One of the aims of this book is to subject familiar material to new treatment. For this contribution I propose to submit Athenian tragedy and comedy of the fifth century BC to the unfamiliar glare of film criticism.1 My purpose is to examine to what extent our appreciation of the treatment of gender in these texts can be aided by the application of one particular area of film criticism, namely ‘spectacle’.
By ‘spectacle’ I do not mean the range of stage machinery and production effects which we might understand as the meaning of the Greek word opsis as used in Aristotle’s Poetics. Instead I use the term in its more technical sense from the language of film criticism, to mean the focusing of a spectator’s gaze upon a specific object. The word ‘gaze’ is also used in a critical sense to mean not simply ‘sight’, but a deeper sensual and psychological focus of interest, concentration and examination. Such a gaze is detached; it can delimit and define its object; it exerts power and can control. In film criticism, the concept of the gaze has for some time been discussed with regard to gender, but with an emphasis on women, either as objects of male spectacle, or as spectators of female characters in film.2 Only in the last fifteen years have critics begun to turn their own ‘gaze’ upon the male as the object of spectacle (e.g. Cohan and Hark 1993; Dyer 1993; Byars 1991). In a classic article, Steve Neale (1983) applied to male characters the considerable weight of film criticism devoted to the woman as object of the gaze. Much of this early criticism was driven by feminist motives, and aimed to stress how mechanisms of patriarchy exerted control over women through media ideals of femininity which few could in reality attain. Women, it is argued, become objects of spectacle for a variety of psychological motives: desire, envy, hatred. The reaction of the spectator, so the critics argue, depends upon their sex, and their society’s constructions of gender, race and social class. To view a film is thus to participate in an act of subtle societal manipulation and control. Individual directors may offer varying viewpoints, but they are still fundamentally influenced by the conventions and demands of the medium, and of the society which produces it.
Thus framed, the potential value of this interpretative framework for an analysis of Attic drama may now be more apparent. Like film, Attic drama was undeniably linked to social conventions and the construction of idealised characters. Like film or, more probably, television today, it was the popular entertainment medium in Athens, whether at major civic or minor local festivals. Many have devoted considerable time to the investigation of Attic drama for social history. However, in its frenzied dissections of ‘others’, be they barbarians, slaves, women, children, homosexuals, the elderly, the disabled or even animals, scholarship on drama has consistently overlooked the structural norm against which we define these ‘others’: that is, the heterosexual male. The only book to deal specifically with male characters in drama was written long before the refinement of theories of gender (Blaiklock 1952). Its author uses gender merely a means to select characters from the corpus for a more traditional discussion of characterisation and function, with little or no colouring from what we would recognise today as gender studies. Much work could be done concerning representations of masculinity in classical drama. This chapter is offered as one insight which, it is hoped, may stimulate others.
I should now outline the boundaries of this chapter. I examine the treatment of the male body in fifth-century Attic drama. I shall discuss both tragedy and Old Comedy, because I believe strongly that the two genres overlap and engage with one another in so many ways that critics, especially social historians, are severely hamstrung if they restrict themselves to a single genre. I restrict myself to extant tragedies and comedies because our information about fragmentary plays often relies on late literary sources, which cannot provide reliable evidence, especially for staging. I do not use the evidence of vase paintings either, as it has its own complex nexus of conventions, which render it problematic for the issues with which I am concerned. I also confine my interest to the treatment of the male body as a whole, and rarely as parts. Thus I shall not be discussing ideas of the soul or of human biology. These valuable areas have been illuminated recently by the work of Ruth Padel, most notably her book In and Out of the Mind (1992). My work on men complements hers, for she dwells particularly upon the psychology and biology of women.
I also refine the interpretative framework, by distinguishing two different, if often overlapping gazes: that of the audience in the theatre, and that of other characters within the play. I shall examine instances of the male body as spectacle in both these areas, adding some remarks on how Attic drama relates to earlier literature in this regard. I then conclude by placing drama within its broader fifth-century context.
Here I shall analyse a tripartite catechism. Who is the spectator? Which males are the objects of the gaze? In what types of situation do dramatic male characters become objects of spectacle?
As I have said, film criticism has shown that the reaction of the spectator is profoundly influenced by cultural conventions (e.g. gender, race, class). The feminist origin of much film criticism in this area has resulted in a great interest in the woman as spectator, particularly of the so-called ‘women’s pictures’ produced in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s (e.g. Doane 1987; Tims 1987; Byars 1991; Basinger 1993). These films often featured female characters in central roles, but relied upon contemporary positive and negative gender stereotypes to depict women as either threats to or upholders of traditional male-controlled society. Such roles are familiar to any reader of Attic drama. However, one area where the parallels between film and Attic drama may begin to trouble us is the idea of a female spectator.
