How to Be a Man: Towards a Sexual Definition of the Self in Achilles Tatius’ Novel Leucippe and Clitophon

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How to Be a Man:Towards a Sexual Definition of the Self in Achilles

Tatius’ Novel Leucippe and Clitophon

Romain Brethes1

Abstract

Achilles Tatius’ novel, Leucippe and Clitophon, remains one of the most puzzlingexamples of this genre. Parody, pastiche, terrorism against novelistic conven-tions, the hidden aim of the text has been long debated since the severe assess-ment of the novel by E. Rohde in 1876. The object of this paper is to contrib-ute to this debate, thanks to a study of the sexual identity of his main male char-acter, Clitophon. Throughout the novel, Clitophon, who is the narrator of hisown adventures, is successively depicted (and self-depicted) as an aggressiveyoung lover escaped from New Comedy, a master of love rhetoric, and a re-versible character, that is, according to the words of the advocate Sopatros,the sort of lover ‘who imitates a man with women but becomes a womanwith men’. Beyond the traditional attacks on masculinity that can be foundin courtroom oratory, such as in Aeschines, the sexual phraseology used in Leu-cippe and Clitophon argues for a problematic identity, where the traditionalboundaries between male and female representations are no longer relevant.

During the last thirty years, there has been a tremendous increase in thestudies of ancient novels, both Greek and Latin. A fundamental advancewas made especially by Michel Foucault’s successful studies in the eight-ies, with his posthumous History of Sexuality,2 completed by the recentpublication of L’Herm�neutique du Sujet in 2001. In his attempt to dem-onstrate a profound evolution in the way of constructing the sexual selfin antiquity, chiefly in late antiquity, Foucault, aided by Paul Veyne,3

opened the way to a multiplicity of commentaries. Foucault’s evaluationof the ancient Greek novels in The Care of the Self,4 to put it schemati-

1 I would like to thank sincerely Prof. Marilia Futre Pinheiro, Prof. MarilynSkinner and Prof. Froma Zeitlin for their very accurate reading of this paper,their priceless suggestions and for the (many) corrections of my English.

2 Cf. Foucault 1985, 1986, 2001.3 Cf. his basic article 1978, well contested by Saller and Shaw 1984, particularly

134–35, and by Swain 1996, 118–31.4 Cf. Foucault 1986, 228–32.

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cally, judged them a perfect reflection of their age, as they express anideological change in the representation of love, fidelity, chastity, andmarriage at the same time as they confirm the progressive decline ofthe traditional and asymmetric homoerotic model of sexual relations.

If the part played by novelistic conventions has too often obscuredthe great richness and variety of what can be considered one of the mostremarkable products of the Greek literature in the Imperial Era, it stillcan hardly be denied that Eros, or love, according to David Konstan,‘assumes a form in the Greek Novels that distinguishes them as agenre from all other amatory literature in the classical world’. Ayoung couple of eugeneis (elites) fall in love at first sight, a perfectly sym-metric love in general, and despite several attempts against their chastityand/or fidelity by other suitors, they are expected to remain pure andfaithful until the end of their adventures. This idealistic erotic aspectwas particularly emphasized5 first to demonstrate the rigidity and mon-olithic ethics of the Liebespaar and then to underline the repetition andthe poverty of invention in those novels. The problem with such anal-yses is that scholars who adopted such a position were in search of psy-chological consistency. In Greek novels, it was thought, main charac-ters, instead of being represented as individuals, represent profound val-ues such as epieikeia or decency, praiotes or gentleness, sophrosyne or tem-perance,6 and incarnate the ideal of paideia, which is the key word forthe cultural identity that the elite and well-born shared, not merely inGreece or in Asia Minor but also throughout the whole Roman Em-pire.7

In comparison to the so-called realistic world of Latin novels, theSatyricon by Petronius and the Golden Ass by Apuleius, the protagonistsof the Greek novels are supposed to embody the newly appropriate wayof living a love relationship within the strict boundaries of a civic mar-riage, one, however, which in a sense is very close to the conception ofmarriage in New Comedy.8 Male characters in Greek novels have beensometimes accused of pusillanimity and passivity, which David Konstan

5 See Létoublon 1993.6 Cf. Whitmarsh 2001b, 117–18. On sophrosyne, the best reference is still North

1966.7 On paideia under the Roman Empire the bibliography is huge. See esp. E.

Bowie 1970; Reardon 1971, 3–11; 1974; Gleason 1995, xxi–xxiv; Swain1996, 18–64; Whitmarsh 2001b, 4–9, 90–130; Goldhill 2001b; Puech 2002.

8 On the comparison between New Comedy and the Greek novel about modal-ities of love and marriage, see Konstan 1994a, 141–50.

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denounced as a misreading of the genre, since the sexual symmetry be-tween the male and the female constrains the former to obey novelisticconventions, which means suffering with his beloved without offeringany resistance to Fortune or Tych�9 and responding to an aggressiveworld only with tears and suicide attempts. But if it indeed workswell for the Ephesiaca and its male protagonist, the weak and fascinating-ly insignificant Habrocomes, this is not really the case with Chaireas inChariton’s novel and Theagenes in Heliodorus’. In the second half ofCallirhoe the former is transformed into a hero similar to those ofepic, a smart and brave warrior, well attested by the multiplication ofHomeric quotations,10 while the latter, as a man of the race of the Ai-nianes, claims kinship with the famous Achilles and is keen to show hisandreia (or bravery) on every occasion, although this tendency is clearlynot very helpful in the novelistic world of tricksters and liars. Yet thequestion of masculinity, in a world where the traditional values seem di-luted due to some radical cultural changes under the Roman Empire, isspecifically raised in many ways in Greek novels. When andreia is nolonger the most efficient response to obstacles, when the symmetry be-tween partners confuses the fundamental distinction between male andfemale roles, when boundaries between expected behaviors are crossed,novelists have to invent a new kind of erotic relationship as well as con-struct a masculine identity that conforms to this relationship.

