Scholarship on Ecclesiazusae (as on Wealth) has been largely divided between those who are in favour of a fantastical/positive reading of the play and view it as a celebration of comic energy void of serious social critique,Footnote 1 and those who argue for an ironic/satirical interpretation and deem Praxagora's plan as a spectacular failure.Footnote 2 The unsuccessful realization of the new political programme is often regarded as a commentary on the state of democracy at the time. Other views are more affirmative of the democratic values of the play: Scholtz claims that the women in Ecclesiazusae succeed into putting into action Lysistrata's dream of a cohesive civic order, although, according to him, the play does not present ‘an unambiguously pro or contra viewpoint vis-à-vis gynaecocratic communalism’.Footnote 3 Rothwell believes that the satire is directed against the greedy dēmos rather than against Praxagora's plan. He sees the persuasion exercised by women as ‘a benevolent and indispensable force in democracy’, and argues that the women of Ecclesiazusae, like the women in Lysistrata, strive to assure the continuity of the community; in his view, the play is about ‘the potential advantages of leadership in building a community’.Footnote 4 Moodie also outright rejects a threatening or pessimistic reading, and makes the case that the audience is encouraged to take the women seriously as political actors owing to their unusual interaction with the audience and the rupture of dramatic illusion, which creates a rapport between the women and the audience. If the play is subversive, it is so only in its ‘non-satirical presentation of female leadership’.Footnote 5
While it would be exciting to discover proto-feminist traits in the portrayal of Aristophanes’ women in Ecclesiazusae, I do not believe that there are any. Contrary to what has been argued, the comparison between the permanent gynaecocracy in Ecclesiazusae and the temporary one in Lysistrata does not paint the world of Ecclesiazusae in a positive light. Whereas both female leaders are preoccupied with issues concerning the oikos, the new world of Ecclesiazusae, as formed by Praxagora's laws, is the opposite of Lysistrata's leadership and the world brought about at the end of Lysistrata. The women in Lysistrata, by taking matters into their hands, uphold the institution of marriage and restore the process of reproductionFootnote 6 in a world controlled once more by men. The play is almost a lesson on how a well-governed and restrained sexuality may prove beneficial for the city. As I will argue, Ecclesiazusae is a far cry from this. The women in Ecclesiazusae abolish the institution of marriage, and create chaos and a wild sexual disorder, which smacks of prostitution and an inability to reproduce. The years that intervened between the production of Lysistrata and that of Ecclesiazusae make all the difference for the fantastical portrayal of a world dominated by women, a world which now enacts the nightmarish scenario of an ungoverned and unrestrained female sexuality.
It must be clear by now that my reading falls into the dystopian camp. It focusses on the competition-scene between the three old women and the young girl over Epigenes, which follows the application of Praxagora's plan, in order to show that there are dark aspects to the way in which power relationships are transacted between men and women in the new world. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part argues that the old women are assimilated to agents of death and mythical female monsters that prey on the young man, who is gradually emasculated and finally reduced to a state of impotency and symbolic death. In the second part I propose that the old women and the young girl perform magical practices, such as the pronouncement of separation curses and ἀγωγή spells on stage, in order to satisfy their sexual cravings. Both the treatment of the young man at the hands of the women and the control of magic practices by the women over the young man reveal some alarming aspects of the new world, namely sterility, impotency and (figurative) death of the young and vital forces of the city.
Such a dystopian reading propounds an escapist fantasy politics of a darkly misogynistic sort. At the same time, however, Praxagora's brave new world has something to say about Aristophanes’ own world and that of his audience. I will come back to this point at the end of my analysis.
