but iphigenia’s victimization is clear. she is lited 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 of 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 his nakedness, like that of Clytemnes-
tra when she tries to gain pity, is inefectual.
iphigenia is not completely passive, however (scodel 1996, 115). Aeschylus
describes her throwing a missile at each of the men performing the sacriice 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 ofer instead of a human to a goddess, here the sacriicial 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 sacriicing 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 per-
haps 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
object of the gaze? Her glance and her voice, that is, her actions, are both evoked
here, though to no avail (see Fletcher 1999). he sacriice 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). he contrast with Helen heightens the sense of pathos and waste
about her death. he dangerous, mature woman, Helen, is also called an agalma,
and when she went to Troy, she too threw a sot dart from her eyes, but Helen’s gaze
was not inefectual (Ag. 741–3).
he Iphigenia in Aulis expands on the Oresteia’s sacriicial scene; here the issue
of visuality is prominent over and over again (zeitlin 1994, 167, 169).43 i men-
tioned 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. he entire
plot of euripides’ play turns on seeing. he play opens (in the sole surviving manu-
script) with Agamemnon sending Clytemnestra a note countermanding his origi-
nal 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 ofers her “eye free of aidôs” (994) to
Achilles. He refuses the sight of her, fearing blame (997–9).
he extent of the catastrophe to come is deined in part by changes in the visual
register. initially, father and daughter share a reciprocal, nonhierarchical gaze. in
the irst 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 ater 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).
hus, loving father and daughter look at one another and are identiied with one
another by that look. his 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 sacriiced, and while she is still ighting for her
life, she supplicates Agamemnon, and her plea is again based on the looks they had
208 H e l io s
exchanged (1239; cf. 640–1). he 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 pre-
tending 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. he imagery of light and dark at the beginning
and end of her speech intensiies 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). he 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). he relationship between
glory and the gaze is typical for the male hero; here iphigenia attempts to adopt
that role. he 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 illed
with heroic resolve. iphigenia has greater volition assigned to her by euripides than
by Aeschylus—she is not dragged of 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. hus, it seems that being looked at, and the desire to be looked at, are
problematic in the ways that Mulvey hypothesized.
his 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 sacriicial 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. he war is now over, and the Greek army is becalmed in
hrace, as it was at Aulis. his time it is stopped by Achilles’ ghost (38) demanding
the sacriice 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 argu-
ment is that the army should honor the dead Achilles as it honored him when he
looked on the light (312). he 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 ofering 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 irst caught my attention: “i see you” (342). his simple declara-
tive and its placement at the opening of her speech, the irst 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 god-
dess except for her mortality. in that role, she was much looked at (apobleptos, Hec.
355; see Gregory 1999, 88) and sought ater 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). he typical use of eyes and
life is intensiied 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
ofstage 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 ofers 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 H e l io s
into self-sacriice. As Achilles fell in love with the self-sacriicing iphigenia, so the
army is smitten with this self-sacriicing Polyxena. We hear that the soldiers were
moved to give her gits and praise her courage and aretê (579–80). his 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. he 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-sacriice 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 eforts to resist. he 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. here 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 oten taken as
a model for these sacriicial virgins who are, like her, called brides of Hades.49 Visu-
ality is prominent in the descriptions of her power. For instance, when Antigone
irst 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 irst 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. he
guard says “he child was seen” (hê pais horatai, 423). Between irst and second
burial she has become bolder—willing to be seen—and, in a seeming contradic-
tion, more passive—willing to be caught. We are not told whether Antigone looks
at the Guard or away from him. But in her irst interaction with Creon, her down-
cast 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 resis-
tance? 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
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 sacriicial 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). Ater 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 sacriice; therefore, she approaches
her death asking her fellow citizens to look at her (806). since she has alluded poi-
gnantly 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 hebes to look on her suferings 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
low.”53 he 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 inal 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). his speech has long
troubled critics; some go so far as to excise it as non-sophoclean.54 But it is con-
sistent with the rest of the play (Neuberg 1990; Cropp 1997; Griith 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 philo-
sophical 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 H e l io s
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 deines desire’
(1973, 247); but she is also, according to him, the personiication of the death wish
(1973, 281). hat somewhat dubious fame is countered in feminism, which sees her
as a freedom ighter. luce irigaray (1994. 69–70) reclaims a political Antigone who
as an “example is always worth relecting upon as a historical igure and as an iden-
tity or identiication 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 pene-
trating 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 deinition 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 ind 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. hey would have seen that if women turn a desiring or aggressive eye
on the world, they are killed of. 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 sacriicial 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 ind ourselves
in them? in the tragedies, these characters went as far as they could go, but we are
in a much diferent position today. one implication here might be that women
simply objectifying men in our world is not solving the problem of objectiication
through the gaze. Feminists need to unsettle the structure, not simply grab the
dominant position to make change. Critical attention to Helen might make mod-
ern 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
learned that students tout lap dancing and pole dancing as signs of women’s power
(cf. Cody 2005).57 hus, a discussion of beauty in antiquity can raise important
questions about the risks and beneits of that privilege and the power to which it
gives access.
What then about women’s deployment of the gaze? he 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 let me questioning why i should continue work-
ing on tragedy. To misuse Aeschylus: Perhaps learning can help us avoid sufering
by showing us the sufering 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. he 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 staf at Hamilton was
assiduous in their assistance. Finally, i would like to thank the students in “Tragedy hen 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: “he visual ield has begun to be
explored with a thoroughness and global understanding unique in the history of human self-
relection”; Bryson et al. 1994, xv–xxix. here has been increased attention to the body and visual-
ity 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. he use of the masculine is lacan’s; it relects a certain gender ideology implicit in
psychoanalysis.
3. evelyn Keller and Christine Grontkowski (1983, 207) sum the concern up in this way: “he
gist of this sentiment is that the logic of the visual is a male logic.” see also Pollock 1994.
218 H e l io s
4. silverman (1994) ofers 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 trag-
edies of euripides and seneca ofered multiple spectatorial positions for the citizen and senatorial
male gazes.” linguistics would suggest that we have to distinguish the power of agency ofered by
diferent 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 citi-
zen 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. he 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 invis-
ibility 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: “he perceptions on-stage now coincide with those of the spec-
tator”; 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 relexive space.
12. he 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 ictions and the impact they had on
society can only be fully understood by approaching them from ‘both sides of the curtain’ simul-
taneously” [3]).
13. Cartledge 1998, 5–6; cf. Frederick 2002, 1–18. Winkler (1990, 46) says that the gaze was
only put into efect 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.
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,” lowing 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 humiger, this volume.
20. Fraenkel 1962 ad loc.; steiner 1995, 177, esp. on Ag. 416–9; Maclachlan (1993, 66–7) inter-
prets this as the loss of the “love-lash” 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 signiicance of her
beauty). on her age, see Diodorus 4.63.2; Apollodoros, Epit. 1.23; Plutarch, hes. 31.
22. she talks about the power of Aphrodite in euripides, Tro. 924–32; lloyd (1984, 307) dis-
misses 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. he word aischion here implies the relation-
ship between inner and outer beauty since it also means shameful (cf. Horace, Carm. 1.19 and
sutherland 2003). Goldhill (1998, 114) says that “heodote 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. he 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 idelity (and of the
Agamemnon scene [1046–69] where Menelaus’s grief is exacerbated when he looks at statues; see
above on Menelaus).
220 H e l io s
30. see Blondell 1998, 163–4 on masculinity here; Foley 1989. he description of Medea’s eyes
reairms the notion that downcast eyes may signify more than a woman’s lack of status vis-à-vis
men. At irst, the nurse takes the fact that her mistress does not lit 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 ine clothing is particularly the mark of the hetaira; cf.
the clothing or nudity of sacriicial 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 igures 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 he-
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. he 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 audi-
ence 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 igure in a painting not only because she is central and mute, but also because she does not break
the gaze.” on the signiicance of frontality, see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, 80–9.
39. For a discussion of the relationship of this picture to the “safron tunics worn by the girls
who acted the bear in the cult of Artemis Brauronia,” see scodel 1996, 115 with references. hat
ritual prepared girls for the end of their childhood and marriage. in Cretan wall paintings the
crocus (source of safron 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). halmann (1993,
151) also notes this stereotypical femininity.
41. Cf. Fletcher 1999, 18 who thinks that she is a real picture staring at her sacriicers, but also
victimized; scodel 1996, 117, cf. Wohl 1998, 67–82. halmann (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 difer 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.
45. his address may be interpreted as a form of interpellation, reminiscent of louis Althus-
ser’s formulation (1971, 127–88). here, the individual gains subjectivity by responding to the
address, but is also subjected, since Althusser refers to the police oicer’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 ofered a
safe way to put her on display; cf. Benton 1999, 31.
47. his action would recall Helen, at least for the audience (scodel 1996, 123 and halmann
1993, 142–3).
48. halmann 1993, 147: “if 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 illed by admiration for her.”
49. hough she is not exactly a sacriicial heroine—it is her choice to bury Polynices, and no
one demands her death in advance—it is still possible to see her as sacriicing 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. Griith 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 deiant
outburst, at which point the audience must surely interpret her refusal to engage in visual contact
as deliberate disrespect—a gesture that oten 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 signiicance of the repetition as speech act, see Butler 2000. he philosophical tradi-
tion from Hegel is powerful in Butler; see now Wilmer and Źukauskaite 2010.
52. here is a textual problem, and given the irst stanzas, it is not really logical to think of
desire as lawful. Griith (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.
Griith (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 bufeted
with criticism from people who felt it objectiied us. i’d felt like such a libertine. . . . here was a
reason men paid ridiculous sums of money for the company of an exaggeratedly feminine crea-
ture. Because strippers are spectacular. hey rule.” But she goes on to say: “it was the whole girls-
in-bulk thing that repulsed me . . . it’s like a girl bufet . . . i hated the girl bufet. I deserve better
presentation, i thought. We all did.”
Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy*
C H iA R A T H UM iG e R
it is to be expected that the problematization of seeing features importantly in the-

