Speaker 1: Hello, this is Let's talk about MIT's baby, and I
Speaker 1: am your host, live here with a very brief intro
Speaker 1: into it. Just a little bonus episode that we've put
Speaker 1: together for you today, And by we, I do mean
Speaker 1: I asked the wonderful Laura Smith, my audio engineer and
Speaker 1: production to assistant, to scramble together a little bit of
Speaker 1: a recap episode. Maybe basically, Laura has pulled together portions
Speaker 1: of two conversations that I aired last year about I mean,
Speaker 1: not directly necessarily about Hitterai, but featuring Hitterai, and so
Speaker 1: these are some bits of those conversations which will essentially
Speaker 1: just help you to further understand the episode that I
Speaker 1: released this past Tuesday about Hitteri and ancient Greece. And
Speaker 1: I just thought that they would be a great little accompaniment.
Speaker 1: And frankly, my computer crashed and I lost the introduction
Speaker 1: I'd already recorded, and now I've forgotten what I said.
Speaker 1: But it'll be a fun episode just featuring some further
Speaker 1: information about these really fascinating women from the ancient world.
Speaker 1: I just love the idea that we can talk about
Speaker 1: very real women and the lives they led, good or bad.
Speaker 1: And I'm so thrilled to be able to bring that
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: H M.
Speaker 1: This is the bonus episode. Selections from my conversations with
Speaker 1: Melissa Funky and Rebecca Fujo Kennedy. The foreign women aspect,
Speaker 1: now that's all I can think about, you know, seeing
Speaker 1: the Amazons as this kind of like invading foreign women
Speaker 1: for h and.
Speaker 2: And and that's one of the earliest so in the
Speaker 2: when they you know, they didn't start rebuilding the the
Speaker 2: part of the the acropolis buildings until you know, the
Speaker 2: build they started commenced with the building of the Parthenon
Speaker 2: in four forty seven, But there was a lot of
Speaker 2: building activity in Athens starting in the four sixties, and
Speaker 2: it was sponsored by Kimone, who was the son of Miltiades,
Speaker 2: who was the general who led the Day Marathon the
Speaker 2: Battle of Marathon, and one of the most famous buildings
Speaker 2: that he sponsored his sister Elpinike, who was the daughter
Speaker 2: of so Kimone and Elpinike were both the children of
Speaker 2: Miltides by a foreign woman, by a Thracian princess, and
Speaker 2: so they often had this like Elpanique especially had this
Speaker 2: reputation for being a sort of big time party girl,
Speaker 2: and one of the other women who was well known
Speaker 2: as a big time party girl. Even gets her own
Speaker 2: verb is Corsirah, who was probably the daughter of Pisisteritis.
Speaker 2: In Aristophanes's Uh, one of Aristophes' plays, there's a character
Speaker 2: who's like he's referred to as being corsirified, meaning he
Speaker 2: like meaning he's like really like you all into like
Speaker 2: showy luxury kind of things. But yeah, so they he
Speaker 2: married alpinike Off. Miltiades dies in prison because he's in
Speaker 2: debt to the city because the Athenians they're never really
Speaker 2: kind to their successful generals because they're always worried that
Speaker 2: they're going to try and overthrow the democracy, so they're
Speaker 2: always setting them into exile or like something. Right, So
Speaker 2: Miltides dies in debtors prison because he was charged fifty
Speaker 2: talents for a botched attempt to take a territory for them,
Speaker 2: and in order to pay it off, Chimon Mary's his
Speaker 2: sister off to like the wealthiest man in Athens, and
Speaker 2: they go on this building spree and sort of build
Speaker 2: on these buildings in the Agora, and one of the
Speaker 2: most famous is a building called the Stoa Poikil at
Speaker 2: the painted Stoa. It's famous because this is where the
Speaker 2: Stoics get their name. This is where they hung out.
Speaker 2: But it was famous because it was painted. It had
Speaker 2: these four paintings in the building, and then later which
Speaker 2: i'll i'll describe the painting in the second so you
Speaker 2: can see how this sort of works out. But then
Speaker 2: later during the Pelpesian War, it was this building where
Speaker 2: when the Athenians defeated and captured a group of over
Speaker 2: two hundred Spartans at the island of s Bacteria in
Speaker 2: four twenty five, they took their shields, as you know, trophies,
Speaker 2: and they hung them on this building. Wow, and we
Speaker 2: have one. It's in the Agora Museum. It's very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But so the building had four paintings in it. Two
Speaker 2: were mythical, two were historical. The first one is and
Speaker 2: I can't remember the exact order of them, but they're
Speaker 2: sort of paired up. But the first one is the
Speaker 2: Invasion of the Amazons, right, which has Theseus and Heracles
Speaker 2: sort of fighting the Amazons. Next to it is the
Speaker 2: Battle of Marathon. And one of things that's very interesting
Speaker 2: is that the descriptions of the painting that we have
Speaker 2: from Pausanias, who who saw the paintings describes the Persians
Speaker 2: and the Amazons of both wearing like leopard print, you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of they're given the same sort of fits, right,
Speaker 2: and so you see this also on vase paintings, and
Speaker 2: so a lot of scholars have argued, our historians have
Speaker 2: argued that we should see the Amazon stories as an
Speaker 2: analog for the Persian Wars, which I think is you know, fine.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that's interesting about the Marathon
Speaker 2: battle is it shows the sort of protected protective gods
Speaker 2: and spirits sort of popping up in the corner. And
Speaker 2: so Athena of course pops up, and theseus pops up.
Speaker 2: No tieties and kimone claim to be descended from theseus,
Speaker 2: which is another tie in here, which I'll explain another
Speaker 2: story in a second. But so so theseus pops up,
Speaker 2: you know, Pan is there and they're sort of all
Speaker 2: in the background. And that's the pair that's the painting
Speaker 2: right next to the ball of the Amazon Anarchy. Then
Speaker 2: next to that is the the Sack of Troy, which
Speaker 2: you would think is a really weird thing to put
Speaker 2: on this building, but it also of course shows up
Speaker 2: on the Parthenon. But the Sacatory shows up, but the
Speaker 2: way it's described give you an insight as to why
Speaker 2: it is on an Athenian monument to Athenians in the
Speaker 2: center of the painting, and again the Trojans are described
Speaker 2: as wearing these like leopard print outfits, sort of like
Speaker 2: the New Jersey Housewives sort of tracksuit with you know,
Speaker 2: with a Scithian hat, and they are so again we
Speaker 2: have Trojan war as analogy becomes in this period analogy
Speaker 2: for Persian wars and the Trojans. This is that when
Speaker 2: the Trojans finally become Persianified right instead of being Greek
Speaker 2: as they appear in the homer But the the thing
Speaker 2: in the center shows the judgment of a guy named
Speaker 2: little Ajax or ajax Locris, So he's the guy who
Speaker 2: raped Cassandra on the altar of Zeus and it shows
Speaker 2: a trial for him according to Pausanias. And there's also
Speaker 2: a play by Softles that's that was put on around
Speaker 2: the same time as this building went up, called the
Speaker 2: ajax Locris, which has as its central feature a trial
Speaker 2: scene of ajax Locris and the people who the two
Speaker 2: people shown leading with trial are the two sons of
Speaker 2: theseus who are inserted into the catalog of ships as
Speaker 2: having been at the Battle Troy. So Chimone, So, so
Speaker 2: what's happening simultaneously is one of the things of Chimon's
Speaker 2: claim to fame is that he because people don't remember
Speaker 2: that theseus got banished at the end of his life.
Speaker 2: This is why he's living in toison with Hippolyta, with
Speaker 2: not with a falta with Fedra and his son Hippolytus.
Speaker 2: He was kicked out because he killed the fifty sons
Speaker 2: of the palace, but he had gone to the island
Speaker 2: of Skyros, where he ended up being buried after his death.