1. FEMALE MONSTERS AND THEIR MALE VICTIM
Men are thoroughly humiliated in Ecclesiazusae, as is often the case in the ‘female’ plays of Aristophanes. Even before a man shows up on stage, all women's references to men seem to question their masculinity: Agyrrhius used to be a woman (102–3) and Epigonus looks like a woman (167–8); the most successful male speakers are believed to have a woman's role, since they assume a passive sexual role (112–14). The entrance of the first male character, Blepyrus, sets the tone for how the young man will be later portrayed in the play.Footnote 7 Blepyrus shows up on stage as an involuntary transvestite,Footnote 8 who puts himself in the position of a pregnant woman and prays to the goddess of childbirth for assistance, while he is squatting for reasons other than delivery: he wants to bring forth not an infant but a pear (354–5, 361–2). The attempts at this rather unorthodox delivery remain unsuccessful. Blepyrus compares himself to a σκωραμὶς κωμῳδική (371), a comic chamberpot, which receives excrement but cannot discharge it: he is sterile.Footnote 9 His impotency and sterility are stressed several times in the play.Footnote 10 In the comic world, where sexuality is often the driving force and sexual prowess the most powerful male weapon, sexual death and impotency equal (symbolic) death.Footnote 11 Indeed, the overtones of death are manifest when he describes himself as a corpse lying in bed with his wife's mantle over him but in an incomplete state of preparation: without the traditional garland and oil-bottle (536–8).Footnote 12
The implications of impotency and death return more prominently in one of the scenes which exemplifies the consequences of the radical plan of Praxagora for a city ‘as one giant household’: three old women quarrel over the sexual services of a young man. The first references to death are traced, naturally, in the jokes and insults against the old women. Although the first woman considers her maturity to be an advantage over her young competitor (895), in reality she is old and ‘rotten’ (884, 926 σαπρά, 934 ὦλεθρε), almost dead already (904–5 σὺ δ’, ὦ γραῦ, παραλέλεξαι κἀντέτριψαι | τῷ Θανάτῳ μέλημα, 926 οὔκουν ἐπ’ ἐκφοράν γε); her lover cannot be anyone else but Geres (932) or the best painter of the funerary jars, Death himself (993–7).Footnote 13 However, the death undertones gradually shift from the old woman (and her old and ugly competitors that soon appear on stage) to the young man. The comic inversion of the natural state of things is funny but also rather alarming: in the new world the morbid imagery of death is not reserved just for the old, but extends to the young and threatens their vitality.
At first the young man appears confident about his sexual prowess: he is burning with passion and desire since he has been yearning for the young woman for a long time (938, 948, 960–75). As soon as he finds out, however, that he has to deal with the old woman first (and the rest of the old women later) his confidence vanishes together with his potency. The first sign is given in the young man's exchange with the first old woman which is loaded with sexual innuendoes:Footnote 14 the old woman claims that the man knocked on her door (977 καὶ τὴν θύραν γ’ ἤραττες), to which the young man replies ‘I would rather die’ (977 ἀποθάνοιμ’ ἄρα). The young man's reply to the old woman's sexual advances foreshadows the later scene (1105–11), where death is what the young man expects to come out as a result from his sexual intercourse with the old woman.
When the young man appears unwilling to serve the first old woman sexually, she recites the new decree which permits her to ‘drag the man by the peg’ (1020 ἕλκειν ἀνατεὶ λαβομένας τοῦ παττάλου).Footnote 15 The young man's response betrays his concern about his bodily integrity (οἴμοι, Προκρούστης τήμερον γενήσομαι): Procrustes used to kill his victims by cutting or stretching out their limbs so that they may fit in his bed and was himself killed by Theseus in the same way.Footnote 16 The young man is afraid that he will suffer like Procrustes but with reference to his penis (note the pun with προκρούω, that is, have sex)Footnote 17 not his limbs: he might be thinking of castration or overstretching of his phallus owing to the excessive sexual activity he will be subjected to. A similar fear for the integrity of his body is expressed later on, when the two old women drag him violently in opposite directions (1076 διασπάσεσθέ μ’, ὦ κακῶς ἀπολούμεναι). As the situation escalates, sexual intercourse with the old woman assumes connotations of death: the old woman insists that the young man should follow her to her place out of ‘Diomedian compulsion’ (1029). The scholia explain that the reference is to Diomedes, the Thracian son of Ares; his daughters were prostitutes who forced passers-by to have sexual intercourse with them until the men were exhausted, whereupon Diomedes killed them.Footnote 18
The scene of the old woman with its lethal undertones calls to mind the nightmarish female monsters or deities who destroy men in Greek literary tradition (the Furies and their sisters, the [three] Moirai, the three Graiai, Sphinxes, Erinyes and Sirens).Footnote 19 A particular feature of some of these creatures was their alluring and seducing voice. The binding song sung by the Furies in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (303–6, 327–33 = 341–6) maddens, deranges and withers their male victim.Footnote 20 Ιn the Odyssey (12.1–200) and in Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.485–921) the Sirens lured passing ships to destruction with their irresistible voices and enchanting songs on the rocky coast of their island home, and represented one of the many obstacles that Odysseus and Jason respectively had to overcome in their voyages.Footnote 21 The Sphinxes, in many ways like the Sirens, are said to carry off the person captured by their song (Eur. El. 471–2). Lamias also may have used their enchanting voice to attract males (Plut. Mor. 515F). Likewise, the old and the young women sing their songs to the passers-by in order to lure them into their houses (880–2, 885–7)—as, of course, prostitutes would also do. In her song, the old woman promises to her much-expected lover that he will have a very good time owing to her long sexual experience, and that she will be faithful to him forever (893–9):
This is similar to what the Lamia (φάσμα) in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius (4.25) says to her victim, Menippus:
«ἐς ὃ ἑσπέρας» ἔφη «ἀφικομένῳ σοι ᾠδή τε ὑπάρξει ἐμοῦ ᾀδούσης καὶ οἶνος, οἷον οὔπω ἔπιες, καὶ οὐδὲ ἀντεραστὴς ἐνοχλήσει σε, βιώσομαι δὲ καλὴ ξὺν καλῷ».
