This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the (...) theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality (as a heroine from an aristocratic family) and marginality (as a woman and associated with other marginal social groups) of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status (both subordinate and elite) embodies the social position of other “marginal” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings. (shrink)

This paper explores how gender can operate as a disguise for class in an examination of the self-sacrifice of the Maiden in Euripides' Children of Herakles. In Part I, I discuss the role of human sacrifice in terms of its radical potential to transform society and the role of class struggle in Athens. In Part II, I argue that the representation of women was intimately connected with the social and political life of the polis. In a discussion of iconography, the (...) theater industry and audience I argue that female characters became one of the means by which different groups promoted partisan interests based on class and social status. In Part III, I show how the Maiden solicits the competing interests of the theater audience. After discussing the centrality and marginality of the Maiden's character, I draw upon the funeral oration as a comparative model with which to understand the quite different role of self-sacrifice in tragedy. In addition to representing and mystifying the interests of elite, lower class and marginal groups, the play glorifies a subordinate character whose contradictory social status embodies the social position of other “marginal” members of Athenian society. The play stages a model for taking political action to transform the social system and for commemorating the tragic costs of such undertakings. (shrink)

One of the simplest methods used by Cicero for depicting a personality or characteristic of an individual within his correspondence was to use a nickname. When describing groups, the natural progression was to use collective nouns that helped to define some essential quality of this collective. The enormity of Caesar's assassination provided an opportunity to use a plethora of terms for the conspirators, most conspicuously seen in Cicero's treatment of Cassius and Brutus following the death of Caesar. The act itself (...) had a polarizing effect. On one side were the invective terms for assassins, murderers and parricides. On the other side were the favourable terms, such as liberators, heroes and tyrannicides. Cicero also included in his correspondence Greek words, as well as their transliterations into Latin. Each word would seem to have its own subtle characteristics, focussing on different aspects and interpretations of the conspirators and their act of tyrannicide or political murder. The collective nouns themselves and the context in which they are used not only will provide the first indication of how Cicero felt about the conspirators but may also give an insight into Cicero's perception of the general feeling about the political situation in Rome at this time. (shrink)

The Republiccontains: an implicit argument that slavery is unjust, a bar against Greeks having Greek slaves that allows barbarian slaves. The scholarship has failed to notice the first, that the second is a performative addressed to Greeks, and mistakes the third as explicit. Four passages are examined: a catalogue of a Greek city’s social classes ; a bar against Greek slaves, asserting the continuation of barbarian slavery ; an assertion that the Best City can exist at any time and any (...) place ; and a passage asserting the injustice of enslavement.La Républiquecomporte les trois éléments suivants : un argument implicite à l’effet que l’esclavage est injuste, une interdiction pour les Grecs de posséder des esclaves grecs, qui admet cependant la possession d’esclaves barbares. Les commentateurs n’ont pas décelé le premier, ni remarqué que le second est un performatif adressé aux Grecs; ils ont tenu, à tort, le troisième pour explicite. J’examine ici quatre passages : un catalogue des classes sociales dans la cité grecque ; l’interdit pesant sur l’esclavage des Grecs accompagné du maintien de l’esclavage des barbares ; l’affirmation que la cité idéale est possible partout et en tout temps ; et l’affirmation que l’esclavage est injuste. (shrink)

Social magic always manages to produce discontinuity out of continuity.Social dialect, which can be defined negatively as dialect associated with variables other than geographic region, was hardly recognized as a linguistic category until the twentieth century. Although it has been recognized since antiquity that groups at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder speak differently from the elite, non-elite idioms did not merit serious investigation since they were regarded merely as corrupt or decadent approximations to the prestige variety. There is evidence (...) that the Greeks also recognized gender as a variable in linguistic production. Age occasionally figures in discourse about language, but the association is vaguer since it was tangled up with the idea that earlier generations spoke a better or more authentic form of Greek. (shrink)