The question of whether or not women attended the dramatic performances in fifth-century BC Athens is one of the oldest of classical chestnuts (the classic is Navarre 1900). Indeed it was an originally antiquarian interest in women’s attendance at these events which sparked the interest of eighteenth-century scholars in the more general legal and social position of women in Athens (Katz 1995). Unfortunately here we encounter one area where we cannot apply film theory so readily. Our evidence for whether women attended these performances is quite inconclusive: some literary sources imply that women were present, others not. But even if women did attend, the playwrights primarily wrote for a male spectator. So we must modify our approach from film theory to assume that our ancient spectators were male. We also need to be aware that the audience may well have contained non-Athenians, as resident aliens or vistors (especially for the City Dionysia). But, once again, it was not primarily for them that the plays were written. Our spectator, therefore, is male, and Athenian, but may come from any social class.
What men, therefore, are the objects of spectacle? We may dismiss the gods quickly, for tragedies show little interest in their bodies. They are revered as divinities, but they are not to be gazed at in the same way as mortals. Of mortal men in tragedy, those whose bodies become the focus of spectacle are almost all aristocratic heroes. Little is ever made of the bodies of the chorus. An exception is the often lurid description of selfmutilation in lament by members of a female chorus. In satyr drama, the chorus of satyrs is certainly a focus of attention, but they remain non-human and as such are only standards of masculinity in that they can represent excessive sexuality.3 Old Comedy offers, as one might expect, a different picture. Here we see more recognisable potential images of masculinity. The padded and distorted costumes worn by male characters may serve to distance the spectator partially, but their all-too-human phalloi unite the male spectators by means of the one sign of masculinity which society does not have to construct. I shall return to this further in due course.
The final part of my catechism concerns dramatic situations. There are surprisingly many plays which focus upon the male body as a major element of the plot. The male body thus becomes an important, if not the most important clement in the structuring of the whole play. The same cannot be said for women’s bodies. While female characters may dominate the action in terms of intrigue, we do not find plays which centre, for example, on the burial of a woman. Even Sophokles’ Antigone concerns itself more with ethical issues than with any extended reference to her death. The women who die in tragedy have been the subject of a stimulating study by Nicole Loraux (1985). But, truth to tell, despite the time devoted to the intrigue, the actual descriptions of female death are surprisingly brief, and the women die off-stage. Only Euripides’ Alcestis dies on-stage. She is the exception which proves the rule, because, although she is characterised as the ideal wife, her heroic self-sacrifice and duty are held up to be emulated by men, and there is no focus upon physical pain.
The situation for the men is quite different. One popular on-stage scene is that of the ‘man in pain’. I well remember the comments of one teenage schoolgirl sitting in front of me at a recent Oxford production of Sophokles’ Women of Trachis in Greek. As Herakles was in the full flow of his painful exclamations, she turned to her neighbour and remarked, ‘Oh god, doesn’t he take a long time to die!’ A large part of the play is indeed devoted to his on-stage agony. Critics of the play do not seem to have addressed this issue with anything other than banal pleading. We are told that the length of the scene illustrates the religious importance of Herakles’ death, of the dramatic sympathy his severe portrayal evokes for the dead Deianeira. But the fact remains that, even in one’s own language, the scene seems inordinately long. But it is by no means unique. We encounter a similar, if shorter, scene of a ‘man in pain’ in Euripides’ Hippolytos. Here, the mangled body of Hippolytos is brought on-stage to die, after a violent chariot accident. Hippolytos too takes a long time to die, as he and those around him (including the goddess Artemis) comment on his agony and unjust suffering. It is possible that the drawn-out construction of the scene encourages us to feel more sympathy for Hippolytos as the pawn of the gods, and that it illuminates Theseus’ misfortune, but the strange phenomenon remains of the climactic episode of the play focusing on a ‘man in pain’.
An even more extreme example is that of Sophokles’ Ajax, in his nameplay, who commits suicide on-stage only half-way through the play. The action then proceeds with the corpse of Ajax on-stage, as family, friends and enemies debate his burial over him. Here the corpse becomes the unifying element within the whole play and the structuring motif for its second half. He, or rather his corpse, is the object of abuse, defence and affection. The dramatic motif of the abuse of an on-stage male corpse is developed further by Euripides in his Elektra. Here Elektra unleashes her anger upon the corpse of her mother’s lover and father’s murderer, Aegisthos, in a lengthy tirade pent up over the years since the murder of Elektra’s father, Agamemnon. Euripides is thus able to pit Elektra against Aegisthos on-stage: something which does not happen in Aeschylus’ earlier version of the same story in his Oresteia. That Aegisthos is dead provides a vivid sign of Elektra’s excessive and pointless anger: her words, as it were, flog a dead horse. In this excessive emotional outburst she outdoes her mother, Klytamnestra, in the Oresteia, who may exult in her victory, but who does not waste her words upon the corpses of Agamemnon or his concubine, Kassandra.