If you come to my place this evening, you will have songs sung by me and wine, such as you never drank before; no rival will disturb you and we will live together as a beautiful couple. (my translation)
The song—to which the girl refers twice (887 ᾄδουσ’, ἀντᾴσομαι), as does Lamia (ᾠδή, ᾀδούσης)—the promise of a good, memorable time, the reassurance of good faith to the potential victim and the erotic rhetoric of a continuous life-long love are folk-tale features,Footnote 23 which are all to be found in Aristophanes. The love which is ‘now and forever’ is also found in the practice of the ἀγωγή, to which I will return, where the agent aims at an eternal bondage with the victim.Footnote 24 Both the old and the young women display the features of female monsters: thus female sexual desire and incessant appetite in the new world of Praxagora is portrayed in a negative light, coming from either old or young women. Any women who express their sexual impulses in this open, straightforward way cannot but resemble, in the eyes of the ancient audience, female rapacious and deadly monsters.
The appearance of the other two old women adds to the death overtones of the text, as they also share common features with female monsters who seduced men in order to finally destroy them. If the first old woman is the girl of Geres or Death, the second is an Empusa (1056), and the third looks as if she does not belong to the world of the living but to that of the dead (1073 ἀνεστηκυῖα παρὰ τῶν πλειόνων): each of them is more repulsive than the other (1053 τοῦτο γὰρ ἐκείνου τὸ κακὸν ἐξωλέστερον, 1070 τοῦτ’ αὖ πολὺ τούτου τὸ κακὸν ἐξωλέστερον). The implications of death are straightforward in the case of the third old woman and latent in the second: Empusa was a female monster or bogy who could take many shapes.Footnote 25 In one of her numerous disguises, she could be identified with Hecate (Alciphron, 3.26.3).Footnote 26 Even more suggestively, Empusa was often associated with another mythical monster, Lamia, who was initially conceptualized as a child-devouring demon who sought out pregnant women and devoured their babies before or after they were born.Footnote 27 Lamias at some point become man-eating creatures, which mate with young attractive males before devouring them.Footnote 28
All aspects of the creatures to which the old women and the girl are assimilated have important implications for the new world of Praxagora: death has not been banished from the new world and threatens the vitality and fertility of the young. In the light of the representation of the three old women as agents of death, one may argue that Epigenes calls the two old women, who drag him to different directions, χαλεπαὶ πορθμῆς (1086), because he has in mind Charon, the ferryman of Hades.Footnote 29
When the third old woman appears on stage, the young man seems for a moment to rediscover his lost potency, as he mistakenly believes that it is the young girl who has come to free him from the old woman (1045–8; note the obscene pun on the παχεῖαν χάριν). Yet, when it becomes clear that his supposed saviour is an even uglier old woman, he becomes a ‘softie’ (1058 μαλακίων), which may refer not only to his fear of the old woman's ugly faceFootnote 30 but also to the loss of his sexual prowess.Footnote 31 This is further emphasized later on, when he professes to be unable to perform sexually with both women (1090–1 βινεῖν δεῖ με διαλελημμένον | πῶς οὖν δικωπεῖν ἀμφοτέρας δυνήσομαι;) and the old woman reassures him with the promise of a ‘potful of bulbs’, which was supposed to be a strong aphrodisiac.Footnote 32
