HELIOS最新文献

{"title":"Recognition and the Forgotten Senses in the Odyssey","authors":"Melissa Mueller","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2016.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2016.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Recognition in the Odyssey typically hinges on a visual or visualizable sign of some sort. There are, however, three recognition scenes--between Odysseus and his dog, his Nurse, and his bow--which turn instead on nonvisual triggers. Touch occasions Eurycleia's recognition of her master, as it does Odysseus's reunion with his bow, while there are strong hints that his sharp sense of smell is what enables Argus to detect his master behind the ragged appearance of a beggar. These three scenes, based as they are on senses other than sight, expose the fissures in Odysseus's otherwise flawless disguise, and reveal his surprising vulnerability. As David Howes (2005, 10) observes in Empire of the Senses, how the senses are valued in any given society is not only culturally determined but also hierarchical: The senses are typically ordered in hierarchies. In one society or social context sight will head the list of the senses, in another it may be hearing or touch. Such sensory rankings are always allied with social rankings and employed to order society. The dominant group in society will be linked to esteemed senses and sensations while subordinate groups will be associated with less-valued or denigrated senses. In the West, the dominant group--whether it be conceptualized in terms of gender, class, or race--has conventionally been associated with the supposedly 'higher' senses of sight and hearing, while subordinate groups (women, workers, non-Westerners) have been associated with the so-called lower senses of smell, taste, and touch. The gendered social valuation of the senses in the Odyssey is in line with what Howes describes as typical for Western societies: sight and sound are allied with social prestige, while touch and smell are more prevalent among subordinate groups, particularly women and animals. Argus and Eurycleia mobilize these 'lower' senses during their interactions with Odysseus. Women, moreover, are often the first to notice bodily semata, perhaps because of their involvement in rituals of hospitality which brings them into close contact with the physical self. (1) And as weavers, women are practitioners of a supremely tactile art. (2) This may mark them as closer to 'nature' and supposedly less suited for positions of political power, but their tactile expertise is also what allows female characters in Homer to 'see through' the superficially altered appearances that confound their male counterparts. (3) Even Odysseus, a hero of metis (cunning) rather than bia (force), resorts to uncharacteristic aggression when he is confronted with Eurycleia's discerning touch. The forgotten senses of touch and smell thus reinforce, at the same time that they call into question, the Odyssey's gendered and political status quo. By pointing up the dangers of discovery that Odysseus barely escapes, such seemingly loose ends in the 'disguise' strand of the epic hint at alternative outcomes to the hero's nostos. Odysseus's is a homecoming w","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"43 1","pages":"1 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2016.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In Defense of Myrrhina: Friendship between Women in Plautus’s Casina","authors":"Anne Feltovich","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The argumentative behavior of Myrrhina towards her friend, Cleostrata, in Act 2, Scene 2, of Plautus's Casina has struck many scholars as inconsistent with her amicable behavior elsewhere in the play. (1) When the two women meet in this scene, which is their first encounter on stage, Cleostrata expresses indignation towards her husband, and Myrrhina counters that her grounds for indignation are not valid. The friction between the two women is obvious, but later they cooperate fully in Cleostrata's efforts to humiliate her husband and foil his plan to rape the slave girl, Casina. The charge of inconsistency appears as early as Peter Langen (1886, 127), who stated simply, \"Der Charakter der Murrhina ist nicht konsequent durch gefuhrt\" (The character of Myrrhina is not executed consistently throughout), and as recently as Ariana Traill (2011, 502), who writes, \"The betrayal is as short-lived as it is unexpected.\" (2) To Eduard Fraenkel (2007, 204), the difference in her behavior is so striking that he concludes it must be the result of Plautine interpolation: The principles which Myrrhina espouses in lines 199-211 fit neither her character nor her behaviour during the rest of the play nor the nature of her friendship with Cleostrata. The two women are in complete harmony; the intimacy of their relationship is studiously emphasized at the beginning of this scene (179-83). Cleostrata is deeply worried; such cold-blooded opposition by her friend, as it is portrayed in only one set of lines, 199-211, is intolerable: it contradicts the way the Greek poet has clearly shaped the whole play. The primary goal of my paper is to demonstrate that Myrrhina's behavior in Scene 2.2 is not inconsistent with her otherwise strong expressions of solidarity with Cleostrata; in fact, she acts precisely as a friend should by warning Cleostrata that her opposition to her husband could get her into serious trouble. Before delving into