ater, 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, per-
sonal; 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 relective knowledge in its various forms.2
second, seeing engages with theatricality (the speciic 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. he themes of vision and knowledge interact,
therefore, with the conventions and the medium of theater itself.3
hird, the problem of seeing and appearances as epistemologically charged has
great relevance within Athenian culture in the second half of the ith century. he
sophistic movement (exempliied notably in Protagoras and Gorgias) focused on
the problem of deining knowledge and the way it is gained. Plato’s late work he-
aetetus (ca. 369 BCe) illustrates vividly the extent of the debate: in the irst 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 impor-
tant 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 diicult to
distinguish from the real . . . he 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 ofspring.
(ht. 150B–C)
224 H e l io s
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 trea-
tise 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.”
his evidence points at a rich philosophical debate initiated in the ith century,
at irst 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
(heaetetus, 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 deinition of ‘real knowledge’ and
‘real being’ is sought.
he 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 ith century. i will
follow a working division into three ‘levels’: the subject as viewer, the world as
object of viewing, and lawed viewers and unclear sights. hese correspond to dif-
ferent approaches to the fundamental epistemological topic—the reliability of sen-
sory perception and the communicability of knowledge. Although they are
simultaneously present in the cultural relection of the period (and they are,
indeed, three crucial components of the cognitive experience of viewing), i pro-
pose that they also relect a development in the history of philosophical thought.
he 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 ‘dark-
ness,’ 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). his range relects a historical and cul-
tural shit, which corresponds to a crisis in traditional religious beliefs and a radi-
cal 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 diferent 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-
T H UM iG e R—Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 225
standing versus ignorance and error, sanity and clarity versus madness and obfus-
cation, 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 inally 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 diferent 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 prob-
lems. in Aeschylus issues are typically played out in the ‘externalized’ arena of rela-
tionships, family, religion, politics; there is a constant attempt to strike a balance
between the individual and his or her duties within the world. signiicantly, the
elaboration of light and darkness in the older tragedian locates the fundamental
opposition within a irmly established world and does not involve questioning the
perceiving subject. When we ind the motif of visual clarity made manifest in the
Oresteia’s use of light imagery, it is characteristically ‘objectiied’: from the ire 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 celebra-
tion 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 itting to revere the rulers
who dwell in heaven. he 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 paciied political
community; as a result, darkness is incorporated within the light, not eliminated.
he 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). hese
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. Relection
on the nature of knowledge or on the individual’s viewpoint as epistemologically
isolated, however, is not prominent.
he works of sophocles and euripides were produced and staged in a rapidly
changing world and one very diferent, in many ideological respects, from that of
Aeschylus. he inluence 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 H e l io s
pages, i concentrate on this phase and examine the works of the younger play-
wrights, sophocles and euripides, to illustrate the epistemological questioning of
the subject as viewer and the undermining of reality as object of viewing.7
he 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 he 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 dark-
ness, even though they still see). he image is ampliied and given universal signii-
cance 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 repre-
sent 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 he 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 inal 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; gennaiòv~ 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 irst place.
hree referents of darkness, therefore, coexist: the blinded mind of the deranged
Ajax, his ensuing longing for the darkness of death, and the condition of helpless-
ness and ignorance common to all human beings. Audience and readers are pre-
pared 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 irst 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). his 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
seeming to yield he returns to his previous inlexibility. he speech is couched in

ambiguous terms, which have received a great deal of critical attention. hey seem-
ingly imply a sotening 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
relect this ambiguity: light brings clarity and salvation only at irst appearance,
and the darkness of death is inally 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 light 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 relect, 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 ana-
lyzed by Richard Buxton in his inluential piece on blindness and sight in tragedy.13
Buxton focuses on the tragedy where seeing and learning are most central, Oedipus
Tyrannus (hereater, 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.
he 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 diferent 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 dark-
ness and light marking the stages of the investigation; and, on a conceptual level, in
the more general relection on ignorance and knowledge and on the refusal and
acceptance of an uncomfortable truth. Here, too, the visual element and its con-
nection with knowledge are used to convey the subjectivity of characters.
he 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 inally rejected by the hero himself in
228 H e l io s
favor of a death that he sees as a preferable kind of existence. he 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 see-
ing character is placed under the spotlight; all references to the visual take of from
this one source, oedipus and his own, personal, (un)privileged vision; they are
never corrected by a inal, 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.
he 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
ind shelter only in extreme visual retreat, in “shutting of ” his wretched self (ajpoklh`/
sai toujmo;n a[qlion devma~, 1388); inally, it leaves oedipus painfully displayed to the
internal choral audience (from 1295 onwards) and objectiied, 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.
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 inal
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).
he visual objectiication of oedipus, his reduction to a blind sight, will be the
main force of his character in Oedipus at Colonus (hereater, OC), from the open-
ing 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 guaran-
tee of divine favor, once dead (402, for the hebans; at 576, in his own words to
heseus: “i come to give you this miserable body of mine, as a git; it is ‘not worth
much to look at’ [ouj spoudaiòn eij~ o[yin]); but the beneit it can bring is greater
‘than a beautiful appearance’ [h] morfh; kalhv]”). his objectiication 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 irst
phrase of OT’s ith stasimon, at 1297, w\ deino;n ijdei`n pavqo~):
once we had let, ater a little we turned back and we saw [ejxapeivdomen] that
he was no longer there, nowhere to be seen and that the king [heseus], 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].
he last enterprise of the blind man, who could see many things, but not what he
needed, is a miraculous disappearance from sight.18
230 H e l io s
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. he important ambigu-
ity resides in the extent to which facts are acknowledged, not in what the facts are.
hese ‘facts’ are clear to the audience: who oedipus really is, what he has actually
done. he oedipus who interrogates Dürrenmatt’s Pythia, with her labyrinth of
capricious and arbitrary oracles, a game in which the diference between what is
true and what is believed is lost, is far from the world of sophocles. he 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. he importance of the visual relects
the varying degrees of access to knowledge and wisdom ofered to characters. he
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 deinition 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 criti-
cal times.
he World as Object of Viewing: Eidôla and Nephelai

he 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). he play fully exploits the visual
theme, which ofered such a rich opportunity for the display of the subjectivity of
character in sophocles. he 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 he comedy, which was revised
and no doubt circulated no more than eight years (and no fewer than ive) before
the Helen, is concerned with themes that have much in common with the implica-
tions of the euripidean play. With its ludicrous ‘socrates’ and the trivial and cap-
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 he 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.
he motif of the eidôlon as double, ghost, or image for Helen is not a euripi-
dean invention.23 he 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 iden-
tify 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 com-
pared 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
horriied eyes of Aegisthus as he irst sees her, because he cannot make sense of
who she may be, if she is dead or alive, nor indeed of what has happened. he 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 physi-
cal, 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.
he use of a ‘ghost’ can thus be a reference to the existential status (an appear-
ance 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 diferent 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. he Helen
pushes the efect of this tactic to the limit, using it as an instantiation of the philo-
sophical 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. he application of this imagery is not
232 H e l io s
exclusively visual. Running clouds appear as an image for the passing of time and
the indiference of the world.27 Nevfo~ is also used as a military image, as a cloud
of armed men;28 inally, it is used to evoke emotions, weakness, death, and destruc-
tion.29 hese cover the whole range from divine obfuscation (doom) to emotions
and upsetting events (with a range similar to that of the ghost motif above). hey
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
oten 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 ofer a itting metaphor for empty philosophical sophistication,
being “insubstantial, impermanent things, ‘mist and dew and vapour’, it deities for
those who teach men to obscure reality under a smokescreen of rhetoric”;32 inally,
they have a “multiplicity” and “shiting quality,” participating as they do in “rareied
speculation and airily sterility” and “abundance of nature” at the same time.33
here 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 irst by means of the second; they interact with theatricality as
they become symbolic of the freedom of artistic creation and of the ininite 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. his play presents an oscillation between comedy and trag-
edy which is relevant to its relection on appearances.35 Under the surface of the
melodrama and adventure story, it carries a despairingly serious message: ajpistiva
is the wisest option let to mortals, says heoclymenus at the end, asserting a gen-
eral norm as, paradoxically, he was not deceived by the eidôlon of the woman, but
by the real Helen (Hel. 1617). he 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
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 phil-
osophical concerns about knowledge and vision, but also with the work of his
comic antagonist, to show from a diferent perspective that those seemingly harm-
less and silly ‘clouds’ must be taken seriously, because all too oten 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. he 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. his shit 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 ques-
tion” (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 rit in the late ith century
between man and his world,”38 the ghost is surely the quintessential image for this
crack in the surface of reality. he 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
heoclymenus. 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: he Case of Euripides’ Bacchae