In order to cast light on this issue, I choose to focus on one novelistin particular, the flamboyant and subversive Achilles Tatius. Comingfrom Alexandria, he was an ideal product of the literary movementcalled the Second Sophistic, which flourished mainly during the firstthree centuries AD and was decisive for the redefinition of Greek cul-tural identity during the Roman Empire. His novel, Leucippe and Clito-phon, generally dated as belonging to the second half of the SecondCentury AD,11 is ‘a kind of baroque opera, which parades an incredible

9 Behind this attitude in the face of external oppression, linked with a powerfulinternal strength, some scholars have seen some references to the values of Sto-icism, which is not very surprising since it was in a sense the koin�-philosophy ofthe Roman Empire. See a very good discussion in Perkins 1995, 77–103.Goldhill 2001b and Morales 2004 were especially interested in the materialistvision defended by Stoicism, traces of which might be found in Leucippe andClitophon.

10 On the use of quotations in Greek novels, see Müller 1976, Fusillo 1990b andRobiano 2000.

11 See Willis 1990.

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mix of historical, scientific, paradoxographic, artistic and of course liter-ary knowledge’ according to the definition of Simon Goldhill. Thesometimes mocking exploitation of generic conventions, such as theconcatenation of Leucippe’s false deaths – her successive disembowel-ment and beheading – and the contestation of such traditional and hon-ourable novelistic values as chastity, fidelity and temperance, have ledsome scholars to define him as a ‘virtuoso saboteur’12 or as a ‘guerillero’13

fighting against the conventions. Others have more simply seen in Leu-cippe and Clitophon a parody or a pastiche of traditional Greek novels.14

The reading of this text is probably far more complex; I would prefer tospeak instead of an ‘urbane guerrilla’, where urbane would have its orig-inal sense of ‘urbanity’ and ‘sophistication’. There is no one reading ofAchilles Tatius, either exclusively comic or exclusively serious. For ex-ample, Foucault’s reading of the novel as an edifying ‘odyssey of doublevirginity’15 is countermanded by the observation that ‘as this novel playsa role in the construction of symmetrical and monogamous chastity as anideal, so it plays with the role such an ideal enforces’.16 Leucippe and Cli-tophon sets up a matrix of cultural influences and subject positions in thenovel itself, and this matrix is paradoxically expressed by a remarkablerestrictive strategy, that is, the first-person narrative. In my study, thisprocess is absolutely crucial, since the way Clitophon sees and defineshimself as a man, and the way he wants to be seen and defined in thenovel, is counterbalanced by two other points of view: first, the author’sone, which interferes in the narration in the person of the ‘hidden au-thor’ – a notion defined by G. B. Conte – who ‘is also listening, alongwith the reader, to Clitophon’s narration – and, along with the reader, issmiling at it’,17 and second, the other characters’ point of view, or,should I say, point of voice. Indeed, if the importance of seeing inthis novel is so important that Helen Morales has devoted an entirebook to it,18 external voices and polyphonies must also play a consider-able part as they are the only means of introducing opposition to Clito-phon’ s hegemonic view and voice.

12 Anderson 1982, 32.13 J. R. Morgan 1995, 142.14 Durham 1938; Fusillo 1988 and 1991, 97–108; Chew 2000.15 Foucault 1985, 230.16 Goldhill 1995, 144.17 Conte 1996a, 21–22.18 Morales 2004.

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Indeed, the first-person strategy opens the way to sly-manipulationand dissimulation,19 and Clitophon makes subtle and constant efforts topaint for his readers – and listener, since he is telling his story to ananonymous character in Sidon – a very honourable self-portrait. Livingin Tyre, a Phoenician city, coming from a wealthy family, Clitophonfalls in love with his cousin Leucippe at first sight, following the usualnovelistic conventions. Nevertheless, this coup de foudre cannot reallybe compared to those affecting the other Liebespaar such as Chaireasand Callirhoe or Theagenes and Charicleia, precisely because we lackLeucippe’s reactions, which creates a strong disparity in the representa-tion of symmetrical love. In order to seduce Leucippe, Clitophon adoptssome of the lover’s strategies well-known by elegiac poets, such as theimitation of mythological exempla to which the lover is obligated.20 Forexample, recalling the one-sided love story between the god Apollo andthe nymph Daphne, which ends in her symbolic death, he admonisheshimself (1.5.7):21 ‘Look here, Apollo himself loves a maiden; unashamedof his love, he pursues her, while you hesitate, blush and are modest outof season! Are you better than a god?’ In this comparison, Clitophonimplicitly depicts himself as an aggressive lover and characterizes his re-lationship in a way familiar from the young rapists in Menander’s NewComedy: only male desires are taken into account, so that rape is a typ-ical assertion of masculinity among the young citizens.22 The Greekverb, !mdq¸feshai, which is used at two different points in the novel,is a reflex of this attitude. According to LSJ, this verb may mean ‘actas a brave man’, ‘play the man’ or even ‘come to manhood’, but mayalso have an obscene sense, very close to ‘ rape’, when used in particularcircumstances.23 Achilles Tatius deliberately manipulates this potentialdouble entendre. The first occurrence takes place when Satyros, anotherfascinating character, both Clitophon’s servant and realistic praeceptoramoris, urges him to take advantage of Leucippe’s apparent docility(2.10.1):

19 See mainly Reardon 1994 and Whitmarsh 2003.20 On the irreverent use of such exempla, see Ov. Am. 2.19.27–28; 3.4.21–22.21 The translation is Winkler (1989) except when indicated.22 See Sommerstein 1998, 110.23 LSJ indicates that these meanings correspond only to the middle or passive form

in Greek, which might suggest assumption of a role for oneself, as a kind of ‘ritede passage’.

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let± d³ t¹ de?pmom b S²tuqºr loi pqosekh½m 5vg7 ‘mOm l³m !mdq¸feshai

jaiqºr. B c±q l¶tgq t/r jºqgr, ¢r oWsha, lakaj¸fetai ja· jah’ 2autµm

!mapa¼etai7 lºmg d³ B pa?r badie?tai jat± t± eQhisl´ma t/r JkeioOr2pol´mgr, pq·m 1p· t¹m vpmom tqap/mai. 1c½ d´ soi ja· ta¼tgm !p²ny

diakecºlemor‘.

After dinner Satyros came up to me and said: ‘Now it is time for you toplay the man. As you know, the girl’s mother is in poor health and staysin bed in her own room. So the girl will be alone on her usual promenadebefore bedtime, with only Kleio to keep her company. I shall engage Kleioin a conversation and divert her from the path’. (translation Winkler).