Speaker 2: And Chimone goes and reclaims his bones and brings them
Speaker 2: back and reburies them in Athens, right, he finds a
Speaker 2: super sized skeleton and brings it back because this is
Speaker 2: the only way they can, like, you know, gain victory,
Speaker 2: uh in a in a war, you know, of some
Speaker 2: battle of some sort, and so so he but he
Speaker 2: does so also by laying claim to his relationships. So
Speaker 2: we have these three paintings and they're all painted by
Speaker 2: uh they're painted by different people, but one of them,
Speaker 2: the Troy, is painted by a painter famous painter named Polygnotus,
Speaker 2: who is also very famous for his base paintings of
Speaker 2: Amazon amazon amochies and things. He's also good friends with Sophocles,
Speaker 2: the playwright who put this play together, and they're all
Speaker 2: good friends with Pericles. But Polygnotus was also suggested that
Speaker 2: he had an affair with Elpinike Kim's sister. So, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like, you know, the the you know
Speaker 2: what is it, the the real Housewives, the real of
Speaker 2: Athens kind of thing. But these are all the move
Speaker 2: and shakers who are passing the laws, funding the buildings
Speaker 2: that are presenting these new mythologies and embedding them within
Speaker 2: the Athenian imagination and literally into the landscape by putting
Speaker 2: them on buildings in the landscape. So you have all
Speaker 2: this stuff sort of going on where all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Amazons and the Trojan War all become analogies for the
Speaker 2: Persian wars, and then you have these very specific stories
Speaker 2: that elevate the Athenians in these context, long before the
Speaker 2: Athenians were ever considered a major player in the Greek stage.
Speaker 1: Right, the Amazonomichi, we've talked like a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: I know it was like an enormous iconographic setting or
Speaker 1: you know however I should phrase that, but like you
Speaker 1: know that it kind of appeared on everything, and so
Speaker 1: like I don't know quite what I'm asking, but basically
Speaker 1: it seems to me that there was like a level
Speaker 1: of respect for the Amazonomicchy, for the Amazons generally, but
Speaker 1: then still always depicting them as being both defeated by
Speaker 1: Athens and also this like you know, the foreign aspect.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, is it always kind of them
Speaker 1: to Persia or yeah?
Speaker 2: No? So so Andy Stewart, who great art historian who
Speaker 2: recently just passed away. I loved him, his wonderful human being.
Speaker 2: But he wrote an article back he was sort of
Speaker 2: one of the big experts on Koroi and Korey statues,
Speaker 2: the sort of maiden statues, but also Athenian red figure
Speaker 2: painting and at pottery and sculpture, and he wrote an
Speaker 2: article gosh, it might haven't have been in the nineties,
Speaker 2: but definitely early two thousands of the latest on vas
Speaker 2: representations of the Amazons and the Amazon Homichy. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that he so so what he basically argued,
Speaker 2: and once you see it, you can't and see it.
Speaker 2: You see it on every vase. Like the Amazons are
Speaker 2: represented in two ways. One, they're represented simultaneously as foreign invaders. Right,
Speaker 2: they've got like the skithi and cap on, and they've
Speaker 2: got animal print leggings and everything. But over top of
Speaker 2: those animal print leggings and the animal print or like
Speaker 2: fancy designed leotard, is the keton of of of a parthenos,
Speaker 2: which is the pre marry, unmarried girl who is available
Speaker 2: for marriage, like this is the coming of age girl.
Speaker 2: And his argument was that they are simultaneously figures of
Speaker 2: fear and danger but also desire. And so I saw
Speaker 2: a vase painting in the Vatican Museum which he had
Speaker 2: never seen. But I think it guarantees his interpretation in
Speaker 2: some ways, because it's not just that they're wearing the
Speaker 2: guises of the parthenoi. Sometimes they have the leopard prints
Speaker 2: and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just have the keton on,
Speaker 2: but that marks them as desirable.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But in this particular, it's got a Greek warrior running
Speaker 2: in one direction and he's looking backwards, and it's got
Speaker 2: an Amazon following him, chasing him, and she's looking at
Speaker 2: him as well, and it is what we call a
Speaker 2: callos face. So someone used this vase as a gift
Speaker 2: for someone that they thought was beautiful and that they
Speaker 2: were in love with. But the vase has Callos over
Speaker 2: the male figure and calais over the Amazon. So here
Speaker 2: you have a Greek Amazon sort of erotic, erotically charged
Speaker 2: love scene. They're in the middle of a battle against
Speaker 2: each other, but they're gazing at each other with desire.
Speaker 2: And this is recognized by whoever owned this pot, because
Speaker 2: they chose to gift this pot as a sign of
Speaker 2: erotic affection to a beloved. So I think that there's
Speaker 2: something about you know, and I think this is where
Speaker 2: Hippolytus as a mythological figure stands at this focus, because
Speaker 2: the thing that is wrong with Hippolytus is his rejection
Speaker 2: of eroticism and physical love entirely. He is he says
Speaker 2: I have the heart of a Parthenos in his speech.
Speaker 2: He doesn't say that he hates when he says I
Speaker 2: have the heart of a Parthenos. And that's going to
Speaker 2: read weird to anybody in an Athenian audience, right, But
Speaker 2: that's representing one of the desirable figures about the Amazon.
Speaker 2: Because He's a male Amazon, right, He's just an Amazon
Speaker 2: in a man's body. He's a Parthenos, which makes him
Speaker 2: eligible for and should be desired for marriage, but he
Speaker 2: rejects it. And so But I think this is what
Speaker 2: the Amazon is such an interesting figure for them, is
Speaker 2: that it's not that they're an analogy necessarily for the
Speaker 2: Persian War itself. They can be used that way, but
Speaker 2: then they also because of the gender aspect of the
Speaker 2: Amazons and what they represent, they are the sort of
Speaker 2: a locus of anxiety about attension between fear and desire.
Speaker 2: M But they're in danger, a threat to the very
Speaker 2: fabric of how Athenian life is social life is structured.
Speaker 2: But that in some ways makes them, makes them want them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes them so interesting. I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: there's got to be some kind of inherent tie there
Speaker 1: too to the fact that they are women warriors, right,
Speaker 1: like the fear of women in that.
Speaker 2: Role probably, I mean, this is one of the things
Speaker 2: that makes them. They reject men, they reject marriage, they
Speaker 2: reject the inside, and they live in the outside. M m.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like everything Athenian women can't do, right.
Speaker 2: The ideals for the Athenian woman are are like, they're
Speaker 2: the opposite, but at the same time they embody this
Speaker 2: one element of the desired pre wife. M right, they're
Speaker 2: sexually appealing.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. I love that you've not said the word
Speaker 1: virgin once. By the way, I appreciate that the pre
Speaker 1: wife is such a good way of describing that.
Speaker 2: Well, because the word part So this is a problem,
Speaker 2: right a woman, As far as we can tell in
Speaker 2: our sources, a woman doesn't become a wife officially until
Speaker 2: she gives birth to her first child. Really, the actual
Speaker 2: birds the word yes, so that's what stops you from
Speaker 2: It's not having sex. That's not what makes you not
Speaker 2: at parthenos, it's having a child. If you sort of
Speaker 2: do a deep dive into the actual uses of the
Speaker 2: words in their connotations for women, the dividing line between
Speaker 2: between parthenos and Gune's childbirth, it's not marriage itself.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: It's not sex. It's not sex.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting. I've like over the course of
Speaker 1: the podcast, I've you know, changed how I phrase things
Speaker 1: based on because you know, nine times out of ten
Speaker 1: you read and in a translation it's gonna say the
Speaker 1: word virgin like almost always, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's wrong. I mean it's it's well, it's
Speaker 2: only wrong if you conceptualize virgin in the way that
Speaker 2: Christianity conceptualizes virgin, if you sort of write, if you
Speaker 2: rethink that like the Greeks actually have where we have
Speaker 2: evidence that rigidity was renewable, like it was one something
Speaker 2: you've lost and done, Like you could like not have
Speaker 2: sex for six months and then you are ritually pure
Speaker 2: again to be a priestess for a cult, and so
Speaker 2: you're a version again. Yeah. Right, It's like there are
Speaker 2: ways around the around that rule. And Sharon James wrote
Speaker 2: a really short, sort of little study of a poem
Speaker 2: by Archillicus in this like mass it's like this massive
Speaker 2: six hundred page companion to Women in the Ancient World,
Speaker 2: and she writes this like little three page analysis of
Speaker 2: this little it's a fragmented poem by Archiloicus in which
Speaker 2: he seduces the sister of like the woman who rejected
Speaker 2: him or something like that. I can't remember the whole story,
Speaker 2: but it's it's basically evidence that pre marital sex was
Speaker 2: not out with respectable women, like right, right, Like the
Speaker 2: pre marital sex wasn't the thing, like as long as
Speaker 2: you didn't get pregnant. It's like her argument is like,
Speaker 2: there's this is there's this is evidence that having sex
Speaker 2: before marriage was not the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to in relation to like
Speaker 1: all the mythological stories of the same time, it's like
Speaker 1: anytime that that like it needs to kind of serve
Speaker 1: a purpose where a god, you know, has sex with
Speaker 1: a mortal woman, like there's always going to be a
Speaker 1: child because yeah, well yes, of course exactly. They get
Speaker 1: to do what they want with it. But that's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to I mean, I'm just I'm fascinated now
Speaker 1: by the giving birth aspect because I, like I said,
Speaker 1: like I've kind of shifted my own phrasing to say
Speaker 1: unmarried and to clarify you know that that when often
Speaker 1: when you see the word virgin, it doesn't mean what
Speaker 1: we think today it means unmarried. But now knowing that
Speaker 1: it's more about like when the actual birth takes places
Speaker 1: even more fascinating. That feels like a very late moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's actually quite a few good articles on this.