We may stay with Aeschylus’ Oresteia to see how it exploits the male body. The first play of the trilogy, Agamemnon, can be seen as structured around the central scene of the persuasion of the returning hero, Agamemnon, by his wife, Klytaimnestra, to enter the palace, where she plans to kill him (Aesch., Ag. 810–974). The scene focuses our gaze at once upon the spectacular entrance of Agamemnon. It is spectacular in both senses of the word: a triumph of stage management, but also a clear focusing of our attention upon the king’s body, raised upon the chariot above the other actors. Klytaimnestra performs prostrate obeisance (proskynesis) before him. This was exceedingly unusual, as it smacked of Eastern ruler-worship. But it is also an example of the male as object of the gaze of another character, which I shall explore further below. However, the crucial moment within the scene comes with the removal of Agamemnon’s sandals before he steps onto the delicate tapestries which Klytaimnestra has spread out like a ‘red carpet’ towards the palace doors. All our eyes are fixed on his body at that moment, however the act may have been performed in practice. The stage directions are carefully incorporated into the text so that even those who could not possibly see the detail from their seats in the theatre would know precisely what was happening. Agamemnon’s body is also the focus of our gaze when Kassandra later recounts his death (1101–29). He dies off-stage, but the vivid language allows us to develop an off-stage ‘gaze of the imagination’. In both cases, Agamemnon’s body is used to highlight his sexual humiliation by Klytaimnestra: it is not merely a humiliation of words.
Situations of sexual humiliation also focus upon the male body in Old Comedy. The most obvious case is that of the sex-starved men of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. They too are spectacular in both senses: the erect stage phalloi draw our attention to the humiliation of the men by the women, who have refused to have sex with them until they make peace. The joke can be interpreted on several levels: as simply a crude obscenity, or as a subtle manipulation of the genre’s costume conventions which some may see as subversive. But the whole play is structured around the sex-strike. Whole episodes, including the scene between the teasing Myrrhine and the desperate Kinesias, which many iind the funniest in the whole play, are fundamentally based on the male body as the object of the gaze of both the spectator and other characters. But the joke can be seen as more problematic still. The plot’s central joke is at the expense of male sexuality. Comic women are always sex-mad, so the play offers little new there. The unusual point is that the comic play Lysistrata presents an extended image4 of highly exaggerated male sexual libido, whose dramatic presentation is more commonly muted by means of the semi-bestial members of the chorus of satyr plays.
There are two other situations which I should now like to examine, where drama focuses attention upon the male body in situations of weakness: first supplication, and second illness, especially madness. By convention, the most popular dramatic suppliants tend to be women. However, we do see the miserable. Fury-tormented Orestes in Aeschylus’ Eumenides. The weakness of the male suppliant is developed by one of Aeschylus’ successors, Euripides, so much so that the comedian Aristophanes makes it the butt of repeated jokes. Euripides strengthened the focus upon the male body by dressing his unfortunate heroes in rags, instead of the more conventional solemn costume. Moreover, in Euripides’ Helen, Menelaos’ rags become one of the linchpins of the plot: a means of ensuring his escape by pretending that he is merely a shipwrecked sailor. One can certainly view this as simply an innovative use of stage costume, echoing the rhetorical need for evoking sympathy in an audience or other character. One can also see it as a way of expressing visually a more philosophical interest in the relationships between appearance and reality, virtue and high birth, which dates back to earlier thinkers such as Hesiod or Theognis. But one could add a further dimension.
Using the psychoanalytic approach of gaze theory, one could also interpret the rags as emphasising the heroes as objects of spectacle, and so of examination. Heroism is drama’s epitome of masculinity. Conventional tragic heroes are distanced from the spectator by several screens: elaborate language and costume, for example. Euripides alters one screen to make the heroes appear more down-to-earth, thus easing audience identification. Identification can take place at a number of proximities to the object. The spectator can remain detached or sympathise more closely, often moving along this spectrum during the course of a performance. The spectator may experience a variety of responses: he may envy heroic status, while pitying poverty and, in the case of Menelaos, his intellectual inferiority to Helen. The use of rags thus becomes one way to explore heroism and masculinity. This would be particularly important if, as I shall argue below, there was an on-going analysis about whether heroism and gender were external or internal attributes.
Scenes of madness and illness once again present the male body in situations where the spectator can experience simultaneously a sympathy for the character and a revulsion from him. But scenes of madness are slightly different from the other situations listed above. For drama does present women on stage as mad as well as men. This will be an important point for my later argument. For madness is an illness suffered entirely and deeply within the body, while the pain experienced by men such as Herakles in Sophokles’ Women of Trachis is chiefly external.
But the dramatist does not simply present these men as objects of the spectators’ gaze. They are also looked upon by other characters within the drama. We may now refine our investigation by looking at the way in which Attic drama plays with the male body as the object of another character’s gaze. Let us first of all consider a few famous examples of characters who deliberately offer themselves as objects of other characters’ gazes, who seem to revel in the act of being seen. I shall consider tragedy first and the play which many, after Aristotle, view as the most tragic of tragedies, Sophokles’ Oidipous the King.