Sex in the new world can have a lethal effect—on young men, at least. The prime symbol of death, λήκυθος,Footnote 33 which we encountered earlier on in Blepyrus’ self-description as a corpse, recurs in two scenes which are inextricably linked to one another. In the first scene (1030–6), the young man urges the (first) old woman to make preparations for her funeral, because he professes that she is so decrepit that she will not survive the intense sexual experience. The old woman misinterprets the description of the ritual and thinks that Epigenes talks of marriage, since some of the items that he mentions are appropriate for both the context of πρόθεσις in a funeral and the ἔκδοσις and ἐξαγωγή of the wedding ceremony:Footnote 34 ribbons (ταινίαι), flasks (λήκυθοι), pots of water (ὄστρακον ὕδατος) and diadems (στεφάνη) had a different function in either ritual.Footnote 35 Epigenes hurries to specify that the στεφάνη will be of wax, hence making clear that it is the funeral of the old woman that he has in mind (1036).Footnote 36 However, later on, when the other two old women have made their appearance and also claimed his attentions, the young man appears to believe that it is he who will soon be in need of a funerary ritual (1105–11). The implications of death have shifted from the old women to the young man himself: he asks to be buried ‘at the mouth of the strait’ where he will perish, that is, the old woman's house (1106–7), and he envisages the old woman as the monumental urn placed over his grave (1111 πρόφασιν ἀντὶ ληκύθου).Footnote 37 As Saïd, Auger and Zeitlin have argued,Footnote 38 the new laws of Praxagora do not only bring unhappiness upon individuals: they signify the death of the whole city, whose vital forces are destroyed by sterile unions. It is not without significance that the ramifications of Praxagora's sexual communism are explored only from the side of old and ugly women seeking sexual gratification from younger men, and that the alternative scenario, that of old men lusting after young women, is not dramatized.Footnote 39 Old women represent a sexuality which cannot be associated anymore with child-bearing,Footnote 40 hence their union with the young man is doomed to be sterile.
This is not to say that Epigenes comes across as a sympathetic character. Far from feeling sorry for him, the audience would probably experience a feeling of Schadenfreude and would laugh at his misfortunes. The fact that the positive aspects of the new world are reserved for the old and the ugly, while the young and the beautiful fare badly at their hands is the main cause of mirth in the play.
2. LOVE MAGIC
Although both the lyrical duel between the old woman and the young woman and the love-duet have attracted much scholarly attention, the references to magic practices in these scenes have remained unnoticed. Yet, the use and the control of magic practices by the women over the man reflect the changes in the new world: the inversion of the gender roles, the complete abandonment of the oikos-focussed role of women and the unrestrained expression of female sexuality outside the context of marriage. These women are depicted not only as hetairai whose competing sexual interests threaten the stability of the community but also as ominous figures who openly engage in practices from which respectable citizen women should refrain.Footnote 41 Although explicit condemnation, such as legal charges, were not expressed, unless there was harm done,Footnote 42 magic practices were looked upon with suspicion and dread.Footnote 43 The legal cases that have come down to us concerned women of low social status, such as prostitutes, which were probably seen as interfering with the established traditional religious practices.Footnote 44 Since most of the magic practices invoked powerful and potentially dangerous forces which normally one was expected to avert,Footnote 45 practitioners of these rituals were viewed as adopting a deliberately antisocial and subversive stance.Footnote 46 A female magic practitioner may come across ῾as a sinister figure, one who has scant respect for the values and structures of polis and oikos, who has tremendous influence over the men she meets—who may (possibly) use pharmaka to get her way—and who sets the city at risk with regard to the god᾽.Footnote 47 Thus, by assuming the role of aspiring magic practitioners the women personify the dismantling of the city and embody the sexual and social confusion in the new world of Praxagora. At the same time, this is the earliest representation of old women with witchlike qualities in comedy.Footnote 48 Only much later, in particular in the Augustan period, does the decrepit old witch become a literary stereotype.