this, I will examine the methodological problems behind Langen's original proclamation and investigate why his conclusion--that Myrrhina's behavior is inconsistent--perseveres even though his methodology is now considered outdated. Returning to the dramatic world of the Casina, the trouble arises when Cleostrata's husband, Lysidamus, makes a particularly overt and particularly grand effort to gain sexual access to their slave, Casina, who is of marriageable age. Lysidamus plans to arrange her marriage to his personal slave, Olympio, so that he can access Olympio's chambers and rape Casina without arousing the suspicions of his own wife, Cleostrata. Their son, Euthynicus, who is also interested in the young woman, has devised a similar plan to marry Casina to his own slave. Casina has no lines and the audience is never shown her perspective; she is a hapless bystander whose future will be decided by a handful of citizens who fight for the prestige that comes from controlling Casina as property. (3) Cleostrata, aware of her husband","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"245 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Poeta as Rusticus in Ovid, Amores 1.7","authors":"Caroline A. Perkins","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Amores 1.7 has long been considered a problematic poem. Its subject matter, the physical assault of the puella by the poet-speaker, is often viewed as distasteful (James 2003, 184), and there are difficulties of interpretation. Opinions of the poem vary, although critics no longer see it as a \"sincere expression of regret\" on the part of the poet-speaker (e.g., Barsby 1993, 91, quoted in James 2003, 184; Fraenkel 1945, 18 and Wilkinson 1955, 50, both quoted in Khan 1966, 880; Greene 1998, 84). The poem is read, for instance, as a humorously exaggerated and disingenuous description of the poet-speaker's reaction to his attack on his puella, designed to rationalize and minimize his responsibility (Barsby 1973, 91; Cahoon 1988, 296); as an expression of continued violence against women (Greene 1998, 84); and as a tour de force that turns an angry lover into a subservient underling (Olstein 1979, 297). Commentators agree, however, that the poem is embedded in a strong literary and elegiac tradition that includes quarrels and physical force as a part of erotic interactions. (1) In this article I argue for another interpretation of this poem that locates Amores 1.7 firmly in the elegiac topos of the lover's violence. Specifically, I examine Tibullus 1.10.51-66 and Propertius 2.5.21-6, two poems to which Amores 1.7 has direct verbal and thematic connections. (2) My intention is, first, to focus on the characters of the rusticus and the poeta in Tibullus 1.10 between whom Tibullus draws a contrast when it comes to the battles of love, and, second, to discuss how Propertius in 2.5 objects to Tibullus's description of a drunken rusticus as a rapist, a scene that, in his view, should not have been written. Finally, I argue that in Amores 1.7 Ovid confronts and redirects the topos of elegiac violence by creating a poeta who is also a rusticus. (3) Rusticitas is a quality that Ovid disdains and one that his elegy is designed to combat, (4) but in Amores 1.7, Ovid's poet-speaker gradually reveals that he has actually engaged in the behavior of Tibullus's rusticus by physically attacking his puella. Ovid thus combats the parochial and exclusionary conventions of Propertius and Tibullus who define the elegiac lover ostensibly as a peaceful man. At the same time, however, Ovid's poet-speaker punctuates his revelations with a high degree of epic features that show that, despite his uncouth behavior, he is a poet and a learned poet at that. As I suggest here, Ovid, by creating a poet-speaker who is a poeta as well as a rusticus, reworks both Tibullus, who has created a distinction between the behavior of a rusticus and that of a poeta, and Propertius, who believes that any poet who describes the behavior of a rusticus is himself behaving as one. In the final poem of his first book, Tibullus creates a distinction between the rusticus and the poeta which calls on earlier themes in his poetry and connects the rusticus with the soldier. (5) After a series of contrasts ","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"267 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Down through the Gaping Hole—and up the Fig Tree","authors":"Han Tran","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0013","url":null,"abstract":"'Well!' thought Alice to herself. After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down-stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home!' --Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland As the Odyssey's Circe turns from treacherous witch to helpful advisor and takes it upon herself to warn Odysseus against, first, the Sirens, and, second, the twin dangers that are Scylla and Charybdis, she curiously does not immediately proceed to discuss the latter pair. In her preamble, Circe begins by claiming that Odysseus's path is a matter of choice: one leads to the Clashing Rocks or Planctae, the other to Scylla and Charybdis (Od. 12.56-8). It quickly emerges, however, that Odysseus does not, in fact, have a choice: the Planctae, which spare not even the doves carrying ambrosia to Zeus, have only once been successfully crossed, and even so, only thanks to Hera's direct intervention (Od. 12.69-72). How formidable these rocks are can be glimpsed in