Dangerous Gifts: Gender and Exchange in Ancient Greece

1. Gender and Exchange

7 In a footnote to his fundamental article on “the mythic idea of value” in ancient Greece, Louis Gernet noted “the significance of the theme of the woman’s role in the transfer of a talisman or other precious object from one person to another.”¹ Gernet, however, was less interested in the agents of these exchanges than in the objects exchanged: precious and highly wrought tripods, weapons, and jewelry that fall under the category of agalmata. In Gernet’s view, these objects carried not only economic and social value in a premonetary economy, but also, in a line of thought owing much to Marcel Mauss, a kind of sacred charge.² The original meaning of the word agalma is “adornment.”³ Its metaphorical use in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, where Iphigeneia is called the agalma of her father’s house (Ag. 208), suggests that she herself is potentially an object of exchange.⁴ To quote Gernet: The word agalma, in its earliest usage, implies the notion of “value.” It can be used of all kinds of things, even, on occasion, of human beings thought of as “precious.” It usually expresses some idea of opulence, and above all of aristocratic wealth (horses are agalmata). . . . The word agalma is used especially in relation to a class of movable objects which concerns me here. . . . The objects I am concerned with are “industrial objects”: but it must be stressed that they are products made for a luxury market.⁵ The mythic examples used by Gernet to elucidate the meaning and power of the agalma, such as the tripod of the Seven Sages, the necklace of Eriphyle, and Atreus’ lamb with the golden fleece, are prestige objects with complex genealogies and fateful histories. Although Gernet was primarily interested in the circulation of agalmata and the sources of their power, these very examples can be used—as he noted—to illuminate the role of women in that circulation. The connection between women and the circulation of precious objects chapter one GENDER and EXCHANGE Lyons-final.indb 7 Lyons-final.indb 7 1/31/12 3:19:32 PM 1/31/12 3:19:32 PM DANGEROUS GIFTS 8 can be even more precisely delineated than Gernet’s formulation suggests. For in the myths he treats, as in many others, it is only in the context of a marital crisis that a woman is allowed to transcend her usual role as object of exchange and to become instead an agent of exchange. These myths locate fears about women and exchange within the context of marriage—or rather, its failure—showing how completely these fears are entwined with concern about the fidelity of wives. The exchanging woman is assimilated to the adulterous woman, while her involvement in the circulation of objects is tied to the potential for the illicit circulation of her own person. As if to stress the fundamental inability of women to act as legitimate exchange partners, these myths play out against a backdrop of perverted reciprocity characterized by the violation of established codes governing the economic and social spheres of women and men. Further examination of this theme reveals a complex and nuanced system in which not only the givers but also the objects they give are conceived of as gendered. The gendering of exchange objects and the rules governing the separate spheres of men’s and women’s exchanges can be better understood with reference to the anthropological categories of “male wealth” and “female wealth.” These categories are closely related to the roles of men and women in the production of the kinds of objects in question. Thus we must take into account the gendered division of labor as conceptualized in archaic and classical Greek thought. Closely related to the gendered division of labor and production is the spatial opposition between inside and outside, which distinguishes not only types of wealth, but also the different (and differently gendered) spheres of wealth-producing activities encompassed by the Greek oikos.⁶ This domestic economy exists in opposition to the outside world of trade and artisanal production. It is my contention that much of the anxiety about women as exchangers is related to tension between the ideology of self-sufficiency (autarkeia ) of the oikos and the frequent necessity of importing wives from outside. The methodological and conceptual underpinnings of this study have emerged from a reading of ethnographies from a wide range of cultures.⁷ The anthropological concepts on which I rely are among the staples of traditional anthropology, such as...