But translations here can vary. While Jean-Philippe Garnaud, in theFrench Budé edition, translates literally ‘to be a man’ (‘être unhomme’), John Winkler chooses an ambiguous ‘to play the man’,which is a suggestive translation from our perspective. Winkler’s readingmaintains the sexual innuendo while suggesting that Clitophon’s mascu-linity in a broader sense still has to be proven. The second occurrenceappears at a key-moment of the drama. After several threats to theirlives, such as a shipwreck on the Egyptian coast and attacks by brigands,Clitophon decides by himself not to delay his desire and to !mdq¸feshai

(4.1.2):

‘elo· d´ tir oWjor !pet´tajto ûla t0 Keuj¸pp, lijq¹m !myt´qy t/r toOstqatgcoO jatacyc/r. ja· ¢r eUsy paq/khom, peqiptun²lemor aqtµm

oXºr te Elgm !mdq¸feshai.

A house was assigned to me and Leukippe a short distance up the streetfrom the general’s headquarters. When I went in I embraced her and feltin myself certain stirrings of manly energy.

Contrary to the first occurrence, where the word was used by Satyros,Clitophon is the one who adopts such a phraseology, not without anexpression (the oXºr te Elgm ) indicating that he has well learnt the les-sons of his praeceptor amoris. Moreover the verb is explicitly linked withbi²feshai, a little below (6.1.8), the sense of which is very clear: jata-k´cy dµ toOto t0 Keuj¸pp, t¹ 1m¼pmiom ja· oqj´ti 1pewe¸qoum bi²feshai

(‘I related this dream to Leukippe and made no further attempt to ravishher’.) Clitophon fails again – and definitely, at least until the wedding toLeucippe, which is presumed (?) to occur outside the limits of the novel– to make love to Leucippe, because Artemis and Aphrodite have ad-vised the lovers in a dream to postpone the consummation of theirlove. Affirmation of masculinity is not as simple as in New Comedy,where the rape frequently operates as a substitute for seduction and

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where, according to Alan Sommerstein ‘the ability to perpetrate rape iswhat makes a young man, be he a neos or a meirakion, a real man’.24

Masculinity in Leucippe and Clitophon is not obviously given, but isthe result of a complex contestation, negotiation and adaptation,where traditional boundaries between male and female values and iden-tities are no longer relevant. ‘Constituting oneself as the ethical subjectof one’s sexual behavior’, to quote Foucault, is sometimes highly prob-lematic, as several indicators make clear in the novel. Previously weconsidered the use of mythological exempla by Clitophon in order togain Leucippe’s favors. There is one instance, particularly puzzling,which reveals much about Clitophon’s own idea of masculinity.When he is still in Tyre, in order to seduce Leucippe, Clitophon com-pares himself to Herakles, truly a judicious choice, since the mythicalhero is an honourable emblem among pepaideumenoi in late antiquityand supremely embodies the values of both masculinity and temperance,especially among Stoics.25 But there is a problem for Clitophon in thechoice of his prototype, since he selects not the brilliant warrior of lit-erary tradition nor the austere Stoic figure put on stage by Seneca, butthe effeminate and cross-dressed Herakles subjugated to Omphale, theQueen of Lydia (2.6.2). This episode, surely one of the least gloriousin Herakles’ mythic career, has been the object of much comic exploi-tation. In Ovid’s Heroides, Hercules’ wife, Deianira, is laughing at herhusband, calling him ‘lasciva puella’ (‘shameless girl’, 9.65) or ‘mollisvir’ (‘unmanly man’, 72), and in Lucian’s irreverent Dialogues of theGods (13) the god Asklepios makes fun of this pseudo-warrior, ‘dressingin a purple dress and being beaten with Omphale’s golden sandals’.26

The aesthetic of cross-dressing is a recurrent feature of Achilles Ta-tius’ world and causes a confusion of identity not only sexual but alsosocial. Clitophon is not the only character subject to this rule sincethe pirates, paradigms of ferocious and unmerciful manliness in thenovel, are constrained to adapt their masculinity to the equivocalworld of Leucippe and Clitophon. This reversal happens in Tyre, whena young man from Byzantium, named Kallisthenes, engages pirates to

24 Sommerstein 1998, 110.25 On Herakles’ figure and its fortune, see Galinsky 1972.26 Lucian, a Syrian from Samosata, is a likely contemporary of Achilles Tatius. His

comic strategies have been well examined by Branham 1989 and could be ad-vantageously compared to those of Achilles Tatius.

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kidnap Leucippe.27 The pirates instructed to do the job ‘were wearingwomen’s clothes and had shaved their beards clean. They carried weap-ons under their dresses’ (2.18.3). This passage bears testimony to the am-bivalent attitude of Achilles Tatius to both the standard image of piracyin the novels and the affirmation of masculinity the pirate generally rep-resents.28 Someone may object that cross-dressing for young people, asanalysed by P. Vidal-Naquet in his Black Hunter, constitutes a kind of ritede passage leading to manhood.29 But in Clitophon’s case, the road to thetruth is not as simple and the novel is not a straightforward Bildungsromanas it has been sometimes defined.30

Our protagonist is involved in a cross-dressing episode, not figura-tively, as in his former comparison of himself with Herakles, but in ac-tuality. After Leucippe’s second false death on the island of Pharos offthe Egyptian coast, Clitophon and his companions sail to nearby Alex-andria, where he meets a rich widow from Ephesus named Melite, whobelieves her former husband died in a shipwreck. Predictably, accordingto novelistic canons, she desperately falls in love with him and, in a lessorthodox development, convinces him to marry her. Nevertheless, herefuses at first to have sex with her, pleading the spatial proximity ofLeucippe’s death. Once they return to Ephesus, the situation totallychanges. Leucippe, of course, is not dead but has been sold as a slaveto Melite, and Thersandros, Melite’s former husband, having comeback from the dead, accuses Clitophon and Melite of adultery. WhileClitophon, with Thersandros seeking him, tries to escape from herhouse, Melite helps her lover by dressing him in her own clothes.Here, we turn to another mythological exemplum and again the exem-plum employed is ambiguous. Melite refers to a painting representingAchilles not as the great and manly Iliadic warrior, but as a youngman dressed as a girl amid King’s Lycomedos daughters, hidden on Sky-ros by his mother Thetis, who was anxious to prevent his certain deathin Troy (6.1.3). This episode was similarly exploited in a comic and

27 Kallisthenes fell in love with Leucippe without even having seen her, which is amark of intemperance in antiquity. See for example Alcibiades, who is said tohave fallen in love with a prostitute thanks to the rumor concerning her beauty(Athenaeus 13.574e). See also the idyll between Achilles and Helen in the Her-oikos by Philostratus, who fall in love ‘without even having seen each other’(54.4–5).