the fact that the Planctae are known only by a name the gods have given them. In only one other instance does the Odyssey refer to this divine taxonomy--what scholars have called the \"language of the gods\"; it is when Hermes introduces the molu plant to Odysseus and discusses what makes it unique: (1) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (2) (And the gods call it \"molu\"; for mortal men / It is hard to dig up; the gods, however, are capable of everything, Od. 10.305-6). Like steering a ship through the treacherous Planctae, to find and dig up the molu is a simple matter for the gods; for mortals, the same task is not so easy. It is implicit in Odysseus's subsequent questions to Circe about how best to tackle Scylla that he does not for a moment consider the Planctae to be a real alternative. (3) Odysseus thus gives up beforehand on a trajectory that is doomed to failure as it leaves no room for him, as a mortal, as a hero without the direct divine protection enjoyed by the likes of Jason, to exercise his famed resourcefulness. There is a strong suggestion here that the Clashing Rocks may belong to a heroic past that cannot be revisited by Odysseus. Circe's introduction is thus significant, for it frames the hero's encounter with Scylla and her counterpart as, unlike the Planctae, a challenge that is not beyond remedy--provided he follows her advice to steer clear of Charybdis and thus stay closer to Scylla. And not only did Odysseus follow the advice, so have most commentators. The pair has been the object of many fruitful studies, but common to these treatments is a stress on Scylla, often to the neglect of Charybdis. Both monsters are, scholars agree, female, engulfing mouths, but Homer's own tendency to humanize Scylla while leaving Charybdis as landscape rather than fully gendered creature has slanted the traditional reading, favoring an interpretive close-up of Scylla. (4) Scholarly discourse, at its most fleshed-out, interprets the whirlpool as an extreme example of the anthropophagous, one of the O","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"32 1","pages":"179 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Solonian Legacy in Socrates","authors":"Lucas Fain","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0014","url":null,"abstract":"[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] But before he is dead, wait, and do not yet call him happy, but fortunate. --Solon (1) Prologue What does the history of philosophy look like from the perspective of psychoanalysis? In the present essay, I propose to consider a specific moment in the history of philosophy, namely, the intervention of eros in the historical transition from Herodotean inquiry to Platonic philosophy. If psychoanalysis makes a difference as to how we understand the history of philosophy, what can it tell us about the significance of eros for the tradition of philosophy initiated by Socrates? In asking this question, my aim is twofold. First, I want to demonstrate that a psychoanalytic approach to the history of philosophy not only is plausible, but that by virtue of its insight into the wishes and fantasies that motivate human behavior, it can help us to understand how eros intervenes to motivate the Platonic account of the Socratic unity of happiness and philosophy. Where the historical significance of this account is at stake, we shall have to investigate both the prehistory of the Socratic tradition and its major connection to a Platonic account of the eros for philosophy. Hence my second aim: to demonstrate the central importance of Plato's Symposium in this psycho-historical drama. My argument is not simply that the Symposium is amenable to psychoanalytic interpretation, as readers like Jacques Lacan (1991 [1957]) and Jonathan Lear (1999) have already demonstrated. (2) Rather, my argument is that psychoanalysis offers a powerful vocabulary for understanding the genesis of philosophical eros, and that the Symposium is likewise a key resource for illuminating the prehistory of Socratic philosophy precisely because its account of the eros for philosophy is traceable to the Herodotean inquiry concerning Solon's role in an ancient quarrel about the meaning of happiness. My argument, in short, is that the eros for philosophy has its source in an all too human dynamic of seduction, and that the psychoanalytic theory of seduction is uniquely capable of elaborating the account of philosophical seduction in the Symposium--precisely because the psychoanalytic and Platonic accounts share the same fundamental structure. To be clear: I am not arguing that either Solon or Herodotus is the sole antecedent to the Socratic tradition, nor that one cannot find older or more diverse sources for the constellation of themes that link Herodotus to Plato through what I shall call the Solonian legacy in Socrates. Rather, my argument is concerned to show that a certain collection of themes converge in the figure of Solon, and that by virtue of their transformation in the Symposium, it is possible to consider both Plato's indebtedness to the Solonian teaching, as well as the specific terms of his divergence. For introductory purposes, I cite four fundamental themes that define the appearance of Solon's legacy. (3) 1. A tension between olbos and eudaimonia i","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"209 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Hierarchy of Violence?: Sex Slaves, Parthenoi, and Rape in Menander’s