When Men Were Men

Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity

Lin Foxhall, John Salmon, Lin Foxhall, John Salmon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134686773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Trendy, topical subject Part of successful, high profile series Unique - masculinity in ancient world not focused on before Distinguished line-up of contributors: such as Sarah Pomeroy who invented ancient women's history

1

A brief history of tears: Gender differentiation in archaic Greece

Hans van Wees

Men are reinventing themselves as victims. Champions of male liberation insist that in the war of the sexes all recent casualties have been on their side, and indeed that many of the deaths have been self-inflicted. ‘As boys experience the pressures of the male role, their suicide rate increases 25,000 percent’, says one.¹ A man’s lot is not a happy one, we are told, because he is made to sacrifice his health and happiness for the sake of others. As if it were not enough having to provide for his family and put up with all the occupational hazards and mental stress involved, he is expected to be an ‘unpaid bodyguard’: ‘You know that is your job as a man – every time you are with a woman … any woman, not just your wife’.² The so-called mythopoetic wing of the men’s movement traces male altruism right back to Greek legend, with the aid of a garbled version of the story of how Kleobis and Biton died helping their mother, and a bit of dubious Indoeuropean etymology claiming that the Greek word hero meant ‘basically a slave whose purpose was to serve and protect’.³

All this, of course, is merely the latest spin given to an old and widespread ideal of masculinity. Ethnographic evidence from across the world shows that ‘manhood ideologies always include a criterion of selfless generosity, even to the point of sacrifice. Again and again we find that “real” men are those who give more than they take; they serve others’ (Gilmore 1990, 229). A recent anthropological survey charitably concludes that the ideal is not far removed from reality, and that men are trained to live up to its exacting standards because their sacrifice is needed for the common good. ‘Men nurture their society by shedding their blood, their sweat, and their semen.’ ‘Cui bono? Who benefits? Everyone.’ (Gilmore 1990, 230, 168). It is tempting to be cynical, but arguing about how useful or useless men really are would be beside the point. The real question in the study of masculinity is why gender ideologies encourage men to display certain socially desirable qualities, while they fail to encourage, or positively discourage, a display of the same qualities by women.⁴

With that question in mind, we shall investigate an intriguing aspect of ancient Greek gender differentiation: the norms according to which men and women were supposed to express and suppress grief. A comparison between the extrovert grieving by men as well as women in Homer and the much more restrained expression of sorrow by men in classical Athens reveals a significant change in the ideology of masculinity. The process can be reconstructed not only from literary evidence but also from the series of scenes of mourning found in Athenian art from the eighth to the fifth century BC. Increasing differentiation in the expression of emotion, it will be suggested, was part of a general widening of the gender gap, which provided new justification for the superior status of men, which in turn was part of a still more general redefinition of social hierarchies.

Homer’s weeping warriors

Big boys are not supposed to cry or go running to their mothers for help when they are being bullied. So we are a little embarrassed when Akhilleus, a grown man and the greatest warrior of his generation, sits on the beach ‘crying tears’ and ‘groaning heavily’ while his mother strokes him consolingly and promises to make that bully Agamemnon pay for what he has done to her son.⁵ Ever since antiquity, people have felt the urge to make excuses for our hero. Alexander Pope summed up the gist of most ancient comment when in a note on his translation of The Iliad (1715) he explained that:

It is no Weakness in Heroes to weep, but the very Effect of Humanity and Proof of a generous temper. … But this general Observation is not all we can offer in excuse for the Tears of Achilles: His are Tears of Anger and Disdain … of which a great and fiery temper is more susceptible than any other; and even in this case, Homer has taken care to preserve the high Character, by making him retire to vent his Tears out of sight.

(Pope 1715, note ad 1.458)⁶

There is, however, no getting away from the fact that all Homer’s heroes display sadness and despair far more extrovertly and frequently than classical and modern audiences have regarded as normal and appropriate for men.⁷

The world of heroes is a fantasy, of course, and how much of it is based on the poet’s own world remains a matter of debate. Yet whatever else may be fictional in the epics, the manner in which emotions are expressed is a part of culture so deeply ingrained that it is commonly perceived as human nature, and it is highly unlikely that Homer and his audiences could have imagined heroes whose emotional behaviour was fundamentally unlike their own. We may suspect that the poet at times intensifies emotions for literary effect,⁸ but if so, this merely confirms that his original audiences, unlike his subsequent readers, found extrovert displays of grief by men perfectly acceptable.