Significantly, the implications of sterility reoccur. The first old woman uses the language of separation curse tablets in order to condemn the union of the young man and the woman to sterility. According to Eidinow, separation curses ‘are aimed at a ritual in a love triangle situation and, occasionally, at the object of affection, as well, in order to inhibit contact between the two’.Footnote 49 The main purpose of such a curse is ‘to restrain erotic attraction and break any bond that may have already developed between the accursed and their partner’.Footnote 50 This description is very fitting to the case of Ecclesiazusae. There is the love triangle situation (young woman, old woman and young man), at least before the rest of the old women appear, and there is an obvious competition between the young woman and the old woman over the young man, who is soon to appear: the two women exchange insults (884–7, 904–5, 918–20, 926–7, 932), shoo one another away (890, 930), advertise what they have to offer, one in contrast to the other (893–9, 900–5), and state their superiority and their confidence that they will prevail, the one over the other (921–4, 925–6, 933–5). Before the old woman utters her curse against the young woman, the young woman notes that the old woman is jealous of her (900 μὴ φθόνει ταῖς νέαισι) and goes on to give an account of what causes the old woman's jealousy: the sexual attractiveness that a youthful graceful body emanates (901–3). Enraged by her words, the old woman immediately exclaims her curse (906–10):
The old woman phrases her curse in the form of separation: she uses the ‘wish formula’ (optative)Footnote 51 and attempts to prevent the girl from having sex with the young man by a) targeting a specific part of the girl's body (τρῆμα), b) focussing on relevant objects or locations, such as the bed or part of the bed (ἐπίκλιντρον, κλίνης), and c) using an analogy to condemn any act of sexual nature between the two and, at the same time, control the young man's potency (909–10). All these features are also to be found in separation curses. The curses often deploy a binding formula, which targets parts of the body and aspects of the behaviour; for example one curse (A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae [Paris, 1904] [henceforth Def. tab.] 86) is directed against an hetaira and binds her food, her drink, her sleep and laughter, as well as her buttocks and her eyes. These last two probably evoke the sexual power of the woman, that someone was desperate to disable:Footnote 52
Side A:Footnote 53
I assign Zois, the Eretrian wife of Kabeira, to Earth and to Hermes. I bind her food and her drink, her sleep and her laughter, her intercourseFootnote 54 and her cithara-playing, her entrance, her pleasure, her little buttocks, her thoughts, her eyes …
Other curses target female genitalia (R. Wünsch, Defixionum Tabellae Atticae [IG 3/3] [Berlin, 1887] [henceforth Def. tab. Att.] 77 κύσθους, κύσθον, Def. tab. Att. 89 ἀκρωτήρια), which, apart from inhibiting sexual contact, may also signify the intention of causing infertility.Footnote 55 In Ecclesiazusae the situation is very similar: the crude curse of the old woman has obviously erotic overtones, since she targets the ‘hole’ of the young girl, wishing that it falls out,Footnote 56 when she is about to perform the sexual act. In addition to preventing sexual intercourse, the curse may also aim at causing infertility and childlessness for the young woman. This has grave implications for the oikos in the new status quo: at the rare instances in which a young woman is able to mate with a young man, before any other old and ugly woman, the union is still not allowed to result to the production of children.
The reference to the bed is also common in curses and binding spells. In Def. tab. 68 and 69 the κοίτη is mentioned as a way of implying the sexual act: in Def. tab. 68 a woman called Theodora is cursed in her relationship with Charias (probably that of a hetaira with a client):Footnote 57
Side A:
I bind Theodora in the presence of the one beside Persephone and the unhappy dead. May she be useless both whenever she is about to chat with Kallias and whenever she is about to chat with Charias and her deeds and words and business … Words, talk that, at any time, she may say. I bind Theodora to be useless with regard to Charias and Charias to forget Theodora and Charias to forget the child of Theodora / dear little Theodora and sex with Theodora.
Side B:
Just as this man lies here, useless, in the same way may everything of Theodora's be useless, both her words and deeds, those directed to Charias and those to other men. I bind Theodora in the presence of Hermes of the underworld and in the presence of the unhappy dead and before Tethys. Useless the deeds directed at Charias and the other men and sex with Charias and Charias should forget sex; Charias should forget the child of Theodora / dear little Theodora, the woman he loves.