Epitrepontes","authors":"A. Glazebrook","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship on prostitution in ancient Greece, specifically classical Athens, commonly ignores the violence surrounding sexual labor. Whereas violence is central to discussions of prostitution in the modern context, the focus on the ancient hetaira as a courtesan has obscured the reality of Greek prostitutes, many of whom were slaves and vulnerable to abuse. (1) It is not just the obvious fact that prostitution could at times be violent--women, girls, and household slaves in general were at risk for sexual violence more broadly (as comic plots attest and as ancient warfare demonstrates (2))--but that such violence was constructed differently for sex laborers than other social groups: the prostitute body is deemed an accessible body and that accessibility normalizes sexual violence against it and creates a double standard of violence. (3) It is this construction of violence that I begin to explore here by comparing two narratives of sexual assault as recounted by the sex slave Habrotonon in Menander's Epitrepontes. In comparing the two narratives, I place special emphasis on the narrative voice (a shift from third person to first person), the intended context for the narrative (a private conversation between slaves versus a conversation at the symposium), and the identity of the victim (a citizen girl versus a sex slave). Also important is the fact that the narrator of both accounts is the same person, the sex slave Habrotonon. The plot of Menander's Epitrepontes (The Arbitrators) is typical of New Comedy in that the plot hinges on the rape of a young citizen woman by an unknown and inebriated assailant at a night festival (in this case the Tauropolia). (4) The victim becomes pregnant from the rape. The rapist, discovered to be a wealthy young citizen, does the right thing by acknowledging his child and uniting with the mother. All ends happily. Specific to the plot of this play is the fact that when the action begins, the victim, Pamphile, is unknowingly married to her assailant. Charisius, her husband, has discovered the pregnancy, though not his role in it, and left the marriage to take up with a slave prostitute, Habrotonon. Habrotonon, in turn, discovers that the father of the child is Charisius. Hoping to acquire her freedom, she reveals the child to Charisius, who then happily reunites with his wife. As noted by Hunter Gardner (2013) and Sharon James (2014), the Epitrepontes is unique in that it presents details of a sexual assault and its effect on the victim. (5) Habrotonon recounts the event as follows (486-90): [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Although being there with us, she [Pamphile] wandered off. Then suddenly she ran up alone crying and pulling out her hair [in grief]. Oh gods--she had totally ruined her light cloak, very beautiful and fine; for the whole thing was a tattered rag. Pamphile is described here as hysterical after the encounter, crying and pulling out her hair. The violence of the event and its effect on the victim a","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"101 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Harlots, Tarts, and Hussies?: A Problem of Terminology for Sex Labor in Roman Comedy","authors":"Serena S. Witzke","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0000","url":null,"abstract":"\"Whores are not a homogenous class.\" Adams, \"Words for Prostitute in Latin\" is apud scortum corruptelae est liberis, lustris studet. Plautus, Asinaria \"And all the time corrupting his children at a harlot's, haunting houses of ill fame!\" Nixon, Plautus, The Comedy of Asses \"And all the time he's teaching Rip how to make it with Cleareta's whores ...\" Chappell, Plautus, \"Asses Galore\" \"Now he's chez tart. A freeborn child's perversion, lover of morass.\" John Henderson, Asinaria \"In reality he corrupts his son at a prostitute's and frequents the brothels.\" De Melo, Plautus, The Comedy of Asses The last twenty years have seen a renewed interest in sex labor in antiquity, (1) with colleges offering more courses on women in antiquity, Roman comedy, and sexuality in the ancient world, and Roman Civilization courses including units on women. These classes, largely aimed at undergraduates, require clear and accurate translations of the Latin material and a thorough understanding of the types of sex labor in the Roman world. It is therefore time to reevaluate terminology--to reconsider the kinds of sex labor in the texts, and how they can be understood. There have been studies on Greek sexual vocabulary (2) and examinations of the importance of distinctions in the terms for sex labor, (3) but these have focused on technical terminology, not the lived realities that the terminology represents. Few similar studies have been attempted for Latin. (4) Drawing on Roman comedy as a test case, I offer here a survey of various problems of terminology for sex labor (in translation, teaching, and scholarship) and reflect on why such terminology should be considered a problem at all. Translation of, and scholarship on, sex labor in Latin literature is problematic for two reasons: (1) the limited vocabulary of Latin in these plays does not adequately express the myriad historical situations of sex laborers, which must be gleaned from context; and (2) the English terminology frequently used is too fluid and cannot express Roman cultural situations. When translating either for those not fluent in Latin or for