EN
IN CHAPTER
SIX
WOM RS LIE F
"Double Consciousness" ClassicalAttic Tombstones* in
JohnC. Yownger
Iur RoDUc r r oN In much recent scholarship on the lives of women in Athens of the Classical period (broaily,fifthand fourth cenruriesncr), there is a recurring insrstence that women were objects in a patriarchal system, the property of men, and the objects of male sexual desire and an all-encompassingmale gaze. Were women ever subjects? Could women feel their own personhood even within the confines of a patriarchal system? And if so, under what circumsrances? Lauren Petersen argues that "it was possible for a woman of ancient Greece to liberate herself from the oppression of patriarchal constructs by actively reading her subjectivity";I she cites several vasepaintings thar could serve to faclitate such feelings. Circumstances in which women could feel liberated "from the oopression of pariarchal constructs" could logically include occasions when and locations where women were physically beyond the reach of men. The home, once the men went to the agora (the marketplace) or the assembly, became a female homosocial environment; so did house rooftops during the Adonia and the Pnyx hill during the Thesmophoria (see Rabinowitz's essayin this volume).2 This study looks at another place that, on occasion, became primarily a woman's space, the Kerameikos cemetery located outside the fortification walls in northwest Athens; in that space,I concentrate on its sculpted tombstones (sttki:orfi\.aL) of the later Classicalperiod (fourth century ncr). Like all cemeteries, the Kerameikos was a heterotopia, a space other than that which humans usually inhabit,3 and its gardenlike appearance and calm contrasted greedy with the traffi.c that clustered at the entrance to the city at the Dipylon and Sacred Gates. For women, going to the Kerameikos cemetery to perform occasional funenry rites at the tombs of their relatives may have provided some relief from the everydaypressuresof a patriarchal wodd. I suggestthat in that space,women visirors could also be subjects,the active viewers of the deceased women depicted on the stelai.
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city, with the tombs linusually lay outside the classical Greek cemeteries on forand women vi'ittd the tombs it' Both ing the roads leading i"t" -"t' the Presefveof women' these afeaswefe more _"1 o.."riorrs, but otherwise provided formal mourning lay dying'yo:tt Women attended those who continfor burial, and women paid for rhe deceased*h;i.;;;.;;d In Athens the exittfo'In"l occasions thercaftet uous honot ao tht at"d o'i laws' but women remained limited by successive of cesses mourning were central to honoring the dead'a holding office (Arwas a Prerequisite for men Paying honors to the dead istotle,AthenaionPoliteia55'3;Xenophon'Memorabillaz'z'g)andforinheriting
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property ([Pseudo-Demosthenes] $57-58)t to hold office, men had to undergo a scrutiny (dokimasia), part of which demanded that they be able to identify their ancestral tombs; next-of-kin heirs had to bury the deceased.s There were formal occasions held annually when families performed commemorative rites at the tombs; the festival called Genesia (honoring the tribe took place on 5 Boedromion (mid September) and is the best known, lgenos)) perhaps becauseit preceded the state commemoration of the battle of Marathon (6 Boedromion, 49o ncn). But there were other celebrations of the dead, annual ones about which we know little except their names, traditional ones such as those that occurred on the ninth and thirtieth days after death, and personal ones that occurred at more informal times. on the formal occasions the entire farnrly paid honor to its ancestors, but it is clear from the scenes on vases, especially the fifth-century whiteground oil flasks (le$thoi) that were often left at the tombs and the fourthcentury red-figure vasesthat marked the tombs,6 that women by themselves often paid other and more casual visits, much as we see them doing in the modern cemeteriesin Greece today. In these vase paintings, we see them bringing appropriate objects to the romb, trays with fillets and lekyrhoi, special cakes, and other gifts for remembering loved ones; they would pour libations, leave gifts and bloodless offerings, and tie the fillets around the tombstone, perhaps as a gesture of remembrance and closure. T ns CpM r r s n y 7
outside the fortification wall, three roads converge at the Dipylon and sacred Gates in northwest Athens: from the harbor at Piraeus a road (now called Griberstrasse) joins the Sacred Way from Eleusis to follow the left bank of the Eridanos stream inro the city through the Sacred Gate; east of the Eridanos, the wide road from the Academy enters the city through the Dipylon Gate. At the convergence of these three roads stretches the Kerameikos cemetery alongside and between them for some disrance. Public monuments line the Academy road; here, several monumental tombs have been excavated, such as the mass tomb of the Lacedaemonian officers and Athenian polemarchs (4q ncn; Xenophon, Helbnica2.4.28 -31). Farther our must have been more tombs of the honored dead buried at public expense, the Demosion Sema, where Pausaniassaw the stele of Pericles *ho g"ue th" famous funeral oration there (Thucydides z.l4-46; Pausanias rzy).The extraordinary width of the Academy road (more than 35 m in front of the Dipylon Gate) would have accommodated the funeral games that accompanied these state occasions.8
Women in Relief
rzr
Most of the private cemeteryplots flank PiraeusStreet and the Sacred of Way,filling the triangular areabetweenthem. At the conYergence the two roadswasih" Trirop"rreion (plot r4), probably a heroon; acrossthe Sacred way to the south is a sanctuaryto an unknown divinity (plot zo); and farther up the hill to the west is a sanctuaryto Hekate (plot 3z). Aside from containshundreds,if not thousandsof burithe ,,rch ,acr.d afeas, cemetery simple inhumations, als.Most of the tombs consistofunmarked sarcophagi, layersin the earth, grouped in plots some cremations,all shcked in several tended by families,and marked by the tomb stelai. period Women visitors to the Kerameikoscemeteryin the later Classical it through one of the two gates,and, unlessthey were would have entered to pay honors to an illustrious family member buried in one of the public monuments along the Academy road, they would have turned toward the private plots along the SacredWay and PiraeusStreet. Although in use from the twelfth cenrury BcE to rhe early Roman period, the cemeterysaw its principal usefrom the mid fifth century into the third century (early Hellenistic period). In 338BCE'after Athens' defeatat tomb markefsand building the battle of Chaironeia,many of the cemetery's blocks werehastily removedto repair the city walls. After a sumPtuarylaw rn y7fy6 under Demetrios of Phaleron,tomb markers becamedrastically simplified; no longer the ornately sculptedstelai of the earlier period, large rectangularblocks or short columns bore only the name of the deceased (cogrro-e.r), father'sname (patronymic), and the community from which they came(demotic). tomb markersvaried in shape,but in th" late fifth and fourth centuries, many of all types were inscribed.Somemarkerstook the shapein marble of the leklthoi whose oi1 was poured in honor of the dead and the taller loutrophoroi, which often marked the tombs of the unmarried; many of these of however,consisted simple, Most markers, relief sculpture. alsoreceived with relief sculpupright slabsoften (though by no meansalways)decorated ture. There afe two major types of sculpted stelai, the tall pediment stele whose areaabove the relief takes the form of a rcmPle pediment and the (little temple or shrine) stelethat looks like a temple shorter,squafef nakkos with flanking jambs enclosingthe relief with pediment above.The fagade deeperthe relief and broader the stele,the more peopleit can accommodate anJ the later it usually is dated; in the latest naiskosstelai,the relief can be jambs and crownedwith a seParate slab insertedbetweenseParate a separate pediment. The excavatedarcaof the Kerameikos contains at least 35 identifiable
farnilr- plots, each containirg numerous bunals but onlv a felv tomb srelai: christoph clairmont's massiveupdate of conze cataloguesrz5 classical stelai thatlan be assignedto the Kerameikos cemetery, and, of these,54 can be attributed to the family plots they once marked. Several inscribed tomb markefs identify the specific members of the farnily, and from these it is sometimesporribl. to reconstruct an extendedfamily tree.eObvious ageand allow for similar reconstructionsof gesex differencesin the relief scenes neric family groups.Io In many ."r.., th. people depicted on the stelai seem to correspond to the names inscribed, and in these instances we can assumethat, at least when I a stele was first set up, it marked the gfaves of the people named on it.I Many other stelai, however, were reused; some wefe put into new bases,and others were reinscribed with new names.I2 We can imagine that modifications to a family's plot and the later burial of additional family members might have warranted such feuse; mofe drastically, some stelai might even have been taken from one plot to mark another, especially in the late fourth century, afterthe disturbances to the cemetery in 338,or perhaps when a family had died out or moved away and there was no longer any male relative to maintain the plot. It is therefore often impossible to tell whether the people named (in either the original or latel inscriptions) wefe related to each other,I3 if the names inscribed had any relation to the people depicted in the reliefs,Ia or if the names inscribed and the people depicted were even related buried in the plot itself.Is Our women visitors coming to a to the deceased fanlly plot to honor their ancestral dead may have had to regard-the marka "willing suspensionof disbelief": it is possible that such a visitor, "rrrvirh when pouring her libations and setting her offerings, had in mind deceased relatives and friends who were not the Persons inscribed on the stelai or engraved in the scenesor even buried below.I6 Though the connection between the inscribed names, the sculpted figures, andthe deceasedmight not always have been straightforward, we may nonethelessassumethat our women visitors saw some sort of generic relationship operating between names and figures on the stelai and the people on whom rh" ."-. to honor. Though some of the scenes the stelai were specially commissioned, most afe conventional, with severalversions appearing stelai, and these must have been carved in a t;'pe of mass proo.r iiff.r.n, duction ready to be bought, inscribed, and set up.17 Most of these scenes depict p"opl" singly or in groups of two or thfee, occasionally fout, mely It i, tbviou, that these people correspond to social realities and were -or".
