The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens / Edition 1

by Eva C. Keuls

Overview

At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens.

The phallus was pictured everywhere in ancient Athens: painted on vases, sculpted in marble, held aloft in gigantic form in public processions, and shown in stage comedies. This obsession with the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life, influencing law, myth, and customs, affecting family life, the status of women, even foreign policy.

This is the first book to draw together all the elements that made up the "reign of the phallus"—men's blatant claim to general dominance, the myths of rape and conquest of women, and the reduction of sex to a game of dominance and submission, both of women by men and of men by men.

In her elegant and lucid text Eva Keuls not only examines the ideology and practices that underlay the reign of the phallus, but also uncovers an intense counter-movement—the earliest expressions of feminism and antimilitarism.

Complementing the text are 345 reproductions of Athenian vase paintings. Some have been reproduced in a larger format and gathered in an appendix for easy reference and closer study. These revealing illustrations are a vivid demonstration that classical Athens was more sexually polarized and repressive of women than any other culture in Western history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520079298
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/27/1993
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	477
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Eva C. Keuls is Classics Professor at the University of Minnesota, the author of many scholarly articles, and a recognized authority on both Greek literature and vase painting. She is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Military Expeditions, Protest, Lament, and Scandal
2. Attic Mythology: Barren Goddesses, Male Wombs,
and the Cult of Rape
3. The Phallus and the Box: The World Seen in the
Shapes of Human Genitals
4. Bearing Children, Watching the House
5. Brides of Death, in More Ways Than One
6. The Athenian Prostitute: A Good Buy in the Agora
7. The Whore with the Golden Heart, the Happy
Hooker, and other Fictions
8. Two Kinds of Women: The Splitting of the
Female Psyche
9. The Sex Appeal of Female Toil
10. Easier to Live with Than a Wife: The Concubine
11. The Boy Beautiful: Replacing a Woman or
Replacing a Son?
12. Learning to Be a Man, Learning to Be a Woman
13. Sex Among the Barbarians
14. Classical Tragedy: Weaving Men's Dream
of Sexual Strife
15. Sex Antagonism and Women's Rituals
16. Love, Not War: Protest in the Arts and on the Streets
Epilogue

Notes
Bibliography
Supplementary Bibliography
Sources of Illustrations
Index
Appendix