Pictures from an Exhibition

Chapter II collects and analyses the Greek sayings that circulated under Theano’s name, and briefly discusses the Syriac collection. It situates Theano in the gallery of sages and clever women whose personae were represented and repeatedly performed through chreiai. Theano articulates her program within a greater network of sayings and anecdotes, including sayings of clever courtesans, Sappho, Diogenes, Herodotus, and Spartan women, to then be deployed in intellectual games by men—and women. The chapter draws attention to the tactics of appropriation, allusion, and citation that connect Theano’s aphorisms to that network. The sayings allude to tensions between the Pythagorean and Cynic ideas about sex, marriage, and women’s education; they reveal a debate on women’s role as defined by the teachings of the two schools. The extensive Syriac collection is linked to a group of Greek sayings that present Theano as a universal sage whose pronouncements matter to men as much as to women.