Women in Relief
r73
meant to be seen as comprising ideal families, often accompanied by their servants. The inscriptions and the apparent agesof the individuals can therefore be helpful in identifyingthe pants in some of these scenes.I8 F{ere are two examples from the Kerameikos, one straightforward, the other surprising: stele Kerameikos MG 4, I 4y, depicts a standing woman clasping hands with a seated man and gives their names, Theopropis and Simonides; because she appears much younger than he, they are presumably wife and husband rather than sister and brother.re Stele Kerameikos P 595, I zzr, depicts a woman holding an infant, as if mother and child, but the inscription tel1sus that the woman Ampharet6 is the grandmother, and all females, child, mother, and grandmother, are now deceased.2o I give these examples and the various factors at work in the Kerameikos of the later Classicalperiod, because, trying to imagine the inreraction bein tween our women visitors and the monuments, we need to keep in mind that almost every apparertt"fact" about the stelai could have been a fiction. We can hypothesize that stelai were set up soon after the burial of the primary deceasedwhom they commemorated. At that time, the figures engraved in the reliefs probably portrayed ideahzed social families; inscriptions would be necessary specify special relationshipr (..g., mother and child) but nor to necessarily specific families (e.g., grandmother and granddaughter). Additional names could be added later, but these might not correspond to the figures sculpted in the reliefs. A family may die out or move, or a family plot might change hands, and stelai could then be appropriated to mark the tombs of other people. Such discrepanciesand alterations might thus have freed our women visitors to the cemetery from the necessity of interpreting the conventional figures in the reliefs as specific individuals, allowing them therefore to be able to gaze upon them with the freedom to construct their own narfativesand interpretations. Wo M s N oN T H E T o u rs ro N s s idealized relationships among the partici-
What is indisputable about the stelai, however, is the preponderance of women in the inscriptions and in the figured scenes.Tombstones from Athens depict and mention the cognomina of more women than men;2l and when women and men are depicted together, it is common for the woman to be named but the man not.22 More specifically, of the rz5 catalogued stelai from the Kerameikos,inscriptions record at least 8o female cognomina and at least 66 male cognomina.23Of the freeborn people depicted in the
r74
A u o N G ' W o M EN
reliefs (servants not being counted), there are 5 infants, r child, rrr males, and r3r females, with roughly t-wice the number of females than males in the range of young adult to adult.za Depictions of women also seem more personalized. Men on the tombstones possessa number of attributes that identify them as soldiers, hunters, citrzens, athletes, and devoted sons.2sWomen, too, are depicted and named in the conventional famrly roles of wife, mother, sister, and daughter, but they arc also depicted in other roles such as priestess, dancer, midwife, and physician.26 The tomb markers were presumably set up to commemorate the death of 27 a specific individual, conventionally termed th e " prirnary deceased." When the stele depicts a seated and a standing figure, Clairmonr usually identifies the standing figure as the primary deceased,taking leave of the one who is remaining. This seems sensible, but other indications may elicit a dtfferent identification. Among the well-preserved Artic stelai depicting only two adult persons (Clairmont nos. 2.o5r- 2.+99) I briefly surveyed those that name just one of the figures, assuming that the named person was the primary deceased.There are 8z examples of such stelai: 6r women and zr men are named. Of the scenes where it was clear to which of the two sculoted figures the name applied, there was a slight preference for seated figr.r.i, to be named (42 seatedto 34 standing) but a marked preference for figures on the left to be named (4g aileftto z7 atight).In the reliefs, therefore, women on the left, especiallywhen seated,stand a good chanceof being the prrmary deceased;at the end of this study we shall return ro this preference. The most conunon composition involves two figures on stelai, one seated, the other standing, often clasping hands (dexi6sk:6e{ioots).28Men can have masculine attributes such as staff, shield, or hunting hound (to connote citizen, warrior, or hunter), while women have a box, a wool basket (kaktho), or a child (fig.60,6.4)." When a man and woman are depicted together, they may be husband and wife or brother and sister;inscriptions sometimes state these relationships, and noticeable age differences or similarities (respectively) may imply them. In other instances, two men clasp hands, and occasionally inscriptions specify father and son or perhaps brothers.3o While the majority of two-figure stelai depict a man and a woman, of the ones that depict same-sex pairs, more stelai depict both women than both men.3t Sometimes the familial relationship between these women is clear: inscriptions may specify it, or obviou, diff.r.nces may imply mothers "g. and daughters.3zIn three reliefs, the second woman assiststhe other who is
woman,in front of for 5.3. Stele seated and holds a womanstands whom a second Archaeological box. Athens,National no. Museum726; Clairmont 2.300. Photograph: Author.
for 6.4.Stele womanwho diedin and looks womanstands childbirth; woman woman; between, at seated (servant?) holdsinfani; in backof Nawoman.Athens, chair, another 819; Archaeological Museum tional no. Clairmont 4.930.Photograph: Author.
ry 6
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WoUEN
dying; for convenience, Clairmont prefers to identify this second woman as the deceased's mother, but without an inscription that specifiesher role, she equally well could be a midwife, if the woman died in childbirth, or some other professional, friend, or relative assisting.33 however, the relationship beIn the majority of thesetu/o-women scenes, tween them is unclear, even if, for convenience, one may prefer to identify the women as related or as close friends.3a As is common, almost all the scenesinvolving only two women have one standing and one seated, and they may or may not clasp hands. In the following section, I concentrate on two aspectsof these stelai depicting two women: whether they clasp hands or not, and whether they are named or not (assuming that naming the figures indicates they belong to the famiLy whose plot the stele marked and that clasping hands indicates that the two figures are related). To anticipate my conclusions: when both women are named, they almost invariably clasp hands and are probably therefore close family members. But when neither woman or only one woman is named, the standing woman usually contemplates the seatedwoman, and they do not clasp hands; I suggest that these two women are not close family members.3s Of the stelai that depict the two women clasping hands, only six do not name either figure (fig. 6.5): four scenesdepict one woman standing and one sitting, thereby indicating a domestic location but otherwise no specific relationship between them;36 the fifth, however, includes a small household dog, akin to the modern Spitz, that leaps upon the figure at the right, ptobthe sixth stele includes a maid who ably to indicate the primary deceased;37 holds a baby.38Of the ten stelai that depict the two women touching, five name just one of them: four depict them clasping hands,3eand the fifth depicts an embrace (see below).ao When both women are named, however' they almost invariably clasp hands,al whether they both standa2 or, as is otherwise the rule, one stands and one sits. Most of these scenesare simple with no object to convey the social construction of either woman;43 occasionally, however, one of the women holds something to indicate a social role: the standing woman holds abox,44 the sitting woman holds a kithara(a type of lyre) ,as a mai'd holds a child.a6 The rest of the stelai, both those naming neither woman and those naming only one woman, depictno handclasping;instead,one woman stands and regards the second woman seated. For instance, a standing woman regards the seated "Arkhestrate daughter of Alexos from Sounion" fingering her veil.a7 On two stelai, the standing woman holds or offers a baby to a seated
Women in Relief
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for 6.5.Stele seated woman whoclasps hands second with woman stands looks her; back chair, Athens, who and at in girl. of Archaeological National Museum Clairmont 870; 3.461 Photo. graph: Author. woman.48But most commonly (sevenstelai), a young unnamed woman holds a box and regards the seatedwoman, who is named (the primary deceased): "Ameinokleia daughter ofAndromenes from Lamptraia" with her sandalbeing adjusted by arnaid;ae "Pausimakhe" opening a box;s0 "Kalliarista daughter of Phileratos wife of Damokles" touching her mantle;sI "Arkhesrrare" taking a fillet from the box and regarding her daughter, who leans against her knees holding a btd;s2 "Kallistomakhe daughter of Thorykon from Trikorinthos" receiving a large braceleq and "Glykylla" removing (or perhaps putting on) a bracelet.s3 Even when the stele is reused, the seated figure is the one named (and thus the primary deceased even in the period of reuse); for insrance,seated
178
AIraoNc
W o ur N
"Niki]ppe daughterof Nikippos" holds somewool (a kalathosstandsbeneathher chair) while a young woman,againstwhosethigh a nude boy leans, standsand regardsher.sa The gesture clasping of hands(dexiosis) received has much scholarly discussion.ss joins two peoplephysically and in harmony; it wasusedin life It both upon meeting and upon parting, and for closing the agreementbetween father and prospectivegroom for the daughter's hand in marriage.As a gesturein funeraryart, it thereforesignifiedthat the deceased survivor and were closelyjoined both before and after death: "The two parties together make up a whole, the family, which the intervention of death has failed to
sundef." 56 Most of the relationships depicted on stelai showing two people were probably considered rcal yet conventional; having them of different sexes, naming both, and having them clasp hands was probably the surest way to imply a close family relationship (a loving husband and wife, for instance). Omitting any of these criteria throws that relationship in doubt; omitting all (having the two figures both women, naming neither woman or jusr one of them, and omitting the handclasp) must be seen therefore as deliberately implying that the two women were not close family members. That this relationship was depicted on so many stelai as to be conventional ought to imply that it was socially real, if not socially legitimated. I suggest,therefore, that these two women, not clasping hands, at most only one who is named, represent women who were "close friends," one woman regarding her deceasedfriend. Tns HoM E AND ToMs
Who is this unnamed woman, the secondary deceased, she is not a close if relative? She usually stands to regard the named other woman who is most often seated-they should at least therefore be friends. Since the small range of attributes, the box, a kalathos and ball of wool, an infant or child, the small dog, and the omnipresent chair are all emblems of the home (oiftosr oircog),s7 take the secondary nonrelative woman to represent all members I of the primary deceased'scircle of intimate friends. It is of course an ideal home, one envisioned on the stelai as an encapsulation of the one envisioned by proper society. In vasepaintings, we seethe same home environments where women of the household, women relatives, and women friends gathered. We see them lounging against each other, bathing, dressing one another, arranging each other's hair; producing cloth
Women in Relief
r79
and washing clothes; playing lyres and auloi (a musical instrument like a double clarinet) for one another;and looking after their children and their were ptobably the realm of women Such domestic spaces women servants. and fathersleft for the agora,and it is thesehomosocial oncetheir husbands spaces thosetimesthat may havebeencalledthe "gynaikonitis"(yuuatrcr,lat I ilrts) or "women'squartets."ss prefer to think of the gynaikonitisasthe spaceand the women in it, a type of "woman'sworld." for The well-known terracotta kneeguard(epinetron) working wool, the namepiece the Eretria Painter (late fifth century),may serveto illustrate of depictwomenpreparing this "woman's wodd" (fig. e.e).Its two main scenes the Harmonia,the other,the heroineAlkestis.se brides,one labeled goddess On the back end, the end at the thigh, there is a band decoratedwith palmettes.On the front, knee end,the utensil hasan applied woman'sheadand seizingThetis in front of her father Nereus a painted band depicting Peleus Altis, Melite, Eulimene,Aura, and Nao. A frieze runs along and five sisters, eachside that huggedthe thigh, and eachdepictsthe mythological sceneof On women preparinga bride for marriage. sideA, we seedivinities,left to jewelry,Eros holds a right in front of a column a seatedAphrodite selects chest,Peitho and Kore fank a seatedHarmonia (Aphrodite's daughter,the her wingedmaleHimeros (Debride),andHebe adjusts hair beforea seated sire), who holds a chestof cloth and offers her a small jat probably of perleft fumed oil (fig. 6.7); andon sideB, we seeheroines, to righr Theo bends Kharis standsfacing gamikoi), over two black-figurebasinson stands(bbxes in branches a loutrophoros asif it her and lifts her mantle,Theano arranges Asteropeleanson a seatedHippolyte talking to her pet rverea fower vase, bird perched on her left hand, and inside a columned porch Alkestis (the bride) leansagainsta bed in front of an open door (a room is visiblebeyond), and on the wall hang two wreathsand a mirror (fig. e.A). The domesticenvironmentson the Eretria Painter'sepinetron shareseveral interestingpoints with the stelai;here too 'u/efind the box and chest, jewelry,the pet, and the gestureof lifting the mande.This gestureis akin to that the formal unveiling (anakafupsi) the bride doesin front of her new husmore band.60 on the epinetron and on the tomb stelai,the gestureseems But casual.6lClairmont notes that women normally drew the cloak (bimation) modestly,and fingeringor touching it was over the headto coverthemselves simply giving "the inactive hand . . . some activity," especially"in the conThe gesturemay of text of the togetherness the living with the deceased." have indeed been absent-minded,but most stelai depict the gestureas if
Museum Archaeological Painter. Athens,National 5.5. Red-figure epinetron the Eretria by Museum.CourArchaeological from the Athens,National 1629.Photograph from negative lnstitut,Athen. tesyDeutsches Archdologisches
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Museum 1629. Archaeological National Painter. Athens, 6.8.Red-figure epinetron the Eretria by Drawingafter Hartwig,"'Enivlrpou { of SideB: preparations the marriage Alkestis. for ' E perp ioe ," 1 0.2 . pl.