scholarship (which is written in their native languages), translators deliberately take foreign words in ancient contexts and then provide these words with modern approximations that are given meaning through contemporaneous understanding of those words. When situations involving sex labor are translated, the realities of the laborers are often obscured: euphemisms prejudice readers, moralizing judgments are perpetuated, and lived realities of sex laborers in antiquity are easily glossed over or dismissed. This phenomenon has occurred, for example, in translations of Roman Comedy with regard to rape, which historically has been bowdlerized into \"seduction\" in English translations or has been edited out altogether. (5) The majority of Roman comedies feature sex labor. (6) The three most common words for female sex laborer in Roman comedy are arnica, meretrix, and sc","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"27 1","pages":"27 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Reading the Material Culture of Ancient Sexual Labor","authors":"J. Baird","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Can a single object change how we think about ancient sexual labor? Using the evidence of an artefact excavated near Pompeii, in this article I argue that our material evidence for sexual labor has not been properly appreciated, and that by more fully considering the range of human relationships associated with and enabled by objects, the possibilities for a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements of people, objects, sex, and labor become apparent. Approaches to the archeology of slavery in the Roman world have advanced greatly in recent years. Far from invisibility, comparative approaches have been harnessed to find the presence of slaves beyond the visual evidence and material culture of restraint (such as chains, shackles, or bullae) to interpret more ephemeral archeological traces including graffiti and leather footwear. (1) Despite such advances, a glance at recent works on material culture and slavery in the Roman world reveals that there is still a heavy reliance on textual and visual depictions rather than on material culture. (2) However, considering the material production of labor in the Roman world is one way we can access slavery archeologically: from the storage of surplus indicative of a slave-owning household, to places where slaves worked and were held, to landscapes transformed by the labor of the unfree. (3) But what can material culture contribute to our knowledge of sexual labor and to the debates surrounding slaves and sex? One way is the study of brothels, as Thomas McGinn has expertly demonstrated. (4) Sexual labor within a domestic setting has not commonly been included in the economy of Roman prostitution. (5) Nor have historians of ancient labor or archeologists usually considered sexual work (free or unfree) amongst household labors. (6) Within the household, a slave had no choice but to participate in any sexual act the free members of the household desired of them. Any slave could be a sex slave. (7) Within this asymmetrical power arrangement of masters and slaves engaging in sex, there must have been a range of relationships--from those slaves who lived under constant threat to those who consciously leveraged their own desirability to try and improve their lot; indeed, these situations might coincide within a single person and complicate issues surrounding what we could consider to be consent. In this short contribution, I hope to show that material culture can be a powerful tool with which to reflect on how we think about sexual labor in the Roman world (and how we, as scholars, often do not). One way in which this is possible is by acknowledging the ambiguities in our evidence, and the multiple narratives that may be drawn from them. Acknowledging ambiguities encourages more reflexive and reflective interpretations, enabling the challenging of, rather than replication of, power structures both within our discipline and in the Roman world. (8) Archeological evidence is by its nature material, fragmentary, a","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"163 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Associating the Aulêtris: Flute Girls and Prostitutes in the Classical Greek Symposium","authors":"Maxwell Goldman","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Symposiasts in the late archaic Greek period began hiring trained female slaves to furnish musical entertainment. (1) The profession grew so pervasive that the female aulos player, the auletris, came to seem as necessary to a proper party as wreaths and wine. While shopping for party supplies, for example, Theophrastus's repulsive man hires some pipers. What is so repulsive? He shows off his supplies, makes indiscriminate invitations, and boasts at the barber's and perfumer's shops that he will get drunk. (2) And how do the pipers fit? James Diggle (2004, 318-9) suggests that Mr. Repulsive, in addition to being a braggart, also offends when he insinuates that his guests can have sex with the women. Although I am not convinced that the neuter tauta includes the pipers with the other supplies, as Higgle infers, in any case the only sexual insinuation in the text would have to stem from the nature of the pipers themselves. Mr. Repulsive does not mention sex, but drunkenness. The question becomes, Must the female piper imply venal sex? Recent scholarship has indeed emphasized the female piper's sexual labor, even taking the word auletris as a synonym for prostitute. (3) James Davidson (1997, 81) has influentially highlighted the sexual role of the female piper, one that not only has her regularly provide sex for the guests at the end of the symposium, but also imagines her soliciting men on the street. Many scholars follow Davidson to a greater or lesser degree. (4) Matthew Dillon (2002, 183), for example, presumes that female pipers ended their performances by having sex with the guests. Warren Anderson (1994, 143) follows a similar assumption and unaccountably undresses them: \"Auletrides, scantily clad young women, were paid to provide all-male gatherings of symposiasts with aulos music and fellation.