28 See Hopwood 1998.29 See Vidal-Naquet 1986.30 See Laplace 1991, Lalanne 2006.

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popular way, as we can see in Statius’ Achilleid, where the poet seems to‘delight in the naughty humor of the situation and the deflation of epicpretentiousness’31 when describing the hero as an ambiguus sexus (1.337).What is interesting for Achilles’s transition to manhood is that the peri-od of sexual ambiguity occurs before he becomes a man at Troy, whilethe episode of cross-dressing in Leucippe and Clitophon exactly coincideswith Clitophon’s presumed maturation, i. e. having sex under the pa-tronage of Eros (5.27.2). Our young protagonist indeed tries to escapefrom Melite’s house just after the intercourse, even though aware thatboth his beloved Leucippe and his rival Thersandros are alive. MichelFoucault called it ‘an honourable, minor lapse’,32 which is not so farfrom the truth, though many scholars might not agree.

But the cross-dressing game does not stop at this moment, since Cli-tophon is recognized by Thersandros and his servant Sosthenes, wholaughs at the young man for acting the bacchant (6.5.1). This new ref-erence to a famous cross-dressing episode in Euripides’ Bacchants, whereKing Pentheus dresses as a woman in order to attend the rites of Dio-nysos, tends to stress Clitophon’s unmanly characterization, especiallybecause we are told by the narrator that this episode occurs in Ephesusduring ‘a Festival of Artemis’, while ‘drunken people were roaming ev-erywhere’ (6.3.2). And, as we know since New Comedy, ‘religious fes-tivals have provided the ideal opportunity for sexual attacks’33 which arenot restricted to women, since in one of his Controversiae, named ‘Theman who was raped in women’s clothes’ (Raptus in veste muliebri : 5.6),Seneca presents a young man wearing women’s clothes raped by tenmen during the night.

Clitophon’s gender ambiguity has been up to this point carefullymanaged by the author and tends to obscure the sexual dimorphismin the novel. The situation in Ephesus seems to be the same as theone in Tyre, except that the roles are clearly exchanged. Melite, oneof the most appealing female characters in Greek literature, is assumingthe assertive male role, trying by any and every means to obtain Clito-phon’s sexual favors, while Clitophon seems to have lost the famouserotic andreia he was formerly claiming when he planned to andrizesthaiLeucippe. If we have a look again at the beginning of chapter 6, someexpressions are quite surprising. The cross-dressing involves not only

31 Konstan in Slavitt 1997, 83.32 Foucault 1986, 231.33 Pierce 1997, 164.

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Clitophon but also Melite, who wants the young man to leave hisclothes so that she can feel his embrace when she puts them on. Thefemale role-switching reminds us of Ismenodora in Plutarch’s Erotikos,an additional text reflecting this cultural change. Another wealthywidow, this time from Thespiae, she falls in a love with a young ephebosnamed Bacchon and asks him to marry her. While he still hesitates,urged by his erastai to refuse, Ismenodora decides to kidnap him(754e–f). Foucault assumes that Ismenodora performs the part normallyassigned to the erastÞs34 and Goldhill, critiquing this reading, asks a fun-damental question: How like a man can a woman be?35 In our case, thequestion would be rather: How like a woman can a man be, while re-maining a man? Preceding the sexual consummation with Melite, shemakes several abortive attempts, all rejected by Clitophon. Melitethen voices her disappointment, revealing precious information abouther opinion of her lover. First, believing that Leucippe is from Thessaly,the area of magic par excellence, and ignorant of her real identity, she asksher for a magic aphrodisiac to give to Clitophon.36 As Leucippe is stillsuspicious about her lover’s fidelity, Melite calls him an eunuch(5.22.5). Later, as Clitophon has been jailed for adultery, she visitshim and complains again with powerful and strong words (5.25.8):

‘… !kk², t¹ p²mtym rbqistij¾tatom, pqosaptºlemor, jatavik_m, ovtyr

!m´stgr ¢r %kkg cum¶. t¸r avtg t_m c²lym B sji². oq l³m dµcecgqaju¸ô sumej²heuder, oqd³ !postqevol´m, sou t±r peqipkoj²r, !kk±ja· m´ô ja· viko¼s,, eUpoi d’ #m %kkor fti ja· jak0. eqmoOwe ja·!mdqºcume ja· j²kkour b²sjame, 1paq_la¸ soi dijaiot²tgm !q²m7 ovtyr

se !l¼maito b =qyr eQr t± s²‘. taOta 5kece, ja· ûla 5jkaem.

‘…you offered me the supreme insult : you held me close, you kissed me,and then you rose from my bed as would another woman. What phantomshadow of marriage was this? You were not sleeping with an old crone orone who rejected your embraces, but a young and loving bride, and as any-one else would add, beautiful too. Eunuch! Effeminate! Evil eye of beauty!On your head I pronounce this most fitting curse: may Eros condemn youto the same fate as I’. She ceased and broke into tears.

Clitophon, in Melite’s words, is successively a woman, a eunuch and anandrogyne. The first two sexual personae, those of woman and eunuch,are familiar and clearly defined as inferior to man. In the Historia Augus-ta, the eunuch is presented as a ‘third race’ (tertium genus: Alexander

34 Foucault 1986, 197.35 Goldhill 1995, 152.36 See Faraone 1992.

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Severus 23.7) and Diocles, in Lucian’s Eunuch (6), asserts that an eunuchis ‘nor a man neither a woman but something composite, hybrid andmonstrous, alien to human nature’.37 Winkler’s translation of androgynosas ‘effeminate’ is a free one but perhaps a little too suggestive. the literate‘man-woman’ would be perhaps preferable since Clitophon never pres-ents himself as a typical effeminate in the novel. In his Treatise on Inju-rious Terms (Peq· Bkasvgli_m), Suetonius describes androgynos as t± l³m