in his article on Helen as a play that stages a “double world,” Charles segal com-
mented 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 ind the most engaged relection on the status of reality
and the reliability of human knowledge, as well as a more radical version of skepti-
cism.41 his 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 contradic-
tions and doublings rotated; it is clearly placed in the middle as a philosophical
234 H e l io s
problem. At the end of OT, oedipus stands bare, so to say, and blind in front of the
audience. in Bacchae, inally, we have a irm integration of the philosophical relec-
tion 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 signiicance on a broader human level.
in Bacchae, irst 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.
hese references irst 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 diferent
ways of viewing and being viewed, of becoming spectator or spectacle, contribute
to the emergence of a landscape of human types and attitudes.
he display of these multiple viewpoints within the drama is relected in the
(potentially) multiple receptions of the drama on the part of an audience. he sta-
tus of the dramatic facts is let worryingly uncertain.43 At the end of our other
examples—Ajax, OT, and even Helen—all spectators could describe what has hap-
pened in a univocal way. in Bacchae, instead, there are sections of the ‘script’ on
which, ater twenty-ive 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 hebes. With its combination of multiple viewpoints and sights, i
would argue, and with a clouded unreliable visible world, the Bacchae ofers the
extreme end of euripides’s epistemological relection.
he 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’); diferent kinds of viewer
(qeathv~,55 katavskopo~,56 dokeuvwn57); terms of appearing, seeming, and consid-
ering (dokevw,58 faivnw59/fanerov~,60 ejmfanhv~,61 ejpivshmo~,62 shmaivnw63); verbs of
hiding and being hidden (lanqavnw,64 kruvptw65 and cognates); physical appear-
ance (morfhv and cognates,66 skeuhv,67 ei\do~68); physical change and transforma-
tion (ajmeivbw,69 meqivsthmi,70 meqivhmi,71 ajllavssw,72 metabavllw73). hese 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, sen-
sory meaning of the term relects her or his inner disposition or beliefs and her or
his role within the spectacle and its complex net of deceit and awareness. he ulti-
mate efect 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
his ultimate passivity. He turns from being an unit 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.
he heban king’s understanding of reality is supericial and unsophisticated;
notwithstanding repeated advice from others, he ‘cannot see.’ his 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 clifs of Delphi, dancing]; see also 319–20); Cadmus at 337
(“you see [oJra`/~] the fate of Actaeon”). he messenger says to him at 713: “if 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] lying limbs.”74
hen, 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 helpless-
ness mark Pentheus’s visual perception, from his initial false opinion, through mis-
understanding, to literal hallucination.
We have, then, types of qualiied, non-neutral seeing for Pentheus, a seeing that
is shaped by his inner drives and dispositions: irst, his desire to see certain things,
oten 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 irst the god
who oten 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 H e l io s
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 prom-
ises Pentheus he will be satisied, 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 under-
standing of seeing as religious experience.
in the interplay between the two characters, Dionysus and Pentheus, the king’s
eagerness to see gains a practical signiicance. he 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 implica-
tions, in the sense of ‘inspection,’ at line 838: molei`n crh; prw`ton ej~ kataskophvn
(i must irst go to reconnoitre).
he desire not to be seen while viewing has the paradoxical efect 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, lawed 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 hid-
den in the way that you should be hidden]); at 816 (sigh`/ . . . kaqhvmeno~ [sit-
ting . . . 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-
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. he god announces that Pentheus will be ejpivshmo~ (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 hebes (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 irst from a sheer clif with keen eye shall catch sight of him]); and in his
inal 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 [hey saw my master perched on the ir
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 lawed 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 expo-
sure 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 lawed ‘viewer’ and problem-
atic, 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 let on which one can rely. he inal 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 inal 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.
he ‘characterful seeing’ of Pentheus has signiicance in the overall construc-
tion 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 objec-
tive level of reality is challenged, with a bewildering efect for the audience too.
What is actually happening onstage, or reported, cannot be taken for granted as
238 H e l io s
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. his 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 ofer 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. he result
is an even more radical and despairing outcome than the philosophical criti-
cism ofered 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 rela-
tionship with sight and knowledge, as well as with the nature of ancient theater as
performed, visual experience, but also diachronically, as relection of a shit in
philosophical thought in the second half of the ith century. in 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 ques-
tioning of the phenomena that should constitute the object of knowledge and a
mistrust in the reliability and communicability of knowledge itself. he unambigu-
ous implications of light and darkness in Aeschylus, the focus on the knowing and
perceiving subject in sophocles, and inally, 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: coexis-
tence and the intertwining of diferent stages always characterize cultural changes),
which moves from Aeschylus’s identiication 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. hese three moments of
relection are spread over the whole spectrum of the epistemological relationship
between subject and the world, summing up, at the same time, the scope and pow-
ers that are proper to theater.
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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 eforts to secure
publication of the proceedings, and for their thorough and illuminating feedback on various drats
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 sup-
ported my research during the inal 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 ofered 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 knowl-
edge; 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 ofered an important account of the “ith-
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
heunissen 2002, 220–5.
7. he turn of the ith century has always been identiied 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 per-
ception 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 H e l io s
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) ofers 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 inest examples of this supposedly impossible order,’ then
Oedipus Tyrannos is indeed one of the inest examples of that kind of tragedy . . . sophocles’ con-
tribution 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`~,
teleutaiòvn 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. he efect is there, with or without the probably interpolated lines at 1524–30: “you see, o
citizens of hebes, 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. he 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. he response given by the Pythian
priestess was, they say, as follows: ‘last of heroes is Cleomedes of Astypalaea; honor him with
sacriices 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 oten scrutinized “verbal reasoning.”
21. on Clouds see also Rufell in this volume.
22. his 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 philo-
sophical 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.
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~ dromaiòu (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
hebes, 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. he 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 afecting it from the outside (see humiger
2007, 3–18, for a summary of the question). he Greek tendency to conceive reality (here, the
subject) as ‘wrapped’ into an event (an emotion, or an external afection) 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 deined by the German philosopher as a “coming to
pass of concealedness,” and by nature a struggle, “in its very essence a conlict.” he net of eidôlon/
phasma/nephelê imagery can be suggestively analyzed in the light of the existentialist interpreta-
tion, as instances of the withdrawal of knowledge from man, a process of concealment. on imag-
ery 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 H e l io s
36. lines 728–33, explicit in dignifying the igure of a servant, are deleted by Willink; the
intervention of the slave at 711–33 and 744–57, however, conirm the same picture.
37. he 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
Kirchhof], 707, 750, 1219).
38. segal 1971, 560.
39. Cf. Menelaus’s confusion at euripides, Hel. 490f. (“Could there be another zeus, on the
riverbanks of the Nile . . . ?”) and the confrontation between the two logoi at Aristophanes, Nub.
889–1114. he 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 rit
[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 conlicts are marginal.” segal’s subsequent work on Bacchae and meta-
theater (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 humiger 2007, 74–9.
43. he 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 humiger 2013 and 2010 (for the problems raised by the notion of ‘meta-
theater’ more generally).
44. his 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 Kirchhof ’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]).
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. he 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 rein-
forcing’ device in messenger speeches. he 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 (ive times): this does not underline self-
relexivity, 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 ire]), 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 psycho-
analytical key (notably by segal 1997; cf. humiger 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~. Kirchof conjectures e[m j i[doi.
80. Flaumenhat 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. he 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*
iA N RU F F e l l
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 indi-
viduals, to the behavior of its protagonists while pursuing their crazy schemes, the
implications of such verbal and actual violence have proved in diferent ways prob-
lematic. he visual elements, in particular, have oten proved troubling when set
against the big political issues and self-proclaimed ambitions of the plays. While
the resources of the comic stage have oten been considered, the speciic contribu-
tion of the spectacle of comic aggression has rarely been considered directly, even
compared to obscenity, which has been treated primarily from a linguistic view-
point.1 For some critics, this comic aggression is all too easily dismissed as slap-
stick, 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-speciic comic heroism or the straightfor-
ward expression of masculine power and male sexuality, common to other expres-
sions 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 ofers 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 ith- and early fourth-century
BCe Athens.
his paper falls in two parts. in the irst 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 iden-
tiication of victim with comic target is not always possible, that comic violence is
less about social stratiication 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
248 H e l io s
humiliation. i discuss the audience’s visual experience and pleasure, and its implica-
tions, by engaging with positions within feminist ilm 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 ith century and in the early fourth cen-
tury, such remasculinization in any visual sense was considerably more question-
able and the process of male humiliation gathered apace. he 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 ofer 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 hersites in Iliad 2.265–78
or the lesser Ajax in Iliad 23.773–84. hey also had a place in ancient theories of
comedy speciically, 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 com-
ments 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.
here 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
RU F F e l l—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 con-
ceptual 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 ind (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 iction, 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: ictional 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, more-
over, there is a particular deprecation of a kind of visual and violent humor (Vesp.
58–61; Nub. 537–44). hese 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 he
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 pro-
logue 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 he 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. Ater strepsia-
des’ attempt to use the techniques of socrates’ workshop has spectacularly back-
ired, 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 pun-
ishment. 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). he
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 ire), as students lee
the scene:
250 H e l io s
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 ire.
strepsiades is quite explicit here: he is going to burn the students to death. his 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 dis-
sent 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 diferent 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: “he inal violence has to be seen in its generic context as comic
violence. . . .”
his 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 deinition of the school and its students, the character-
ization of socrates (blanket-stealing a specialty), and the two embodied logoi13—to
deny similar meaningfulness to the inal scene seems, to say the least, odd. like
most scholars, Revermann is unwilling to accept Plato and pin the blame for
socrates’ death on Aristophanes; the suggestion that Aristophanes was encourag-
ing ire-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 heater 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 ind a space between direct and immediate imitation by an audi-
ence on the one hand, and ideological, moral, or political signiicance on the other.
Here it is useful to consider, for a moment, modern debates over the efect of
watching violence (and associated moral panics) which have been a feature of pub-
lic discourse since the development of mass media (particularly television). in
these debates there has been considerable empirical study of the efect of watching
the ictional enactment of violence, but it is such as to warn us against imposing
simple models of audience engagement or efect. 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 efects 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 oten skel-
etal and over-simpliied 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. his 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 efects within dramatic time and implicitly
beyond. Unlike Tom, neither the students nor their masters will recover, or be seen
to recover, within the ictional world. hird, 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). here 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’ ists). indeed, his burning down the
252 H e l io s
thinking-shop may indeed be drawing further attention to strepsiades’ idiotic