The person who curses the relationship asks that Charias forget the bed (κοίτης) of Theodora and that Theodora and her deeds towards Charias (and other men) prove to be useless (καταδῶ Θεοδώρα πρὸς Χαρίαν ἀτελὴ αὐτὴν εἶναι, ἀτέλεστα καὶ ἔργα τὰ πρὸς Χαρίαν καὶ τὸς ἄλλος ἀνθρώπος). Thus the main target appears to be the sexual power and success of Theodora, mainly with regard to Charias; the sexual contact may have already taken place or it could be the possibility of it that the curse is targeting.Footnote 58 Again, the situation is reminiscent of that in Ecclesiazusae. The old woman wishes that the girl lose the headrest (ἐπίκλιντρον) when she lies down with her man, and we may reasonably assume that it is the sexual act that she wants to impede or prevent from taking place. On the other hand, if SommersteinFootnote 59 is right that the ἐπίκλιντρον refers to the girl's bum, then the old woman is trying to immobilize another part of her body, a particularly erogenous one. In the last part of the curse (908–10 κἀπὶ τῆς κλίνης ὄφιν | εὕροις καὶ προσελκύσαιο | βουλομένη φιλῆσαι) the text is corrupt and not very clear: probably the snake alludes to the phallus of the young man,Footnote 60 to which the old woman addresses her curse. Since snakes are also symbolic of death,Footnote 61 it could be that the old woman curses the man's phallus to be limp, so that the sexual union with the girl is unsuccessful. Again, there are some parallels in curses, where the male genitals are targeted (Def. tab. Att. 77 ψωλάς, ψωλήν) not always in an erotic context but as a wish for an enemy's general ill-will (D.R. Jordan, ‘A survey of Greek defixiones not included in the special corpora’, GRBS 26 [1985], 151–97 [henceforth SGD], 88). The writer of SGD 57 wants to separate Euboula from Aeneas, but more attention is drawn to the male half of the couple, since his body parts are mentioned, from which Euboula is cursed to stay away (cf. especially πρωκτοῦ and, possibly, ψωλίου in line 8):Footnote 62
I turn Euboula away from Aineas, from his face, from his eyes, from his mouth, from his breasts, from his spirit, from his stomach, from his penis, from his anus, from his whole body. I turn Euboula away from Aineas.
Unsurprisingly, it is the old woman and not the girl who resorts to a binding curse in order to thwart her rival. By contrast to the aforementioned separation curses, which were written on tablets, the old woman addresses her curse to the young woman in person. One must bear in mind, however, that the pronouncement of the curse was as important as its inscription on lead, wax or other pliable material. The cursing formula attended the gesture, as it could be recited over the tablet while it was being twisted and perforated.Footnote 63 It may be that the practice of writing binding curses grew out of existing oral traditions, as many scholars have argued.Footnote 64 In Euripides’ Medea plain cursing takes place in the context of erotic competition, as Medea spells out her curses to Jason and Glauke on stage (Eur. Med. 113–14, 160–5, 625–6, 803–6). This shows that cursing was essentially an oral practice, as one would have imagined;Footnote 65 but there is also literary evidence that binding songs and magic curses were intoned in Athens at least fifty years before the date given to the first Attic tablets (fifth to early fourth century). For instance literary parallels of magic love curses are found in tragedy, which are spoken out spontaneously and are sometimes addressed to someone on stage: in Eumenides (327–33) the Erinyes utter their own binding curse against Orestes.Footnote 66 In Agamemnon, Clytemnestra's binding spell is sung on stage (958–74)Footnote 67 and addressed to Agamemnon in person (961 ἄναξ, 968 σοῦ μολόντος, 974 μέλοι δέ τοί σοι τῶνπερ ἂν μέλληις τελεῖν) in what is suggested to be a context of erotic competition, since Clytemnestra has just seen Cassandra. Moreover, comic writers were familiar with magic practices,Footnote 68 and Aristophanes, in particular, appears to parody a magical incantation that turns up repeatedly in Hellenistic and Roman-era charms for erotic purposes.Footnote 69 In this light, the curse in Ecclesiazusae is not uncommon, neither in terms of its orality nor in terms of its appearance within a comic context.