%kka c¼mmir ¥m, 5wym d´ ti !mdq|loqvom, which can be translated as‘someone who has everything of a woman but has still something of aman in the appearance’, while in Adamantios’ Physiognomy, the androgy-nos is mainly characterised by his voice, keptµ 1pijk²fousa kicuq± swo-ka_a p\mu, that is ‘a wholly frivolous, whining, shrilling and lazy’ one’.38

But, what is more interesting about the pure meaning of androgynos is tobe found in Pollux’ Onomastica, which was a kind of glossary. For Pol-lux, there is indeed an absolute semantic correspondence between theandrogynos and the kinaidos (6.126–27) and Maud Gleason admits thatthe two terms ‘become virtually indistinguishable when used to describemen of effeminate appearance and behavior’.39 The status of the kinaidosis a fascinating one, though it is very hard to translate with our sexualcategories, considering that its etymology itself is very doubtful.40 ForWinkler,41 the kinaidos ‘is not a ‘homosexual but neither is he just an or-dinary guy who now and then decided to commit a kinaidic act. Theconception of a kinaidos was of a man socially deviant in his entirebeing, principally observable in behavior that flagrantly violated or con-travened the dominant social definition of masculinity’. The analysis ofMaud Gleason42 is very similar: she argues that ‘what made [the cinaedus]different from normal folk was not simply the fact that his sexual part-ners included people of the same sex as himself […] but rather an inver-sion or reversal of his gender identity: his abandonment of a ‘masculine’role in favour of a ‘feminine’ one’. This side is also to be found in Cli-

37 For a detailed study of the eunuch’s nature, see Boulhol and Cochelin 1992.38 For a detailed account of the androgyne’s typical features, see Gleason 1990,

394–95.39 Gleason 1990, 396.40 Chantraine, in his Dictionnaire �tymologique de la langue grecque, thinks it is sup-

posed to be connected with aQd~r and jim]y. See also Dover 1978, thoughthere is a mysterious silence in his fundamental study regarding this word andthe status of the kinaidos.

41 Winkler 1990a, 45–46.42 Gleason 1990, 411–12.

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tophon’s modus loquendi. Marko Marincic underlines that ‘in achievingdominance as a lover and as a speaker, Clitophon uses strategies thatstereotypically belong to the female realm’.43 This ‘effeminate rhetoric’,Michel Briand suggests, might coincide with a predominance of Asianistrhetoric in Clitophon’s speeches, while Leucippe would endorse thepure masculinity of Atticism.44 As Joy Connolly clearly expresses it,quoting the Elder Seneca (Controv. 1 praef. 8), in the time of theRoman Empire ‘the Roman love of competition, once properly exer-cised on the battlefield and law court, has moved into the women’s bed-room, as young men compete with women (certare cum femininis) in thearts of femininity: hair-braiding, cosmetics, training the voice in therhythmic, sing-song effects suitable only for women (ad muliebres blandi-tias), and making the body soft and pliable (mollitia corporis)’.45 She addsthat ‘in Cicero, Dionysios of Halicarnassus, the elder Seneca, and Quin-tilian, references to femininity or effeminacy connote the non-Roman(especially the ‘Asiatic’ Greek), the enslaved and the poor’.46 See, for ex-ample, in The Orator’s Education (8.19), this assessment by Quintilian:‘Decent and impressive apparel lends men authority, as the Greekverse bears witness, but a womanish and luxurious dress, instead ofadorning the body, exposes the mind within. In the same way, thetranslucent and many-coloured style of some speakers emasculates sub-jects which are clothed in this kind of verbal dress’. In the case of Cli-tophon, perhaps the most impressive speech he offers in front of thecrew, after having been beaten by Thersandros, is ornamented with the-atrical and Asianist effects (8.2):

‘po? v¼cylem 5ti to»r bia¸our. po? jatadq²lylem. 1p· t¸ma he_m let± tµm

-qtelim. 1m aqto?r tuptºleha to?r Reqo?r7 1m to?r t/r !suk¸ar paiºleha

wyq¸oir. taOta 1m 1qgl¸air lºmair c¸metai, fpou lgde·r l²qtur lgd’%mhqypºr 1sti. s» d³ aqt_m 1m exei tuqamme?r t_m he_m. ja· to?r l³mpomgqo?r aR t_m Req_m !sv²keiai didºasi jatavuc¶m, 1c½ d³ lgd³m!dij¶sar, Rj´tgr d³ t/r )qt´lidor cemºlemor, t¼ptolai paq’ aqt` t`byl`, bkepo¼sgr, oUloi, t/r heoO. 1p· tµm -qtelim aR pkgca¸. ja· oql´wqi pkgc_m B paqoim¸a, !kk± ja· 1p· t_m pqos¾pym tir kalb²mei

tqa¼lata, ¢r 1m pok´l\ ja· l²w,, ja· lel¸amtai t¹ 5davor !mhqyp¸m\aVlati. toiaOta sp´mdei t¸r t0 he`. oq b²qbaqoi toOto ja· TaOqoi ja· B-qtelir B Sjuh_m. b paq’ 1je¸moir lºmor ma¹r ovtyr aRl²ssetai7 tµm

Yym¸am Sjuh¸am pepo¸gjar, ja· 1m 9v´s\ Ne? t± 1m Ta¼qoir aVlata. kab³

43 Marincic 2007, 194–95.44 Briand 2009.45 Connolly 2007, 85.46 Connolly 2007, 88.

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ja· n¸vor jat’ 1loO. ja¸toi t¸ d´, sid¶qou. t± toO n¸vour pepo¸gjem B we¸q.!mdqovºmor avtg ja· liaivºmor deni± toiaOta d´dqajem oXa 1j vºmou c¸metai‘.

‘Whither further may we flee violence? Where may we seek shelter? Towhom of the gods after Artemis? We are attacked in the very temples;we are struck in the sanctuaries! In desert places only do such thingsoccur, where no man is and no witness watches. Yet you act the tyrantin the gods’ own sight. Even to the wicked the temples’ security gives ref-uge, but I who never a wrong have done, a refugee of Artemis, amknocked about at her own altar, while the goddess (alas !) looks on. Hisdrunken violence stops at striking blows but even draws blood from myface, as if this were a battlefield and we at war. This sacred floor is stainedwith human gore. Who makes such libation to the goddess? Is this not theway of barbarians, of Taruians before the Artemis of Skythia? Only theyhave a temple that runs with blood like this. You have transformed Ioniainto Skythia; blood that flows among the Taurians now flows in Ephesosas well. Draw your sword against me too. Though what need have youof iron? Your hand has done the sword’s work. That man-slaughtering,blood-letting hand has produced effects like those of murder!’