crudeness. he concluding violence, then, is multiply overcoded and motivated,
and may suggest multiple targets for the on-looking audience, not only the victims
of arson. he multiple comic motivations (and targets) are drawn from and rein-
force 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 vio-
lence 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
identiiable) 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 diferent 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. he 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 signiicant physical action in plot terms is the rescue of Peace in Peace
458–519, which is very diferent 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, oten indeed in the same play. he 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 qualiications for dealing in verbal aggres-
sion, which is igured as physical violence (387–90; cf. 261–3, 450–9), stems explic-
itly from his own experience of violence (1236, 1239, 1242). in this respect, he is
not so very diferent from other foci of comic plots.
such a luid 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 implau-
sible Heracles outit for his trip to the Underworld—a lionskin and club over his
safron 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 (dis-
cussed below), the butts are both the viewer and the viewed.18 he 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) cheek-
ily ofers 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
irst.
he 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 sufering and being poorly tolerant of
physical discomfort, as in eupolis’s Taxiarkhoi (A. M. Wilson 1974; storey 2003,
253–7; Rufell, 2011, 305–6) and earlier in the rowing competition with the frogs.
he 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 increas-
ingly 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: hen you didn’t feel anything?
Dionysus: i’m not bothered at all.
254 H e l io s
in terms of the wider strategies of the play, the violent humor of this scene afords
a threefold problematization of authority in the igures of Aeacus, Xanthias (who
goes further than any other character in old Comedy in subverting master/slave
relations20), and Dionysus. he abuse of Dionysus here comes on top of his mani-
fest 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 signiicant 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 ater the parabasis diicult to take entirely
straightforwardly.
he exploitation of violence for humor in Aristophanes implies a variety of
relations between audience and ictional participants. he humor of Schadenfreude
plays a part, but one consistently implicated with the ideological and literary posi-
tioning 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 sym-
pathy between audience and a comic protagonist, but audiences are not consis-
tently 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 lavor, as citizen males are
humiliated by men and women of every status. i shall engage with feminist ilm
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 cul-
ture 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
lagrantly and publicly of any ancient form, involves the fetishistic and controlling
male gaze. such a notion descends from laura Mulvey’s classic psychoanalytic
reading of Hollywood cinema, in which she contends that women in ilms are
either voyeuristically exploited as sexual objects or fetishized in terms of unattain-
able beauty, but not allowed their own identity as desiring subjects. Mulvey’s posi-
tion 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 its neatly the actual or supposed composition of the ancient
audience.22
he character of Festivity (heoria) is a good example of the way that such
objectiication works in old Comedy. heoria 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 oten 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 lit her legs
up high and then celebrate a Release.
it is further grist to this interpretative mill that Festivity actually refers speciically
to spectating, with obvious application to the immediate performance context. he
association of the audience gaze with active male sexuality is clearly very strong,
and the division of sexual spoils—with heoria 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 audi-
ence 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 personiied
abstractions opora and heoria (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 H e l io s
(fivlai, 1217); these are preceded by arguably the most disturbing scene in Greek
comedy, when the Megarian traics 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. he 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 lute girls he has kidnapped from the sympo-
sium (1342–4). such igures are also drawn upon or developed in Lysistrata, hes-
mophoriazusae, and Ecclesiazusae, but also in rather more complicated explorations
of sexual power, as i shall discuss below.
his aggressive desiring comic gaze is almost exclusively directed towards slaves
and foreigners, male or female, personiications, abstractions, or even deities.25 he
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 here is, however,
a marked reluctance to involve citizen wives in this way, which its 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.
his 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 law of classicists’ studies
as well. Two other objections are more fundamental. First, the options let for a
feminist cinema (or audience) are narrow. Mulvey champions disruptive strategies
long associated with the (male) avant-garde. his privileging of formalism over
realism has been criticized as both restrictive and stuck within patriarchal catego-
ries 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 briely in the irst part of the essay. second, Mulvey’s rigid construction
of the gaze leaves very little space for strategies of rereading, contestation, and
resistance. his, 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. he continuing refactoring
of the regularly revived Lysistrata is only the most conspicuous example of a prob-
lem from this perspective. he sadistic and fetishizing viewer cannot be a complete
(or universal) explanation.
he 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 his
has important implications for the way the audience experiences the world of old
Comedy. While the grotesque comic bodies certainly do not obliterate diference,
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). he convention of ugliness also makes it diicult to see
the comic body in the irst 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 oten 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 ictional environment that is both dislocated and irmly 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 rea-
son) the exaggeration of social norms, not least in the sexual realm.
Furthermore, although the evidence for the ith century is limited, male char-
acters 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. hat tendency in
the comic body is relected in the obsession of comic plots with male sexuality,
both aggressive and otherwise. his 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 address-
ing the full ramiications 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 argu-
ably 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 pro-
cess of ideological facilitation and fantasy that she calls the “dominant iction”:
258 H e l io s
“Male” and “female” constitute the dominant iction’s most fundamental binary
opposition. its many other ideological elements, such as signiiers like “town”
and “nation,” or the antithesis of power and the people, all exist in a metaphoric
relation to those terms. hey derive their conceptual and afective value from
that relation. (1992, 34–5)
For silverman, there is an excess of desire in even the most normative circum-
stances, but in non-normative contexts there is a much greater possibility of threat-
ening or circumventing the social order. in the irst instance, silverman reads a
number of post-World War ii ilms, including the at irst 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 iction’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 airmation actually leaves potentially trou-
bling questions about masculinity and the relationship between the sexual and
political orders.
symbolic phalluses abound in the play. once Dicaeopolis has enacted a per-
sonal 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. hus Amphitheus, the sup-
posedly divine character who arranges peace for him, is apparently dragged out of
the assembly by the archers ater spinning an extremely specious story of being a
god and then demanding journey pay from the Athenian assembly (44–54). he
joke is partly on the audience: it turns out that he can do what he claims ater all.
Dicaeopolis himself is at the mercy of the Chorus for most of the irst half of the
play. He is stoned by them on their irst entrance (280–5); his subsequent recourse
to a butcher’s block is a conspicuous reminder of that threat. His threat to “shat
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 efective than advertised.
he relationship between sexuality, violence, and the political order is strikingly
shown when Dicaeopolis strips lamachus, the embodiment of the Big Man and
the personiication 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 inal visual insult is to suggest that lamachus 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?
he 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.
he pun on lamachus’s equipment clearly references lamachus’s phallus, no doubt

revealed lamboyantly in this moment, and it seems to be an invitation to the gen-
eral to display with it his prowess sexually on Dicaeopolis. he shocking suggestion
(for a citizen male), ampliied by stage action, is thus the punch-line to the routine
that deconstructs a series of visual symbols of power. he precise action is less
clear. he verb, ajpoywlevw, is elsewhere used, as of the odomanti (161), of retract-
ing the foreskin, through erection or circumcision. he 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 politi-
cal and military power in a series of visual symbols, until it reaches the symbolic
kernel, the phallus.
he 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 ofering to be penetrated,
260 H e l io s
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). he 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 mas-
ochistic 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. hus 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. Ater 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). his opposi-
tion between sexuality, in the igure of the remasculinized Dicaeopolis who enjoys
peace, and collective violence, in the igure of lamachus who has to go on cam-
paign (1071–141) and returns injured (1174–97), is presented clearly through ver-
bal and visual parallels in the inal 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`.
lamachus: Hold me. Hold my leg; argh,

hold tight, boys.
Dicaeopolis: Take my cock, both of you, round the shat:
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.
he power relations between Dicaeopolis and lamachus are clearly reversed. he

civic violence directed towards Dicaeopolis and other citizens has turned into vio-
lence inlicted on the politician. he 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.
he 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, proits from civic enemies, and distributes peace to
deserving parties, and the extremism of those deploying violence to narrow politi-
cal engagement, close down debate, and commit to war. he distinctions are pre-
sented through a series of stark visual oppositions: Dicaeopolis and the assembly,
Dicaeopolis and the butcher’s block, Dicaeopolis and lamachus. he presentation
of violence would then emphasize two very diferent sets of political ideas about
the ends of power and to a large extent its means too.36 hat would be a very cozy
and tidy account, but Acharnians is less comfortable and more open-ended than
that. Prospectively, within the ictional world, the political and sexual systems
show no sign of reuniication. Using the ictional 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 humilia-
tion 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: protago-
nist, chorus, and audience. Whether this challenge to masculine norms betrays a
particular anxiety of the 420s—because of the developing nature of Athenian
262 H e l io s
democracy, or because of the historical situation in the Archidamian War or the

atermath 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 signii-
cant designs on the “dominant iction” 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 lagellation 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 hesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, and Ecclesiazusae the violence and
humiliation have a much more strongly sexual sense. hey share with Frogs the
presentation of subverted power relations to the spectators without any efective
visual counter.
hesmophoriazusae 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 ictionality
through its parody of tragedy,37 but these are also implicated with violence and
humiliation, in which audience enjoyment is overwhelmingly and certainly visu-
ally aimed at the representation and victimization of what looks like male, pene-
trating sexuality.
he play begins with apparent assertion of such comic male sexuality, as eurip-
ides and his male relative, who might have been identiied as “Mnesilochus,”38 seek
Agathon’s assistance in iniltrating the women’s assembly. he 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 unreined masculine aggression, as he is erotically stimu-
lated 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 relects on Agathon’s (exces-
sively seductive) music and sexual preferences, but also undermines considerably
the claims to phallic power made elsewhere in this scene (157–8). hat phallic
power is more explicitly undermined in what follows, as Mnesilochus is black-
mailed into iniltrating the women’s assembly himself and consents to being cross-
dressed himself.
From an audience perspective, the economy of pleasure in this sequence is

complex. he 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.
he phallus in light is as much the butt of the humor here as are the singed but-
tocks. here are, however, forms of enjoyment here other than Schadenfreude at the
expense of Mnesilochus.40 his scene its 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 cos-
tumes in old Comedy such as those of birds and beggars. here is a basic incon-
gruity within the iction, central to much modern drag in performance (Newton
1979), even as Mnesilochus attempts to pass and, incredibly, does so. he incon-
gruity of his outit engineers a superiority of the actual audience over the internal
audience of the women at their assembly. here is also a male complicity between
audience and character, as the unconvincingly female Mnesilochus details to the
ictional 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 lirts with the possibility that he might be discovered.
so the travails of Mnesilochus do not end with a very rough depilation. Ater
jumping from the frying pan into the ire, his capture by the women entails further
discovery, exposure, and humiliation, before both the women and the external
audience. he 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 H e l io s
element of his former passing. He is inally, ater 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.
he pornography of humiliation is nowhere else so blatant in old Comedy. he

violence is male (scythian) on male, but much force (and pleasure) for the audi-
ence derives from (ictional) 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 thor-
oughly 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.
he 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. hat the scythian stupidly
‘fucks away’ his prisoner (by fucking the slave girl elaphion) is consistent with the
treatment of male sexuality in the play. he phallus is central to the humor, but
rather than signifying mastery, it signiies lack, weakness, submission, and subor-
dination—in short, ridicule.
in hesmophoriazusae this presentation of (the limits of) aggressive masculin-
ity is bound up with issues of ictionality, particularly tragedy. in the other extant
plays of Aristophanes in which women are center-stage, similar visual pleasures of
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 stereo-
types of women abound in both plays,41 men are most consistently the butts of
visual, aggressive humor.
in Ecclesiazusae, there is a stark diference between the women’s cross-dressing
and that of Praxagora’s husband Blepyrus. he emphasis of the women’s iniltration
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 ictional audience, and
thence their actual analogues than at the ictional female activists. Blepyrus’s mis-
adventures are of an entirely diferent 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 ine 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.
his cross-dressing, like that of hesmophoriazusae, 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.
his 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 expla-
nations and intertextual echoes into a (for the time and the genre) plausible speaker
266 H e l io s
(Rufell 2006, 78–82), so too her opposition is here substantially undermined.

