In a well-known parable, told by Xenophon but credited by him to the sophist Prodicus, the young Heracles setting out on the road meets two women whose appearance turns out to be in accord with their characters and names, which are soon proclaimed by each to be Virtue and Vice.Footnote 1 The former comports herself as a proper Greek woman should, ‘becoming to look at and freeborn by nature, her body (σῶμα) adorned with purity, her eyes with shame, her stature with moderation (τὸ δὲ σχῆμα σωφροσύνῃ), dressed in white’ (transl. Mayhew).Footnote 2 Vice, on the other hand, is self-absorbed and slutty: ‘well nourished to the point of fleshiness and softness, made up to appear whiter and redder than she was in fact’,Footnote 3 τὸ δὲ σχῆμαFootnote 4 ὥστε δοκεῖν ὀρθοτέραν τῆς φύσεως εἶναι, ‘with wide-open eyes,Footnote 5 dressed to show off her ripeness,Footnote 6 often checking herself out and seeing whether anyone was looking at her, often even looking at her own shadow’.
All seems clear and likely, even familiar, except for the words kept in Greek, the meaning of which seems to have eluded scholars. Some renderings are: ‘formâ procerior visa quam esset a natura’ (B. Simpson),Footnote 7 ‘ihre Haltung gestreckt, so dass sie gerader erschien, als es die Natur mit sich brachte’ (A. Zeising),Footnote 8 ‘her stature such as to seem too straight to be natural’ (R. Mayhew), ‘her carriage unnaturally lofty and stilted’ (D.J. Stewart),Footnote 9 ‘with a figure more upright than was consistent with nature’ (J. Dillon and T. Gergel),Footnote 10 ‘nell’atteggiamento poi tale venir giudicata piú eretta del naturale’ (M. Untersteiner),Footnote 11 ‘her figure [sc. was made up] to exaggerate her height’ (E.C. Marchant, in the Loeb edition), ‘with a carriage more upright than was natural’ (H. Tredennick, in the Penguin translation), ‘plus droit qu'au naturel’ (L.-A. Dorion, in the Budé edition).
What can be meant by these vague but generally consistent translations? It cannot be that a woman standing unnaturally upright or straight (how?) was especially voluptuous, since both women appeared tall to Heracles (φανῆναι αὐτῷ δύο γυναῖκας προσιέναι μεγάλας). Was Vice somehow exaggerating her height? It was indeed possible for a woman to appear taller by means of high-heeled shoes or lifts, but if this is what Xenophon meant to say, his words would have been more like his description of Isomachus’ wife: ὑποδήματα δ’ ἔχουσαν ὑψηλά, ὅπως μείζων δοκοίη εἶναι ἢ ἐπεφύκει (Oec. 10.2).Footnote 12 This detail about Vice's appearance would rather seem to apply to a haughty woman, one whose appearance and attitude (Untersteiner's atteggiamento) was designed to ward off rather than attract male advances; cf. Rufinus 33.1–2 Page (Anth. Pal. 5.92) ὑψοῦται Ῥοδόπη τῷ κάλλεϊ, κἤν ποτε «χαῖρε» | εἴπω, ταῖς σοβαραῖς ὀφρύσιν ἠσπάσατο. Aristotle regards an upright body as a sign of both masculinity and an angry personality.Footnote 13 Surely, though, this phrase must be in line with every other detail offered; that is, her σχῆμα is such as to exaggerate her womanliness and to contrast with the sōphron σχῆμα of Virtue, each such comment the fourth to be listed by Prodicus, an observation I owe to my anonymous referee.
My suggestion is that ὀρθός here refers not to her body's height or bearing but rather to its outward projection of breasts.Footnote 14 Compare Procopius’ account of Justinian, who, given his own Choice of Heracles for a wife, preferred not a woman σωφροσύνῃ ξυνῳκισμένην but rather Theodora, ὑπερφυᾶ καὶ παρθένον τινὰ καὶ τὸ δὴ λεγόμενον ὀρθότιτθον οὖσαν (Arc. 10.2).Footnote 15 Whether Vice has come by her large breasts naturally—cf. Phld. Epig. 16.3–4 Sider, with my notes: κἀν στέρνοις ἔτι κεῖνα τὰ λύγδινα κώνια μαστῶν | ἕστηκεν, μίτρης γυμνὰ περιδρομάδοςFootnote 16— or she has produced a false appearance (note δοκεῖν) through the ancient equivalent of a push-up bra (the effects of which are implicit in Philodemus’ praise of a woman who does not need one) is not discernible from the text as we have it, but this is surely what Prodicus was describing, perhaps in more explicit language.Footnote 17 It is, moreover, important to realize that, although Greek males admired firm round breasts, they preferred them small, to judge from the various fruits (such as quince, about the size of an apple) with which they were compared, as Gerber (n. 14), 208 notes;Footnote 18 cf. also Olson on Ar. Ach. 1199.Footnote 19 Whether this is because of any deep-seated fear of femininity, as Gerber suspects, need not be addressed here; it is enough to note that Vice is over the top in every way, including her σχῆμα.Footnote 20