Women in Relief
r8r
frozenhalfivay betweenveiling and unveiling,asif ambivarent; viewerscourd thereforeinterpretit according their own inclination: to eitherunveilingor about to veil the face,welcoming or refusing the spectator's attention.62 Even more striking is the Eretria painte* depiction of Alkestis reaning her bed' presumablythe marriagebed that she addresses in Euripi1g"1"r., llrr, Alkutk Q77-fi2); sinceAlkestis'deathheroizes her, her marriage .d.rbed is much like the couch rhar women in the stelailean againstor lie on havingdied in childbirth (seeabove, and n33). Perhapsmarrying, giving birth, and dying werecloselylinked;63 the tomb stelai often show deceased women ani their infants, arrd the insc'ptions mention their death.slon_ after marriage. For the daughterof Ampharete (1bou1,and nzo) and for Myrtis (above, and, ryz), giuiig birth brought on their death. addition,on a damaged In stere readho- i"-phire died early we into her marriageand apparentlybefore giving birth:
Marriage gave her once a home in which pamphile was eager to dwell most blessedly; she left behind her life now finished before rwenry and the marriage home of her youth dred with her.6a From such examples and from the rarge number of women named and . depicted on the tomb stelai, marriage, giu-g birth, and death seem ro have
been recurrentsequence. ."-.t.ry Th. h"u. beenan extension the of 1 gynaikonitis:both were women'sspaces,-"y the gynaikonitis with being the ro.::. yh.i. women supported women through the-dangers of marriageand childbirth, and rhe cemerery being the locus where."orri"., tendedthe tombs of thosewho had succumbed. Sincethesemarriages and childbirths aresub_ jects that focus on women's sexuarity, womb, g.tritar., the homosocial "rrd envlfonmentsof both gynaikonitis and cemetery may alsohavebeenthe roci for homoeroticfeelings. HovosocrAL eNo HoMoERorrc Srsr^a.r
what might a woman think and feerwhen shepaid honors to the deadand looked upon the \'vomen the sterai? we tuin to the in If accompanylng inscriptions, many seemtoo repetitive to be helpful, often emploiirrg ,.".r_ d.ardized vocabularythat.restrictsempathy:a woman'sq,raht;". are " usuaily limited to the formulaic "virruou, ,.rr."ined (or (agathi kai ".rd s6phr6n: dyo.i; rcoi orirsporu), femarecounrerparr -od"r"t")" the to the "good.and upright man" (kalns k'agathos; xo).ds rc'<iyo06s); worth i, .oriu"y.d by ti. her sorrow (penthos, nuOoe) leaves she behind and the tonging/desire (pothos:
r82
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n60os) her family feels at her loss. The inscriptions also sketch out conventional narratives: death cut short her marriage; now dead, she cannot enjoy the child she bore; the eath envelops her body but her memory lives on. One remarkable stele, however, should caution us against dismissing these conventional narratives, qualities, and emotions, A painted stele once depicted two women, probably standing and facing each other and therefore not clasping hands and therefore probably not close fr-tly members; both their names, however, are inscribed, "Herophile" and "Anthemis." The accompanying elegiac couplet is remarkable for its content, sentiment, and graceful meter: Her companionscrown this tomb of Anthemis with a wreath in their remembranceof her virtue and friendship.6s In few words this sincere memorial assuresus that women, like Anthemis' companions, did tend the tombs of their friends with genuine care; the memorial also allows us to assume that Herophile was indeed one of Anthemis' companions, the secondary woman, and therefore a member of her g;znaikonitis. We therefore need to pay more attention to rhe reliefs and the epigrams of stelai than their conventional words and scenes might otherwise elicit: A young woman stands holding an open box, from which the young seated Arkhestrate takes out a fillet while she looks at a small girl holding a bird: The eath has coveredover the virtuous and restrained Arkhesffate most desiredby her husband.66 Khrysanthe stands, clasping hands with a seated elderly man: The earth has her body within but your moderarion, Khrysanthe,that the tomb cannot hide.67 Pausimakhe stands somewhat limply, holding a mirror (fig. 6.9): All who live are fated to die, but you Pausimakhe leavebehind bitter sorrow for your grandparents and your mother Phainippe and father Pausanias; those standing here seethis memorial of your vrrtue and moderation.68
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As seated Melite clasps handswith her belovedonesimos,he add.resses her in theinscriptionand twicepraises asworthy (khr6st:yprlorrj)_she her was probably a slave;in the last line shereplies: -Haill tomb of Melite, a worthy womanlieshere; You constantly returned loveOnesimos for voul the had
how he missesyou now dead,for you were a worthf woman, -And haill beloved of men, do take careof my loved ones.l6e ,.Dionysia,,,a Andone ftagmentary stele preserves only the head of woman past her prime, and an idealizinginscription: Neither clothing nor gold did she enjoy in life but she loved her husband and self-resrrainr; insteadof your yourhful beauty,Dionysia, your husband Antiphilos adorns your tomb.To The conventional persons depicted in the reliefs and the conventional narratives conveyed in the inscriptions do not have to limit the women viewerc/readers of them from interpreting them as they wish. seyeral stelai appeal to their imagination and address them directly, inviting rhem ro contribute to rhe construcrion of a_ conrinuing narrative. Th" st.]" of Khrysant]re, fo1 instance, implies that the specrar; can envision her "moderation,,; .,virtue the stele of Pausimakhe asks the spectator to imagine her and moderation"; the stele of Melite invites the spectator to wonder if her ,,loved ones" are indeed being taken care of, th" stele of Dionysia demands that "rrd the spectator observe if her tomb is indeed being adorn.d. S,r.h appealsinvolve us in the process of continuing these women,s lives. Pe u sr uer Hr ' s MTRRoR
The stelai employ several other devices thar cause the spectator to identify with the women in the reliefs. The most obvious is pausimakhet mirror. Several stelai depict women holding mirrors. crairmont lists twenty-four, selelal are fragmentary and,rrr.l""r, and three depict the woman (all fu1 facing left) not looking into the mirror she hords.Tr rie other rwenry-one women, however, do look into their mirror; most stand to the right, hord the mirror up, and look directly inro it. one even has a dower hole in her upraised hand; a real mirror may have been inserted there. since an interest in_depicting reflections in mirrors begins to develop contemporaneously in other fourth-cenrury media, including South Italian vasesand mural paint-
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6.9.Stele Pausimakhe. for National Athens, Archaeological Museum3964; Clairmont no. 1.283.Photograph from negative, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, @ photographer R. Coette.Courtesy H. Deutsches Archdologisches Institut, Athen.
ing, it is possibie that Pausimakhe'smirror had her reflection painted on it for us to gaze aL72Since she holds the mirror up so that we see its almost full disk, the reflection we would see, or imagine, there would have been ours as well as hers; Pausimakhe, then, is our alter ego.73The meffiento mori in her inscription, "A11who live are fated to die," reminds us all of the passing of time and the nearnessof death; the reflection, therefore, is also that of our immanent soul.Ta A full study of ancient mirrors is beyond the scope of this paper, but a few additional comments are appropriate.Ts One of the pnmary purposes of mirrors is to allow us to seeourselves as we appear physically to others; thus we use them to perfect our appearanceand to check our health. The image that mirrors convey, however, is an illusion that occupies no real space in this world (therefore an "outopia" [or "utopia"]).76 This illusion would have
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been more obvious in antiquity, since ancient mirrors were of polished metal, usually bronze, and the refection they gave back was dark. Within the heterotopia of the cemetery, the sculpted figure of Pausimakhe gazesat her reflection in the mirror; and as a real woman spectator envisioned that dark reflection (a stand-in for her own), the two \vomen would have triangulated that refection, locating it at the juncture of their two wor1ds.77As the two women, the lifeless Pausimakhe in her outopia and the living woman in the heterotopia of the cemetery, both gaze upon the mirror, like a hinge it folds the one onto the other and melds them. A Rr ns s r nA T E ' s F R rp N o
Although several stelai depict women holding mirrors precisely as Pausimakhe does, many other stelai use another device for triangulating the spectator into the scene:the secondary woman who gazesat the primary deceased, at whom all spectators of the stele also gaze. The stele of Arkhestrate, for instance (above, and nn5z and 66), depicts a young woman holding a box and gazing at Arkhestrate as she removes a fillet and, in turn, gazes at her daughter, who leans against her knees and holds a bird. Arkhestrate, the primary deceased,thus functions like Pausimakhe's mirror, to triangulate the spectator to the secondary woman and meld them. Whereas the mirror causesthe deceased and the spectator to be paired, the parallel gazesofthe secondary woman and of the spectator demand that they also be paired.78 When the spectator thus assumesthe role of the secondary woman, in gazing and refecting upon the primary deceased,she is also being asked to imagine and feel the emotions that were felt by the women whom the secondary woman represents. If our woman spectator gazesat the young woman, who in tutn gazeset Arkhestrate, who in turn gazesat her daughter who gazesback, there is ample opportunity for her to imagine a narrative of love, Ioss,grief, and yearning, and for her to appropriate for herself, along the circle of gazes, the desire chat Arkhestrate's husband felt at her passing. Our woman spectator thus builds on her perception of the relief and epigram and on her identification with the young woman holding the box to create her own metaresponse: to imagine what her own relationship to Arkhestrate would have been and to regenerate the desire that had once been felt for her.7e Through such devices as the mirror and the secondary woman, our woman visitor learned to identify herself as a member of the primary deceased'scircle of friends and to read herself actively into the construction of a narrative that concerns her and her relationship with another woman,8o
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the primary deceased. should be ableto place herselfintimately in that She relationship,to gazeupon the pirrr'erywoman with feelings,yearnings,and regrets similar to thosedepictedin the relief and specified the epigrams, in even to the point of imagining the woman'slife cut short, her virtue and moderation, and eventhe desirefelt for her.8l
Grnr-FRTEND S oN Sr elnr
Several stelai lead us more specifically toward this last possibility, that of homoerotic feelings being depicted in the stelai or generatedby their depictions.82 I start with three deep naiskos stelai dated to the mid fourth century; while there is nothing Jirtinctly homoerotic about them, several aspects seem unusual: the stelai form a coherent stylistic group, only pairs of women are depicted and named on them, and no farnrly relationship is specified (they are not mothers and daughters,sisters,or cousins).In other words, there is no mention or indication of any of the usual, socially legitimated relationships between these women. Each of the three stelai depicts one woman standing on the left with her left hand raised in a speaking gesture, and the other woman seated on the right. One stele, provenience unknown, names its two women "Hedeia daughter of Lysikles from Athmonon" and "Phanylla daughter of Aristoleides from Athmonon"; for convenience, Clairmont identifies them as cousins, but they may simply be friends from the same conununity.S3 Two similar stelai, both from plot zo in the Kerameikos, both name rhe women "Demetria" and "Pamphile" (fig. 6.ro) and the original architrave to one of these two stelai carries additional names secondarily inscribed, "Kallistomakhe daughter of Diokles" and "Nausion daughter of Sosandros."84The three stelai are so similar, stylistically and compositionally, that they should all come from the same workshop, possibly destined for the same clientele or the same cemetery plot (if so, Kerameikos plot zo). From the inscriptions, it is clear that these women, Hedeia, Phanylla, Demetria, Pamphile, Kallistomakhe, and Nausion, are not sis[ers.Since all their cognomina are different, they probably are not first cousins.ssIt seems unlikely that all six women would have been second cousins commemorated two of them even twice. If these six women did not belong to a nuclear family, one wonders what their relationship was. Whoever they were, they were importanti perhaps they had formed some kind of an associationor had been in businesstogether, or perhaps they were just very close friends whom not even death could separate. by stelai from a single workshop-and
women
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from and for Cast thestele Demetria Pamphile, of 5.1O. plot inv. Kerameikos 20.Kerameikos no.unknown; Author. no. Clairmont 2.464'Photograph: Two stelai depict one woman embracing the other. on one (see above, and n4o), a young woman embracesand touches the chin of a maiden, and the inscription above names one of them, "Mynnion daughter of Khairestfatos from Hagnous." Since the gesture is directed at the maiden, she is probably Mynnion, but there is not enough of an age difference between lh.- to identify the young woman as her mother; it is more likely that she is another relative or a slightly older close friend. The second stele is unusual:86a woman embracesand touches the breast of a girl. Clairmont identifies the girl as about ten years old, and the woman as a nurse by her "garment and possibly also her physiognomy"; at the left stands a smaller girl. The top frame of the stele bears an inscription ovef the woman, "Soteris," and letters of a name, now illegible, over the girl. A1though the gesrure is unusual, a contemporary Apulian winejar depicts a similar scenewith two adult women.87 The girl may not be so young as ten, but she is certainly no older than twenty. If Soteris wefe a nurse, she would probably have been named as such (tittht: rft07 seeabove, nz6); her "physi-
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ognomy" does seem crude, but that need not imply a difference in class or status.Given thesepeculiarities, it is possible that the stele does depict something unusual. Even more interesting is the scene on a half-preserved, early fifth-century relief from Phalanna, Thessaly: two women stand and face each other; the woman at the left lifts uo the left shoulder of her chiton and holds out a ball, probably of wool, in her right hand; the woman at the right touches the left edge of her chiton's shoulder and reachesout as if to take the ba11.88 The two gestures answer each other and seem purposeful ruthet than casual, as if gestures in greeting or in mutual understanding. The same gesture, also in connection with wool working, occurs in the tondo of a kylix by Douris (see Rabinowitz's essayin this volume, fig. l.t).tn The ball of wool that is being offered may function as a gift; and since it connotes weaving and therefore invokes that homosocial work environment, the ball of wool as a gift may have been a love gift. The gestureoflifting the shoulder of onet chiton while a ball of wool is offered may convey the women's good intentions, willingness,receptivity, or even desire.eo Another ball of wool occurs on Nikippe's stele from Skala Oropou mentioned above (n54), and a kalathos under her chair completes the reference to the industriousnessof the deceased.el But Clairmont and others have also pointed out that the pose of Nikippe's right arm, raised high against the back of her chair, is reminiscent of the pose of Alkamenes' "Aphrodite of the Gardens" and this may lend some support for an erotic connotation for the ball of wool. Finally, another early fifth-century, half-preserved relief from Pharsalus, Thessaly, shows a similar scene(fig. 6.r); it has been much discussed.e2 Two women face each other, and while the woman on the left stands, the woman on the right was probably seated;both women wear scarvesto bind their hair. The rvoman on the left holds up a flower in her left hand and, with her right, offers a leather bag(phormkkos: to S6ppLorcos) the woman on the right, who holds two flowers, one up in her raised right hand and another down in her lowered left hand. The iconography here seems homoerotic in three details, the flowers, the raised and lowered hands, and the phormiskos, but most scholars seem to have shied deliber ately away from such an interpretation. John Boardman (above, n9z) notes vaguely that "Thessaly will present novel compositions with women, presaged in [the Pharsalus relief] with its mysterious pair," as if such mysteries are appropriate to the outskirts of civllization. Brunilde Ridgway (above, n9z) assumesthe relief is a tombstone and describesit as
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6.11.Relief from Pharsalus, Thessaly. Louvre . photograph: 70,1 Author.