More signiicantly, 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.
he 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. he comic grotesque here certainly ampliies 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: hat’s going to be no use for you.
i’ll be coming with you.
epigenes: No by the gods;
it’s better to be alicted 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.
he sexuality of older women is of course one object of humor here (as oten), but
laughter and the aggressive gaze are aimed equally, if not more so, at epigenes, as
he is dragged of. his 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 he hapless Blepyrus presents one (older, more every-
day) masculinity, epigenes one of the haughtier sort (tw`n semnotevrwn, 632) dep-
recated in earlier discussion.45 he 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. he
power struggle is mapped out by physical confrontations on stage, where success-
ful 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 eforts to penetrate the gates and retake the Acropolis by force.
his aggression relects the male aggression in war, but its failure also echoes the
sex strike in progress ofstage.46 he 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. his 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.
he 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 heir irst 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 inally making a move with their torches and
being soaked by the women for their trouble. he decrepitude and physical inca-
pacity of the old men, already pointed up in their entry, is reinforced by sugges-
tions 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?

hey’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.
he entrance of the proboulos descends from the self-conident beginnings of

democracy, a central plank in democratic propaganda, to the most recent constitu-
tional tinkering ater the sicilian catastrophe. he 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 H e l io s
(424–9) and, ater 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). his brief but efective 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
he disempowerment of the proboulos’s slave bodyguard (with all its connota-
tions) happens physically; that of the proboulos, verbally and symbolically. he
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. he proboulos is
itted out (badly), irst with the women’s dress and equipment (veil and basket,
531–8) and then with funeral attire (602–10). his enacts visually the claims
(within the ictional world) of female power and the need for the proboulos irst 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 implausi-
bility, 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 confronta-
tion 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.
he reversal of gendered codes of nakedness (sommerstein 2009, 239–46), contin-