Throughout this play the theme of the male body recurs. Oidipous’ crimes involve first the body of his murdered father, Laios. Once again, by means of reported description, the dramatist allows us to focus our off-stage gaze upon the moment of his murder. Details are given of Laios’ appearance and behaviour.5 We focus upon his body, while that of Oidipous is merely that of the killer, and remains undescribed. Oidipous’ second crime is the sexual union with his mother. The crime is always presented as committed by Oidipous. Nowhere is Iokasta held responsible as seducer. The theme of incest focuses our gaze upon Oidipous as sexual being. This physicality of Oidipous of course reaches its climax with his self-blinding, again described in detail, although off-stage (Soph., OT 1265–79). Oidipous wanted to know the guilty man, to see him, to control him, to humiliate him with his censorious gaze. But Oidipous is unable to turn his gaze upon himself, to realise that he is the guilty man. Oidipous realises that the gaze which can judge others has failed to judge himself correctly. His self-blinding thus robs him of that power to judge others, and places himself as the object of their critical gaze. The play devotes considerable space to this ‘man in pain’. His positive decision not to die means that he will remain a visible object of the gaze of judgement for others, and simultaneously a physical symbol of the dangers of failing to use that gaze correctly.
Old Comedy provides a less sombre example of a character seeking spectators: Agathon in Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria (95–265). Here, Agathon is a dramatist presented in the process of writing a female role, dressed in appropriately feminine garb, illustrating an ancient belief that a poet must himself experience what he hopes to imitate. The text devotes considerable space to the detailed description of Agathon as female character, and to his humorous dressing of the Kinsman in feminine dress (on which see below). Agathon willingly adopts the dress of women to improve the quality of his writing. He parades and performs in front of the Kinsman and Euripides. But this self-conscious pleasure is painted as effeminate, as harming his masculinity. Proper masculinity should therefore avoid seeking the gaze, an ideal most succinctly realised by the later Epicurean tenet ‘live unnoticed’ (lathe biosas).
We can gain confirmation for the hypothesis of this ideal, that there are occasions when a man should avoid the gaze of others, from two plays by Euripides: The Madness of Herakles and the first (now lost) version of his Hippolytos. In the first of these plays, when Herakles feels embarrassment at his violent crimes, he turns away from the sympathetic Theseus to avoid his gaze. In the latter play, when Phaidra openly declared her love to Hippolytos, he covered his head, giving rise to the title’s extension, Hippolytos Kaluptomenos, ‘The Veiled Hippolytos’. It has been customary to treat these two actions as instances of the avoidance of the religious pollution thought to contaminate criminals. But we may use the theory of the gaze to view the scene from another angle: Herakles wishes not so much to save Theseus pollution as to avoid the power of his gaze of judgement; Hippolytos covers his head not so much from shame as from a fear of remaining the object of Phaidra’s gaze of desire. The case of Hippolytos is particularly interesting for those studying concepts of masculinity. For here Hippolytos is the object of a lover’s gaze. Normally it is the men who enjoy the privilege of the power of the erotic gaze, to desire, to choose, and it is the women who must remain passive objects of desire. Here one could say that Hippolytos feels his masculinity under threat. 1 le fears that Phaidra has reversed the traditional roles of seer and seen: she is now the possessor of the active, desiring gaze, while Hippolytos is made the ‘feminised’ object.
But women are allowed to gaze at men in certain situations, when the gaze is not one of active desire, but of passive obedience. Euripides’ Medea tells us that it is a wife’s job ‘to look at one soul’ (eis mian psuchen blepein), namely her husband’s (Eur., Med. 247). Her albeit metaphorical gaze is to be controlled and directed towards the man who takes the lead in the relationship. Phaidra’s behaviour thus confuses the two situations. The power of the story and of this infamous and crucial scene are thus based upon the male body as the object of another character’s gaze.
There is one further situation where dramatists focus our attention and that of other characters upon the male body, and that is in scenes of disguise and its dramatic extension, travesty (Zeitlin 1984, 1985). First, disguise: in tragedy, male disguise tends to centre on the disguise of the voice, as in the case of the Phokian dialect which Orestes says that he will assume to deceive Klytaimnestra (Aesch., Choephoroe 563–4), or it simply relies upon the ignorance of the party to be deceived and requires no change of costume. In Old Comedy, we find the device developed for all it is dramatically worth. Here the dramatist is able to offer humour and to play with genre conventions. We can find mild instances: for example, the attempted disguises adopted by Philokleon in order to escape from his house at the opening of Aristophanes’ Wasps. But it is the more flamboyant comic disguises which are most useful for our investigation into the gaze and its application for the study of Athenian conceptions of masculinity.
On the face of it, it might appear that, in Aristophanic Old Comedy, fun is made equally of male and female bodies. But on closer inspection, we find that the emphasis is firmly upon the male. The instances of women adopting masculine disguise in The Assemblywomen never really raise a serious question about femininity in the way that the adoption by men of feminine dress can be seen to problematise masculinity. The jokes about the disguises adopted by the women of The Assemblywomen revolve around what it is to be a man, not what it is to be a woman. They focus upon the external attributes of men: the objects or parts of the male body which are given gendered power. These include the masculine cloaks, the deep voices, and the greatest symbol of masculinity (apart from the phallos itself), the beard, which women cannot grow. Men are the butt of the joke here. Masculinity is shown to be what one sees. The comedy thus plays with the power of the gaze to define. The women make themselves the object of others’ gazes and adopt external characteristics which other men will use as the criterion for accepting them in the Assembly. If they look like men, they are men.