\" Marina Fischer (2013, 222) claims that entertainers provided \"not only musical and acrobatic entertainment during banquets but also engaged in sexual activities with the symposiasts (D. 59.33; Is. 3.13-17).\" Fischer's claim is particularly difficult to evaluate because neither passage cited mentions entertainers. Other scholars have underplayed the element of prostitution. Kenneth Dover (1968, 220) says that \"it would be unfair to say\" that slaves hired to entertain at the symposium \"were necessarily prostitutes, although they could be prostituted.\" Chester Starr (1978, 409) believes that the evidence does not allow us to imagine that the symposium with female entertainers \"always, or even usually\" resulted in orgies. Given the servile status of the auletris and her frequent presence among groups of carousing men, she was likely at times subject to prostitution. I have found no certain evidence, however, that she ever engaged in venal sex within the symposium and evidence for prostitution is slim and vague. What the evidence, written and visual, does reveal is that the female piper in classical Athens had a far more complex and nuanced s","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"42 1","pages":"29 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419826","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Domestic Sexual Labor in Plautus","authors":"C. Marshall","doi":"10.1353/HEL.2015.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/HEL.2015.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The plays of Plautus and Terence provide a rich database that can be used to document the variety of forms that sexual labor manifested in the Roman republic. (1) Even though the contexts are fictional and the plays consistently represent adaptations of Greek originals, for the plays to be meaningful there must exist some correspondence between the world depicted in the plays and the city in which they were performed. (2) Women occupying a wide range of socio-economic positions are presented as sex workers (meretrices), and the range of attitudes to the labor they provide allows meaningful contrast between them as individuals. Three categories define this labor in financial terms: the meretrix can be a noncitizen but free entrepreneur surviving on the fringes of society (e.g., Asinaria, Bacchides, Cistellaria, Truculentus); she may be a slave who is to be sold for a profit (e.g., Rudens, Curculio); or she may be rented for short-term contracts (e.g., Persa, Pseudolus). (3) In the case of the latter two categories, the slave's owner may be considered a leno (a dealer in sex slaves, a term often translated as \"pimp\"), even if he identifies primarily with another profession. This article considers a fourth category of sexual labor that appears to fall outside of this Roman economy of prostitution (as described by McGinn 2004): the domestic slave used for sex. Since slaves lacked most rights (any legal obligation or recompense was due instead to their owners), they were available for sexual use at any time by their master or anyone he may choose. The domestic slave was particularly vulnerable since, in the urban context presented in the plays, she lives in the same building as someone who can rape her regularly and against which she has no legal recourse. (4) I am therefore defining domestic sexual labor more narrowly than does Sharon James, (5) confining myself to situations where there is no exchange of money or objects of value for sexual acts. (6) Even if the owner uses terms such as \"love\" when he speaks to his friends, or happens to treat her modestly (as the pimp Cappadox does Planesium in Curculio (7)), there should be no doubt that this continues to be forced sexual activity and, therefore, rape. Since the owner's rights over the woman are absolute, the direct continuity between forced sex and other types of violence cannot be understated. (8) Of course, a slave woman's situation may change at the master's whim. At any time she may be sent to provide sexual favors to a houseguest as a gift, for money, or with an eye to a sale; (9) or she may one day be seen as too old or sexually undesirable. This is evidently the fate of Scapha in Mostell. 199-202: vides quae sim et quae fui ante. nilo ego quam nunc tu *** 200 *** amata sum; atque uni modo gessi morem: 200a qui pol me, ubi aetate hoc caput colorem commutavit, 201 reliquit deseruitque me. tibi idem futurum credo. You can see who I am and who I was before. No less than you now I *** I was lov","PeriodicalId":43032,"journal":{"name":"HELIOS","volume":"34 1","pages":"123 - 141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/HEL.2015.0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66419903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}