ues as the play reaches its climax in the second half of the play. he men’s claims to
power echo even more hollowly as the women’s sex strike takes efect.
he subsequent distribution of gazes reinforces the power dynamic that has
been established. Although Myrrhine and then, particularly, Diallage (Reconcilia-
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 irst 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;
he 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 ofers a commentary on the mascu-
line 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 demon-
strates 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.
hroughout 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. here is, to be
sure, a restoration of marital relations in Lysistrata, just as ultimately the new
regime in Ecclesiazusae is for the beneit of men and just as Mnesilochus and
euripides survive in hesmophoriazusae; but there is in none of these plays any-
thing 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 speciically 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. he male semi-chorus, in particular, provides a full tour of
foundation myths for the Athenian democracy—from the period of the Peisistratids
270 H e l io s
through Marathon and the Persian invasion—myths that were pervasive in visual
and verbal accounts of the Athenian democracy. he 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 ideol-
ogy 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 diicult 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 indi-
vidual 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 fea-
ture of old Comedy, it is not, in these plays, in the spirit of aggressive male pene-
trative sexuality, but as a symbol of the complexities and vulnerabilities of both
sexuality and power. in hesmophoriazusae, 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. he visual dimension provides one of the ways in
which the presentation of these ideas through otherwise marginal igures is con-
solidated. he 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 visu-
ally 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 ater 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. he
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
emerges into a sense of palpable crisis. his was not to last. only four (or ive) 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). he times as well as the genre may be changing.
Conclusion
he 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 relect 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 behavior-
ist 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. he 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 oten than not to encounter
comic inadequacy and a comic lack rather than comic mastery. he comic gaze in
Aristophanes certainly has a dimension of a controlling desire, but it is also ambiv-
alent, interrogative, and frequently self-critical, less an expression of sadism than of
masochism. Taking comic pleasure in violence and humiliation is less an expres-
sion of individual or collective male mastery than the exposing and limiting of
excessive or problematic power.
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Notes
*hanks to Douglas Cairns, Anton Powell, Nancy Rabinowitz, Catherine steel, and the jour-
nal’s anonymous referee and editor for their comments on drats 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.
4. For remasculinization see the discussions of post-Vietnam ilms by Jefords 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 treat-
ment 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, Rufell 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 irst half of Freud 1991, and the semiotic and narratological formulation of Palmer 1987,
which includes analyses of purely visual gags in silent cinema. he productive aspect of jokes can
be traced back to Aristotle on witticisms (asteia, including puns: Rhet. 1412a9–b3). For fuller
discussion, see Rufell 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 diferent 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 ictionality and dramatic illusion tend towards passive audiences; cf.
Rufell 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. his particular conclusion to the play seems to be one of the clearly identiiable changes to
the original version; see Hypothesis Vi in the edition of N. G. Wilson 2007.
13. his would be all the more so if they really were represented as ighting cocks, but even
anthropomorphized logoi are still making a strong visual statement.
14. For the luidity 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. he 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 irst in the sequence, see Av. 990, with Dunbar 1995
ad loc. he 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 ofstage (1389–91, 1417–8), but the actual display of
violence is mutual, between father and son (1386–7, 1442–4), which relects their lack of mastery.
he only agôn to end in violence between characters is the unusual instance of Wealth, where an
ideological impasse has been reached (see Rufell 2006, with bibliography).
18. so Dicaeopolis as Telephus in Ach. 480–625 and “Mnesilochus” in hesmophoriazusae (see
below). he joke is more at the expense of the viewed character in Birds: irst 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 H e l io s
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 com-
ments in Rufell 2000, 491–2 and note 86.
21. it is diicult 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) under-
mines Poseidon, while Prometheus’s mission skulking under an umbrella is a signiicant 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 sup-
ports 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. he point of the play on ajnavrrusin is unclear; see olson 1998 ad loc. he image of the
sacriicial 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 of with some
exclamations that hint at physical encouragement: eujra;x patavx (1258). he latter word is sugges-
tive 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 ofers 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. his position insists on both elements in Bakhtin’s “grotesque realism.” For the Bakhtinian
grotesque, see esp. Goldhill 1991, edwards 1993 and 2002, von Möllendorf 1995, and for carnival
Carrière 1979. Pelling (2000, 125–6) suggests that the major diference 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 tem-
porary license.
32. Davidson (2001 and 2007) traces Foucault’s model of ancient sexuality back to Dover 1978,
which was heavily inluenced 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: the-
atrical/ictional phallus for the male penis for the lacanian phallus as signiier 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
(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 difering perspectives in Ray-
mond 1980, Butler 1990, and s. stone 1992. For treatments of gender in the play, see esp. zeitlin
1981; Taafe 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 efeminacy 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
oriice was raised. Both are unlikely. he actor’s actual (as opposed to ictional) body is not explic-
itly indicated anywhere else in Greek comedy, while discomiting an actor does nothing for comic
timing or performance quality. As louise Welsh (2002, 152) puts it, “other possible side efects
include . . . piles, and a punch in the face for inlicting too much pain.” in other dramatic tradi-
tions, graphic physical violence up to and including apparent anal penetration can be represented
without literally breaching the ictional or indeed actual body. Marlowe’s Edward II oten 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. he 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 relected in critical vocabulary.
44. For older women in old Comedy, see Henderson 1987; also Henderson 1991b, 99–104.
45. here are signs that he is also the sort to have signet rings (tw`n sfragi`da~ ejcovntwn, 632).
he 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. he reciprocal analogy is one of the
ways in which the play’s two plot strands (Vaio 1973) are intimately related. What is not repre-
sented 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. he stoa Poikile is speciically 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 poten-
tial penetration.
IV.
Enlightenment
Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s hought
FRiTz-GReGoR HeRRMANN
he 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. he 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.
his 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 ixated, 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, accom-
plished, capable citizen and gentleman.1 his excellence could in theory always be
analyzed as being composed of its two constituent aspects of being kalos and aga-
thos: to be agathos is to be ‘good,’ whatever may count as good, but to be kalos is to
be ine, handsome, and ‘beautiful.’ And oten at the beginning of a dialogue socrates
is portrayed as deeply afected and attracted by the physical beauty of a young man
or boy.
he 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. he
familiar picture arises of socrates as an individual who, as is the case with the soci-
ety 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 beauti-
ful 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, includ-
ing their subjection to the senses, and the sense of sight above all, they subject
282 H e l io s
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
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 irst 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 irst impression, when he sees lysis
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. hings develop very diferently in a parallel scene from
another early dialogue. At the beginning of Charmides, socrates has returned to
Athens from a military campaign abroad. Ater an initial exchange of greetings,
socrates enquires ater the state of philosophy and ater 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
H e R R M A N N —Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s hought 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 con-
cerned, 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 H e l io s
many other lovers followed in his train. hat men of my age should have
been afected this way was natural enough, but i noticed that even the
small boys ixed 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.
“hen 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 diiculties, and although i had thought it would
be perfectly easy to talk to him, i found my previous brash conidence
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 every-
one in the palaestra surged all around us in a circle, my noble friend, I saw
inside his cloak and caught on ire and was quite beside myself. And it
occurred to me that Cydias was the wisest love-poet when he gave some-
one 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)
he 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 partici-
pants and bystanders are designed, in the irst 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 efect that
the physical beauty of Charmides has on socrates evokes that of the Gorgon
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 efect 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 exer-
cized his power over others to the extent that he became, with Critias, one of the
leaders of the hirty 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 obses-
sion with beauty of this nature is, in the inal analysis, an indictment of the values
and the whole way of life advocated by the elite in ith-century Athens. But if this
is in the text, it is not on the surface. he image evoked in the opening of the Char-
mides is intelligible when taken at face value.
in the Meno, a dialogue completed shortly ater the Charmides, socrates com-
ments 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: Ater 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 H e l io s
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 shits switly from the beloved to
the lover; and it is the lover whose manipulations are explored in the speeches of
the irst 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 hessalian nobility. And quite apart from
hessaly’s dubious position during the Persian Wars at the beginning of the ith
century, hessaly 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 con-
nection with the Persian court. But, though the details are not clear from the
sources, hessaly was also the place of ‘exile’ for Critias at some stage during the
Peloponnesian war, and Critias is even said to have written a hessalian constitu-
tion (88 A1, B31 DK). he reference in the Meno passage to the tyrannical power
exercised by the beautiful is thus, with historical hindsight—that is, from the point
of view of Plato’s irst-generation readers—another reference that evokes the bloody
rule of the hirty 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 relection 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 diferent 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
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~.’
[he 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 ingers
he ran forward to the bodies, saying, “here you are, curse you, have your
ill 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 ixed on the sight seen. his
example conirms 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 admira-
tion 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` <prw`ton> 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 H e l io s
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 illing 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 irst 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.
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: he wisest man alive, if you think that the wisest man is—
Protagoras. (Translation by lombardo-Bell 1997)
he 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
ind 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; Trwè~ 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. he verb for seeing in line 54 is the
290 H e l io s
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. he 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.
“hen 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.”
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 fur-
ther dimension.
II
one notable advance in the ield of Plato studies over the past century has been an
enhanced understanding of the nuances of Platonic diction. he last two genera-
tions 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. he organization of mysteries and
the practice of theôria—travelling from one’s home town to participate in the spec-
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`~ ijonv ta ejpi; tou`to to; pra`gma a[rcesqai me;n nevon
o[nta ijenv ai ejpi; ta; kala; swvmata, kai; prw`ton mevn, ejan; 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; ejan; 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|onv 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 ijwn; 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} ejanv 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|onv t j h\n, mhvt j ejsqivein mhvte
292 H e l io s
pivnein, ajlla; qea`sqai movnon kai; sunei`nai. tiv dh`ta, e[fh, oijom v eqa, 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; qeiòn 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 ater just one body is a small thing and despise it. Ater 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. he 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. Ater
customs he must move on to various kinds of knowledge. he 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 beau-
tiful in its nature; that, socrates, is the reason for all his earlier labors: . . .
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 lesh 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). he 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.”
his, Phaedrus and the rest of you, was what Diotima told me. i was
persuaded. (Translation by Nehamas-Woodruf 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 “vis-
ible part or realm” (horaton), distinct from the “thinkable realm” (noêton), which is
not open to the senses but open to the mind. he 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 dis-
tinction 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. he constitution or society or city state that socrates
and his companions envisage in the Republic is tripartite: irst, 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 qualiied individuals. he 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 H e l io s
oice because they have ‘seen’ the truth along the lines drawn by Diotima. his
vision of the truth is exempliied 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 use-
less. socrates says that while he cannot give an account of the good as such, he can
talk about the ‘ofspring’ 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 irst place; up to this point, then, socrates provides a scientiic
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 irst 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 irst place, not least because
justice is a good thing. his 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, “hat’s a tree”; another, to look at a tree and say, “hat’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 under-
lie 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
clariied these points, socrates moves to the allegory of the cave.
he allegory of the cave extends over ive 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. he 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
ire 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 ire and the igures 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 relected, and eventually the
sun as the source of all light and vision. his 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 irst they will appear blind and ignorant to those who have
never let their seats.17 he 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[;
teleutaiòn 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.
ajnagkaiòn, 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 irst he would most easily see shadows, then the relections in
water of men and everything else, and, inally, the things themselves. Ater
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?”
“surely.”
“hen, 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 alle-
gory the comparison of those inside the cave would be with people watching
296 H e l io s
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 alle-
gory. 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 con-
versely, the vision of the things themselves and of the sun is purely passive: what
can be known is ixed, and human beings are subject to what they see; what is in
one’s vision determines what one can think and know. he power is with the object
seen, here as in the Symposium. hat 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.
his 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. he winged charioteer and horses strive to ascend
to heaven, leaving the earth and all things corporeal behind. Few reach the bound-
ary 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.
he 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 with-
out solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowl-
edge, 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 diferent as it knows the diferent 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)
his image, more than anything else, has formed and informed popular impres-
sions of Plato’s ontology and metaphysics as postulating two separate worlds, the
world of stuf and things perishable below, and the eternal unchanging world of
forms above. To what extent this is tenable will briely be discussed in the next sec-
tion. Here, it must be reiterated that, as regards the freedom of the individual,
power relations are consistent throughout the dialogues. he common man—and
to some extent certainly that applies to all of us—is dictated in his thoughts, feel-
ings, and resulting actions by the beauty seen with his eyes. he 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 irst glance, this picture is conirmed in Plato’s Timaeus. But it is further
extended there, in that not only men and, as in the Phaedrus, the gods of tradi-
tional 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 stuf. Timaeus, socrates’
298 H e l io s
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 ind 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; cersaiòn
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. his 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 hing.
Now there are four of these kinds: irst, 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. he gods he made mostly out of ire, 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, 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 crats-
man, 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
cratsman, 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 irst 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.” hat is to say, there is a shit from the divine cratsman 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:
he gods he made mostly out of ire, 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 . . .
he repeated “to be” indicates purpose. But in this context that seems to presup-
pose, at the same time, freedom: the purpose is ixed, but the means and, impor-
tantly, 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 H e l io s
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. he
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 disor-
der 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 dimen-
sion 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 oten not pursued radically or far enough.
he view most prevalent seems to be that for all Timaeus’s and our human limita-
tions, 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 creat-
ing 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
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
oten called into question whether the bringing about of the ordered universe by
the Demiurge, the divine cratsman, 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
he 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 diferent forms of cognition in the
simile of the line at Republic 509C–511e—the mathematician ranks below the dia-
lectician, in that mathematics works with certain hypotheseis, things (assumptions)
posited without being questioned or proven independently. Notably, mathemati-
cians 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 deinition.
in the Timaeus, Timaeus turns out to be exactly this sort of excellent mathema-
tician, 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 H e l io s
which must be assumed as something in itself, and even of sameness and difer-
ence.29 But apart from the acquaintance with parts of Plato’s philosophical termi-
nology, 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. he 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 scientiic 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. his
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 ire, 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 fol-
lowing 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 diference,
stability and change,31 a rational explanation of how order is achieved is possible
through a deinition 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 deinition of Platonic
forms through accounts of what they are, that is, knowledge of a form is here not
knowledge by acquaintance. here is no vision, efable or inefable, 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 fulils 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 ater all the power of the mind
to deine how the world is structured? But if one were entitled to ask these ques-
tions, 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
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.
IV
here may, therefore, be no forms to see 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 relexion on Platonic love. in the course of our discus-
sion, 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 math-
ematical 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 writ-
ten in the last decades of his life, notably perhaps in the heaetetus and in the Timaeus,
discussion of concrete mathematical problems seems to relect advanced discussion in
Plato’s Academy. he 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 lux, are mathematical igures of two and
three dimensions. hese igures 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 mathemati-
cal clarity and precision; but in order for all else to ind 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, ater 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 exempliied by the
304 H e l io s
demiurge of the Timaeus. And in this sense, unexpectedly, for Plato, too, beauty
really is in the eye of the beholder.
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Notes
i should like to thank David Robinson for discussion of many of the issues touched on in this
chapter.
1. he abstract noun kalokagathia, the adjective kalokagathos, and the adjectives kalos (k)aga-
thos (ine-and-good), paired as a hendiadys are found a few times in the Hippocratic Corpus and
the ith-century authors Aristophanes, Antiphon the sophist, lysias, Andocides, isaeus, Herodo-
tus, and hucydides, but are considerably more frequent in the fourth-century authors isocrates,
Xenophon, and Aristotle. here 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 relect oral usage he would have encountered in his youth in late ith-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 aga-
thos which comes to the fore in Callicles’ argumentation in Plato’s Gorgias is Hobbs 2000.
306 H e l io s
2. A decade ago, Goldhill produced three studies on the gaze and performance that have a bear-
ing 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 diferent perception of the tone of
socrates and, on a diferent level, of Plato leads him to an assessment in many respects diferent
from mine, especially regarding elements of subversiveness in the dialogues; that should not delect,
though, from the many nuanced observations concerning the language of socrates (and the lan-
guage 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. his 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. here are interesting parallels in this respect in some of the philosophical passages in the
Augustan poetry of Virgil and Horace.
6. For a diferent 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 hessaly (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 ‘hessalian Constitution’ (88
B31 DK = Athenaeus 14.662F) suicient to allow us to draw any irm conclusions regarding the
content and tendency of the whole. What is said about the way of life of the hessalians, 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 hessalians for their friendship with the Persians, inlicted 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 diferent
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. he 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 eforts in Greece in the Classical period were alto-
gether impressionistic, as demonstrated in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus, Greek poets have always been
sensitive to the sounds of words, and thus we ind collocations of similar sounding words of difer-
ent stems but derived from the same root from the Iliad onwards. in the present context, though,
the degree of etymological awareness in ith- and fourth-century Greece is irrelevant. ‘seeing’
metaphors in the realm of cognition draw on a wide range of words for ‘seeing,’ ‘viewing,’ and ‘gaz-
ing,’ 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 irst passage cited in Goldhill
1998.
12. My point here is not whether to translate phresin with ‘heart’ or with ‘mind.’
13. he 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 irst and foremost Classen 1959, esp. Chapter 4, “Metaphern des
sehens für geistige Vorgänge als Grundlage für Gleichnisse” (Visual Metaphors for Mental Pro-
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. his 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. his seems to be the view of Nightingale 2004, 179–80; cf. sedley 1999.
22. Johansen 2004, 66–8; cf. 91. he three quotations, though, cannot do justice to the difer-
entiated 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 afection 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 diicult 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. he comparative
material necessary for a suicient treatment of the issue, however, is also provided by Nightingale
2004, 168–80.
28. he 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 irst 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 deined as “understanding the one
and the two and the three.”
29. see Gadamer 1974, 246.
30. see Hufman 2005, 84.
31. hese 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’: he Power of Ritual
Viewing and Ritual Framing in Eleusis*
G e o R G iA P e T R i D o U
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. hese lines have traditionally been inter-
preted as referring to the spectacles ofered to the initiates in the course of the
secret initiation of the megavla musthvria of eleusis, oten 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 ini-
tiation ceremony of the Greater Mysteries of eleusis: sophocles, fr. 837 Pearson-
Radt (“hrice-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
310 H e l io s
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 ater-death existence
endurable. scholarly speculation on the nature of the things seen (and undoubt-
edly 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 privi-
leged 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 deined 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 eicacy 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.
efectively, i argue that, when studying the sources that speak of the process of
mystic initiation in eleusis, more may be gained if we shit our focus from the idea
of unqualiied and unmediated visual experience (vision) onto the cultural con-
struct that mediates between the eye of the beholder and the things seen (visual-
ity). he 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 diicult 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 con-
straints of secular visuality.
What exactly is “ritual-centred visuality”? elsner (2007, 25) deines as follows:
his ritual-centred visuality may be deined in many ways—as the putting aside
of the normal identity and the acquisition of a temporary cult-generated iden-
tity, or as the surrendering of individuality to a more collective form of subjec-
tivity 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 deinition (which is always open to contestation, depend-
P e T R i D oU —‘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
identiication and objectiication of a screen of discourse and posits a possibility
for sacred vision, which is by deinition more signiicant since it opens the
viewer to confronting his or her god.5
his 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 ater 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 diiculty in determin-
ing 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 aterlife, and the power that
comes from being allowed to view and being viewed by the divine.
his 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 evi-
dence on the notions of ‘spectacle’ and ‘experience’ of the mysteric initiation in
eleusis,8 while simultaneously being aware of the problematics and dynamics of
diferent 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 briely 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
deined the diference between vision and visuality in the context of naturalistic art
as follows:
312 H e l io s
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 hallucina-
tion, 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 speciic visuality’ and ‘culturally inlected visual practices’ have dis-
placed the notion of vision in an array of diferent scientiic 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 ive
years or so been grated onto the historical research of the viewing processes in the
ields of classics and ancient history—one may venture to say that the greatest ben-
eit 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 per-
ceptual and our conceptual cognition.
As an example let us take the male Athenian citizen of the ith and fourth cen-
turies 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 hucydides 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 afairs, 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 signiicance that the Greek word “for oicial 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 speciic dates deined as
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 uniied 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? his is a question to which i shall return in due course.
When considering the complexity and the subtlety with which sociopolitical
and cultural contexts deine 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 exempliied in the writings of Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Heraclitus, Plato,
and Protagoras, among others).16
his debate was not limited to the circles of the philosophers. in a number of
contemporary theatrical plays, physical vision and, consequently, the power to
acquire information with one’s eyes are compared to, and quite oten 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 dark-
ness (blindness), and intellectual darkness (ignorance) as one of the basic underly-
ing ideas in sophocles’ Ajax.18 he 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 par-
ticular, and sensory perception in general, are the privileges of the gods. Whether
we think of Athena as onstage or ofstage at this point, what we have here is an
unparalleled piece of stagecrat, with bloodshed, and a deranged Ajax not being
314 H e l io s
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 his piece of stagecrat
creates a mental and visual focus on the partial vision and knowledge of the mor-
tals, 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 oten
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
ofers 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. his 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. 5.115f.).21 he goddess removes the mist that
prevents him from distinguishing between mortal and immortal ighters: o[fr j eu\
gignwvskh/~ hjme;n qeo;n hjde; kai; a[ndra. Note here that Athena uses gignwvskein,
not ijdei`n. he gods can regulate both conceptual and perceptual cognition in
humans by, among other things, casting or raising a thick mist before their eyes.
he 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 irst 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 diferent to them.
it is with the privilege of allowing him to see sights restricted to the initiated
and their o[nhsi~ (beneits, advantage) that Dionysus lures Pentheus to his per-
verted initiation and efectively to his own death.22 like oedipus earlier on, Pen-
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 diferent things. he vision of the unbe-
liever is contrasted with the vision of the believer. he scopic regime of the reli-
gious 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 (591f.), 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
heban 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 proliic illusionary
creations. hroughout Pentheus’s psychosomatic ordeal, the god’s priest, or rather
the disguised god, has been standing nearby calmly observing the heban prince’s
physical and mental efort 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?” he 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 tem-
porarily 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 puriication, 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 con-
ceptual 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 H e l io s
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 follow-
ing 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 diferences in terminology, one may be correct in claim-
ing 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 ref-
erences 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 blind-
ness) 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 spec-
tacles and mystic voices” (polla; me;n oJrw`nta mustika; qeavmata, pollw`n de;
ajkouvonta toiouvtwn fwnw`n), and some spectacular “alternation between dark-
ness 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 puriication 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
deimavtwn qeivwn plhvrei~ gignomevnou~) as an integral part of the initiatory expe-