In Aristophanes’ Lysistrata we see another instance of play with a man’s body and costume jeopardising masculinity. When the Magistrate visits Lysistrata to demand that she relinquish the Acropolis, the women send him and his officers packing. But they take the opportunity to give the Magistrate recognised external attributes of femininity: a veil and a work-basket (Ar., Lys. 530–5). Once again, we laugh not so much because these are feminine objects per se as because they are used to insult the masculinity of the Magistrate. He is the butt of the joke, not the women. Later in the same play we see another use of the gaze and its focus upon the male body. As the play nears its conclusion, the two halves of the chorus are reunited as a dramatic foreshadowing of the later peace negotiations between Athens and Sparta. The old women help the old men on with their cloaks (1021), remarking that ‘you now look like a man’ (1024), and then remove an irritation in the old men’s eyes which facilitates their reconciliation (1025–35). The reunification of the chorus thus dwells upon the eyes and the clothing of the men, the latter an explicit feature of masculinity.6 The women’s bodies are not discussed. It is as if the removal of the irritation in the old men’s eyes allows them to view the situation, themselves and the women with due proportion, to apply their gaze of judgement correctly. The stage action of the putting on of the cloaks draws our attention to this external attribute of masculinity. In helping the old men on with this symbol of masculinity, the women encourage a return to traditional gender relations. They thus prefigure the similar encouragement to return to the gender status quo offered by Lysistrata herself, who retreats from the play once the reconciliation of Athenians and Spartans, of husbands and wives, is secured. The play Lysistrata presents women who are happy with traditional concepts of femininity, and who only involve themselves in politics as a last resort and for a limited period of time. They are therefore unlike the women of The Assemblywomen, whose plot changes gender roles for good.
Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria also makes much dramatic mileage of the humour of on-stage travesty. I have already mentioned the case of Agathon, the popular dramatist who not only delights in travesty but sees it as essential for good poetry. Agathon more than willingly adopted feminine dress. Aristophanes contrasts him with Euripides’ Kinsman, who is decidedly unwilling to don his disguise as a woman. It is through the primary lens of the Kinsman that Aristophanes projects his experiments with genre conventions, para-tragedy and images of gender. The episode with Agathon dramatises the popular belief that the poet must liken himself as much as possible to the character which he aims to imitate, if he desires success, which, for Agathon, is dramatic success.
Tragedy was famous for its portrayals of masculine women. But the women of tragedy which one might label ‘masculine’ exhibit masculinity in terms of daring, bravery and intrigue. In other words, the masculine traits attributed to these women are emotional or intellectual: Aeschylus’ Klytaimnestra has a ‘man-thinking heart’. These traits are internal. Such women arc never masculine in external appearance. They are not said to resemble men: Aeschylus does not say, for example, that Klytaimnestra was six feet tall and built like a prop-forward. And such women do not wear costumes or carry props which are loaded with gender and consequently power associations. (Athena in Eumenides is a goddess and an exception who proves the rule.)
However, when we consider the presentation of ‘féminisation’ in tragedy or comedy, this femininity is always external and external alone. When Pentheus becomes ‘feminised’ in Euripides’ Bacchai, his féminisation is concerned simply with donning a woman’s costume and demeanour. We always know that he is a man under his woman’s clothing. His masculinity is only threatened, never subsumed. The same holds true for the Kinsman in Women at the Thesmophoria. Here indeed the humour requires that the audience never lose sight of the fact that the Kinsman is male. Aristophanes never allows him to become totally feminised. The Kinsman resists: he utters asides to the audience; he makes mistakes in his portrayal of a woman. The comic phallus always remains in play. The femininity remains an external addition. The Kinsman thus differs slightly from Agathon. Agathon goes as far as he can into the portrayal of femininity: he tries to feel it. Agathon’s portrayal is thus convincing enough to producc an effective poetic and dramatic end-product. The Kinsman, however, does not get fully enough into his role. His fictional end-product therefore fails to convince.
It is possible to read this scene as a comment on the dramatic portrayal of gender and its relationship to poetic creativity. Agathon throws himself fully into the role and thus produces convincing feminine characterisation. He surrenders his masculinity for the prize of poetic success. Euripides’ Kinsman could symbolise Euripides. But Euripides is also represented through the character which bears his name. Aristophanes uses both characters to make his comment upon the quality of Euripidean tragic writing. Euripides put the Kinsman up to the job: he is thus like a dramatist manipulating a character. But the Kinsman is reluctant to surrender his masculinity, to enter fully into the part. Euripides’ creation is thus a failure, a farce. Aristophanes therefore may well be making the comment that Euripidean female characters are unconvincing because they possess too much masculinity, in terms of clever thinking and speaking; that they are feminine only externally. The scene therefore explores the problems involved in the creation of gender within drama and the role of the dramatic poet, but uses as its focus the image of the male body and masculinity.