Speaker 2: I did a I did a I wrote a book
Speaker 2: review of the New Greek Lexicon, because that's what we do.
Speaker 2: We review dictionaries, but they commissioned two different reviews, so
Speaker 2: one of the reviewers did a sort of general look
Speaker 2: at the sort of language of the dictionary, and I
Speaker 2: did a look specifically at the language of race and
Speaker 2: ethnicity and of gender and women, because this was one
Speaker 2: of the big things that the writers of the dictionary
Speaker 2: were really super interested in doing, is updating the language
Speaker 2: around women and gender and sexuality, because you know that
Speaker 2: nineteenth century Victorian dictionaries so out of touch with you know,
Speaker 2: they basically turned the ancient Greeks into Victorians the way
Speaker 2: they translated these terms, and that's where that term virgin
Speaker 2: is in there. If you look at the sort of
Speaker 2: newer Greek dictionary, the new Cambridge Lexicon of the Greek language, like,
Speaker 2: they're much more nuanced in understanding how the word parthenos,
Speaker 2: you know, or the word gunei or palaque all sort
Speaker 2: of all these different htayra which everyone also translates chora,
Speaker 2: but they're actually six different uses of the term. Paula
Speaker 2: Que actually has like four different uses, one of which
Speaker 2: is just means a temple attendant doesn't have anything to
Speaker 2: do with their relationship to men. So you know, when
Speaker 2: you actually do deep dives into the usages and you're
Speaker 2: not being shaded by your sort of Victorian morality. You
Speaker 2: realize that that these terms have a lot more nuance
Speaker 2: and they don't fit cleanly into our assumptions about how
Speaker 2: we want to rebuild the ancient Greeks in our image.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean, I still I've
Speaker 1: brought this up recently another conversation when I learned that
Speaker 1: heteros is often translated as companan or like comrade.
Speaker 2: Well, that's yeah, hit tyros, right, is your your drinking buddies?
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 2: Is the is a whore? You know it's a high
Speaker 2: class one. Yeah, So I wrote an article on this
Speaker 2: because the criteria that people use to classify what is
Speaker 2: and isn't a hittyrah. And this goes back to an
Speaker 2: article by Leslie Kirk who was like, hittyrae are courtizans.
Speaker 2: They get they get gifts. They don't get paid for sex.
Speaker 2: They get gifts, and a porne is someone who gets
Speaker 2: paid money for sex. Right, that's very narrow narrow. There
Speaker 2: are these women, they do exist, right, But this is
Speaker 2: there's no sort of grand horizontale demimonde hittyra you know
Speaker 2: it could accord it. Grand court is ins in in
Speaker 2: fifth centry Athens. But women like Elpinike, who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: Kaimo's sister. She is probably someone who would have been
Speaker 2: called a Hittyrah in her own time period, but not
Speaker 2: as a Cordison. She's known to be a citizen, she's
Speaker 2: known to be a wife of like the wealthiest Callius,
Speaker 2: the wealthiest man in Athens. But she's a party girl.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have all these vases from antiquity that
Speaker 2: show women at symposia, some of them just women together,
Speaker 2: and we know that there were women only symposia of
Speaker 2: they're called symposia, they are called a pennitis, but they
Speaker 2: My argument in the article was that when we see
Speaker 2: this term used in the context of the symposium, we
Speaker 2: have to be careful because it may in fact be
Speaker 2: that what we're talking about are these wealthy Athenian women
Speaker 2: who were hanging out together and having parties with each
Speaker 2: other in the same way that they're Tyroi, the male
Speaker 2: guys are getting together and having parties together, and that
Speaker 2: this is like Corsira, you know, this wealthy woman who
Speaker 2: was known for partying and known for luxury, and these
Speaker 2: are publicly known figures. These are not women who weren't named.
Speaker 2: These women were named in very public space, is and shamed.
Speaker 2: There was a rumor that Elpinike and her brother Kaimun
Speaker 2: were having an incestuous relationship that was circulating. She was
Speaker 2: accused of having an affair with Polly Noticed, the painter.
Speaker 2: But my funtest piece of evidence for Elpinike and for
Speaker 2: Courseira both is that the Athenians had this thing that
Speaker 2: I also referred to as the anti election right. So
Speaker 2: every you would have an election every year if you
Speaker 2: get a quorum to ostracize, to kick somebody out of
Speaker 2: the cities, you ostracize and you kick them out for
Speaker 2: ten years. They don't lose their citizenship, they don't lose
Speaker 2: their property, or they just have to move out for
Speaker 2: ten years and they're not allowed back in the city.
Speaker 2: And normally you would do this if you think somebody
Speaker 2: is like getting they're aiming at tyranny. It's an anti
Speaker 2: tyranny law, right, But it was often just used by politicians.
Speaker 2: Like we know, the last ostracism to take place was
Speaker 2: like Alcibiades and Nikias were both up to be ostracized,
Speaker 2: and they got together and colluded to make sure a
Speaker 2: third person that wasn't either of them got ostracized and
Speaker 2: the dude, innocent guy who did nothing right, And the
Speaker 2: Athenians were like, okay, this is like being corrupted. Can't
Speaker 2: use this anymore.
Speaker 1: That makes sense?
Speaker 3: That checks it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, right, totally, but yeah, so, but Kaimon gets ostracized,
Speaker 2: and so does a guy named Megacles who's the son
Speaker 2: of Corsira. And on the ostracon we have ostracon, which
Speaker 2: are the broken pieces of pottery after which the process
Speaker 2: is named where you carve the name of the person
Speaker 2: you want to kick out. And so Megacles has Megacles
Speaker 2: and has the father's name and has son of Corsira. Like,
Speaker 2: you don't put the mother's name on there unless the
Speaker 2: mother name carries a negative value for you, right. Megacles
Speaker 2: is a guy who while he was off in ostracism land,
Speaker 2: he went and won the Olympic chariot race. Like he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck, like kick me out of
Speaker 2: the city. I've got so much money, I don't live
Speaker 2: wherever I want. He was totally living his best wife, Kaimon,
Speaker 2: you know the one that from Chyro And it says
Speaker 2: Kimon son of Miltietes. Take your sister La bone Elpini
Speaker 2: kane Ito, taking a panique, go get out, and it
Speaker 2: uses eto the duel so it wants so she's again
Speaker 2: named and shamed. It's like everybody knows who comeent is
Speaker 2: take your sister and get the hell out of the city.
Speaker 2: So these are the women who I think that are
Speaker 2: the originating words for the sort of negative use of
Speaker 2: this term katayra. These are party girls. And so when
Speaker 2: you see later in the fourth century, these women who
Speaker 2: are sort of not available for marriage, often because they're
Speaker 2: foreign women, so they can't you know, after the in
Speaker 2: the fourth century, you know, after four fifty one, the
Speaker 2: children if you marry a form woman they can't become
Speaker 2: a citizen. There are still reasons to marry form women
Speaker 2: because you maybe have citizen children from your first marriage,
Speaker 2: and so you don't want any more citizen children. But
Speaker 2: because you have to divide the property equally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the property will just keep.
Speaker 2: Getting smaller and smaller every generation. But when they ban
Speaker 2: marriage finally in the fourth century, you know, these fore
Speaker 2: women are completely ineligible for marriage, but they're they're getting
Speaker 2: paid to come to parties and you know, things like this. So,
Speaker 2: but those negative connotations I think actually root back to
Speaker 2: these like really famous, wealthy, don't give a fuck party girls.
Speaker 2: They're like the Kardashians of their generation. I think. I
Speaker 2: always think like Paris Hilton, you know, and sort of
Speaker 2: her heydays.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna age myself by yeah, suggesting Paris Hilton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Like that's sort of you know, and it
Speaker 2: is that these are the they were, you know, they
Speaker 2: were in all the time. If we had legal speeches
Speaker 2: from that period, we know that like friends of Pericles
Speaker 2: were charged with heresy, would violate, you know, with with sacrileges,
Speaker 2: and Espagia was supposedly one of these people. Wellspasia is
Speaker 2: a wealthy foreign woman who is probably married to Pericles.
Speaker 2: Her sister was married to you know, Alcibiety's the elder.