rience. 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), respec-
tively.32 Notwithstanding the ambiguous and oten 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 signiicantly, 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 his is especially evident in Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus: the philoso-
pher’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). here 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 salviic and epistemic
connotations.
Private religious qewriva as a widespread Greek cultural practice involved trav-
elling abroad to a Panhellenic sanctuary to witness an event or to see a spectacle
(Rutherford 2001). he journey to the sacred location, along with the physical and
mental preparation for it and along with its dangers, pleasures, and diiculties, was
as signiicant as the sacred event or the spectacle that the qewrov~ had set out to
witness.34 he theôric journey to a sacred panhvguri~ is essentially a journey to the
unknown and the unfamiliar with a distinctively religious and ocularcentric
dimension:
heôria, in short, brings an individual into contact with what is foreign and dif-
ferent: 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
sacriices, prayers, and rituals). Here the theôros approaches the ultimate and
most distant ‘other’, a divine being. (Wilson-Nightingale 2005, 163)
his 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 H e l io s
create focus, and focus creates reality. efectively, 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 god-
desses 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 oten 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 his scene in turn brings to mind the mytho-
logical 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 his 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 ight, or was your victory the git of the
goddess?
Her. in a ight. 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 ire, dadouchos. i have experienced
far truer mysteries . . . i have seen Korê).
Both passages imply that the muvstai saw during their initiation what they
expected to see ater their death, and that these visions may have included visions
of underworld deities and especially visions of Persephone or Korê.40 he underly-
ing idea may have been that proper ritual behavior in the course of initiation deter-
mines aterlife experience and existence.41 Passages from the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter (480–2) and Aristophanes’ Frogs (154–7) support the idea that the initia-
tion into the Great Mysteries may have prepared those initiated for the House of
Persephone (Persefovneia dwvmata) by means of ritual rehearsal.
he 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 staf led me to the temple, uninitiated as i was,

in both the secret ceremony and the light of the sun.
he goddesses initiated me into both, and that very night i truly saw
Having being puriied from the darkness of my eyes.
Without my staf 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 let
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 ields of ‘vision’ and
‘knowledge.’44 he cultural metaphor of ‘puriication’ has been utilized here in a
twofold way: initiation into the mysteries of Demeter and Korê ofered 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 coin-
cided with, and perhaps even facilitated, the acquisition of his physical vision.
Could this image of puriied vision be read as a rhetorical trope referring not sim-
ply to the new enhanced visual capacity, the new and clear vistas ofered by an
320 H e l io s
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 irst thing he (or is this the testi-
mony of a female initiate?) saw right ater he regained his sight, and what did they
look like? interesting questions with no deinite answers.
Perhaps the most interesting feature in this epigram is that the speaker remains
conident 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 reli-
gious prohibitions regarding the secret ceremony (the qewrov~ is not allowed to
speak about what he saw), as well as the diiculties 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
he 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 par-
ticipation 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 conirmation of the
goddesses’ powers and the eicacy of their mysteries.
his 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 tra-
ditionally 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 win-
nowing fan symbolize puriication, according to Clinton (2003, 59), who reminds
us that both these images relect 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
over her head.48 his short-term sightlessness must have had a profound efect on
the initiate’s psyche, who sat there blind, helpless, and frightened, surrendered
to the hands of his mustagwgoiv.49 his 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 oicials. 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 ini-
tiation 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 heal-
ing 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. his 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. he lat 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.
his 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 H e l io s
Fig. 1 Marble votive plaque found in the area of the eleusinian Telestêrion depicting a radiant
Demeter (ater 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 illed with radiance
hat 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.).
hese 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-
sories. Alternatively, this Demeter imbued with light may have been eucrates’ very
irst sight ater his blindness was cured, hence the similarities with the healing ex
votos. he 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 intensiied 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 ocular-
centric processes that informed the initiate’s experience at eleusis.
if there is, however, one artifact that exempliies 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
irst 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 ith-century BCe models and
contains the only positively identiied portrait of an Attic iJerofavnth~ that has
survived so far.58 it is also of interest that the relief was made to order, was deliv-
ered 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.
he inscription at the bottom of the relief reads: Qesmofovroisi Qeai`~:
Ἁgnouvsio~ Ἱerofavnth~ (To the hesmophorois Goddesses [this is dedicated] by
the hierophant from the deme of Hagnous).59 he hierophant of our relief is a man
of mature age clothed in his elaborate ceremonial outit (stolhv, skeuhv, or ejsqhv~)
324 H e l io s
Fig. 2 Attic votive relief with a iJerofavnth~ from Hagnous (ater 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 aterlife, 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 let
of the relief. he 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 raters when she
irst stepped onto Metaneira’s threshold (Hom. Hymn. Cer. 188–9). surprisingly
enough, the human igure of the hierophant is only slightly smaller than the two
divine ones. he iconographic norm in this sort of representation of mortals
encountering the divine is that the human igures are usually of a much smaller
scale.
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 cen-
tury 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 let holding two large torches.61 he
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. his 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 conceptual-
ized by their votaries and perhaps even how they were imagined as presiding over
their initiation ceremony.
he 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, how-
ever, 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.
his notion of aloofness is further intensiied by the uneven distribution of space
in the schematic naiskos: the three larger-than-life divine igures occupy two-thirds
of the surface of the relief, leaving the mortal igures to make a token appearance
in the remaining space. hey 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 diferences between the
Triptolemus relief and that of the hierophant from Hagnous are remarkable. he
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. he
most arresting diference 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 efort 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 H e l io s
Fig. 3 Votive relief from eleusis depicting Persephone, Triptolemus, and Demeter in the presence
of worshippers
divine. his reciprocal process of viewing is so unlike the atmosphere in the Trip-
tolemus relief, where the divine igures 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 ofered 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 ofer to both the devotee and the deity honored:
[i]n ritual-centered viewing, the grounds for a direct relationship have been pre-
pared. he 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. he reciprocal gaze of this visuality is a kind of epiphanic
fulillment both of the viewer-pilgrim, who discovers his or her deepest identity
in the presence of the god, and of the god himself, who receives the oferings
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 oicial who must have served the two deities for many years
and perhaps anticipates a special treatment ater he has let the world of the living
behind. he 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. he 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. hen again, it is likewise possible
that the female igures 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 igures,
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 assimilat-
ing 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 identii-
cations and restrictions.
he 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 oicials 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 he 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 H e l io s
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 here 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 suferings 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 suferings was of a mimetic nature, and that both priestly
personnel and initiates participated in that mimetic ritual. here is, of course,
also the view of scholars like Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1931–1932,
473–4), who think of Clement’s reference to the dravma mustikovn as purely
metaphorical.
hat 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 sup-
ported 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 inal joyous reunion. Tertullian,
in particular, reports that the priestess of Demeter was abducted during the sacred
reenactment.66 his (admittedly late) source, then, makes it possible, if not proba-
ble, that Demeter’s priestess reenacted the suferings of the goddess. he 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 of 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~.
he 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. he minimum
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 oicials performed which part.68 he question is, What made
the initiates ready to believe that they were encountering two deities instead of two
of their fellow human beings?
he 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 embodi-
ment 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 inten-
tionally made to resemble the deity’s most popular anthropomorphic image, and
enacted the part of the deity on festive occasions.69 his view was further sup-
ported 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 relected in the
prerequisites for becoming a priest or a priestess of a deity. he 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 mem-
ber 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 oten denoted by por-
traying the latter as the mortal look-alike of the former.72
here 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 diferent 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 irmly 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 H e l io s
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 partici-
pated 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 puriied their visual ilters 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, speciically designed for purposes
of viewing, with its numerous inscriptions, epigrams, and votive oferings (such
those of eucrates and the hierophant from Hagnous) which commemorated previ-
ously 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 ire and the torches held by the ejpovptai?75
hese are only some of the conditions and factors that would have nuanced the
initiates’ visuality, would have provided the essential ritual framing, and uniied
their diverse (due to their diferent gender, ethnic and political identities, socioeco-
nomic status, etc.) scopic regimes. hese 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 encoun-
ter the divine in eleusis. in their majority, these visuality-shaping factors, these
culturally determined conditions, are either at best partly known or at worst com-
pletely 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. Ater 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 irst presented and for their insightful comments on earlier drats of the printed
version. i am also grateful to P. R. scade and R. A. s. seaford for reading the manuscript and sug-
gesting several useful improvements. i would also like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt
stitung and Philip van der eijk for their generous inancial support. All mistakes are, of course,
my own.
1. on the names of the diferent 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. he 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 visu-
ally 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, 228f.; 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-
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 inally odysseus is ofered 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 hav-
ing dealt with Athena’s distortion of his visual capacity. his statement may indeed suggest that he
now envisages himself not only as a possible victim of the vengeance of the gods, but also as spec-
tacle 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 efect 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: “hat 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 ininite regress.”
21. When invoking Athena, the hero is careful to emphasize his patrimonial qeofiliva. he
goddess ofered his father Tydeus constant assistance and protection on the battleield, and, there-
fore, 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 humiger in this volume.
23. he 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. he young women failed to recognize the divinity of the god’s favsma and were
driven mad. he oracle advised their father to initiate the cult of Dionysus with the black shield as
the antidote to their mental aliction. 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 mys-
teries, despite the fact that, at least in my mind, they it perfectly his deinition 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 sufering, and (3) holds a promise of
prosperity in this life and usually also in the aterlife.”
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 H e l io s
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. he 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 diferent) 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 difer-
ent 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
inluences 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 aterworld, the initiation of the philo-
sophic theôros, Plato claims, puriies 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 diferences 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, 193f.) rightly notes that in the
world of the polis—unlike that of epic—death ceases to be a public afair; it becomes more of a
private matter and the anxiety that surrounds it seems to have been intensiied. 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 prepara-
tion for their ater-death encounter with the gods of the underworld. None of these, however, can
be identiied 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.”
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 diiculty 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 ire 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 bibli-
ography. 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 blind-
ness 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 rela-
tionship 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 oferings in sanctuaries, see Petsalis-Diomidis 2005, 187–8
and Mylonopoulos 2006, 87.
57. he exact location of its discovery is indicated on Travlos’s plan of area in Vanderpool 1960,
265.
58. Fith-century BCe models: Vanderpool 1960, 268; Attic hierophant: Clinton 1974, 32.
59. Clinton 1974, 32: “he 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
ater 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. he exact title of the hierophantid of Demeter does not appear in the liter-
ary 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 H e l io s
Demeter wander, nor brings in addition [ejpeisavgei] Keleous and Triptolemous and Dragons,
and some she does while others she sufers [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 initur; Apollodorus FGrHist 244
F 110b: ejpei; oJ tou` calkou` h\co~ oijkeiò~ toi`~ katoicomevnoi~. fhsi;n Ἀpollovdwro~ Ἀqhvnhsi
to;n iJerofavnthn th`~ Kovrh~ ejpikaloumevnh~ ejpikrouvein to; legovmenon hjceiòn. kai; para;
Lavkwsi, basilevw~ ajpoqanovnto~, eijwvqasi krouvein levbhta. sourvinou-inwood (2003) ofers a
most informative discussion of these sources and a very plausible reconstruction of the spectacles
the muvstai saw. For other very diferent, but equally learned reconstructions, see Clinton 1992,
and with some diferences 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. hese sources not only testify to the performative char-
acter 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) ofers an extremely respectful and sen-
sible 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. his view is based on a passage from isocrates, Panygericus (4.28),
where we are told about Demeter’s gits to the Athenians. hese are gits “of which only the initi-
ated may hear” (a}~ oujc oi|on t j a[lloi~ h] toi`~ memuhmevnoi~ ajkouvein). he 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 oicial has a diferent
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 let
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. 465f. Cf. also Callimachus 6.42–4 Pfeifer: 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 sacriicial scene from the black-igure 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 sacriice in her honor while
seated on a diphros holding a phialê. he helmet in her let hand, the spear that lies next to her, and
the large snake crawling in her feet diferentiate the divine igure from her mortal facsimile.
Athena reciprocates the sacriicial ofer by manifesting herself.
73. More in Gagné 2009.
74. on the visual dynamic of the architecture of a sanctuary and its votive oferings, see
Petsalis-Diomidis 2005. on the visual dynamic of the Telestêrion, see Clinton 2004 and 2007.
75. Athenaeus 1.21e. he ceremonial costume of the hierophant from Hagnous (Fig. 2) pro-
vides 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: he 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: he 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 personiication.
Fritz-Gregor Herrmann is Reader in Ancient Philosophy and literature at swan-