presenting a "moment of intimacy and companionship," but she dismisses the intimacy as somerhing servile: "The presenceof the companion [on the left] in the Pharsalus relief carries approximately the sarne emorionaf implication as the pet of other tombstones, or the small servantLtoy" attending athletes and youths. since the two women seem approximately equal in stature and status, Ridgway's charucterrzation is unfair. Both women assumea version of the "hands up and down gesture,',a gesture that is seen primarily, but not originally, in male homoerotic courting scenes.e3 The fowers may support this association.In many erotic scenes, people hold flowers, whether rhe scenetakes place in a brothel or whether it involves men courting youths.eaThe meaning of flower holding should imply a good disposition or warm feelings; in the hands of a person offering a flower, it may also demonstrate one's good intentions or even desire,es and in the hands of a person being made an offer, as with youths being courted and women prostitutes being approached by men, it may signify one'swillingness to accepr.e6 With thesepossibilities in mind, Gundel KochHarnack found it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the two w.men on
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the Pharsalus relief are lovers: the woman on the right is older (she has a fuller bosom and heavier jaw), and "she tilts her head so as to look lovingly into the eyesof her partner."eT Though the contents of the leather bag are open to discussion,it is generally assumed that such bags contained either coins or knuckleb ones (astragaloi:d.otpdyo).oL). In a couple of vase paintings, people in a shop hold a phormiskos, apparently purchasing something with the coins in the bag.e8 The majority of sceneswith phormiskoi, however, depict men and youths the offering or showing them to women or youths; and in these cases, phormiskoi should either contain coins for sexeeor astragaloi as a love gift.Ioo A relief from Aigina, but undoubtedly of Attic workmanship, also features two women and a phormiskos: a seated young \ /oman clasps hands with a standing woman, who draws her veil back with a dramatic gesture.Iol The seatedwomant left hand tighrly holds the phormiskos slightly above her lap and just below the handclasp. Both Athena Kalogeropoulou, who first published the stele,and Clairmont assumethat the bag'scontents are astragaloi. Kalogeropoulou comments (above, nroo) that astragaloi are found by the hundreds in tombs, attesting their use in foretelling the future and the role in mediating between this world and the next. She also comdeceased's ments on the apparent similarity of the two young women's ages,which leads Clairmont to identify them as "intimate girl friends." Since astragaloi are common as tomb offerings,Io2it is possible they are the contents of the bags on the Pharsalusand Aigina reliefs; if so, they should be gifts from one woman to the other. If the Aigina relief is a tomb stele, its composition may conform to the standards outlined above: the seated to woman on the left is the primary deceased whom the standing secondary woman on the right has given the phormiskos with its astragaloi. The Pharsalus relief reversesthe conventional Attic position of the two women: the standing secondarywoman on the left gives her phormiskos of astragaloito the seated deceasedwoman on the right; their flowers symbolize the intimate friendship they had and their warm feelings for each other. " S P LI T T " " D o u B L Er" " Mu L T L P L E,"
A ND " S E LF " C o N s c ro u s N ES S Cemeteriesare indeed heterotopias, "other" places,where we think thoughts and feel emotions that are often different from those we have in "normal" places.In cemeterieswe feel the presenceof the dead, and we know we shall eventually join them in that "innumerable caravan" (W C.Bryant, "Thana-
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topsis"). with these feelings and knowledge, we construct a different sense of ourselves than that which we usually feel. The Kerameikos cemetery in the thssical period was no different. It constituted a heterotopia outside the city gates, one that in the later fourth century had also lost even an internal fixity-plots had changed hands, ste_ lai had been moved, and other people's .r"-", had been ..rgi"u"d over the sculpted figures. In such situations, our woman visitor, coming to the cemetery to honor specific individuals, might rcahze ar some l"vel th. futility of ,p..ifi.itv: i.r_ stead, she would have.to yry o,n her thoughts and emorio.r, irncuc.d by the conventional figures in the reliefs and the conventional sentiments in the epigrams. Both relief and epigram, however, contributed at least one asenda: to induce an identity of visitor and deceased.The sentiments in th"e eoi_ grams call for the woman visitor to imagine the deceasedi"di"id;jf:#;acter and qualities, to feel for her the emotions that her loved ones once felt for her, and finally to remember that she will join her. Through such a device as Pausimakhe,smirror, our woman spectator be_ comes one with Pausimakhe herseld and through the device oflh" r".o.rd_ ary woman' our woman spectator becomes fixed in a cycle of gazes. The primary deceasedon the stelai is her future serf, while th. r"co'dlry woman who regards her is her alter self, Her own serfthus regards the deceasedwhom her alter self also regards. The gaze comes ful circle] locking our woman visitor into a loop of gazesas tight as rhe two gazes inro pauJimakhet mirror. But these gazes arenot like the gaze that men turn on our woman visitor inside the city on theother side of the gates;there she is object and object alone. Instead, in tlris homosocial nexus of viewer and viewed, it is her own gaze that travels from her through the two women figures on the stelai and back, continuously shifting from her to secondary io-"r, to primary deceased,from her as subject to an object that is arso a subject to ob"rroth"r ject that is also a subject to anorher object that is again her, making all both gazer and gazedin a continuous loop or visionenabime.ro3 somewhere in that cycle of women viewing should be desire, the desire that begins and ends in the homosocial wodds of gynaikonitis and cemetery wh"r.".rrarriage, birth, and death demanded that women care for oth.. while livirig, furfill "".h each other's lives when surviving, and tend each other's tomb. And within that desire should be a homoerotic desire between women, a womant desire for a woman while alive and for the other woman on the other side of the gaze when she has passed on-and since visitor and deceasedare inextri-
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cable, she is finally left with a homoloerotic (of someone similar) desire for her own self.