Speaker 2: She's not a prostitute. She's living in Perracles's home, She's
Speaker 2: not running a brothel out of Pericles's home. Like, these
Speaker 2: are just stories that we tell to demonize these women
Speaker 2: because they don't fit into our boxes. I actually just
Speaker 2: wrote the New Ancient History Encyclopedia entry on Aspasia, and
Speaker 2: you know, pulled in all the evidence to show that
Speaker 2: this calling this woman at a courtas and or or
Speaker 2: a madam is just absolutely historically inaccurate and you need
Speaker 2: to stop people. Yeah, but she's part of this sort
Speaker 2: of this sort of mythoss of these sort of wealthy
Speaker 2: elite women, Yeah, who were sort of functioned, they were
Speaker 2: companions of each other. Yeah, because that's how Sappho talks
Speaker 2: about She used just the word hit tire to talk
Speaker 2: about her girlfriends that she hangs out with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense. Just it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I just can't.
Speaker 2: I mean when you brought that just like hits one
Speaker 2: of my pet peeves about no scholarship and no.
Speaker 1: I'm not thrilled to hear all of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. Like so actually, just last week I
Speaker 1: also recorded with Melissa Funky, who's just rich. Yeah, she's wonderful,
Speaker 1: and she's got this book coming out about free Nay
Speaker 1: and so like a lot of this is like connecting
Speaker 1: right into that conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually argue in my Immigrant Women book, I
Speaker 2: have a little tiny bit on Frene because she shows
Speaker 2: up in these courtroom discourses. I argued that Frene was
Speaker 2: not actually prosecuted. You know she was prosecuted because of
Speaker 2: her relationship with an Athenian man, because she had crossed
Speaker 2: the boundary that she shouldn't have crossed in this period.
Speaker 2: But she probably actually, based on the evidence we have,
Speaker 2: I think she was actually very much integrated into sort
Speaker 2: of upper class society as the priestess of a foreign cult.
Speaker 1: M interesting.
Speaker 2: We have evidence that she's she's told she was accused
Speaker 2: in numerous documents. She's accused of bringing foreign gods into
Speaker 2: the city. And one of the things that she was
Speaker 2: the sacrilest trial that she was put on trial for
Speaker 2: was for worshiping a foreign god. But she's hanging out
Speaker 2: with like all the people that she's there in this
Speaker 2: context are all wealthy citizens. So she crossed the citizen
Speaker 2: foreigner boundary in a way that she shouldn't have. But
Speaker 2: she is not a prostitute or you know, it's like
Speaker 2: it just doesn't make sense. But she probably was associated
Speaker 2: in some ways with parties and you know, the wealthy
Speaker 2: life and potentially with foreign cult. But a lot of
Speaker 2: foreigners living in Athens, particularly in Piraeus, are associated with
Speaker 2: foreign cults because foreign cults all had the iss called magnamater.
Speaker 2: There's so many foreign gods that were brought in to
Speaker 2: Athens through the port. So a lot of them are priestesses.
Speaker 2: We have all these tombstones for priestesses a foreign cults.
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: It's Frani? Is that right?
Speaker 3: Or okay? So this is actually a bone of contention.
Speaker 1: Great, let's start there.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: Sure I have always called her Franny because of the
Speaker 4: way that people in North America tend to anglicize certain
Speaker 4: sounds or from Greek. But Brits call her Phryni, and
Speaker 4: I suspect Australians too, And so I have had British
Speaker 4: people like be very scandalized, like, surely you mean Phryni.
Speaker 4: And you know I call her Frianny. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 4: other people call her Frenny. We're not using ancient Greek
Speaker 4: here too, write so like Frani is no more accurate
Speaker 4: than Frinny for fun. So right, you know.
Speaker 3: I call her Freddy.
Speaker 4: But I suspect there will be some Brits going, oh
Speaker 4: my god, what is she doing to this poor name?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? I I prefer it that way,
Speaker 1: I swear. I mean so many times I'll hear British
Speaker 1: people pronounce names and it's like it's like they're going
Speaker 1: with a Shakespearean version, and it so often sounds too
Speaker 1: much like that to me that I'm like, I kind
Speaker 1: of prefer almost the North American versions of saying a
Speaker 1: lot of the names. So I certainly do that too.
Speaker 1: I've had conversations where I'm like, we're just pronouncing it
Speaker 1: two different ways throughout, and it is what it.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I have moments all the time where
Speaker 4: I'm like, how do I want to say this name?
Speaker 4: Do I want like to should a kappa be a
Speaker 4: sea like a soft sea in English?
Speaker 3: But I do it.
Speaker 4: I do it enough, and I tend to pick when
Speaker 4: i'm teaching what my students are most likely to hear.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, I certainly make so, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to the k Like, yeah, it's very tough
Speaker 1: to decide with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, it's not a living language in
Speaker 4: the same way. So if if I were speaking someone's name,
Speaker 4: for example, obviously I'm not gonna be like, nah, it's
Speaker 4: coming out the way I'm saying it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: obviously I would never do that to a person who
Speaker 4: is alive. I feel like Frenny can handle it. If
Speaker 4: my pronunciation of her name is like the least distorted
Speaker 4: aspect of her that has made it to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So well, that leads to the perfect way of like
Speaker 1: the way I kind of wanted to start this, which
Speaker 1: is just that. So her story, I feel like, unlike
Speaker 1: most things from ancient Greece, has become like a meme
Speaker 1: that goes around fairly often of just like that one moment.
Speaker 1: I won't spoil it all, but that one moment that
Speaker 1: she seems to be so famous for, and that is
Speaker 1: all that I know about her. So I really want
Speaker 1: to hear everything, not least because she's a real ancient woman,
Speaker 1: So just yeah, please tell me everything.
Speaker 4: So, because it's summer break, I've been kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: spending time on social media, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm going to just look up on TikTok, Like what
Speaker 4: do you get for Frenny on TikTok? And You're right,
Speaker 4: she is a meme. The first thing you get is, oh,
Speaker 4: she's this woman who flashed her way to freedom, I
Speaker 4: think is one of the headlines that I've seen, but
Speaker 4: who was naked in front of people, right, and in
Speaker 4: a way like that is true, Like She describe her
Speaker 4: as a meme is not incorrect, Like she's an ancient
Speaker 4: meme basically, this woman, and so all the stories of
Speaker 4: her are just various memes that have become compiled in
Speaker 4: all of these different ways. But there is a real
Speaker 4: woman at the heart of all this, and we can't
Speaker 4: quite discover her. And that's just something that you have
Speaker 4: to accept with a woman like Frenny, figure like Franny,
Speaker 4: because of the way her stories and details about her
Speaker 4: have been recorded, is that we're never going to dig
Speaker 4: down to who is the real Frinny. We might as
Speaker 4: well hope to find the real Helen of Troy, right,
Speaker 4: there's no there's no chance. But if we kind of
Speaker 4: look at the collected stories, that's where we start to
Speaker 4: get an image of what possibilities there were for a
Speaker 4: woman like her.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so Freddy, the.
Speaker 4: Story that we are alluding to here, by the way,
Speaker 4: is the story of her trial.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So she went on trial in fourth century Athens for impiety,
Speaker 4: and just when it seemed like she was about to
Speaker 4: be convicted, and it was possible in this kind of
Speaker 4: a case that it could have been a capital trial, right,
Speaker 4: she could have been at risk of being put to death,
Speaker 4: and there are different stories. In one of the stories,
Speaker 4: one of the versions, she reveals herself. In the other one,
Speaker 4: the fellow who is representing her high varieties that basically
Speaker 4: her lawyer in the courtroom, he whips off her dress
Speaker 4: and she's, of course so outrageously beautiful that all the men,
Speaker 4: and of course the jury is composed of Athenian citizen men.
Speaker 4: Of course we're all sitting there.
Speaker 3: Go, oh my god, she's so beautiful.
Speaker 4: And in some of the sources they say it's almost
Speaker 4: like they're struck with religious awe, like they're looking at
Speaker 4: Afrodai almost right, and that this this sense of this
Speaker 4: beauty right causes them to acquit her. So this is
Speaker 4: this is probably the most famous story about her of
Speaker 4: the many that are told. But the two most famous
Speaker 4: stories about her involved nudity.
Speaker 3: Right. So that's the thing about Frinny.
Speaker 4: She is famously, you know, one of the most beautiful women,
Speaker 4: or at least most attractive women, and she is periodically
Speaker 4: naked in very prominent settings in public. So the other
Speaker 4: story about Frinny that is often told, and this there's
Speaker 4: only one ancient source that actually really makes this connection directly,
Speaker 4: but is that she is the model for the aphrodite
Speaker 4: of Cnidos, right, So, yeah, so, and for those who
Speaker 4: aren't familiar with this statue, you've seen images of it
Speaker 4: for sure, even if you don't know what it's called.