sea University. He is the author of Words and Ideas: he 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 hought 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 ith- and fourth-century Greece (from
hucydides to Plato), and philosophical aspects of the Greek novel.
344 H e l io s
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is senior lecturer in Ancient History at the University of

edinburgh. He has published ive 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 he 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 read-
ings 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, heoi 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 Traic in Women (ithaca and
london, 1993) and Greek Tragedy (Malden, MA, 2008), she has edited, with Amy
Richlin, Feminist heory 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 he Edge: Four
Plays by Euripides (New york, 1999). in progress are articles and collections, one
on teaching diicult subjects in the classics classroom and one on ancient sex and
gender.
Ian Rufell 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: he
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),
he iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae iliacae (oxford, 2011), and
he Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy (oxford, 2011). He was elected to the
Wissenschatskolleg 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 he 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 humiger 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 ith- 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).

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H e l io s

Volume 40 spring/Fall 2013 Numbers 1–2

Vision and Viewing in Ancient Greece

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

I. Art and Text

Framing a View of the Unviewable: Architecture, Aphrodite, and erotic

Apparitions Apparent: ekphrasis and the Parameters of Vision in the elder

Hesiod and the Divine Gaze 143

Women as subject and object of the Gaze in Tragedy 195

Vision and Knowledge in Greek Tragedy 223

Humiliation? Voyeurism, Violence, and Humor in old Comedy 247

Dynamics of Vision in Plato’s hought 281

Notes on Contributors 343

Helene Foley Mary-Kay Gamel Barbara K. Gold

Helios–issN 0160–0923 subscriptions and other business matters should be

H e l ios, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 1

H e l ios, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 3

he cinematic dominance of this “controlling male gaze” (Mulvey 2010, 206)

lives; it is especially obvious in those situations, typical of many interactions, in

in works such as Michael Haneke’s Caché or Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s

in ophthalmology a distinction was postulated between noxious stuf (related

something that happens to me as a result of my interest in another party who need

intersect, the phenomenology of the emotions concerned (erôs as a passive experi-

was primary. humiger, examining tragedy in the context of these philosophical

long, A. A. 1966. “hinking and sense-Perception in empedocles.” CQ 16: 256–76.

23. For what follows, cf. Craik 2008.

DeB oRAH sTeiNeR

on a well-known pelike in saint Petersburg associated with the Pioneer Group of

H e l ios, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 41

hexameter poetry seems “self-consciously to appropriate the inherent ambiguity in

tuvnh d joijwnoi`si tanupteruvgessi keleuvei~

hJmei`~ de; megavloio Dio;~ peiqwvmeqa boulh`/,

garment.” Nan Dunbar’s (1995 ad 1416–7) commentary supplies an additional

Al. kai; nh; Di j a[lla g j ejstiv mou kovbala paido;~ o[nto~:

ajll j oJpovtan pthvxwsi celidovne~ eij~ e{na cw`ron,

As Jefrey Henderson’s (1991, 128–9, 147) discussion of the passage notes, we

Fig. 4: Munich, Antikensammlungen 2447; ARV 425.

inscriptions serving by way of commentary or subtext to the actions and verbal

Fig. 5: Photo of psykter by smicrus showing euphronius courting leagrus;

as an athlete, symposiast, or high-class pupil engages in a form of self-parody:

H e l ios, vol. 40 no. 1–2, 2013 © Texas Tech University Press 71

enframement.” he impulse to question the validity of using the lucianic text or

Getting a Good Look

oujd j o{ka ta;n Ἴda/ Fru;x ejdivkazen e[rin,

he relective mirror is Aphrodite’s attribute, and kosmêsis—the preparation of her

Ἡ Pafivh Kuqevreia di j oi[dmato~ ej~ Knivdon h\lqe,

Paphian Cytherea came through the surf to Cnidus,

Ἀfrogenou`~ Pafivh~ zavqeon peridevrkeo kavllo~,

Look all around the golden beauty of the foam-born Paphian,

evaluation of Aphrodite is performed in the round. No angle escapes the critical

Provsqe me;n Ἰdaivoisin ejn ou[resin aujto;~ oJ bouvta~

once upon a time the herdsman himself on the idaean mountains

pudicum arbitrantes; reiectuam Cnidii emerunt, inmensa diferentia famae. . . .

Whereas infertile stone was replaced by luxuriant nature as a paving material in

oJ gou`n Cariklh`~ ejmmanev~ ti kai; paravforon ajnabohvsa~, ‘Eujtucevstato~,’

he approach to the Cnidia by Charicles is direct and sexualized, a frontal assault.

‘Ἡravklei~,22 o{sh me;n tw`n metafrevnwn eujruqmiva, pw`~ d j ajmfilaqei`~ aiJ

Callicratidas goes on to compare the goddess to Ganymede. As Callicratidas has

ers. Aphrodite’s charm as an attractive ‘boy’ is assured by her limbs’ perfect

in order to perform his attempted consummation with the statue-goddess, he must

Reading back out of the Frame

pro;~ to; parei`kon aJrmozovmeno~ ajei; liparestevroi~ me;n ajspavsmasin

both Callicratidas prescribes and heomnestus does. in his own tongue-in-cheek

. . . no idleness of the hands is allowed—open embraces through the clothes