I will now move on to the ‘love duet’ (960–76).Footnote 70 The song, as has been argued,Footnote 71 borrows elements from the παρακλαυσίθυρον, the song sung by an excluded lover from the street to his beloved within. The song combines elements from both the παρακλαυσίθυρον song and the ἀγωγή spells. The ἀγωγή spells were a form of love-magic which have come down to us from a first-century b.c. papyrus handbook from Egypt and a second-century lead tablet from Carthage, but there is evidence that they were used in Classical Greece from the time of Pindar and were indeed popular by the Late Classical period.Footnote 72 According to Faraone,Footnote 73 these spells were used by men in connection with women and sought to bind the female victim and force her to come and make love to the male practitioner. Most of the extant ἀγωγή spells aimed at torturing the victim until she would be helplessly drawn to the practitioner's house and bed.Footnote 74
In Ecclesiazusae, both the girl's and the young man's linguistic choices evoke the vocabulary one encounters in the ἀγωγή spells; but theirs is a rather unorthodox spell: it is the girl who first applies it, in the presence of the young man, the intended victim, and then the young man picks it up and attempts to apply it himself. The girl uses the incantatory repetition of δεῦρο (951–3 δεῦρο δή, δεῦρο δή, | φίλον ἐμόν, δεῦρό μοι | πρόσελθε), asks that she be released from her torture, the torments of erōs (958 μέθες, ἱκνοῦμαί σ’, Ἔρως), and then uses the magic incantation to draw her lover to her house and bed (959–60 ποίησον τόνδ’ ἐς εὐνὴν | τὴν ἐμὴν ἱκέσθαι). One may compare this line to Simaetha's refrain in Theocritus’ second idyll, where Simaetha performs an ἀγωγή spell to drive her former boyfriend, Daphnis, away from his current lover and bring him back to her: ἶυγξ, ἕλκε τὺ τῆνον ἐμὸν ποτὶ δῶμα τὸν ἄνδρα (17, 21, 26, 37, 41, 43, 56, 62). The formula finds also parallels in the Papyri Graecae Magicae, such as the inscription on PGM 7.462–6 which reads ῾cause her, NN, to love me᾽ and on PGM 19b.1–3 ῾may he [bring] him, NN, to her, NN᾽.Footnote 75
What is important here is that the magic process which the girl initiates was most commonly applied by young unmarried males.Footnote 76 Any women who had recourse to it were prostitutes, bored married women, or perhaps widows, but respectable unmarried girls were hardly credited with practising magic.Footnote 77 Faraone has argued that the courtesan who was often forthright in her pursuit of men through various magical practices was a traditional literary stereotype.Footnote 78 Thus Aristophanes may present the four women in a situation that would have been instantly recognizable to his ancient audience as typical of courtesans who try to get a lover by performing the sort of aggressive erotic magic that was otherwise typical of men.Footnote 79 Indeed, the young girl who advertises, by singing in public, her attractiveness and availability, who declares openly how she waits and longs for her boyfriend (912), and advises her rival to order a dildo (915–17), adopts the way of prostitutes.Footnote 80
The young man, following the girl's lead, repeats the incantatory words (971–2 and 975 ἄνοιξον, ἀσπάζου με | διά τοι σὲ πόνους ἔχω) and gives a fuller account of his sufferings (966 Κύπρι τί μ’ ἐκμαίνεις ἐπὶ ταύτῃ;, 969–70 καὶ ταῦτα μέντοι μετρίως πρὸς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάγκην | εἰρημέν’ ἐστίν). The part where the practitioner wishes for the victim's torture is comically replaced by the young man's promise of sexual violence (963–5 ἀλλ’ ἐν τῷ σῷ | βούλομαι κόλπῳ | πληκτίζεσθαι μετὰ τῆς σῆς πυγῆς).Footnote 81 However, the magic refrain with which the young man addresses the girl (ποίησον [τόνδ’] τήνδ’ ἐς εὐνὴν | τὴν ἐμὴν ἱκέσθαι) is not appropriate for the situation: it makes sense for the woman who is within her house, but not for the man who is on the street. The futility of the young man's attempt to gain control through magic practices over the young woman is accentuated by his subsequent submissiveness to the will of the old women. One could imagine that the young man's spell, instead of attracting the young girl, worked on the old woman, who indeed appears in front of him, but wants to drag him into her house. Moreover, if Faraone is right in arguing that the majority of attraction spells were based on the model of bridal theft, that is, using violent means to extract a woman from her existing family or relationship and forge a new one,Footnote 82 the young man's attempt becomes even more inappropriate: the institution of marriage has been abolished and he is no more in a position to choose the woman he will have sex with; old and ugly women have the right to choose him instead. This is painfully obvious in the scene with the old women: as each of them attempts to snatch him, the magic vocabulary persists. The rivals use various forms of the verbs ἄγω and ἕλκω (1001 ἐγὼ δ’ ἄξω σ’ ἐπὶ τἀμὰ στρώματα, 1036–7 ποῖ τοῦτον ἕλκεις; | εἰς ἐμαυτῆς εἰσάγω, 1050 ἕλκεις, cf. 886 προσάξεσθαι), which are most common in the ἀγωγή spells,Footnote 83 while the man exclaims in fear and disgust that he is being ‘dragged’ (1055 ἑλκόμενον, 1066 οὐκ ἔγωγ’, ἀλλ’ ἕλκομαι, 1093–4 ἐγγὺς ἤδη τῆς θύρας | ἑλκόμενός εἰμ’). Thus the violent dragging around of the young man by the sexually aroused women is assimilated to the effect that an ἀγωγή spell would have, if the women cast it on the man. The use of the magic vocabulary in this case offers an ironic comment to the situation of the young man, who has turned from an aspiring magic practitioner and most ardent lover to a sexual victim and most unwilling partner in the hands of the old women, who have to suggest the use of aphrodisiacs in order to make some use of him (1091–2). The young man experiences the agonies which the target of the ἀγωγή must feel and be pained with,Footnote 84 and is, finally, dragged, against his will, to the house and to the bed of the third old woman.