Speaker 4: It's the first it's known as the first monumental female nude.
Speaker 4: So the first nude female statue that is sort of
Speaker 4: life size are bigger, Right. So, there's other nude images
Speaker 4: on vase, paintings, on curved freezes and things, but not
Speaker 4: these statues that would be put into a temple, right. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: so there's this very famous statue. People will be familiar
Speaker 4: probably with the image of Abouticelli's Birth of Venus, right,
Speaker 4: that is that pose is based on the aphrodity of Canidos.
Speaker 4: So the story the one source that we have from Athenaeus,
Speaker 4: this late Roman author from Egypt. Right, he says that
Speaker 4: that Frinny she was again well known in fourth century Athens.
Speaker 3: She's a sex worker. We haven't even touched on that yet,
Speaker 3: but she's a very famous, exclusive sex worker.
Speaker 4: And she goes to a festival down by the sea,
Speaker 4: and it seems to be that a festival down in Eleusis,
Speaker 4: which is sort of in northern Attica, and she's down
Speaker 4: by the sea and she goes and bathes in thee
Speaker 4: and as she emerges nude before this crowd, everyone again
Speaker 4: is kind of struck with awe. And there happened to
Speaker 4: be a couple of the most famous artists of classical
Speaker 4: Greece there, Praxidis, the sculptor who sculpts the Aphrodite of Canidos,
Speaker 4: and Appeles, who is the painter who paints the aphrodite.
Speaker 4: It's called afrodite anaduomine. So rising from the sea basically,
Speaker 4: and again that's a very famous pose we'd be kind
Speaker 4: of familiar with, where it's a nude woman rising out
Speaker 4: of the sea and she's, of course I'm doing the
Speaker 4: actions for this and we're on a podcast, but she's
Speaker 4: sort of wringing out her hair on either side of
Speaker 4: her head.
Speaker 3: So it's a very famous poems.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna end up talking about that pose probably later anyways.
Speaker 4: But anyways, of course, you know, these two most famous
Speaker 4: visual artists who have probably the most impact on visual art,
Speaker 4: on sculpture, on painting in ancient Greece, just happened to
Speaker 4: be there to see this famously beautiful woman emerging right,
Speaker 4: So yes, so she's her fame is largely centered on
Speaker 4: sort of appearing naked in public.
Speaker 3: At just the right time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love that for her. What a way
Speaker 1: to leave a memory. But also especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to ancient Athens, because like, we don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of real women who did things that could get them
Speaker 1: that famous, and that's fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like who are the women whose names we know?
Speaker 4: A student once asked me this. I was teaching a
Speaker 4: class on fourth century Athens, and he was like, can
Speaker 4: you name can you name a woman?
Speaker 3: What are the named women?
Speaker 4: And so I said frenny and then I said lice,
Speaker 4: And then I just was naming.
Speaker 3: All sex workers, right, which is fine.
Speaker 4: It's okay to know about sex workers, but I couldn't
Speaker 4: name just regular sort of everyday citizen women or enslaved women. Certainly,
Speaker 4: and if I was in a pigrapher, if I studied ription, yeah,
Speaker 4: I probably know a few from gravestones and things like that.
Speaker 4: But in terms of the ones that I know offhand,
Speaker 4: I know a little bit about their lives, I know
Speaker 4: a little bit about their identities. That's it, right, is
Speaker 4: mostly sex workers?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm thinking Aspasia is the other one that I
Speaker 1: couldn't think of it because she fourth or fifth, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not a lot, and she's also.
Speaker 3: A century yeah right, but she's also she gets called
Speaker 3: a sex worker. She gets called a sex worker.
Speaker 4: Okay, she is not likely to have been a sex worker,
Speaker 4: but she's a woman in public, so why not call
Speaker 4: her a sex worker?
Speaker 1: Anyways, I think that's how they that course, that's what
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there are people, there are some people
Speaker 4: who have suggested even that women like Frenny and so
Speaker 4: the term that I would apply to her is hittyra,
Speaker 4: which it just literally means female companion. But like that
Speaker 4: it just means companion blew my mind because yeah, the
Speaker 4: way that it is used interchangeably with sex worker.
Speaker 1: All of the time. Yeah, and then I saw it
Speaker 1: used in relation to Patrick clus and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it just means companion, and like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: translitting it about men, we're saying comrade, and when we're
Speaker 1: translating about women, we're saying often straight horror. And you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: then yah, it is the same. Really, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, in the way that I think that we
Speaker 4: would also use euphemisms today if I was like, oh
Speaker 4: I saw so and so and he had a companion,
Speaker 4: wink wink. You know, it's that kind of thing. But
Speaker 4: then you get this slippage where you can apply it
Speaker 4: to women who are in public with men, right, who
Speaker 4: are not their husbands, and so then it's like are
Speaker 4: they sex workers? Are they just women who are not
Speaker 4: doing what you expect or want them to do? So
Speaker 4: and even in fourth century Athens, especially in the legal trials, right,
Speaker 4: because quite a few of the sex workers end up
Speaker 4: on trial.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Think about nay Iira is a good example of this,
Speaker 4: and there's a very clever way that the speakers use
Speaker 4: the term hitira because they're kind of suggesting, oh, companion
Speaker 4: wink wink, the kind of woman that you would give
Speaker 4: gifts to, wink wink. And then you know, in against Aira,
Speaker 4: for example, the speaker towards the end he's like, actually
Speaker 4: she's a porne. She's just a regular old prostitute. So
Speaker 4: you see, even then they're really aware that there is
Speaker 4: slippage in this term. So yes, you're right, like in
Speaker 4: the modern world, we can't just assume if someone calls
Speaker 4: someone a sex worker, that they are a sex worker, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, the same is true in the modern world too.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, and it's just so interesting to have
Speaker 1: that differentiation because I think, like I'm just thinking of translations,
Speaker 1: because that's what I come across most. Yeah, so often
Speaker 1: you get hitterra a hittera, like when it's about a
Speaker 1: woman translated in these like really derogatory ways. When it
Speaker 1: I mean, it does just be mean companion. But also,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's the differentiation between a hitterra and
Speaker 1: a porne, which is like like ones like I used to,
Speaker 1: I tend to call them like fancy sex workers on
Speaker 1: my show, like when I'm referring to the yeah, exact
Speaker 1: type like you know, more like an escort versus you know,
Speaker 1: a more you know, the porna is being like more
Speaker 1: traditional kind of I guess, street style sex workers. But
Speaker 1: so often in translations it is just like straighthore or something,
Speaker 1: and it just makes me think of, I mean, just
Speaker 1: the way things have been translated for us and how
Speaker 1: that's impacted everything.
Speaker 4: But yes, I mean that's a really big problem, right,
Speaker 4: Like with with the hittyraye in particular, it's a huge problem.
Speaker 4: But yeah, there's there's a real like slippage between the
Speaker 4: terms and definitely like we can't as scholars go, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: well you like we don't have the receipts to go, oh, well,
Speaker 4: you charged by the hour, so you're a porne. Oh
Speaker 4: did you accept a really expensive necklace? Obviously you're a
Speaker 4: hit TYRT. Like there's gonna be some major slippage there.
Speaker 4: And even when it comes to like sex work, how
Speaker 4: do we determine, like what actually is a sex worker?
Speaker 4: Because the hit Ti ray it seems we're sometimes brought
Speaker 4: into people's houses for like long term relationships.
Speaker 3: Does is that sex work?
Speaker 4: In my books, it kind of is right, or like
Speaker 4: there are enslaved people in houses who are basically doing
Speaker 4: sexual labor, but they're not really like maybe they're not
Speaker 4: sex workers because that's not how they make a living.
Speaker 4: Like there's so much slippage there with sexual labor as
Speaker 4: a whole. And then the terms we use, because they're
Speaker 4: so often meant to be derogatory, it's really hard to
Speaker 4: you know, to know, and then you make a bunch
Speaker 4: of assumptions too about again women in public, women in
Speaker 4: the wrong place, and ticky boo, we have some misogyny there, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this comes up. I've spoken to Elidie Harper,
Speaker 1: who wrote The wolf Den, a few times, and I
Speaker 1: remember like that she was so specific in how she
Speaker 1: was talking about it, because at least in the first book,
Speaker 1: like the character is in the actual like The wolf Den,
Speaker 1: the brothel in POMPEII, And so she made a point
Speaker 1: of using the word prostitute. She was like she was
Speaker 1: being prostituted by somebody else, Like there's a difference there
Speaker 1: between the kind of empowerment that often can come with
Speaker 1: the term sex worker and it. Yeah, I mean, especially
Speaker 1: in those cases, like the differences is important to kind
Speaker 1: of clarify because it, I mean, it's just all about
Speaker 1: agency and everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I genuinely suspect that a woman like Freddy
Speaker 4: who ended up becoming so famous and so prominent, her
Speaker 4: beginnings were probably not very pleasant. Again, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to guarantee anything about this, but you know, the odds
Speaker 4: are not impossible that she was probably enslaved as a child.