This theme is developed in the later scenes of the play which exploit parody of Euripides’ Helen and Andromeda. Again the characterisations are flawed by the masculinity which shines through the Kinsman’s attempted portrayals. As the Kinsman thinks of imitating Euripides’ Helen, he remarks (Ar., Eccl. 850–1): ‘I know; I shall pretend to be his new Helen. At any rate, I have the woman’s clothes.’ The male roles assumed by the character Euripides are no more successful. Euripides the character thinks that external attributes are enough to exhibit heroic masculinity. But we see that masculinity, unlike femininity in tragedy, cannot be constructed simply by donning the appropriate clothing.
What therefore seem to be the messages of these scenes? First, I would suggest that Aristophanes is here echoing a contemporary concern about definitions of masculinity and femininity. Are the genders simply external characteristics which can be imitated with ease, and which are only skin-deep? Is masculinity an intellectual, emotional quality which women can exhibit, and which in men is so strong that it smothers and prevents any attempt at adopting femininity from being successful? Femininity is weaker and can be imitated by external characteristics, but the masculinity will always shine through. This accords perfectly with the dominant ideology about gender which we find at this period, and which is later strengthened by Aristotle, for example, in his scientific works, namely that the female is a weaker, imperfect form of the male.
I now consider in more detail how drama’s presentation of the male body relates to the context of the fifth century, by looking at its treatment in earlier literature, especially in the genre which most profoundly influenced tragedy, Homeric epic. Does Homeric epic share these concerns? Has drama shifted the emphasis?
Perhaps one epic scene where one might expect the poet to dwell on the external) characteristics of the male body would he Iliad 3.161–242, where Helen points out to the Trojan ciders from the walls of Troy the Greek heroes fighting in the plain below. Although one might expect differentiation of the heroes, they are simply described in terms of their military prowess, often expressed only through epithets (e.g. Agamemnon, ‘widely powerful, at the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter’, Hom., II. 3.178–9, trans. Lattimore 1951). or by vague reference to their size. Odysseus is shorter by a head than Agamemnon, ‘but broader … in the chest and across the shoulders’ (Hom., II. 3.194). Antenor remarks about Menelaus only that he was ‘bigger by his broad shoulders’ (Hom. II. 3.210) than Odysseus. Ajax merely towers ‘above the Argivcs by head and broad shoulders’ (Hom., II. 3.227). None of the heroes receives detailed physical description.7 Instead their internal qualities and talents (such as Odysseus’ for talking) are the focus of interest. In the Iliad the only time when heroes are described physically at any length is when they are dying or dead, and it is their wounds which receive the most attention, as in later tragedy. The exception which proves the rule is the description of the malformed Thersites. We do find detailed description in the Iliad when the heroes don their armour. But here the details are those of the external attributes (helmets, shields, greaves, etc.), as if these external attributes partly define masculine heroism. In the Odyssey, perhaps the most memorable passage for a description of Odysseus is when Athena is beautifying him to impress Nausikaa (Hom. Od. 6.224–37. Here we should note that although Odysseus is explicitly made the object of a woman’s erotic gaze, he is not presented as in any way ‘feminised’ or weakened by that gaze.
However, as we have seen, fifth-century drama exploits spectacle in different ways: why should this be? Is it simply a literary innovation, or might there have been a more contemporary influence? Here we must return to the idea of the gaze which controls, selects, defines and judges. The fifth century saw the gradual definition and confirmation of many different societal groups: citizen, metic, the illegitimate, the disenfranchised, the ally, the subject, the respectable, the disreputable, the different property classes, women, young people in different age groups. The general philosophical idea of self-examination, which was to become more developed in the works of Plato, was diffusing on a city-wide scale. Drama reflects the awareness of these social groups. Spectators are also presented with images of masculinity on stage, for them to scrutinise, assess and judge. What images do they see? Philoktetes. Agamemnon, Ajax, Penthcus, Agathon, the imposters of The Assemblywomen. If fifth-century drama was partly to celebrate being Athenian, is it not odd that drama should then depict men in scenes of pain, poverty, weakness, sexual humiliation, that it should present so many strong female roles? But masculinity is highlighted precisely because it is under threat. The spectators are made to question these images of masculinity and femininity, to ask to what extent these differences are by nature or convention. But why focus on pain and humiliation?
To help answer this question, recent discussion of the representation of masculinity in cinema is again helpful, especially the psychoanalytic interpretation of the act of of looking at an object as rendering that object a focus of erotic desire. Recent discussions of masculinity in film have analysed one situation which I have not yet mentioned, but which also occurs in Attic drama: violence between men. Some scholars have suggested that such scenes hint at an undercurrent of male homosexuality (e.g. Neale 1983). In films such as Westerns, they argue, the narrative movement is halted to stress a moment of spectacular conflict or violence. Heroes remain silent and motionless. The spectator then becomes what they call a fetishistic spectator, one whose gaze is ‘captivated by what it sees, does not wish to inquire further, to see more, to find out’ (Ellis 1982: 47). The spectator is made to dwell on the display of masculinity, facing or succumbing to a threat. The characters face and look at one another, playing out the spectator’s masochistic pleasure. The spectator is detached and in control, and yet desires the seen object. The spectator can see the object suffer and possess the power later to forgive. Very often the violence in such films is depicted graphically and in detail.