Deliberative style, multiplication of asyndeton, the grotesque reminis-cences of Euripides, every element concurs in an assimilation to theat-ricality. What is however problematic in Clitophon’s case is preciselythe coexistence of a feminine side, both appreciated and rejected byMelite, and of a masculine, even manly one.

Let us return to his ‘honourable lapse’, nicely – and rightly – mini-mized by Foucault. Nonetheless, the reader has got to remember that he– or she – is reading a Greek novel, this strongly conventional and co-dified literary form, where young lovers never have sex, forced or con-sensual (which is the worst alternative), with any of their suitors. Thefact that Clitophon consents to have sex with Melite not only reallybreaks generic conventions47 absolutely but deeply changes our percep-tion of him, since he becomes without a doubt a moichos, an adulterer,which is ‘the crime par excellence of the Greek novels’.48 The problem isthat being a moichos is normally a manifestation of masculinity and itcontradicts the definition of an androgynos or a kinaidos who abandonsa masculine role in favour of a feminine one. The example of Favorinusof Arles clearly expresses this contradiction. In his Lives of the Sophists,Philostratus draws a vivid portrait of this very puzzling sophist, born

47 Konstan 1994a, 53 says that ‘however titillating this episode with Melite may beto us, or perhaps to the ancient audience, it does not compromise Clitophon’sfidelity’. We should say strictly ‘Clitophon’s virginity’.

48 Schwartz 2000–1, 93.

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in the Western Empire, in Gaul, but having acquired an Hellenic cultur-al identity through his paideia (489). Favorinus is said to be an !mdq|hg-kur, which is a Greek hapax and a strict synonym of androgynos. Helooks like a eunuch, because he has no beard and a shrill, high-pitchedvoice, in conformity with Adamantios’ Physiognomy, but, what is quitesurprising and expressed as a paradox, he ‘was so ardent in love that hewas actually charged with adultery by a man of consular rank’ (heql¹r d³

ovty tir /m t± 1qytij², ¢r ja· loiwoO kabe?m aQtiam 1n !mdq¹r rp²tou),a situation similar to Clitophon’s. We shall now remember that Sopa-tros, Thersandros’s advocate, precisely accuses Clitophon of being ‘thesort who imitates a man with woman but becomes a woman withman’49 (8.10.9), a qualification that reminds the famous expressionabout Julius Caesar by Suetonius, quoting the elder Curio, that hewas called ‘every woman’s man and every man’s woman’ (1.52). Sopa-tros rightly focuses here on another paradox in this novel: How canwomen so brilliant and – presumably – respectable as Leucippe and Me-lite ever fall in love with such a character? The question of erotic con-tingency does not indeed happen at all in other novels as Callirhoe, TheEphesiaka or The Aithiopika, where the protagonists are defined as themost beautiful and virtuous people in their fictitious world, which isnot really the case in Achilles Tatius’ novel.50 No one could express bet-ter than Sopatros the perfect reversibility of Clitophon, already evokedby Melite. Yet precisely despite Favorinus’ physiological ‘double-na-ture’ and his effeminate appearance, he is never said to have had inter-course with any man.51 As Tim Whitmarsh expresses it, ‘Favorinus de-liberately exploits the counter-intuitive mixture of manliness and un-manliness, flamboyantly manipulating his anomalous position withinthe taxonomy of sex roles’.52 It seems then that both Winkler’s and

49 For an accurate analysis of this speech, see Schwartz 2000–1.50 For example, Melite’s beauty is comparable to Leucippe’s own. For Satyros,

Melite is ‘a living work of art’ (5.11.5), while Clitophon, in order to testifyto the attractive power of Melite, indicates that ‘ her skin you would havesaid was bathed in milk, and her cheeks the natural essence of rose’ (5.13.1),which precisely is the same terms he used with… Leucippe (‘roses arose onher cheeks’: 1.19.1).

51 Gleason fails to explain the exceptional nature of Favorinus (1995, 130). Ac-cording to her analysis, Favorinus is not a cinaedus because he is not interestedin men, which flagrantly contradicts her former equation of the androgynos andthe cinaedus.

52 Whitmarsh 2001b, 115.

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Gleason’s definitions are too restrictive in Clitophon’s case. Craig Wil-liams, in his book on Roman homosexuality, asserts that ‘cinaedi wereconceptualised as transgressing gender norms without necessarily ‘in-verting’ or ‘reversing’ their gender identity irrevocably and always.They crossed the line, and did it often; but they were still capable ofa certain degree of masculine behavior’. He rightly adds that ‘a mancalled a cinaedus might also be an adulter or a moechus. None of these la-bels refers to an absolute, all-encompassing, unchangeable identity.Rather, each of them describes a man’s observable behavior, and thusof course entails an assumption of some kind of underlying predilec-tion’.53

Clitophon is without any doubt not only a technical moichos, as hehad sex with a married woman whose husband was still alive,54 but also ageneric outsider, as he breaks down novelistic conventions. But Leucippeand Clitophon, far from being an antiroman,55 undoubtedly wants to beengaged in a dialogue with a tradition and to fit into this tradition.The question for Achilles Tatius is then how to reconcile a literary per-sonality and strong personal aspirations, in our case a reflection on sexualstatus, with the conventional setting of a Greek novel. Clitophon’s self-definition and identity appear precisely very helpful in this tight spot,but at the price of an incredible sophistic and cultural tour-de-force as Ihope the following example will clearly demonstrate. As we haveseen, virginity (parthenia) is a key word in Greek novels and, I shouldadd, in the Greek world in general. In Leucippe and Clitophon, partheniaand its cognate parthenos are frequent (there are twenty-seven occur-rences in Achilles Tatius, compared to the two occurrences in Charitonand Heliodorus and one in Xenophon of Ephesus). This is not reallysurprising as heroines always claim their status of virgins when defend-ing themselves against rival suitors, although it generally contributes tostimulate and excite those rivals a little more. When Leucippe discoversthat Clitophon has married her mistress, she sends him a letter, whichends with these words (5.18.6): ‘Farewell ; be happy in your new mar-riage. I write this letter still a virgin’. The striking meaning of this final

53 Williams 1999, 209–24.54 Rawson 1986, 33–35, following the new law on adultery promulgated by Au-

gustus in 18 B.C., rightly reminds us that ‘adultery (adulterium) strictly appliedonly to affairs with married women. There was another crime (for which themore general world stuprum came to be reserved) which covered fornicationbetween unmarried ‘respectable’ women and married or unmarried men’.

