Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World

Priestess and Courtesan: The Ambivalence of Female Leadership in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata

Priestess and Courtesan The Ambivalence of Female Leadership in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata christopher a. faraone The Lysistrata has had a deeply divided reception in the last half century or so, hailed as the first feminist text in western culture and at the same time dismissed as an early example of pornography that degrades women. These reactions are each, in fact, rooted firmly in the text, for our reception of the Lysistrata depends entirely on which characters and themes we chose to focus on and which ones we choose to ignore. Indeed , as Henderson and others have pointed out, we find two very different images of women in the play: the foolish younger wives on the acropolis who are slaves to their desire for sex and wine, and the brave, intelligent, and pious older women in the semichorus, who prevent the men from burning down the doors to the acropolis and who serve as Lysistrata’s brave allies until the very end of the play.1 There is, however , a growing scholarly consensus that although Aristophanes alternates between these negative and positive images of women, in the end the character of Lysistrata herself swings the balance of the play toward a positive representation of women, for it is she who is portrayed as unremittingly good, self-controlled, and wise, it is she who reins in the sexual impulses of the younger women under her command, it is she who successfully co-opts the masculine modes of public performance 207 (e.g., oratory and the interpretation of oracles), and it is she who in the end wins the day. In the last few years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with this interpretation of the character of Lysistrata. Indeed , in this essay I will argue that her characterization does not, in fact, tip the scales toward a feminist reading of the play but rather leaves unresolved the question of the source of Lysistrata’s power and moral authority. As I now see it, in his portrayal of Lysistrata Aristophanes cleverly alternates between two very different images of an intelligent female leader. As scholars have recognized, in some scenes he casts her in the role of an aristocratic priestess of Athena—very like the much respected priestess ofAthena at the time of the play’s performance , a woman who in fact has a similar sounding name: Lysimache. Commentators have not, however, fully appreciated a second persistent image of female authority in the play: Lysistrata the courtesan, who knows how to manipulate men sexually and who controls the sexuality of a group of young and attractive women in a manner not at all unlike the way a madam runs a brothel. My essay is divided into three parts. In the first I discuss the generally negative portrayal of the younger, sexually active wives, who appear foolish and who are easily manipulated by their bodily desires (Henderson 1987a, xxxvi–vii). This is one of the two stereotyped views that Athenian men apparently had of women: as objects of desire, who— because of their “naturally” (according to Greek males, that is) passionate and illogical nature—were always a source of danger and the object of careful surveillance. In the second section I turn to the semichorus of older women who staunchly help Lysistrata repel the attacks of the men and never waver in their resolve. Despite an occasional show of physical or verbal violence necessary for the comic slapstick, this second group is by and large depicted in a much more positive manner: they pray to the gods, boast their service in the cults of the city, and are introduced to the stage in the midst of performing a classic type of female work (carrying water from the fountain), which has numerous positive reverberations in popular myths and rituals concerned with salvation . Although in the final analysis both sets of images are designed to keep women in their “proper” places in a patriarchal society, either as “whores” or “wives,” Aristophanes seems to take special care to invest the older women with an unusual kind of authority, a female heroism if you will, that stems from their repeated association with both the dayto -day household economy and with important civic rituals and cults, on which the salvation of the city depends. This authority, moreover, 208 christopher a. faraone clearly lends credibility to their claim to know how best to save the city—one of the most important...