If we transfer the framework to Attic drama, we can see that it fits at many points. I shall examine one play in particular which makes much of the spectacle of men in conflict, Euripides’ Phoenician Women. Here the male body is presented as spectacle on several occasions. In each case the object of the spectacle is off-stage, but the description is deliberately vivid so that the theatre spectator can construct images in his imagination. The first relevant scene in the play is near the beginning, when Antigone mounts the battlements to be told the names of the heroes below by her Tutor.8 The scene lays great stress on striking appearance. Antigone on her entrance remarks that the plain is flashing with bronze (Eur., Phoen. 110–11). As she views the heroes, Antigone’s response is a mixture of fear, admiration and attraction. Hippomedon is “terrible to see’ (127), like a giant ‘in pictures’ (128, 130). She distinguishes Tydeus only because his armour is different and his weapons strange (132, 138). The Tutor recognises the heroes by their shield emblems (142, cf. 144). Polyneikes is seen first only as an outline (162), and later stands out solely because of his golden armour (167–8). Only Parthenopaeus is given any detailed physical description. He has golden hair and dazzling eyes (146–7). We may note the stress on his eyes and the repetition eight times of verbs of seeing (cf. Craik 1988: 175 on 11.101–2).
The stress on the heroes as objects of spectacle is a fifth-century addition to the scene’s epic model. In Iliad 3, the spectator Helen knows the heroes, while Euripides makes his female spectator ignorant: it is the Tutor who must give their names, developed by the Messenger’s later description of the conflict of the heroes (Eur., Phoen. 1104–99). As in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes, the heroes are distinguished by their shield emblems (Eur., Phoen. 1107, 1114, 1124–7, 1130–2, 1135–7), one without an emblem (1112), and Tydeus with a lion-skin on his shield (1121–2). The description of the violence is gruesome: stones tear flesh (1143), missiles rip the soldiers apart (1145), many fall in pools of gore and blood (1149–52, 1192–5). Kapaneus’ death is extraordinary: his limbs are separated, he whirls like Ixion’s wheel, and ends up a blazing corpse (1182–6). Parthenopaeus comes in again for special description: his once-golden hair is now spattered with blood, his bones broken, his cheek bloodied (1159–61). Euripides has used Parthenopaeus as a focus for description in both passages because of his youth and beauty. He is the most vivid way of showing the horror of war.9
But the spectacle of male bodies then narrows its focus upon the duel of Eteokles and Polyncikes. We are told that they stand before one another, not changing their complexion (Eur., Phoen. 1246–7), silent, as their friends urge them on. Euripides leaves our two heroes standing still for a tense one hundred lines (1259–359), as the Messenger begs Iokasta to intervene and as the chorus voice their fears. The scene is just like that from a classic Western. When we return to the duel, both heroes, we are told, have ‘adorned themselves’ with armour (ekosmesanto; Eur., Phoen. 1359). The use of the verb kosmein (‘to adorn’) indicates that they have done so expecting to be looked at. Euripides consciously makes them objects of their own spectators, whom he mentions at line 1388, and who are said to cry for them (1370). The Thebans are said to be given joy by Eteokles’ attack (1398–9). Furthermore Euripides uses the gaze of his two heroes as a dramatic device. He tells us that they each turned to look in a different direction: Polyneikes to Argos, Eteokles to ‘Pallas’ house’ (1364, 1372–3). Once they start fighting, Euripides mentions that they look at one another (1371); that if one sees the other’s eye, he throws his spear (1384); that they direct their eyes at the shield studs (1386–7); that Polyneikes saw an opportunity for a strike (1393); that Eteokles wounds Polyneikes when he sees a shoulder exposed (1396). Even as they lie dying, they become the objects of Iokasta’s pitying gaze (1431). Eteokles cannot speak, ‘but from his eyes spoke with tears, so as to give a sign of love’ (1440–41). Polyneikes also looks at his sister and mother (1442), and asks that Iokasta close his eyelids as he places her hand upon them (1451–2). Iokasta kills herself on seeing the catastrophe (1455). After this off-stage duel, the men’s bodies are then brought on-stage for the chorus to see (1481). This stress on seeing and being seen is not an element we find in epic duels. It is a fifth-century colouring which the theory of the gaze helps to illuminate.