55 For the opposite view, see Mignogna 1996.

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word aims to expose the actual dissymmetry between their situations.By contrasting her status of parthenos with Clitophon’s marriage, Leu-cippe means something very precise and codified. Yet the meaning ofparthenia has long been debated. In Greek Virginity, Giulia Sissa warnsagainst confusing the ancient notion of parthenia with our modern ‘vir-ginity’: ‘The Greek word parthenos does not unambiguously signify theperfect integrity implicit in our word virgin […] Determined by age andmarital status, virginity was a stage through which every woman passedon her way to full social integration. It coincided with nubility and im-plied proximity to as well as psychological readiness for marriage. Atemporal and teleonomic notion, the word parthenos simply denotedthe expectant hiatus between childhood and gamos’.56 By parthenos, Leu-cippe means that she has experienced no sexual relations within mar-riage. Satyros then urges Clitophon to reply to her beloved and to prac-tice his rhetorical dispositions (5.20.2–3):

‘j!c½ c±q aqt0 diylos²lgm, ¢r %jym aqtµm 5cglar‘. ‘eWpar c²q,’ 5vgm,‘fti ja· 5cgla. !pok¾kej²r le‘. ‘t/r eqghe¸ar7 fkg c±q B pºkir oqj oWde

t¹m c²lom.’ ‘!kk’ oqj 5cgla, l± t¹m Jqajk´a, S²tuqe, ja· tµm paqoOsam

t¼wgm‘. ‘pa¸feir, ¡cah´7 sucjahe¼deir‘. ‘oWda l³m %pista k´cym, !kk’oupy p´pqajtai7 jahaq¹r eQr ta¼tgm tµm Bl´qam Lek¸tgr Jkeitov_m.!kk± t¸ cq²vy, k´ce7 svºdqa c²q le 1n´pkgne t¹ sulb²m, ¦ste !pºqyr

5wy‘. ‘ouj eQl¸ sou sov¾teqor,’ b S²tuqor eWpem7 ‘!kk± ja· aqtºr soi b=qyr rpacoqe¼sei. lºmom di± taw´ym‘.

‘I swore to her that you married against your will. – You said I actuallymarried her? You’ve destroyed me! – Don’t be silly; the whole cityknows that you’re married. – Yes, but I haven’t gone through with themarriage, Satyros; no, by Herakles and by my present lot. – You’re joking,sir; you do sleep with the lady! – I know it’s incredible, but we’ve neverdone it. Clitophon remains pure to this day as far as Melite is concerned.But tell me what to write. I’m so upset by what has happened that Ican’t think’. ‘I’m no cleverer than you,’ said Satyros. ‘Eros himself will sup-ply your words. But do it now’.

We can see here that Clithophon clearly associates marriage and sexualconsummation, which occurs generally, in Greek novels as in other pla-ces, during the wedding night.57 Clitophon’s answer in his following

56 Sissa 1990, 76.57 In Callirhoe, the narrator, revealing the young girl’s pregnancy, explains that

‘after Chaereas and Callirhoe were married, their first contact was passionate;they had an equal impulse to enjoy each other, and matching desire hadmade their union fruitful’ (2.8.4). In The Ephesiaka, Habrokomes and Anthia‘relaxed in each other’s arms and enjoyed the first fruits of Aphrodite; and

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letter then introduces a formula, which is, I think, unparalleled in thewhole of Greek literature: …lah¶s, tµm s¶m le paqhem¸am

lelilgl´mom, eU tir 5sti ja· 1m !mdq²si paqhem¸a (‘…you will learn thatI have imitated your virginity, if that word has any meaning for menas it does for women, 5.20.5)’

For the first time, a male character explicitly raises the possibility of amasculine virginity, which is in itself an aberration (or a ‘bon mot’), asthe experience of losing virginity is anthropologically intended to deter-mine the passage from childhood to womanhood. It is more likely thatAchilles Tatius is here deliberately and wittingly exploiting the conven-tion of sexual symmetry in the Greek novel, as we can notice the will to‘imitate Leucippe’, expressing a sexual paradox, while respecting the par-thenia motif as it was generally accepted. Clitophon then is still abstain-ing from having sex with Melite at the time he receives the letter fromLeucippe. Some scholars have tried to denounce Clitophon’s hypocrisyand deceit,58 since the young man admits to his companions, much ear-lier in the novel, that ‘he is only a novice in his experience of the noveland has only had some affairs with women who sell their services forAphrodite’, a well-known periphrasis to designate prostitutes (2.37.5).The Greek verb used by Clitophon to characterize the nature of his re-lationship with those women is blik/sai, which is also ambiguous as itcan mean both ‘to have a commercial activity with’ and ‘to have sexualintercourse with’.59 But, according to the accepted meaning of parthenia,there is no contradiction between having sexual intercourse with pros-titutes and asserting that one is still a virgin. Since a rape does not reallychange the status of a parthenos,60 pre-marital sexual activity won’t really

there was ardent rivalry all night long, each trying to prove they loved the othermore’ (1.9.9). In his analysis of the frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries inPompeii, Veyne (1998, 52) assumes that all the elements converge towards apreparation for defloration, arguing about the lack of references tot this specialmoment in a young virgin’s life: ‘La volupté était autorisée et même prescriteen cette nuit où elle était légitime. Les filles apeurées pouvaient se résigner en sedisant que la nuit de noces était un cap à passer, un rite de passage, une sorte debizutage’.

58 See Anderson 1982, 117–18 n. 11. Goldhill 1995, 95 is more cautious.59 For Morales 2004, 153, ‘this nevertheless leaves little doubt that he is sexually

experienced’.60 See the example of Pamphile in Menander’s Arbitration, well analysed by Kon-

stan 1994b, 223–24. Pamphile is rejected by Charisios not because she has beenraped before their marriage but because she has given birth to a bastard. See alsoFantham 1975.