Speaker 4: And we know again and from speeches like against Naira,
Speaker 4: that women were brought into the sex trade enslaved very
Speaker 4: often and often very young. Like the speaker who's talking
Speaker 4: about Naira says she was basically too young. She wasn't
Speaker 4: mature enough when she started in sex.
Speaker 3: It's dire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you're.
Speaker 1: Too young, like then, yeah, yeah, then it's.
Speaker 4: Really too young exactly. Yeah, certainly by like twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three standards, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's it's very easy to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: she was this beautiful woman who like showed up on
Speaker 4: the seaside and was, you know, inspired these artists. But
Speaker 4: when you really think about the power dynamics that were
Speaker 4: at play probably for most of her life, even once
Speaker 4: she became and I think it's very likely that she
Speaker 4: did become very wealthy at some point, there's still the
Speaker 4: way that Athenian society is set up in particular. You know,
Speaker 4: anyone can grab her and pop her into court, and
Speaker 4: she's got to stand there before a bunch of Athenian
Speaker 4: citizen men and hope that they're not going to put
Speaker 4: her to death or do something terrible to her. So
Speaker 4: I think it's very easy when we look at these
Speaker 4: stories of the HITTI write, to get sort of swept
Speaker 4: up into the you know, the glamour of it, but
Speaker 4: there's like a really non glamorous core there that we
Speaker 4: have to keep in mind all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if she was on trial for impiety, like
Speaker 1: do we know what that looked like? Do we know
Speaker 1: what she did or what they did she did?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's a great question. Okay, So she is one
Speaker 4: of our sources mentions that she's accused of introducing new gods,
Speaker 4: which is also the same for Socrates. It's basically the
Speaker 4: same charges that Socrates got charged with. And I, you know,
Speaker 4: thinking about Frenny, I was like, Okay, Frenny's actually kind
Speaker 4: of in a sense, she's like a parallel to Socrates.
Speaker 4: And so it's not uncommon to put philosophers and Hittyride together.
Speaker 4: So like the later Roman authors have a blast they
Speaker 4: put they make jokes about it all the time about
Speaker 4: how silly it is to kind of pair these two,
Speaker 4: and they always have like the hitti Rie are sort
Speaker 4: of more clever than the the philosophers. Half the time
Speaker 4: they're getting the best of these famous men, but they're
Speaker 4: all people who are like trying. They're trying to spend
Speaker 4: time with wealthy, typically younger Athenian men from elite families
Speaker 4: and they're like making some money off of this too,
Speaker 4: Socrates less so, but they are getting something from this relationship.
Speaker 4: But again, ultimately that power still rests with those elite
Speaker 4: young men in a way, even though it doesn't seem
Speaker 4: that way, And so they're vulnerable if public opinion turns.
Speaker 4: If those men turn on them, they're in big trouble.
Speaker 4: Which is, it's not quite that the young men that
Speaker 4: were following Socrates turned on him, but enough public sentiment did, right,
Speaker 4: and there he was up on trial. And so Frinny
Speaker 4: is the same. The suggestion is that the fellow who
Speaker 4: brought her to court, a fellow named Uthius, had been
Speaker 4: her lover previously and brought her to court. And then
Speaker 4: the fellow, of course who defends her Hypperieties is like
Speaker 4: a famous patron of sex workers. He's apparently got like
Speaker 4: two or three on the go in different households around
Speaker 4: at when he steps up to defend Frenny. Again, like,
Speaker 4: these all come from different sources, So I think you
Speaker 4: know much of it. We have to to really think
Speaker 4: about a little bit more critically. But these are the
Speaker 4: stories that are told about her. So yeah, she goes
Speaker 4: up for trial for impiety. Basically, she's been having gatherings
Speaker 4: in the lyceum, and of course the lyceum is where
Speaker 4: Aristotle's school is, right, like that further connection to our philosophers.
Speaker 4: She's introduced a new god. The name of the god
Speaker 4: in one of the sources is Esodites, who is like
Speaker 4: a sort of connected to Dionysus. Right, so's she's doing
Speaker 4: things that are making people uncomfortable, I think, is the
Speaker 4: moral of that story. But the punishment in these court
Speaker 4: cases is not fixed. So what happens in first century
Speaker 4: Athens when these charges are brought You have a sort
Speaker 4: of the main trial to see if you're guilty or not,
Speaker 4: and then you have a second sort of mini trial
Speaker 4: over what the punishment will be. So you can propose
Speaker 4: it's the same thing that happens to Socrates. Actually that
Speaker 4: anyone's ever read socrates Apology is the exact same thing
Speaker 4: where he gets to propose a sort of an easier
Speaker 4: punishment for himself. Anyways, and so but the concern is
Speaker 4: that she could be put to death over this, and
Speaker 4: again that that moment of revelation is what saves her
Speaker 4: and saves her life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the idea that she was too hot for
Speaker 1: them to kill.
Speaker 3: Like, that's pretty great, that's it right there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so, I mean I realized I should have
Speaker 1: started this with the note that I will in my
Speaker 1: introduction anyway, But you've written a book on her, so that,
Speaker 1: I mean one that's so cool and obviously that's why
Speaker 1: we're talking. But like, how much do we know we
Speaker 1: know a book's worth about this woman.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so I I certainly.
Speaker 4: Well I have done. But also there's that like speculation
Speaker 4: using evidence of other similar figures where you're like, okay,
Speaker 4: there is this court case about Naira that is one
Speaker 4: of our most full some sources about the life of
Speaker 4: any woman in the fourth century, even though it's written
Speaker 4: from the perspective of someone who is obviously trying to
Speaker 4: slender her and you know, depict her as this horrible person,
Speaker 4: but it actually gives us a lot of insight into
Speaker 4: what the life of a sex worker might have been like.
Speaker 4: So I'm not saying that Frenny and Nairah are the same,
Speaker 4: but they lived at the same time, right. The trial
Speaker 4: of Nairah happened in the three forties when Frinny was
Speaker 4: pretty active in Athens, so we can kind of go okay,
Speaker 4: were they were kind of peers in a way, right,
Speaker 4: they have something in common. And so whether Frinny's story
Speaker 4: is identical or just shares elements people like Naeirah, and
Speaker 4: those stories give us this space to kind of speculate
Speaker 4: in a generative way, which is what we're always doing
Speaker 4: with Frinny because all of her stories are fragments, right
Speaker 4: that fragments make you fill in the blanks. So anytime
Speaker 4: we encounter her, So what are the stories about Frenny?
Speaker 3: Like, what do we know? Okay, we know her. Frinny's
Speaker 3: a nickname.
Speaker 4: It means toad because her compunction was so pale, And
Speaker 4: I always always trying to figure out, like what is
Speaker 4: toad like about a woman's appearance.
Speaker 1: So especially not famously beautiful like she being hot, but
Speaker 1: her name means toad, Like, Okay, there's a lot.
Speaker 3: How I know.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of like when you call a
Speaker 4: tall guy shorty, you know, right.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like that maybe, but I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 4: When I was researching this book, I did look at
Speaker 4: a lot of pictures of toads just to kind of
Speaker 4: explore how that metaphor might be working. But yeah, so
Speaker 4: we know that her original name was manisa Ete, which
Speaker 4: means like sort of recalling virtue, and she was or excellence.
Speaker 4: I suppose she was from Thespi or connected to Thespi.
Speaker 4: Spis in Biotia, which is north of Attica, So she's
Speaker 4: from Thespi or she has a connection. So some people
Speaker 4: have suggested her family lived in Athens as resident foreigners,
Speaker 4: and you would never be an Athenian if you're a
Speaker 4: resident foreigner, you could never no matter how long or
Speaker 4: how many generations. In the fourth century, it was impossible
Speaker 4: basically to become an Athenian. So but I think she
Speaker 4: probably came to Athens, possibly as a refugee that SBI
Speaker 4: was destroyed by the Thebans, I think in three seventy
Speaker 4: one ish, So you know, there's lots of ways that
Speaker 4: she could have ended up in Athens, but she definitely
Speaker 4: associated with this town, the Sbi. Okay, so you know
Speaker 4: what's the deal with the Spi. Well, SBI is famous
Speaker 4: for its massive sanctuary to the god Aeros, and what's
Speaker 4: the one you know, Aeros the god of sexy love
Speaker 4: is how I always translated from my students like desire, right,
Speaker 4: sexual desire. So you've got the hottest sex worker of
Speaker 4: the fourth century and she's from the same hometown as
Speaker 4: like Sexy Love.