Tragic scenes of men in situations of pain, weakness, humiliation or conflict allow the spectator to experience ‘an oscillation between that image as a source of identification, and as an other, a source of contemplation’ (Neale 1983: 13). The detached and powerful spectator can pity Orestes in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, judge him, even forgive him, but still take a masochistic delight in seeing him in pain and weakness. It is perhaps apt here to recall that Aristotle in his Poetics (2.1448) speaks of a similar oscillation of audience identification with tragic heroes, like ourselves and yet different. The plays also mitigate any impression that the dramatic male characters are offered to male spectators as erotic objects by placing the characters in situations where they are objects of the gaze of other characters. The duel in Phoenician Women takes place safely within reported narrative. Old Comedy makes much fun of effeminacy, yet Agathon is presented as an object so closely approaching true passive femininity that he almost becomes legitimately desirable for men. The strong Herakles in Women of Trachis, or the youthful Hippolytos, can become safe objects of a gaze which may verge on the erotic because they are dying. In Phoenician Women, Parthenopaeus is described in terms which make him very much an erotic ‘beautiful boy’ (Dover 1989: esp. 78–9). His long, blond locks parallel the effeminate Dionysos of Euripides’ later Bacchai, ridiculed by Aristophanes (Eur., Bacch. 235, 455; Ar., Vesp. 1317). But in Phoenician Women Euripides avoids making his audience feel embarrassed at their erotically charged gaze by giving Parthenopaeus his own spectator within the play, who is reassuringly a heterosexual young girl. As Eteokles and Polyneikes fight before their own spectators, the theatrical spectators remain comfortably detached, in their world of imagination, even as the two men die in an almost erotically charged simultaneous death.
Such a sexual interpretation may offend some readers who think it anachronistic. I am not usually prone to such approaches myself, but I would ask doubters to pause for thought. There does seem to have been an interest in the representation, meaning and future of male homosexuality in Athens during the fifth century. William Poole’s detailed article reminds us how often Euripides treated the subject, and that it may have played a role in some plays by other tragedians (Poole 1990). Jokes in Old Comedy reveal that at least some sections of society during this period viewed homosexuality as an unpleasant reminder of an aristocratic or oligarchic ethos (e.g. Dover 1974: 213–16).
This is merely one aspect of the more general examination of the self and an analysis of what makes the personality which was taking place within fifth-century Athens. We know that Euripides in particular seems to have been interested in exploring the relationships between virtue and high birth, most obviously in his extant Elektra and lost Alexander. But this interest, which is heavily influenced by contemporary sophistic thought, covered a wide range of fields: for example, causation in the military work of Thucydides. This general field of enquiry included gender. This interest in homosexuality can be seen as an off-shoot from the century’s growing concern about legitimate marriage. In this period, ideals of femininity are constructed, controlled and confirmed. But masculinity also comes in for scrutiny: witness the interest in political rights, marriage, inheritance, legitimacy. Drama examines the poetic reflection of masculinity which we see as heroism. My analysis of the treatment of costume and gender shows that both tragedy and comedy explored whether gender was simply a matter of external attributes: women’s dresses and wigs, or men’s cloaks and beards. I have tried to show that at least Euripides and Aristophanes reveal an awareness of a conception that masculinity is somehow more innate and stronger than femininity; that masculinity somehow shines through a woman’s dress. This becomes especially important in the realm of the classical Athenian theatre, where both sexes were played by male actors. We can thus have prominent dramatic characters who are externally female, but who possess internal heroic qualities more often labelled as ‘masculine’: resolution of purpose, a sense of justice, courage, ingenuity. These qualities could be thought to be naturally those of the male acting the part, which can never be wholly subsumed by feminine masks and costume. Nevertheless the plays also make the spectator examine whether such distinctions are valid outside the theatre where so much is judged by sight, by externals. As Euripides questions whether high birth or fine clothes equate with virtue, so he questions whether gender is a valid signifier of difference: need there be a natural connection between femininity, weakness and evil on the one hand, and masculinity, strength and virtue on the other? Is gender ‘by nature’ (physei) or simply “by convention’ (nomoi), in our terminology ‘a cultural construct’? Scholars have long acknowledged the great importance of the spoken word in classical Athens. The application of film criticism, a discipline which initially appears alien, can at least make us reconsider how much and in how many different ways fifth-century Athenians may also have used their eyes.
1 The only work of which I am aware which uses film theory to appreciate classical texts is Rubin 1993.
2 Of the many works on female spectatorship. 1 have found the following most useful for this chapter: Mulvey 1975, 1981; Kuhn 1985; Doane 1987; Byars 1991; Basinger 1993.
3 On satyrs, see Lissarague 1990a, 1990b.
4 As opposed to random jokes about, for example, masturbation.
5 E.g. Soph., OT 740–3 (his stature and grey hair). 800–13 (Laios” aggression and death).
6 Cf. Ar., Lys. 1188–202, with their focus on smart clothes and ornaments, and sharp eyesight (1201–2).
7 Contrast, for example, the detailed description of Homeric heroes (and women) in John Malalas, Chronicle 5.13–40.
8 The authenticity of parts or the whole scene is debated: see e.g. Craik 1988: 164. Here I accept it as Euripidean.
9 Similarly Euripides describes the princess’s beauty in detail in Medea precisely to emphasise her later disfigurement: see Hawley 1996.