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spoil Clitophon’s virginity. Ken Dowden provides a succinct analysis ofthis question: ‘Although parthenia was perceived as adversely affected bypremature sexual experience the real issue was marriageability and thereal contrast was between parthenos and gyne, the married woman. A par-thenos is a maiden, not a virgin’.61

Regarding Clitophon’s second affirmation of his virginity, anothermisreading has been frequently committed. In this passage, Clitophonis relating his adventures to Sostratos, Leucippe’s father. In a tricky cap-tatio beneuolentiae, he is careful to soften the memory of Leucippe’s kid-napping in Tyre. At that moment, he repeats for the second time(8.5.7): ‘If one can speak of such a thing as male virginity, this is my re-lationship to Leucippe up to now’ (eU tir %qa 5stim !mdq¹r paqhem¸a,ta¼tgm j!c½ l´wqi toO paqºmtor pq¹r Keuj¸ppgm 5wy). And onceagain, scholars have wrongly thought that Clitophon is obviouslylying. In the interval between the two expressions of denial, theyplead, the famous lapse with Melite occurred. One of the best examplesof this argument comes from Margaret Doody, who affirms that ‘Clito-phon has now lost his parthenia but not without good cause’.62 Actually,he is still a virgin since he has sex with Melite after Thersandros, Melite’shusband, has returned, which results in the cancellation of Clitophon’smarriage to Melite. During Clitophon’s trial for adultery, Sopratos,Thersandros’s counsel, validates Clitophon’s assertion of virginity atthe same time as he implacably demonstrates our protagonist’s adulterywith Melite (8.10.12):

‘oqjoOm, eQ l³m t´hmgjem, !p¶kkanai t/r aQt¸ar7 oqd³ c±q 5stim b tµm

loiwe¸am pah¾m, oqd³ rbq¸fetai c²lor oqj 5wym %mdqa7 eQ d³ b c²lor t`t¹m c¶lamta f/m oqj !m-qgtai, tµm calghe?sam diavhe¸qamtor %kkou

kek-steutai. ¦speq c±q lµ l´momtor b loiw¹r oqj Gm, l´momtor d³ loiw¹r5stim‘.

‘Consider the implications. If on the one hand he were dead, she would befree of the charge, for no one exists to suffer the injury of the adultery, andwhen a marriage lacks the man, it cannot be insulted. But if on the otherhand the marriage has not been annulled, because the husband is still alive,then a stranger corrupting the wife has poached on another man’s property.

61 Dowden 1989, 2. For a similar point of view, see also Sissa 1990, 78: ‘Makinglove outside the marriage bed, before a marriage has taken place in front of wit-nesses at the ‘nymphic table’, did not result in any change in the name by whicha young girl was called’.

62 Doody 1996, 58. See also Goldhill 1995, 98: ‘The conditional, ‘if there is sucha thing in men’ has become very conditional indeed’.

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The propositions are equally valid: if the husband were not alive, the adul-terer as such would not exist ; but he is alive, and Clitophon is an adulterer!’

Since Thersandros is alive, Clitophon and Melite’s marriage is no longerrecognized as valid, and retroactively, his lapse with Melite occurs out-side the bounds of legally sanctioned wedlock. Before the ‘lapse’ of Cli-tophon in the jail, our young protagonist prevents himself, in a famousexcusatio,63 from any future recriminations about what will be occurring(5.27.2):

½r owm le 5kuse ja· peqi´bake jka¸ousa, 5pahºm ti !mhq¾pimom ja· !kgh_r

1vob¶hgm t¹m =qyta, l¶ loi c´mgtai l¶mila 1j toO heoO, ja· %kkyr fti

Keuj¸ppgm !peik¶veim, ja· fti let± taOta t/r Lek¸tgr !pakk²tteshai

5lekkom, ja· fti oqd³ c²lor 5ti t¹ pqattºlemom Gm, !kk± v²qlajom

¦speq xuw/r moso¼sgr.

When she released me and embraced me, weeping, I had a normal humanreaction. And I was genuinely afraid that the god Love might exact a ter-rible vengeance. And in any case I had now recovered Leucippe, and verysoon I would be separated from Melite, and the act could no longer beconsidered precisely a marital one but was rather a remedy for an ailingsoul.

If Goldhill analyzes this moment as ‘the end of the long deferral of con-summation of his marriage with Melite’,64 he seems to have forgottenthat Clitophon is no longer married to the matron of Ephesus. AsJean Bouffartigue expresses it, the terms used in the description of thiserotic scene clearly testify that Aphrodite is gradually eclipsed by Erosand ‘suggèrent qu’il ne s’agit pas là d’une union consacrée par l’Aphro-dite nuptiale’65.

It seems then that Clitophon deliberately exploits the fluidity of par-thenos status to avoid violating novelistic canons. To remain the hero in aGreek novel, Clitophon enters into a literal ‘no-man’s land’, adoptingdifferent sexual postures that authorize him to be like a woman whilestaying a man. His temporary and consensual lack of masculinity,which is quite ironic since Leucippe, or leukos ippos (white horse) maydesignate a ‘penis’, as is the case in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (191–92),66 is counterbalanced by the fact that he can play a conventionally

63 For commentary on this passage, see Goldhill 1995, 96–97 and Morales 2004,207.

64 Ibid.65 Bouffartigue 2001, 134.66 Henderson 1975, 65. On the mare as obsessed with sexuality and intemperance,

see also Arist. HA 6.18.572a, Ael. NA 4.11; Aesop 32.

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masculine role such as the young and aggressive lover of New Comedyor that of adulterer (moichos). Masculinity, depending on the world onelives in, is necessarily a matter of transformation, negotiation and adap-tation. Clitophon’s skill at manipulating sophistic paradoxes makes him areversible man, sometimes a man with women, sometimes a womanwith women and so on. The form of the Greek novel is an unstableand hybrid one, in keeping with its literary influences and origins,and Clitophon’s construction and representation of self seems preciselyto avoid fixity and transparency in order to conform to the nature of thenovelistic genre. The care of the self in Clitophon’s case consists of acomplex combination of self-preservation and self-positioning, whichengages the sophistic and capable reader in a dialogue, both seriousand comic, with the text and his own position as a man.

Romain Brethes146