Euripedes & Classical "Feminism" part 1: Medea

Euripides 

In Classical Athens, there were three great tragedians: Euripedes, Sophocles and Aeschylus. Euripides was known to shock his male audiences by demonstrating sympathy to all groups of people, women included. His portrayal of women made him unique amongst his peers. How dare he make women seem strong and intelligent?!

Hippolytus and Medea, the plays that I shall be exploring (in two parts), both  have speeches delivered by the two female protagonists demonstrating elements of the stems of feminism, along with consistent referral to the lives of women throughout the plots, with a focus on the problem that exclusively befall on them. Today, I'll be exploring Euripides' Medea (James Morwood's translation). 

Medea About to Kill Her Children by Delacroix

In Euripedes time, women did not have high social stature or any power whatsoever within their societies. Traditionally, women were confined to typical roles, including a mother/housekeeper/mistress/etc. However, Euripedes portrays Medea as ahead of her time: she is not the stereotypical, virginal, "good" heroine, nor is she defenceless or weak. Instead, she proves herself powerful and indeed quite revolutionary. She is smart enough to manipulate the men in the play with great cunning: appealing to the men's passions and their inability to recognise dangerous consequences to then leave them in a helpless position, resulting in their tragic downfall. She completely defies the aforementioned expected confinements of women of her time, evoking feminine pride among the sisterhood. No heroine could possibly better express the destructive power of women and their vengeance.

The Women of Corinth speech, delivered by Medea and addressed to the chorus, is a famous extract from the play, and a well recognised piece of empowering literature.
"Of everything that is alive and has a mind, we woman are the most wretched creatures." (230-231) Here, Medea (Euripedes) begins to outline the absurd and quite heartbreaking realities of the life of a woman.

• "First of all, we have to buy a husband with a vast outlay of money - we have a master for our body. The latter is still more painful than the former." (231-233)
• Way back when, a woman would typically be betrothed to a man from the age of five years old and would probably be married at the age of fourteen. This was not the case in this play, as Medea was a barbarian (someone who isn't from the state), however she is aware of the traditional customs of Greek society. 
• When the betrothed young woman eventually gets married, her father donates a hefty dowry to his daughter's new oikos (household). It symbolises, essentially, a father selling his daughter to a  her new husband, who will replace her father's position as her kurios (head of the household). 
• "For divorce brings shame on a woman's reputation and we cannot refuse a husband his rights." (235-237)
• In Medea's situation, her husband, Jason, betrays her and abandons his wife and children to marry the king's daughter. A woman would struggle to get by following a divorce as a result of the shame that has befallen her. Medea, however, being the most cunning and vengeful babe in Greek mythology, makes sure she gets her revenge and makes it quite clear-cut that she will not tolerate Jason's behaviour. 
• "Men say of us that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight wars. How wrong they are! I would rather stand three times in the battle line than bear one child." (249-251)
• Quite possibly the most famous feminist sentiment in ancient literature. The "life free from danger" that the men assume women are granted is contradicted with the way they are treated in marriage and in society as a whole. 
• She stresses the point of a man's ability and freedom to get up and leave the house to see friends, business partners, etc is endless, but a woman is bound to face "one soul alone," facing this terrible, constant claustrophobia within the oikos.
• Her final comparison between fighting in a gruesome, relentless war and the natural process of giving birth would have been extremely challenging for an audience in Euripides' time, which we can only assume was done completely deliberately to invoke and arouse questioning on the matter of the position of women in society. 

In a time where slaves could attend a play at a theatre but a woman could not, it would not come as a surprise that Euripides was often questioned on his decisions regarding the way he wrote about women. However, his genuine concern that ended up being reflected in his tragedies were able to push for progress, and though it may have taken a couple of thousand years to get there (... still not quite there yet...), the role of women in society is no longer bound in the household.

Part 2 will be on Phaedra in Euripides' Hippolytus. 

Thanks for reading!

Homer's Iliad: The Glory or the Grief of War?

It's been over two weeks since I posted, humblest apologies! I've been quite the busy bee. I'm back with one of my favourite topics of discussion: whether Homer portrays himself as anti or pro war in his epic poem: The Iliad.

The Horrors of War by Peter Paul Rubens

A quick side note, Peter Paul Rubens (painting above) has to be one of my favourite artists of all time. His work literally overwhelms me!

It really is a difficult question to answer. Throughout the Iliad, Homer provides spectacular imagery of the battlefield, mainly through epic similes. When he performed his poems, he would often have an audience that included women and children who would have had no idea what life was like at war, and so he would compare it to things they would understand, such as the weather or animal characteristics. Some more glorifying than others, it leads us to question what Homer's personal opinions on the subject were. Did he think that wars were just, that they defined our heroes, that they were for the greater good? Or did he think that they were in fact unjust, a sphere full of grim death and grief, a brutal waste of time?