N orss
*I am grateful to Nancy Sorkin Rabinowrtzfor the invitation to give a paper for the panel "Retrieving FernaleHomoeroticism" at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association,December 29,tg96,in New York City; eventuallythat paper turned into this very different one. I am also grateful to Paul Rehak and LawrenceRichardson Jr. for their help, suggestions and comments, and to my many students,especiallySuzanneFisher and Christina Ponig. The translations here are the authort own. "Divided Consciousness FemaleComparrionship:Reconstructr. Lauren Petersen, and p ing FemaleSubjectivity on Greek Yases,"Arrthusa (1997): )S-74, esp. ir. z768; and z. Aristophanes, I4tsistrata 382-lg6; Menander, Samia38_ 46;Plato, Phaedrus other soutces.The Adonia: Ronda R. Simrns, "Mourning ard Comrmrnity at the Athenian Adonia," Ckssial Journal93.2 (December-January ryg8): or-r4t, esp. rlz and n49; Jane Egypt(Cambridge: Camand Sotiej in Greek and Roman Rowlandson, Adonk Festival: Women de bridge UP, 1998);Nicole Weill, "Adoniazusai ou les femmessur le toit," Bulletin CorresponoJ The dance Hillenique (1956): 664-698; and John J. Winkler, TheConrtraints Desire: Anthro9o and in pologoJSex Gender AndentGrrrr (New York: Routledge, r99o) r88-zo9 ("The Laughcer of the Oppressed:Demeter and the Gardens of Adonis"). The Thesmophoria: N. J. Lowe, "Thesmophoria and Haloa: Mi'th, Physics and Mysteries," in Saued theFeminine Anand in dentCreue, S. Blundell and M. Williamson (New York Roudedge, 1998)149-186. ed. Arth; Utopias and Heterotopias," in R*hinking 3. Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces: tecture, N. Leach (London: Routledge, ryg7) 35o-156. ed. 4. For generalinformation about Athenian funeral rites, seeMargaret Alexiou, TheRit' Wa1oJ ual Lament Crnk Tradition in (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, ryz+); R. Garland, TheCreek Laments and Wtes: Womenl Death(Ithaca: Cornell UP, rq8S);Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous and C'ruk Literature (London: Routledge, r99z); S. C. Humphreys, TheFamill, Women Death' Comparative Studies. ed. (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, tssl) esp.Bz-88, 94-rr8; Eva C. znd oJ Phallus: in Athens (Berkeley:U. of California P, 1985) Keuls, TheReign the SexualPolitks Ancient (Ithaca: Cornell UB 149-r5zi Donna C. Kurcz and John Boardman, Cruk Burial Customs (New York Cambridge UP, 1987);Thomas H. ry7t)i Ian Morris, Burial andAnrient Societl and Roman Blzantine Nielsen et a1.,"Athenian Grave Monuments and Social CIass," Creek, 'W p Athenians (khaca: Cornell UP, ry77) 51Studies (r98g): 4tt- 4zo;H. Parke, FutivakoJthe 54; and H. Alan Shapiro, "The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art," American Journal oJArchaeolog (r99r): 629-656. Solont antisumptuary laws of 594 apparentlyincluded 95 restrictions against ostentatious funerals; sometime later, perhaps in the early democracy before the PersianWars, more restrictions were said to be added.The Solonian restrictions, and conduct ofwomen: asthey havecome down to us, areelaborateconcerningthe presence and lvomen could not laceratethemselves wail or lament anyone elsethan the deceased, or no lvomen under the ageof sixty could attend the funeral unlessclosely related to the deceased to first or perhapssecondcousins).The early democracyfurther restricted funer(up
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ary speeches rhose made onry by a pubric to maglstrate; compare pericles,funerar oration (Thucydides 2.t4- 46)' in which he refers to the traditio.r ofh"ui.,g r.,.h rp"".h". to the decorous silence of women. For a detaired ".rd accounr, seeHumphreys , FamiLl,women and 85-89 (incorporating the ancient sources,especialy pr,.,tar.h, 'so,kr, ?eat:r cicero, de bgibusz'64)' For an interpretative accounr,see Nicole Loraux, L,Invention ^nd Histoire d,Athines: de I'orakonJunibre la',,ti dassique." dans znd"ed.(paris: F,ditions t;;; ;il;'"r, ,nrr;passim, esp.39-G4. For a cautiousreassessment, seeIan Morris ,,,Law, Culture Ld F.r.r".rry A.t in Athens:6oo-3oo u.c.," Hephaktos t_tz (r992_r9y):35_5o. 5' The dokimasia could be conducted twice, upon being enroned into rhe tribe and upon being electedto office. Men were questioned th"i, th"i, "bo.rt tenanceof family cults and tombs, parents, ".r.".try "borr. and property, and about r.r'ti.rg rheir -"irr_ duties to the stare(military serviceand taxes): winkre r, constraints Desire oJ 45-7o(,,Laying down the Law: The oversight of Men's sexual Behavior in crassicarath.',.,,;'".i. 5a-5rr. 6' See,for exampre, the two mid-fifth-century white-grouna r"ty*,.;'ui trre Achilles ^. Painter, Nue 1963(ARV2 qg5.rzz; paralipomena2 4Z; B"^.'"y Addendaz Keks, RegnoJthe 3rz; Phallus ro5), and Ashmolean Museum_ra9e fig' .ar(aw. g98.t65; Beazrey Ad.dtndaz E1J.en 3r3; D. Reeder, ed.,pandora: y-,r., *.CksstcalGrucefprinceton: princeton Up, rqSfl 46_r4g); and.the fourth-cenrury Apurian hydria associat"a *iri-, rhe Ilioupersis p^;riirin the New York Metropolitan Museum 6.ryr.65(A.D. Trendan and A-l.r".ri", c;bG"r, 5 The RedoJ wred vases Apulia'vol' r foxford: Crarendon p, ry7g] zo5.rr4,pI. 65.2).etro"r"" Garland, Creek Wa1oJDeathrc4-rc5; and Elaine Fantham, H"1..," peet Foley, Natalie Bo).mel Kam_ B' Pomeroy, and H. A. Shapiro, eds.,women in thecrassicar f:ofI"h wodd:Image Text and (Oxford: Oxford IJp, ry94') s6_qz. 7' For a guidebook: Ursura Knigge, Der Kerameikos Athen. von F.i.ihrung durch Ausgrabungen und Geschichte (Athens: DeurschesArchlologisches Insritut Athen, rggg). 8. Loraux, Inyention d'Athines 45. 9' Alexander conze' Adorf Michaelis, Achineus postorakas,Emanuel Loewy, Arfred Bn-ichner,Paul Heinrich, August worters, and Robert von Schneider Die asttkchen , Grabre_ 'W LeJs vols. (Berlin: Sprmann, 3q-tgzz).See, for example,Clairmontt 4 reconstrucred for the family of Eubios, whose plot'was on the norrh side of piraeus Street in the ]1eage Kerameikos(Clairmont vol. rrr and Humphrey s, Fami\t,Women 336), andDeatho9, rr3,rrg for other lineages. ro' R. E' Leader' "In Death Nor Divided: Gender,Famiry, and state on classicarAthe_ nian Stelai"' American Archaeokgy (t997): 6g1-Gg9.For exampre, rct Joumar-oJ crairmont no. ;'11r (t"1, Nue 7ry) from Kerarrreik.r pi.r ,9 belonging to tvt"k".".,, 1 ]s 4; A..h"bio. of Lakiadai depicts (beginning with thi. descriptio", r a*Irir-" the srelai, ".rJ fro.""arrrg a"left to right as I face them) a seatedon r rtool .1"rpi'r,gh".,dr''ith y.-.1r ('-oth".") a standing young r4/oman ("daughter"), while an (,,father,,) berweenrhem con_ "id".ry -templates the "daughter," probably the primary deceased whom the stele was erected.. for rr' Harold R' Hastings, "on the Relation between Inscriptions and sculptured Represenrarions Attic 'rombstones," BurbtinoJ (Jniversitl,oJ on the wivonsin 4g5(rgrz):r_r6, esp.g, Proposesthat in most cases deceased depicted i'th" r"li"f.. 8". the is clairmont nos. 2.zro (vol. n "r"-pi", ry7-48; Nue 755),a pediment stele,possiblyfrom Kerameikos prot zr, shows a woman "Mika" and man ,,Dion" sanding and clasping hands;z.zr4(uo.t. rr ,5._
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tomb ro6,depictstwo women r5l; Kerameiko yz),a paintedrelief stelefrom Kerameikos sI "Eukoline" and "Timulla" claspinghands;and 2.383 (vol. rr 441- 442; Nr'ae9zo), an anthemion stele (stele witl floral top) from che Kerameikos, depicts an elderly man "Piaios" seatedon a throne, clasping hands with a beardless young man "Diphilos." rz. Kurtz and Boardman, Greek BwrialCustorns -37. For example,Clairmont no. 2.44r ry6 (vol.t 562-563;NMl 764), a deep naiskos stele,depicts a standing young woman holding an opened box and facing an older woman seated;the top fiame carries a fragmentary inscription dated to the fourth century, (lciro), probably a womant name; and the pediment carriesthird-century inscriptions, "Demostrate daughter of Aiscron Halai," from "Mikion son of Mantodoros from Anagyrous," and "Ameinikhe daughter of Mikon from Thria." 13. Plot 56acrossthe Eridanos from the titopatreion contained two markers,a marble lekythos and a stele.The marble lekythos, Clairmont r'o. 2.7s5(vol.t 67167z4; Kerameikos P 1388), depicts an elderly man seatedon a chair, claspinghands with a standing youth (a nude servantboy standsat right), and it carriestheir names,"Kleomedes" and "Amoibikhos," presumably father and son.The stele, Clairmont no. 2.7rc(vol.r 65z-651;NMA884; Knigge,Kerameikos Atbenfrg. wn r5rb), carriesin relief a loutrophoros flanked by two lekythoi and two aryballoi (globular perfume fasks); on the relief lekythos at left, a nude youth plays with a hoop, and on the loutrophoros, a youth with a traveling cap, spear,and horse claspshands with a man leaning on a staff (a seryantboy standsat right), with a mant name the and demotic, "Panaitios Amaxantefus]," written above.Who is Panaicios? youth or the man?, and is it the sameyouth as on the lekythos at left? And what is Panaitiost relation to Kleomedesand Amoibikhos) r4. In plot y, ahilTock between Piraeus Street and the SacredWay, stele Kerameikos a P 388(Clairmontr'o.4.420: vol. Iv 95-96) carries relief depictinga maiden(rz-r8 years old), two women, and a man; the original namesinscribed on the architraveare of three females,Protonoe, Nikostrate, and Eukoline; there is no male name.But there are two names later inscribed in the pediment of the stele, a male name, Onesimos, and another female name, which was later erased. 15. E. A. Meyer, "Epitaphs and Citizenship in Classicil. Athens,"JoumaloJHellrnicStudP ies (1991): g9-r2r. Clairmont no. r.o8r(vol. r 215-237;Kerameikos n69, I 4r7), a pediry ment stele from Kerameikos plot 38a,depicts the youth "Eupheros" holding a strigil (a metal implement for scraping off sweat and grime from exercisingin the gltnnasium); the skeleton in the plot, however, was too short (r.15m: 4.8 ft.) to be as old as a youth, implying a discrepancybetween the stele and deceased. 16. Ci Leader,"In Death Not Divided" 6qz. ry. K:ertz and Boardman, Cruk Burial Customs ry6-ryu 18. Clairmont prefers to identify the figures in the stelai as members of a nuclear family. He sees"fathers," "mothers," "sons," and "daughters" and identifies them according to their gender and agesfor which he devisesa precise terminology: infant (I year), baby (z-Syears old), boy and girl (+-rr), youth and maiden (rz-I8), young man and young \ryoman(rs-25), man (bearded) and woman in their prirne (25-45), elderly (45-6o), and old (6o+). In the descriptions of the stelai below, I include Clairmont's identifications of family members. 19. Clairmont no. 2346 (vol. t y3-114).