3. CONCLUSIONS
We may now proceed to an evaluation of Praxagora's new world. The abolition of marriage and the new sexual laws lead to an exuberance of female desire, which finds its outlet through the aggressive stance of the old women against the young man and the application of love-magic. On the one hand, the men of Athens are weak and emasculated, and they let themselves be led by their women; on the other hand, the women assume male roles and are transformed into aggressive prostitutes and sexual predators. Most importantly, the inversion of the men's and women's gender roles and the overturn of the normal social order bring about the infertility and the (figurative) death of the young and vital forces of the city. The end of the play is marked by a forced sterile union between a young man and an old woman.
This brave new world has a lot to say about the socio-political circumstances at the time of the play's creation and production. First, it attests to male anxieties about the changing status of women in the fourth century and their more frequent presence outside the realm of the oikos. There are indications that the exclusion of women from male-dominated spheres was much less extensive as the fifth century gave way to the fourth.Footnote 85 Owing to the continuous warfare in the fifth and fourth centuries, a good number of women who were left without direct male support would have to fend for themselves and, thus, be employed more than before in agricultural tasks and petty commerce.Footnote 86 Stories from the orators also show that women were handling much larger sums in financial transactions as household managersFootnote 87 and that widows had sometimes the freedom to decide whether they would stay in their paternal or in their husbands’ oikos.Footnote 88 This potential for freedom would have been viewed as dangerous to the status quo and may have instigated male fears about the repercussions of (unstable and irrational) women gaining power over men.
Second, the demolition of the oikos and the subsequent conversion of all women into hetairai betray a concern about the blurring of social categories between citizens and non-citizens, also attested in other literary sources of the time.Footnote 89 As Eidinow has shown,Footnote 90 the forensic corpus is haunted by the figure of the dangerous hetaira, whose ambiguous position compromises the integrity of the household and, subsequently, the health of the whole community. The evidence for charges of supernatural activities brought against such womenFootnote 91 shows that the practice of magic played an important role in the formation of the cultural stereotype of the dangerous woman in the fourth century. The charges expressed a moral panic, ‘a scare about a threat or supposed threat from deviants or folk devils’.Footnote 92 These issues resonate in Ecclesiazusae too and they encapsulate the nightmares of the Athenian citizen imaginary: magic becomes a foil for the formulation of civic identity and a threatening expression of female sexuality.
Finally, the shift in social attitudes from the fifth to the fourth century explains the different character of the gynaecocracy between Ecclesiazusae and the earlier Lysistrata. Already in Lysistrata of 411 men view the women's rebellion in sexual terms: gynaecocracy translates as women on top in the sexual sphere (671–9). Yet, the sex-crazed women of Lysistrata operate within the marital framework and, under the contemporary socio-political circumstances, could not but function as symbols of peace and fertility. The sterility scenario was simply not appropriate for the dark times of the Peloponnesian War and could not have been enacted: it was too close to home to be funny. In 392, however, the socio-political environment was different. Perhaps, as SommersteinFootnote 93 has argued, the change in tone in Aristophanes’ last extant plays must be sought in Aristophanes himself; but it may also be that the ground was more fertile (pun intended) for such a dystopian alternative to be appreciated for its comic splendour.