Speaker 3: This is all really perfected ideal.
Speaker 4: But I do think she really was connected, you know,
Speaker 4: if we want to say, Okay, there's a real frenny
Speaker 4: somewhere in these stories. I do think she's really connected
Speaker 4: to the SBI. There were statues of her there historically
Speaker 4: that we know about. There's a coin that references this statue.
Speaker 4: So at some point the statue was there was of course,
Speaker 4: like a lot of famous statues, taken out and moved
Speaker 4: around by the Romans, but it was there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a statue of a real woman like that sex
Speaker 1: worker ended up actually on display.
Speaker 4: That's incredible, on display in a sanctuary. It's a sanctuary
Speaker 4: to Aros So and apparently it was part of a trio,
Speaker 4: so Aros, Aphrodite and an afrodite of course, who she's
Speaker 4: associated with through Prexidilis, but in this very minor way.
Speaker 4: But yes, so Aphrodite, Prexidiis and Aros all together in
Speaker 4: this trio, which is great. But there was also a
Speaker 4: statue of her, a gilded statue at Delphi that was
Speaker 4: up with a Spartan king and I want to say
Speaker 4: a famous theban role, but you know, and it was
Speaker 4: of her, and it wasn't like her posing as someone,
Speaker 4: it was her as herself. And so you know, you
Speaker 4: hear there are different anecdotes where people walk in and there,
Speaker 4: you know, they look at it and they're shocked. Who
Speaker 4: would put a statue of a sex worker in this,
Speaker 4: you know in Delphi? Right, But you know she's prominent enough,
Speaker 4: no matter what, she's prominent enough for it to be
Speaker 4: accepted that you could find a statue of her in
Speaker 4: these places. Yeah, which you know, it just has a
Speaker 4: lot about her profile.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's so cool, it's so cool. Yeah, that just
Speaker 3: makes me so happy.
Speaker 4: And so like a lot of the writers who think
Speaker 4: about Frenny, they're really obsessed with these images of her
Speaker 4: and this connection to Praxicily's. So there's lots of poems epigrams,
Speaker 4: so that the kind of poem that you would inscribe
Speaker 4: on a statue base, and often epigrams kind of blur
Speaker 4: the line between literature and object. So they'll they'll make
Speaker 4: the object talk if often you know, it'll say you know,
Speaker 4: like if it's a statue of a cow. Oh, I'm
Speaker 4: I'm the cow sculpted by Myron. You can practically hear
Speaker 4: me mooing kind of thing, right. And so for the
Speaker 4: statues of Frinny or statues connected to Frinny. So there
Speaker 4: are epigrams about a statue of Aros that was given
Speaker 4: to Frinny by Praxidiles, and they love to blur the
Speaker 4: lines in that relationship between like who's the creator, who's
Speaker 4: inspiring this?
Speaker 3: Is it Aros? Is it Frinny?
Speaker 4: Is Frinny the creator of the statue because she inspired
Speaker 4: Prexidiles to create this image of Aros, right, and it's
Speaker 4: this whole yeah, just blurring of lines. There's a very
Speaker 4: famous letter or fictional letter, i should say, written in
Speaker 4: the second century CE by a writer named Alcafron, and
Speaker 4: he's again he's one of these writers writing in Greek
Speaker 4: under the Roman Empire, and he writes it it's an
Speaker 4: invitation from Frenny to Prexidis, to this sculptor to come
Speaker 4: and make love to her beside the statue at this
Speaker 4: sbi that he has sculpted of her. With the statues
Speaker 4: of Aeros and Aphrodite, they're like all watching on, right,
Speaker 4: and she's like you know, like you gave this to me.
Speaker 4: It's a gift of your love, but from your love
Speaker 4: for me. And we're not doing anything wrong. We're not
Speaker 4: defiling anything by making love in a sanctuary. And I
Speaker 4: suspect that listeners of your podcast know that that's not
Speaker 4: usually a good thing to do, right, No, you're not
Speaker 4: doing that there. Don't do that in like Athenis sanctuary
Speaker 4: because you're not end up in big trouble. But she's like,
Speaker 4: we're not defiling anything because this is like a divine
Speaker 4: love that we have, and you've created these divine images.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of sort of melding of Frenny
Speaker 4: with aeros Frenny with Aphrodite, blurring the lines between her
Speaker 4: and these this divine sort of it's almost like a
Speaker 4: divine trio Frenny, Aphrodite and aeross together.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a level of irony in there that
Speaker 1: she was on trial for impiety and then this happened
Speaker 1: after the fact. Like if anything sounds like impiety, it's
Speaker 1: like putting a human woman alongside Aerosynaphrodite as like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean even just connect getting her that close to
Speaker 1: them in terms of importance and beauty and everything.
Speaker 4: Like exactly or yeah, like putting a picture or a
Speaker 4: picture and image of her at Delphi? Right, but if
Speaker 4: you think about and so there's this is actually in
Speaker 4: it's a dialogue of Plutarch's where you know, a cynic
Speaker 4: philosopher comes along.
Speaker 3: He's like, what the heck is this doing here?
Speaker 4: This is ridiculous, like any good cynic, right is I
Speaker 4: don't like anything. But the person with him is like, well,
Speaker 4: look at everything else here at Delphi. It's all been
Speaker 4: here because of war, because of terrible things that people
Speaker 4: have done. Some of it's been stolen. And that's the
Speaker 4: impiety you're worried about. That's what you find is excessive.
Speaker 4: And I really love that moment because it's such a
Speaker 4: great point, right that that you know, like, what is
Speaker 4: actually so terrible about having this noted woman when you
Speaker 4: would have you could practically put up a temple to yourself,
Speaker 4: Not quite a temple, but you know you could you
Speaker 4: could put up a monument to yourself right inside the
Speaker 4: most sacred sanctuaries. So why can't Fernie get some action
Speaker 4: in there? Why?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in the letter I mean literal action too.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, with the reputation like hers, it's
Speaker 1: got to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, I mean so I think based on all
Speaker 4: of these connections to Parksidills and the statues, I do
Speaker 4: think that at some point she and Practicalys were connected.
Speaker 3: Did they have to have been lovers? I don't think so.
Speaker 4: That's not necessary, right, And that's that's a very common
Speaker 4: trope that you find, and it starts kind of with
Speaker 4: stories of people like Frenny and prexidiis that trope that
Speaker 4: obviously the artist and his model must also have an
Speaker 4: erotic connection too. They have to be in a relationship
Speaker 4: of some kind, and that's you know, obviously we know
Speaker 4: that that's not necessary to create art, but it's a
Speaker 4: story that like gets told and told and told and told.
Speaker 3: And when artists' models become sort of popular again, you know,
Speaker 3: especially in the nineteenth century, oh, those stories they start
Speaker 3: flying around.
Speaker 4: You know, absolutely people are telling those same exact kinds
Speaker 4: of stories and often connected to images of Frenny too.
Speaker 4: It goes all the way kind of circles all the
Speaker 4: way back around again.
Speaker 1: It makes me think, like I obviously I often wonder
Speaker 1: about this and I don't know anyone who reasonably couldn't.
Speaker 1: But just like the things that women must have talked
Speaker 1: about amongst themselves that we don't know, you know, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, right, like oh yeah, it comes to someone
Speaker 1: like this, like I just want to know what the
Speaker 1: Athenian women, well, you know, I don't mean technical Athenian women,
Speaker 1: I mean women in Athens. You know, what were they
Speaker 1: thinking and talking to each other about when this was
Speaker 1: all going on? And I yeah, yeah, imagine.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I've mentioned him already.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite favorite authors from the ancient world
Speaker 4: is this fellow Alsafron, writing in kind of roughly the
Speaker 4: second century CE, kind of end of the second century.
Speaker 4: He's one of those authors writing in Greek about classical
Speaker 4: Athens under the Roman Empire. Right, he's recreating it, And
Speaker 4: he is to me the Wes Anderson of the ancient world.
Speaker 4: He because he recreates this world in such detail. But
Speaker 4: you know, you've seen a Wes Anderson movie. You're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's the Grand Budapest Hotel.