Women in Relief
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zo. clairmont no. r.66o (vol.r 4o4-4o6); the elegiacinscription lacks a completing fourth line: r1uovipfs Ouyorpds 166'1ogi).ou,6pnep oriycig 6re 6ppaoLu fe).io (riures 6epr6pe0a ,1o. 1oupois y6voow rcaiuiv gOrpvov S0rpu4 I hold of my daughter her dear child, whom we saw live in the light of the sun; I hold it now dead on my knees,having myself perished. Also seeC. Clairmont, Gravstone Epigram: and period C,rukMemorialsJrom Arthat andClassical the (Mainz Phillip von Zabern, ry7o) 9r-gz. zr. In life, naming a woman in public seemsto have implied that she had a reputacion; it is on tombstones that we usually learn cheir given names:David Schaps,"The woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women's Names," Classical euarteily z7 Q997): jz)_ro, esp. 328-329. For the inscriptional preponderanceof woment narnes,see Karen Stears, "Dead Woment Society: Constmcting FemaleGender in Classical Athenian Funeral sculpture," in Time,Tradition Societl Greek and in Archaeolog, Nigel Spencer(New york Roured. ledge,1995)rog-r3r; and r. vesterg aardet al.,'A Typology of women Recorded on GravestonesftomAttrca(4oo BC-zoo AD)," AmericanJowmaloJAncientHistorJro (r9g5): ryg-r9o, Nielsen et a1.,"Athenian Grave Monuments" 4rr, repofts 4,519Athenian names between 4oo BcE and z5ocr, of which r,472 arewomen; we are not told if the 4,519namesinclude both the cognomen and patron;rmic or count the two as one. Since both men and women have male patronyrnics, we would expect three times as many male names than female if everyone's name was complete and if both cognomen and patronlrnic were co'nted separately (Humphreys, Family,women Deathut). of and 4,519names,therefore, we should expect three-fourths to be male (3,389)and one-fourth (r,r3o) to be female. Since not all the namesthat Nielsen et al. recorded could have been complete, the correspondence between the ideal number (r,r3o) and the actual (t,472) is striking. stears, "Dead woment society,, 113-114' cites the catalogueby Conze, AnkrhenGrabrelieJs, including 176 tombstones for as \ryomenalone and 168for men alone; in clairmont, I count r7g tombstones depicting one adult person whose sex is recognizable,96 women and gz men. zz. see,for example,two stelai depicting an unnamed man and a named woman: clairmont nos. z.zu (voI. rr r49; NMA 85r) "chairestrate,"and 2.144(vol. rr 329;KerameikosI r8r) 'Anthis," both from the Kerameikos. 23. Elevenmen and five women carry patronymics, and on one stere(crairmont no. r.r54; vol. t z4z-243; chalkis Museum zr8r), only the patronlrnic is partially preserved. 24. within the agegradesthat clairrnont observes, the ratios changemarkedly (here: m : male, f : female): child: 5 m, 6 f; adolescent:rz m, g f; you'g adulu r9 rn,9 {; adult: 4r m, 8r f; and elderly: )4 m, 3 f . using just thesedata, one is rempted to suggestthat males more often died in childhood and old age,while femalesmore ofren di"JL th" asesbetween zo ard 45. 25. Leader,"In Death Not Divided" 69o, draws our amentionto the convenrional attributes for "the variety of roles by which cheidentity of male citizens was defined," military
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garb, nuditp and athletic gear, and the staff that gavemen the right to speak (cf Homer, I lial r:o ,2o ,2lo : ro.tz s and z t . s osand O dls s cz . y ) . : ; l 26. On chewell-known steleof Dexileos (dated 1.g.4), name of his sister Melicta was the later inscribedand presented a wife and daughter(Clairmont no. z.zo9; vol. t r43-t45; as KerameikosP rr;o): "Melitta daughterof Lysaniasfrom Thorikia, wife of Nausistratesfrom Sphectios"(for the changefrom Dexileos heroon to family tomb plot, seeWendy E. ClosArthaeolog rc1 terman, "The Form and Function of the Dexileos Precinct," American JoumaloJ -j999) zgg).Mothers are often shown with cheir children, while a mother and daughterwho areboth adults can be named (e.g.,Clairmont no. 2.414a;vol, n 5515j2; LerpzigSg:- "Mvrtis daughterof Hierokleia"). Priestesses: Clairmont nos. rl (vol. r r7-r8; Nva 3287), e.g., a priescess Cybele(she holds a q./rnpanon kind of flat drum]); r.248(vol. r 277-278; of [a Kerameikos I 43o) from the Kerameikos depicting "Polystrate" carryrnga temple key; r.116 (vol.r 3ro-3u; Ni'ae z3o9); r31q(voI.I3r9-3zo;KerameikosPrr3r)fiomKerameikosplot3r, PrivateCollection), "Khoirine"; a priestess canyinga hydria; r.35oa Geneva, (vol. 329-330; and tg14 (vol. t 495- 496;PiraeusMuseum 1627: ex Nul ro3o) an old woman with tympanon. Clairmont r'o. r.7zr (vol. r 423;Nrte. 1896)depicts a dancer whom he terms a hetaira (rolpo: prostitute). Nurses are named as such (titthi: rirfu) in the inscriptions that ac"Pyraikhmeworthy nurse";r.969(vol. r companyClairmont nos.r.176 (vol.r 347;NMA 3915), British Museum r9og.2-21.1), perhaps"Melitta"; r.98o (vol. r 516;Athens Epi5rc-5e; graphical Museum ro5o6),"Phanion Corinthian nurse"; and the following stelai record just the word, "titthe": r.35o (vol. t p8-329; Athens Epigraphical Museum 8844) from Piraeus, Nve zo76). Clairmont ry49 (vol. r 5o3;Agora Museum I 65o8), and 2417d(vo1.rr 316; tittht ratl;,o.r.249 (I 278; NIrar 978) is inscribed "paideusis wofihy nurse" (paideusis khresti: 8euoLs rlrOq 1pe orrj)-paideusis, meaning"education,"may havebeenher nameor nickname or anocherof her ducies;the adjective "worthy" indicates she was a slave(seebelow, n69). Clairmont no.2.89o (vol. rr 78o-782; Nve. 993) fiom Menidi names"Phanostrate p.aio- iorp6s); t969 rnay citle Melitta as rcoi. midwife (or nurse) and doctor" (maiakai iatros: the "nurse." Stears,"Dead Women's Society" r2)-r24, thinks there were "only a limited number of occupations.These were centeredon the domestic and were chiefly child-raising, woolworking and interacting with family membersand slaves,"but shealsolists tombstones that depict priestesses and a nurse, and adds a prostitute. Vestergaardet a1.,"A Typology 'Women," of mention all these and add a vendor of salt. 27. Of course,whateveractual personswere representedby the figures on the stelai are now all dead. As Clairmont saysof Nikomeneia, the secondarywoman (not the prrmary on deceased) no. ,442 (vol. ur w-)72; Kerameikos P z9o, I ry4) from the Kerameikos, "To be sure,Nikomeneia will have died some day." zB. There appearsto be onlv one steledepicting two standing wornen, and thesedo not clasphands:Clairmont r'o. TToj (vol. rrr 45o; KerameikosP 663),a stelefrom the Kerameikos, carries a loutrophoros-hydria in relief on which appear a standing maiden (to Clairmont, "close friend") with a box, and two young women facing eachother and holding an infant. 29. For example: Clairmont r,os.2).427 (vol. Irr 147; NMA z7z9), a lekythos from the Kerameikos,probably plot zo, depicts a simple scene:a seatedwoman claspshands with a standing young woman, while, at right, a maiden stands fiontally; 2.19o(voi. u 465-465;
Women in Relief
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NMA 82o), a pediment stele,depicts a seatedwoman turned almost frontally and a standyoung wonan;2.300 (vol. n 245-246; uva 726), a naiskosstele,depicts a standing '',g young woman with a box and a seatedwoman (to Clairmont, the latter is an "older sister or friend"); 2.87r(vol. il 752*7jt; presentwhereabours unlnown), a pediment stelefrom oreoi, Euboea,depicts a standing young woman with short hair and carryinga large kalathos (to Clairmont, a "close relative"; for kalathoi, seebelow, n9r), and a girl leaning againsr the kneesof a seated woman; 2.652(vol.t 647-648; Leiden I ryq/z'), a pedimencstele, carriesa standing young woman (to Clairmont, a "close relative . . . just past maiden age") holding a baby (boy?) out ro a seated young woman in a chair; and4.91o(vol. rv ryz_ry); uul 8r9), a naiskos stele from Piraeus,depicts a young woman, a rounger woman holding a swaddled baby with a bonnet, a searedwoman, and a maid behind rhe chair who tou.h". the baby (to clairmont, the seated\r/oman died in childbirth, and the other figures are her maid and "very close relatives"). 3o. Husband and wife, e.g.,from the Kerameikos, Clairmont nos. rgz (vol. r 63; Nue z4z) rccords "Sostraros" and "Praxagora" from Aigilia , andzt54 (vol. rr roz -ro3; Kerameikos P z8o, r ryz), a loutrophoros, depicts a sranding young woman clasping hand.swirh a standing adulr man ("-os from skambonidai"). Brother and sisrer,e.g.,clairmont .,'o.,.42o (vol. rrr )j4-t6; Kerameikos r 277) records,among others, "Euphronsyne" and "Eubios" the daughter and son of "Phanippos of Potamos." Father and son, e.g.,from the Kerameikos, Clairmont no. 2.418(vol. u 5r3-5r4; Reading, pA), a lekythos from the Kerameikos, records "Sostrarosson ofSonautides" and his son "Prokleides son ofSostratos," both from Aigilia. Brothers?:clairmont no. z.4z5b (vol. rr 53r;Athens Epigraphical Museum g89z), a stelefrom the Kerameikos,depicts a seatedold man claspinghands with a standing old man and records "Adeistos Mi..k[." 3r' From clairmontt two-figure stelai (nos. z,o5r-2.499) whose figuresare recognizably men or \.vomen, count zz4 wrth a woman and a man, z j withboth men, and rio with I both women. 32. clairmont no. z.4J4e(vol. u 55t-552;Leipzigs3g) depicts seatedHierokleia clasping hands with standing Myrtis, rhe namesengravedabove their heads;Myrtis is named a second time on the frame and then describedby an elegiaccouplet: I MilprLg-'I.t.rc).eiog 0uycrip M6o'xou yuvl iv0ri6e rceiror n).eioro rp6notg d.poaoa riubp[re roig re rerce. Mltis-daughter of Hierokleia and wife of Moskhos lies here; she pleasedher husband in many ways,including giving birth. clairmont no. 476d(vol,u 4zr- 422i Leiden1859: KAG) depictsa similarscene and names the two \.vomenas "Demosrrare wife of Khorokles from Aixone" and "Lysippe daughter of Khorokles," morher and daughter or step-mother and step-daughr.6;I-yr;pp.t name rs a secondaryinscription, and it may havebeen added co the steleer".t"d-firrt for Demosrrare, 33. clairmont ..o.tg75 (vol. ur 244-245; Louvre 3rr5),a marble lekythos said to be from Athens, depicts a woman (to ciairmont, the rnother) helping another woman lie down on a couch with a maid in back; the deceased named "Killaron daughter of p;rthodoros is from Agryle"; no,4,470 (vol. rv r2o; NMA 7q9),a pediment stele from Oropos, depicts a