Achilles Slays Hector by Peter Paul Rubens

Fundamental evidence of Homer glorifying war in the Iliad is by constantly stressing the concept that in no other situation can warriors get such a chance to prove themselves as honourable heroes. The entire epic is hinged on whether these soldiers abide by something called the Heroic Code. The Heroic Code, to put it simply, is embodied by four Greek words: aristos (being the best at whatever is called for by the situation), aristeia (highest peak performance), arete (merit that is bestowed by others - it's all about what others think of you, not what you think of yourself) and kleos (fame and glory, can only be achieved through action). There are other elements, such as hospitality (xenia) and homecoming (nostos), but we won't go into too much detail.  He shows us that the significance of kleos has no match: Book 1 shows us the fury of Achilles when Agamemnon confiscates Briseis, who was a war prize. The prize was not Briseis herself, and instead it was the glory that Achilles had achieved, and she was just a symbol of it. Homer puts those who follow the Code in the best light, often giving them epithets such as "Hector of the flashing helmet" and "Diomedes, master of the war cry) which highlight the importance of war in their being, thus leading us to believe that Homer thought war was honourable, and a fundamental part of these heroes' lives.
The scenes that take place on the battlefield give us a good idea of Homer's thoughts on war: they are, naturally, the most dramatic sections of the epic, and the worthiness of the warriors is determined on the battlefield, portrayed through similes, epithets and stories of their family line. Many characters have no relevance to the story, but are named nonetheless purely to showcase the honour they achieved at war. Similes like "like a high-flying eagle" emphasise the idea of glory, and is such with glorifying weapons of war, like "spear like a star". We're getting a pretty good idea that Homer thinks glory is of the utmost importance, and implies that war is the only way of obtaining it.


Alternatively, however, we have a lot of evidence to suggest that Homer was actually anti-war. Despite seeing the emotive language that may glorify war, the vivid descriptions and graphic similes may  tell us otherwise. Let me put it this way: when you're being told a story, it is common for it to be told in a way which allows you to visualise it as an onlooker or as someone watching from afar. How do you visualise the following quote?  "Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in his mouth with the pitiless bronze. The bronze spear passed right through and up under the brain, smashing the white bones. His teeth were knocked out and both his eyes flooded with blood: wide-mouthed he spurted a well of blood through nostrils and mouth: and the black cloud of death covered him over." (16. 346-350) You really can't get much closer. You are literally being pulled into imagining the interior of his helmet, watching his head get mangled by a spear in the most gruesome way. Was Homer trying to make his audience feel uncomfortable? He could have easily just said "and then Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the head and he died." but the fact that he puts so much detail into the method in which he was killed perhaps implies that he wanted us to feel pity and discomfort upon visualising the scene. He often portrays battle as unheroic and unfair, using the humanisation of individual warriors that are only mentioned once in the poem as vehicles to accentuate the realities of war. He provides a background story for every man, often sentimental, that can range from just a patronymic (eg. Thestor, son of Epos 16.413) to a run-down on how the man was still young and unmarried (Simoisius 4. 472) or how he was a kind, hospitable man that looked after all passers by (Axylos 6. 12). Again, Homer could have just said "and then Axylos died," but instead he provides us with an outline of character and history and thus humanising them, magnifying the sympathy that the audience endure. Following from this point, Homer effectively makes us see the devastating effects of war through his focus on family life: particularly Hector's. His brief meeting with Andromache in book 6 shows a side of Hector that does not live up to his famous epithet: Hector of the glinting helmet. Instead, we see him as a husband and a father, and his prediction of the fall of Troy and the effect it will have on his wife and son is pretty heartbreaking. Later in the poem when we begin to see Priam as a broken man through the loss of many of his sons, where we witness real grief and sorrow. It would be difficult to argue that Homer did not intentionally use the familial element to highlight the grievances of war.
Before this becomes a novel and not an essay, I must finally point out how Homer writes about nostalgic times prior the Trojan War, where both the people of Ilios (Troy) and Greece were at peace. From lovers walking through fields of green, to women washing their hair in the river and the birth of Simoisius by the banks of the river he was named after, we are told  much about what happened before these poor men were sent away to battle. The shield that Hephaistos forges for Achilles in book 18 does not emphasise the glories of war, but in actual fact the better, more peaceful times where normality could take place. We really can see that the beautiful details on the shield represent an anti-war message by Homer.

Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus by Nikolai Ge

If you're still reading, good on you and happy analysing! But in conclusion, despite the whole story being about the honour and glory obtained from war and the way in which Homer stresses the importance of the Heroic Code, we can see that Homer puts his emotive skills to better use in convincing us that war is unfair and unjust. He makes it easier for the audience to visualise life on the battlefield as horrific and often quite unheroic.