Speaker 3: It's said in pre war Europe. How do I know that?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I can, oh, if I really look closely at the details,
Speaker 4: they've actually been kind of invented by Wes Anderson, so
Speaker 4: you're forced to kind of look at his artistry while
Speaker 4: you're enjoying this nostalgic image. So that's what Elsafron does.
Speaker 4: He writes fictional letters and he has four books of them,
Speaker 4: and the fourth book is called Letters of Hittairie. It
Speaker 4: is letters written by the Hittirie of Athens. So some
Speaker 4: of them are the famous ones, like Frinny to each
Speaker 4: other about sort of their daily lives and what's going on.
Speaker 4: So there's the letter from Frinny to Praxicaly's. There's a
Speaker 4: couple letters about the court case right of Frinny.
Speaker 3: But it is it's.
Speaker 4: Sort of the speculative way to think about, like what
Speaker 4: would these women have said to each other?
Speaker 3: What might they talked about? Right?
Speaker 4: What are they interested in? And so it's this attent,
Speaker 4: obviously by a male author, but to kind of harness
Speaker 4: these women's voices and to think about how are these
Speaker 4: women thinking about their own lives. And that's why I
Speaker 4: love it, because of course we're in this space where
Speaker 4: we have next to know words by women themselves, right,
Speaker 4: but these are like at least purporting to be the.
Speaker 2: Words of these women.
Speaker 4: So yeah, if I could find like a real letter
Speaker 4: written by Frenny to one of her pals, that's like
Speaker 4: a document I would give anything for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes me think I have not read enough
Speaker 1: of this to know kind of how it comes across.
Speaker 1: And it makes me think of Lucian because I recently
Speaker 1: have some more digging into him, and I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and dialogues like that. Yeah, I've still made a True History,
Speaker 1: which is a piece of art. But yeah, now I'm
Speaker 1: interested in all the dialogues that he wrote to mostly
Speaker 1: because of how much I love the True History.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I mean Lucian that he writes so many
Speaker 4: different kinds of things and they're all and it's kind
Speaker 4: of similar to what Elseaphron is doing is stepping back
Speaker 4: into the world of classical Athens, stepping into kind of
Speaker 4: this this uh like created nostalgic space. And of course
Speaker 4: Lucian does it. He's a little bit more ry about it,
Speaker 4: a little bit more pointed than Alsafron is, but it's
Speaker 4: the same, it's the same kind of process, and they're
Speaker 4: part of the same kind of trend, literary trend that's happening.
Speaker 4: So please read more Lucian, because you're all gonna love it.
Speaker 4: There's like this is for everyone listening, please read more lution.
Speaker 4: You're never going to be sad about it. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: But the so the dialogues of the courtesans too, or
Speaker 4: that's what they're called, right, dialogues of the Hitirie, it's
Speaker 4: I love them too. It's the same reason I love
Speaker 4: Greek tragedy. It's because you have again, it's not the
Speaker 4: actual voices of women, but it's someone like representing the
Speaker 4: voice of a woman, right, and you're trying to like
Speaker 4: incorporate just as a good playwright or a good fictional
Speaker 4: letter writer, you're actually gonna have to tap into some
Speaker 4: kind of empathy for their position in society to write
Speaker 4: it in a compelling and effective way. So I yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm just in love with anything like that that purports
Speaker 4: to give the voice of a woman or give voice
Speaker 4: to a woman, even if it's written by a man.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to take what we can get, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean it's why I love Euripides so much because
Speaker 1: to me, he's the one who actually wanted to know
Speaker 1: what women thought, and he was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: actually examine them as real people, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: the other two players do they write great women, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, but like Euripides was clearly fascinated by
Speaker 1: them in a totally different way, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of what survives, Like yes, it's.
Speaker 4: Just well, I am here to tell you. Also what
Speaker 4: does not survive? Does the same thing or at least
Speaker 4: the yes, the fragments? Yeah, yeah, well, and that's I mean,
Speaker 4: that's the thing is with these women Again, I think
Speaker 4: it comes down to you have this really constricted society
Speaker 4: for women, and the ideal for women is very again constricted.
Speaker 4: They don't have a lot of options. A path is
Speaker 4: very clearly laid out for them, ideally, but there are
Speaker 4: women who are not always following that path because of
Speaker 4: just life, right, life is complicated and it never ideals.
Speaker 4: And then people depict her and again these are more
Speaker 4: modern depictions. But there's another painter, Boulonge, who has a
Speaker 4: painting of her kind of reclining on a bed, and
Speaker 4: she his model I think was Italian, But they're they're
Speaker 4: using like a lot of at that time, what are
Speaker 4: considered like Italian models, Jewish models who are considered to
Speaker 4: be exotic at that time, and so like so when
Speaker 4: you know he exhibits this at the Academy and people
Speaker 4: look at this painting. They're like, Oh, that's not what
Speaker 4: we think Frinny should look like, right, that's oh my goodness.
Speaker 4: One of them calls her fat and she is just
Speaker 4: distinctly not fat. Oh they always they love to do this, right.
Speaker 4: There's another painter, a Polish painter later who paints her
Speaker 4: and they say she looks like a man.
Speaker 3: One of the critics. It's like, so, the thing.
Speaker 4: About you know Frinny is that in the stories, in
Speaker 4: the ancient stories, she is she can be whatever you
Speaker 4: want her to be, whatever you think is beautiful, whatever
Speaker 4: you think is pit whatever you can project, because she's
Speaker 4: a fragment And then I think that's also what makes
Speaker 4: her compelling, is that because she is fragmentary, that you
Speaker 4: can do whatever you want. You can fill in the
Speaker 4: blanks however you want. That is the most pleasurable and
Speaker 4: satisfying to you. So she becomes. And I think that's
Speaker 4: something that's common with the way we tell stories about women,
Speaker 4: prominent women, even in twenty twenty three, right, that these
Speaker 4: sort of fragmentary narratives where we don't really allow ourselves
Speaker 4: to know them. Deeply and meaningfully gives us a certain
Speaker 4: kind of power over them, to mold them into whatever
Speaker 4: we want them to be.
Speaker 3: And if someone presents.
Speaker 4: To you a version of her, or of a woman
Speaker 4: like Frenny that isn't what you thought and what you
Speaker 4: expected and what you took pleasure from, then people tend
Speaker 4: to get really defensive and angry about it too, at
Speaker 4: least these art critics, you know, the different images of her.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so the thing about Freddy is like we
Speaker 4: don't know enough of these details to really know her,
Speaker 4: but that I think is another source of what has
Speaker 4: made her compelling over time.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. And it sounds like so much of the
Speaker 1: ancient world with just the fragmentary nature of it, all right,
Speaker 1: and like what, yeah, that's so much more interesting than
Speaker 1: if we knew everything, like just the big open questions.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and I really think yeah, with fragments, it
Speaker 4: allows us to think in different ways about things, to
Speaker 4: kind of we can hyper focus on some details because
Speaker 4: that's all that we have, right, or we can be
Speaker 4: more imaginative, and sometimes that speculation can be really generative.
Speaker 4: It can take us out of the assumptions that we've
Speaker 4: made about the ancient world as well. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously I love fragments. I wrote a whole dissertation about them.
Speaker 4: But it's to me those are some of the most
Speaker 4: compelling parts of the ancient world, and they're also when
Speaker 4: we look closely at them, they're often the ones that
Speaker 4: contradict the dominant narratives that we have about each worlds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, nerds, thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 1: As always, I mentioned this, you know, in Tuesday's episode,
Speaker 1: but I really just wanted to provide you guys with
Speaker 1: a kind of refresh on this way of learning about
Speaker 1: these hitterai a little bit further without having to revisit
Speaker 1: the whole episodes. But if you want to listen to
Speaker 1: those whole episodes, there's probably a good hour more on
Speaker 1: each of them if you want to check those out,
Speaker 1: so you can find those wherever you're listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast or else. Just you know, enjoy the little extra
Speaker 1: bits of Hittera that you've gotten today. Thank you all.
Speaker 1: As always, Let's Talk About Baby is written and produced
Speaker 1: by me Live Albert Mikaylas Smith is the assistant producer.
Speaker 1: Laura Smith is the audio engineer and production assistant and
Speaker 1: was so lovely as to put together these clips today.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Laura. The podcast is part of the
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Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. If you are looking for bonus content,
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Speaker 1: many years of putting together this Patreon. Find that at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash MIT's baby. Thank you all. You're
Speaker 1: just wonderful and lovely and real. People from the ancient
Speaker 1: world are just such an utter joy and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to bring you more of them. I am a
Speaker 1: live and I love this shit.