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"Tolmides ofPlataia" grieving, a woman assistant(to Clairmont, his wife) holding out both hands toward his daughter, "Plangon of Piataia daughter of Tolmides," leaning against a couch (or perhapsa birthing stool), while a maid in back helps; and no. y44z (voI. rrr J7r372;KeramelkosP z9o, I ry4), a pedimental stele from the Kerameikos,depicts the young woman "Nikomeneia" holding what may be a sponge in her right hand and extending her left towards a woman, "Stephane," who leans on a stool, while a maid in back helps (to Stephaneto Clairmont, Nikomeneia was important enough to the family of the deceased be named, but he is unsure of their relationship, "mother and daughter" or "close relative" -or midwife fseeabove,nz6]). she may havebeena respected In Clairmont, I find 46 stelaiwith z women and an additional rr with 3 whose rela34. tionship is unclear.As is his practice, Clairmont narratesrelationships for thesewomen; if no he detectsan agedifference,he identifies a "mother" and "daughter"; ifhe sees such disas tinction, he often will identify the secondary\ryoman a "close friend or relative." 35. Close family memberswould obviously include membersof the nuclear family (parents and children), plus grandparentsand grandchildren;sincewomen were forbidden to attend the funerals of relativesmore distantly removed than first (or possibly secord) cousin (seeabove, n4), we may consider first cousins at least also as close family members. depictsa seated woman Nue. 9zz), a naiskosstele, 36. Clairmont nos.z.zgrb(vol. rr 233; daugh(to claspinghands with standing younger rryoman Clairmont, the standing deceased rnother);2.466(vol. tt 596;Nue 968;Athens), a naiskosplaque,depictsa ter ofthe seated woman seatedon a stool leaning forward to clasphands wich a standing woman who raises her right hand in a speakinggesture(to Clairmont, this is "seatedmother with her standTwo stelai include a third woman: Clairmont nos. 3.46r ing daughter, . . . the deceased"). each (vol. Irr 197-)98 Nvr 87o), andy466 (vol. nr 4o7-4o8; Piraeus429) areduplicates, a separate slab for a naiskos stele,depicting a woman seatedon a stool, claspinghands with who leans toward her; a girl in a long-sleeved a standing woman, che primary deceased, chiton, and therefore probably a maid, standsbehind the stool (3.46r adds a speakinggesture to the standing woman and a partridge under the stool). a womal claspdepicts standing u 37. Clairmontno. 2.284 1vol.lr zr9:Piraeus i), a stele, ftzzy dog (a Spiz) jumps. To Clairing hands with a standing woman, on whom a srnalJ. mont, theseare the deceased daughter and mother, although the attention the Spitz shows cf. the "mother" might rather imply she is the primary deceased; no. 2.186,which depicts a at standing maiden and a seated"Habrosyne" (named and therefore the primary deceased) whom the Spitz jumps. 38. Clairmont no. 1.842(vol. rIr 472; NMAinv. no. unlcnown), a lekythos, depicts a maid in a long-sleevedchiton holding a baby, while a seatedwomar claspshands with a standing young \ryoman Clairmont, the seated"mother" and standing daughter who "died in (to childbirth"). 19. On one stele from the Kerameikos,Clairmont no. 2.89r (vol. u 782-781; Kerameikos P 656,I z:r), "Timagora daughter of Euthykleos from Xypete" lifts her veil with her left hand and claspshands with a seatedwoman, while a young maid standsat left with a box (to Clairmont, Timagora is the daughter of the seatedwoman)-61t" sceneis similar to ones involving youths (cf. Clairmont nos. z.89oa,2.892,z.Bgzb);z36z (vol. t y7; Ptraeuszry) carriesthe inscription "Nikomakhe wife of Eukleies" abovea seatedwoman with a large t1'mpanonwho claspshands with a standing young woman (to Clairmont, the nar-
Women in Relief
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rative is complex: Nikomakhe, dead not rong after her marriage to Eukreies,aspriestessof Cybele gaveher mother h:1.:t_-p_"1""); 33r9a(uo..rrr r4o; NMA y4t), alekyhos from che Kerameikos,depicts seated"Hesykhia" claspinghands *rth ,,*li.rg yo,r.rj .''orrra.,,,"hir" " a secondstanding young-woman gesruresat right; and 3.g5g (vol. rrr +)A_ nrn, NMA 1026), a pediment stelefiom Athens, depicts r""t"d-rro-r,' craspinghands with a standing ,,Ko" tion," while a girl wirh a bird and a young womar stand ai ,ilht (crai.mont observesthat "the respectiveagesare hardly distinguirh"d"). 4o. Clairmont no.,4^(vol.t Nve 763;,,near 5zo_5zr; Royal Stables, rg5g,,) presents a standing young woman embracing and touching ,,Mynthe chin of .tr.rdirrg " nion daughter of Khairestratosfrom Hagnous" -aiden, (to cr"ir-o.,t, Mynnion il th. *"id".,, the young woman is her mother, brrt .h" does not appear ro be oid enough). -d 4r. Clairmont no. 3.388 (vol. rrr 276_z7g; K".l.r,ri," 66/64), naiskos stele, depicts tx/o women standing, "plathane" and "Khoiros,', ^ ^od,"rir"iydeep .o.r,.-ftrr'i.rg the seated "Myrrhine"; the rop frame gives the names,while .,Kallisto,, 1"., a"pi.r'"i; *", i.r...ib"d later in the pedimenr (to crairmont, prathane, Khoiros, .,.ror" and Myrrhine ,"r"_ tives/friends"). Clairmont .,,o. "r.il 2.44r (vo|. u 562-5$; Nwt 7e 4)',a deepnaiskossterefrom the Kerameikos,depicts a standing young woman hording an op"r, bo" and contemplating the seatedolder woman (ro clairmont, the two women are reratives).on the top frame, a few letters remain ofthe originar fourrh-century inscription; third-century inscriptions in the pediment attest a reuseof the sterefor "Demostrat" d",rght., of Aiscron from Halai,,, "Mikion son of Mantodoros from , Anag1,rous,,' and Amei.rikhe daughter of Mikon of Thrr'a." Regardless the reuse,Cr"irmo.rt id"rrtifies of the standing r,,d."'"t"d woman by the later names,and he makesno mention of Mikion. 42. Clabmont nos.2.214(vol. u ryz_ry3; Kerameikos I34z), apainted stele with relief from the Kerameikos, depicts a sranding "Eukorine" craspinghanis with a standing and headless "Timylla" (to clairmont, Eukoli.r" is the primary deceased, daughter of rimyrla); 3'4o7a(vol. rrr Jo9; NMA rorg), a pediment .t.r" fro- rh" r"r"-"itol, 711d J"pict, a .""t"d "tl+"k." claspinghands with a standing "Nikippe," wirh a woman fro'Ji,,.Io."."r"_ tive") between.on the top frame, after the "Nik;ppe,, is the word "khra.ti. (xprrorii), ""-. which clairmont translates_ literally to describeNikippe as ..wortly,,' but the word is com_ monly_used ro modify a slave (see below, n69); "khr6st6" shouri therefore describe the frontal woman berweenMalthake and Nikippe. claitmont nos. z.,rrd^(vo\. u 265;Nua ro34),a pediment stelefrom the Kerameikos, . 43' depicts a standing "Phileia," fingering her v"il, ,nJ chrpi'g hands with the seated,.Nikeso,, (co Clairmont, Phileiais the ,'princifal deceased,,); Nva ,orrS,, 4a7(ot.rr 336; tt:- ,n:.".:rlmeikos, depicrs a standing ,,Theopropis,, .l".pirrg n*a. *iri'rte^lekythos seared 'Arisconike" (to clairmont, the two 1vo-"., prob"bry "ri.t.r.,,,iut th"r" ir.ro direct evi_ "r" dencefor this; see nos. 2346, 334g,and 3349,which mention, by cognomenonly, Simonides and Theopropis; Simonides,Anthippos, and Aristonike; and rheopropis, Anthippos, and Simonides respectively).clairmont io". ,.377^ (vor. t 42';British school of Archaeorogy, Athens S'87), an anrhemion stele,depicts yo.rng "Myftope', craspinghands with ".r*ii.,g seated "Myrrhine" (to clairmont, Myttope is the 'iprincipal deceased," and"Myrrhine is her "mother"); z,4z8a(vol. rr 53g;*mo ,o3r), p"di'-".rt stele,depictsa srandingyoung " "Ariste" fingering her veil and clasping ttr"a. *;i}r seated"Mika,, (to crairmont, the rwo \ryomen may be "mother and daughtel,);2..72 (vol. rr r95_196;piraeus afragmen_ 44),
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:an- stele, depicts seated "Meliboia" probably clasping hands with standing "Nikarete,, to clairmont, Nikarete is the primary deceased, and Meliboia her "older sister or close friend");2.328 (vol. rr z9r; NMA 3g4),e lekythos from Sepolia,depicts a seated"Mika', clasping hands with standing young "Philtate" (to clairmont, Philtate is the primary deceased and Mika is her "mother"); and 2396a(vol. rr 482; Nue rro8), a lekythos fiom the Kerameikos,perhapsplot 55,depicts a seared"Dionysia" clasping hands with standing young "Myrte" (to Clairmonr, Myrre is the primary deceased, Dionysia is perhapsher and "mother"). 44. clairmont nos.J.42)(vol. rrr l4r; NMA 83o),a naiskosstelefound between Kouvara and Keratea, depicts a sranding young "Kleostrate" clasping hands with seared"Menestrate," while, between them, an unnamed young woman stands and holds a box (to clairmont, Menestrate is the primary deceasedand mother to Kleostrate, while the second woman is a "closerelative, perhapsyoungersister"); and3.4o4(vol. rri Jo3-lo4; New york Metropolitan Museum o6.z87), a moderately deep naiskos stele, said to be from salamis, depicts a seatedwoman claspinghands with a standing figure, while a young woman with a box standsbetweenand facestowards, but doesnor look at, the standing figure. The standing figure at right was originally conceivedas a young man with a himation but \.vas turned lnto a young woman wearing a sleeveless chiton. Names are on the top frame, "Lysisft]rate" over the seatedwoman and, over the standing figure, "Panathenais" over an erasure(the young man'sname?);the woman with the box is unnamed. 45. Clairmont .'o. j.4rr (vol. rrr y7_3t8; KerameikosP rr39),a naiskosstelefrom the Kerameikos, Piraeus srreet, depicts a seatedwoman "-s" holding a kithara and clasping hands with the standing "Doris," while a young woman standsmourning berweenthem (to clairmont, the seated woman is Doris'mother who holds Dorist kithara [see nos. z.16r and 2.183, with youths holding lyresl); for the narrative, cf. no. z36z (above, n39). P 46. clairmont no. 2.894(vol. rr 788;Kerameikos 41,r.(.7), a paintedanthemionsrere from the Kerameikos,depicts a standing young maid holding an infant, and a young standing "Medontis" fingering her veil and claspinghands with the seated"Nikandra." The composition is the sameasthar on no. 2.89r,wherethe maid holds a box (seeabove, n39).Clairmont no.4'9ro (vol. rv r49-r5o; Louvre Ma 3rr3),a naiskosstelesaid to be from Athens, depicts a woman "Bako" fingering her veil and claspinghands with the seated"Aristonike"; atleft, a boy looks and gesturesat Bako; between the two women stands a frontal maid holding a box, and at right, a younger maid holds an infant. The top fiame carries the namesBako, Socrates, and Aristonike. Clairmont identifies the boy Sokratesarrdscates that Bako "died soon after having given birth to her second child," and he identifies Aristonike as chegrandmother. Aristonike, however, is not visually much older than Bako. 47. Clairmont no. J.47r(vol. rrr 411_ 4r4; LeidenrSzr),a naiskosplaquefrom Glyphada (ancient Aixone) (to clairmont, the standing woman is Arkhestratet "daughter" [seemore of the family on Clairmont no. 4.471, vol. w rzr-rzz, NMl 2574 + z58a]). 48. Clairmont no. 2.78o(vol. rr 686- 687; N.'t 179o),a pediment stele from psychiko, depicts a standing maiden or young \ryoman(to clairmont, a "close relative") holding out a child, which stretchesout its left arm towards the seated"Philonoe daughter of . .]" [. and the mother ofthe child; a conventional elegiaccouplet once gaveher patronl'rnic: (DL),ov6r1 v0o6e rceircrOuyorllp[---] o orirgpou eiorjyeros r6"oov(y [oo' riperrj.l u
Women in Relief Here lies Philonoe daughterof [. . .]o praiseworthy for her modesty, having every virtue.