Again, apologies for not posting for a while. I will put as much effort as possible to keep posting regularly!

Thanks for reading!

Lady of the Sea

Thetis Takes Achilles from the Centaur Chiron by Pompeo Batoni (1770)

Thetis was one of the fifty Nereids (sea nymphs) who were the daughters of Nereus and Doris. She's known as the goddess of water, and was totally babein' (the technical term for it, naturally). Here's a little bit of the story of Thetis.

She was so much of a babe that both Zeus and Poseidon loved her. However, the goddess of justice, Themis (not to be confused with Thetis!) prophesised that Thetis was fated to bore a son that would end up mightier than his father. Of course, neither god wanted this burden and so withdrew their suits (Zeus was especially worried:  he overthrew this father Cronus, who had overthrown his father, Uranus, and well yeah, you get the picture) so they handed Thetis over to Peleus, king of the Myrmidons. The reason they "handed her over" was to ensure that she produced mortal offspring, and posed no risk of overthrowing an immortal.

Thetis Raped by Peleus by Douris (c. 490 BC)

Thetis didn't particularly warm to Peleus, and refused to marry him. Peleus was then advised to find her whilst she slept, and tie her up tightly enough to avoid her escaping through shape shifting. She put up a hard fight, changing into a flame, water, a lioness and a serpent, but to no avail, and eventually consented to marry him.

They were the parents of the swift-footed Achilles, who became the hero of Homer's Iliad.

Thetis Dipping the Infant Achilles into the River Styx by Peter Paul Rubens (1630-35)

I'm sure you've heard of the myth where Thetis dips her son into the River Styx (the river of Hades), which would have made him immortal. However, the heel in which she held him by was not dipped into the river, and so it was not protected. It proved to be poor Achilles' downfall.

I don't want to go into too much detail on Achilles, especially in The Iliad, as I'd really like to do that in a post of its own. But in the epic poem we see a goddess care more for a mortal than any other god in the story, and goes to great lengths to help him maintain his honour.

More on Thetis and Achilles next time!

I scrawled my name with a hurricane,
When out of the blue
Roared a fighter plane.
Then my tongue was flame
And my kisses burned,
But the groom wore asbestos.
So I changed, I learned,
Turned inside out – or that’s 
How it felt when the child burst out.
- Carol Ann Duffy

But why this fear of love? -Sappho

I decided to switch to Blogspot for classical blogging and leave Tumblr for teenage squabbles. Bear with me whilst I work out how to use this thing!

Sappho by Alma-Tadema

For my first post, I thought I'd write a little bit on the lovely lady in the painting: Sappho! (The woman resting her head on her arm against the lecturn). She was a Greek lyric poet, and she dominates what we think of female desire today.
In ancient Greek times, it was not uncommon for men, including the likes of Socrates, to find themselves attracted to young, beautiful boys. Provided that this attraction did not go further than a cheeky peck, this was absolutely accepted as a part of Greek society. Women desiring women, however, was atrocious. Simon Goldhill wrote: "Male writers who idealise love of boys describe female desire for females as horrific, immoral, contrary to nature and just disgusting."
Sappho lived round about the beginning of the sixth century BC on the island of Lesbos, where she wrote love poetry, of which some was directed towards females. In case you haven't already figured it, the word "lesbian" is directly derived from "Lesbos", where she was born. Her poems imply lovers of both sexes, but naturally, it was her infatuation with the women she wrote about that intrigued us all. Despite the disgust felt by men towards women wanting women, Sappho was considered as one of the greatest lyrical poets in antiquity -  Plato even referred to her as the tenth Muse! She was held in high regard, with men singing songs of her stories for years to come. Third century BC philosopher, Maximus of Tyre, described her relationships with women similar to Socrates' relationship with men:
"What else could one call the love of the Lesbian woman than the Socratic art of love? For they seem to me to have practised love after their own fashion, she love the love of women, he of boys. For they said they have loved many, and were captivated by all things beautiful."
Unfortunately, there is very little we know about her, as the only proof we have of her existence is her poems, which cannot be used autobiographically. It provides us with a canvas with a dim outline, leaving the rest for us to imagine for ourselves. The European Renaissance and the ages that followed gave us incredible imagery of what may have gone on on the isle of Lesbos, for example....

Sappho & Friends by Edouard-Henri Avril

Not quite the outing you'd have with your friends nowadays!
I'll conclude my little "Welcome to Sappho's existence" post by saying that she was a total babe, and if you have the chance, read her poetry. It is ever so beautiful.

"You may forget but
Let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us"
-Sappho
You sure got that one right, girl!


Thanks for reading!