zor
clairmont no. 2.8o6(vol. u 699-7oo; chalkis ro4), a shallownaiskosstele, depictsa young woman (maid or "rather close relative") holding rhe infant "Aristion" (recarved from a box?) in front of a seated"Paranome," who lifts her left hand (to clairmont, anorher complex narrative: "when first used,the relief depicred a woman whose name wasprobably inscribed and who died soon after having given birth to a child. The closerelative to the fleft] may originally have held a box the [left] corner of which still subsistsbut rvasthen given an infant to indicaterhe reasonfor the death ofthe seated woman"). (vol. rri 2,,9- z3o; Nr,re7r8), a shallou,naiskosstelefiom pi49. clairmont ',o. )37o raeus,the north polyandreion (a mass romb), names rhe slightly older voung woman (to clairmont, the younger \4/omanis a "younger sister or a fiiend"); th. tor hr. g..r"r"t"d somediscussion (seeClairmont), althoughit looks conventional. The kneelingmaid is unusual,but she would be the perfect para1lelfor what Eva Stehle and Amv Dal,have in mrnd when they discussthe chitoned kneeling figure o in the easrpediment of the Temple to Zeus at Olyrnpia and identify "her" asadjusting the sanda-l figure F, ,,Sterope,, of (,,Wo-"r, Looking ar'w'omen: woment Ritual and remple sculpture," in Sexualitlin Anrienr Art, ed. Natalie Kampen fCambridge:CambridgeUP, 1996]:ror-116). Marathon 1599, ro;), a naiskossterefrom 5o. clairmonr no. 2.3o6(vol.t 251-254; BE Marathon (to clairmont, che standing woman is a "close relative, perhapsyounger sister,' of Pausimakhe). 5r. Clairmont no.2.15b (vol. rr 3ro-3n; Rhodes), a pediment stelefiom Rhodes (to Clairmont, the sranding woman looks like a servantmaid bur may insteadbe a clumsy Rhodian rendering of a "younger sisrer or relarive" of Kalliarista). The epigram (two elegiac coupletsand a closingpentamerer) lavishlygivesher genericvirtues: rjorLgcipLorog natvogu du0ptinoLoL yuvcrrc6g Katr\tapioro @r).r1priro ro0ro 1ouoogaueu oodpooiyosciperdgTe ri\61orn6ot9 6v(e)rco r6v6e Aoporctris gL\icg ordoeu pvrlp6ouuov ovO' oi Eaiporu tly to0).d9 norropiot. \\-hatevergreatpraiseexistsfor women arnongst men KalliarrstadaughterofPhileratos has it, now dead, ior her moderationand virtue; for his wife, her husband Dareokleshas set up this memorial because his reqard of --:: r [-! her noble spint might artendhis life. .-. !-:::rn..rr no.:.E:o.srr-l 7uz, Markopoulo), a shallow naiskos stele from l l,::.r::--.--- :.- Cl:rrmont. rhe starding \l'oman is a "closerelativeor fiiend" of Arkhes:i-: l. .,: :-::::s. :^:g::; recorl-.her gen.-ric r.rrtues and her husband,s grief(for the trans_
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wo M EN
-{.'r:.:omakhe was not married at the time of her death); and on no. z.zz3a (vol. l 165-166; 3:::rsh Museumfi93.6-27.t), a deep pediment stele said to be from Th"b.., the seated Glr-kvlla" is wearing the bracelet that she had taken from rhe box herd by rhe close relarive"(?) standing in front ofher.
54' clairmont no' 2.65o(vo|. t 6q4-646; piraeus,inv. no. unknown), a rate fifthcentury pediment stelefrom Skala Oropou with a first-cenrury inscription. Cl"ir-orrt .it". Despinis for thinking that the searedwoman is the primary d..."."d but identifies the standing woman as the mother of the boy. The boy, however,must have been incruded to show that his mother had died and reft him bereft, which impries the standing figure is the primary deceased. which of the tq/o women was meant to representthe first-cenrury 'Nikippe" is an open question. Clairmont and other scholarsnotice the resemblance of the standing\ryoman with boy to Arkamenes'prokneand Itys, and the pose of the seated upper body to his 'Aphrodite of rhe Gardens" (seethe Aigina stere,discussed I:-":t Delow)55' E. G. Pemberton, "The Dexiosis on Attic Gravesrones,', Mediterranean Arrbaeolog z (1989):45-5o; and GlenysDavies,"The Significance of the HandshakeMotif in classicar Funerary Art," American oJ a9 Journar Arrhaeorog (r9s5): 627- 64o.Kurrz and Boardman, Greri Burial customs r4o' suggestthat naming both figures craspinghands impried both were the primary deceased (e.g.,Demetria and pamphile, here Figure 6.ro). 56' clairmont, Introducrory vorume rr5, quores K. Friis Attic Grave-rerieJs Joh".r."rr, The ol theCkssrcal Periol(Copenhagen:E. Munksg"ard ,95r) r5r; compare ,,In Leader, Death Not Divided" 698: "Death becomes occasionro stress an the oikos asunbroken.,, 57, Leader,"In Death Not Divided" 6gg,commentson how ,,themedium, context,and style ofstelae associare them with civic arr, [but] their iconography and its prescrrptiveforce inpresenting visually ideal gender roles in do-".ti. conrexrsassociare them with the visual sphereof the oikos." she then sees stelaiasoccupying"a liminar posirion thar complicated and confusedthe divisionsberween""civic and iomestic, public and private,,,.porarities.,, 58. see Rabinowitzt essay this volume. s. Isager, "Gynaikonitis,', Museum in Tuscuranum 3z-y (t978):39-42. Neither archaeology ,.rr.r"1 .tudi". hau. provided an .ro, exac location for a specificroom or areafor women calledthe ,.gynaikonicis.,, publishedrn ARVZ n5o.34;porolipo*rrl; 59. NMA16z9 Beazbl Addenda2 469; Hart_ 354;p. wrg, "'Enbrypov df 'Eperpios,"Apxato)oy,<ri'a6,yrepis rB97:cols.e9_42, pls. 9_ro; Adrienne Lezzr-Hafter, Der Eretrid-Marer: werke wegeJdhrten und (Mainz:lhilipp vonzabetn, rcar.n o. z 57, pp. z 51- z 6z andy 7_1348 , v o l . r r p l s . 1 6 8 _ 1 6 9 ; p " o t o E . A r i a s a n d 1o -SS)-vo l Me-r Hirmer, Tausend griechkrhe Vasenkunsr (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, rgeo) Jahre 95, pI. zo3; John Boardman,Athenian period Red-Figure vases: classxal The (London: Tf,"*, a.,d Hudson, t-?Bq) 235;Keuls, Retgn thePhallusfrg.rl4; and carola Reinsberg, oJ Ehe, H*rirentumund !g: Knabenliebe antiken im Grierhenknd (Munich: C. H. Beck, ry59) fig. zq. H. oakley' "Nuptial Nuances," in pandora: woien in crassiul creece, Enen ed,. :o' ]ohn - Reeder(Princeton: D. Princeton Up, ,sql) g_73, esp. 67, fig. o;John H. Oakiep ,,The Anakalypteria," Archciolngkther Anzeiger (r9lz'1: rr3-rrg; and D. L. Cairns, "veiling, Ai6ds, and a Red-FigureAmphora by Phintias,,,/o urnaloJHelbnic Studies (r99e): r5z_riA. n6 6r. the short descriptions ofthe stelai in this study, t h"u" tri"a to .orru"y th" .".,r"1_ nessof-In gesture and its different characterfrom the the marriage gesture of ,.anakar1psis,, by using a conventional and short phrase, "fingering the veil" or ,,touching the manrle.,,
Women in Relief
zo3
Both gestures may indicate a womant erotic submission, "anakailpsis" to her husband,the casualvariant (Keuls, RagnoJthe Phallus 253)to someonenot her husband:Amymone makes the gesture as Poseidon pursuesher on a red-figure lekythos by the Phiale Painter (New York Metropolitan Museum ry.4o.)5i ARV2 tozo.too BeazIeyAddenda2 lohn H. Oak316; ley, The PhiabPainter oJ lMainz: Philipp vonZabern, rggol 8z no. roo, pl. 79; Keuls, Reign the Phallus z4o, fig. zfi); among the pairs of women and men at apafiy, one of the women makes the gestureon a red-figure sklphos by the BrygosPainter (Louvre Gr56;ARV2 38o.ry2; Paralipomena2 BeazleyAddendaz zz7; Keuls, ReQn thePhallus ry4); and Iphigeneia makes oJ frg. 366; it, thinking Agamemnon is leading her to Achilles, on a white-ground lekythos by Douris (Palermo NI 1886;ARVz 446.266;Paralipomenaz y5;Beazley Addendaz z4riElfer. D. Reeder, "Catalogue," in Pandora: Women Classical in Greerc Princeton UP, tSSll 1.110))2, lPrinceton: fig. ror, both sides). 62. Clairmont, Introductory Volume 86. Leader, "In Deach Not Divided," 695,interprets the gesture"as a formal gestureof welcome." 63. Barbara McManus, "Multicentering: The Case of the Athenian Bride," Helios7 (tggo): zz5-235, esp. zJo-zJr. Sara I. Johnston, Restbss Dead: Encounters between Liuingand the the Deadin Ancient Grnce (Betkeley and Los Angeles:U of California P, rgsq) fi4-t99. 64. Clairmont no.2465d(vol. rr 386-387;presentwhereabouts unknown), a pediment stele from the Laurion area,depicts a fragmentaryfigure standing, probably a woman, regarding a seaced woman, probably Pamphile, since most scelaithat name only one \.voman name the seatedone (Clairmont, however, thinks it possible that "Pamphile" regardsher "mother")r 6o1'r)]Uvotos clLn6re lloptgill ij6e u [oircou (fr).ou rdp poropLor6rorou 1oo'olrceL 6pgouloooo fi npiu r]l re\oqL9[iou]eircooL[u] (\avev. uup$i6to5oircos il\1rc[os 65. Clairmont no. 146(vol. r 47-48; present whereaboutsunknown), a stele probably fiom Piraeus: AvOpr6o9 r66e oflpo rcilrcXoL ore$arvo0o(L)y EroipoL pvqpe tiperfls oivercorcoi[o"ru $L\(o5. The meter demandr the iota adscript not be pronounced (cf. rcoupL8it.rL Clairmont no. in 2.85o)and that only the -oir- in oregatuoOo(rlv be long. 66. Clairmont no. z.8zo(above,n5z). 67. Clairmont no. z.z8zb (vol.t z16-zr7; Copenhagen Ny Carlsbergr99 [IN 1595]): oripc piu vrds yi rcor1er rilv ooSpooivlu 6i Xpuoriu04 rlv orju o(ri) rcorr<puge rd$os. 68. Clairmont no. r.283 (vol. r 293-294; Nue 1964),a pedimentstelefrom Paiania; the inscription is elegiac,although versesthree and four should be reversedifa srandard elegiac is to be maintained (and the last line is an addition although it completesthe dactylic versebegun by the last writtenline of the inscription): (riotv oi 6t nvOos ridot 0aveiy[e]tpopro[t],6ooL oi. | rcrpdu \Lnesllouorp<i11npoy6votg [C]xe[L]v
zo 4
Alrou c
Wov aN
ptrp[i] r[e o]orvi[ri.]ri.r;L ncrpi flcuoou[cr rcai. or1[s]s'tiperfrls u]v1 | p[e]iou 6pau16[s]erois nopt6orv ooSpoorivq[s] r[e]. 69. clairmont no. 2.4o6(voI. u 489- 49r; Piraeus Museum zo), anthemionsteleprobably from Piraeus;the meter of the inscription is unusual, two lines of awkward dactylics and two lines of trochaic rerrameters: r<igosMe).ir1e Xploril yuvil v0ci6e rceiror <iurL$L).o0oa du6po'OurjoLpov rdv $rtroOvra rcpariorrl froOo roryopoOv noOeiOcyo0ooy floOcydp lpqoril yuvrj oe -Koi o,i)lcipe Si\ror' <iu6priu ci\Xdror)s poi)sgitre t. Nielsen et a1.,"Athenian Grave Monuments" 4t9, srate rhat the epithet "wofihy" (khristos, 1p1or6s) and the greering "halll" (khaire:1olpe)are never used for citizens and only very tately for metics...