Physical expressions of grief in Homer range from slapping one’s thighs, through shedding tears, to tearing out one’s hair and writhing on the ground. An impressive range of vocal expressions is suggested by a string of verbs, including klaiein, oduresthai, olophuresthai, muresthai, oimōzein, goan, stenakh(iz)ein, and, for women only, kōkuein. The precise nature and pitch of the emotions conveyed by these verbs is not always easy to determine. Olophuresthai, for instance, has been rendered as ‘lament’, ‘sigh’, or merely ‘speaking in a doleful voice’, according to the translator’s sense of what is called for in the circumstances. Yet it may be misleading to impose our notion of propriety on Homer, and it seems likely that olophuresthai is a stronger expression of emotion than some of these translations suggest. It is, among other things, how Ares and Patroklos, slapping their thighs, respond to news of serious disasters (15. 114, 397–8). Similarly, stenakh(iz)ein, which is conventionally translated ‘groan’ when it refers to the sound made by wounded men, is also used of lamenting women. Do women ‘groan’ in mourning, or do men ‘wail’ in pain? Again, we may have to imagine wounded heroes as making rather more noise than we would consider dignified.⁹

Sometimes the display of emotion by men in Homer remains within limits acceptable even to us. We can empathize easily enough with Diomedes’ tears of anger when he loses his whip and sees his chances of winning the chariot race slip away (Il. 23. 385–7), or the tears of helplessness shed by Odysseus and his companions at the sight of their friends being torn apart by the Cyclops (Odyssey 9. 294–5), or the tears of joy at many a happy reunion.¹⁰

Much more startling is the sight of military leaders in tears when the going gets tough – not only in battle (Il. 8. 245; 17. 648), but even in assembly, where Agamemnon addresses his men ‘shedding tears like a well of dark water’ and ‘groaning heavily’ (Il. 9. 14–16). Fear, too, makes men cry. A crowd of outstanding young warriors observed the Trojan onslaught and ‘tears sprang to their eyes, for they did not think there was any escape from harm’ (Il. 13. 88–9). Agamemnon, watching the enemy campfires at night, ‘emitted frequent groans from the bottom of his heart, and his mind trembled. … He pulled out much hair from his head by the roots’ (Il. 10. 9–15). As Odysseus tells the story, he and his crew wept whenever they saw danger approaching. ‘We sailed into the straits lamenting’ at the sight of the maelstrom Kharybdis (Od. 12. 234). ‘They wept loudly and shed abundant tears’ on finding that they had landed on an inhabited island, where half of them eventually set off to face the unknown, ‘crying; and they left us behind lamenting’ (Od. 10. 201–9). Later, despairing at the thought of having to travel to the Underworld, the men ‘sat down on the spot, lamenting, and tore out their hair’ (Od. 10. 567). Odysseus himself was no less upset (‘I sat down on the bed and wept, and I no longer wanted to live’), but pulled himself together when he had had ‘enough of weeping and writhing’ (Od. 10. 497–9).

The most powerful expressions of male emotion are found in spontaneous reactions to personal loss (as opposed to more formal expressions of grief in funerary ritual, to which we shall return). Word of the death of Patroklos leaves Antilokhos unable to speak and unable to stop crying (Il. 17. 695–700; 18. 17, 32). The loss of his best friend makes Akhilleus wail and groan, as he throws himself on the ground, covers his face and clothes with dust, and pulls out his hair. Bystanders worry that he might kill himself (Il. 18. 23–35). Menelaos and Odysseus, too, are reduced to crawling around in the sand and to a suicidal state of mind, one at the thought of losing his brother, the other despairing of ever coming home.¹¹ Priam not only wails, beats his head, and pulls out his hair at the sight of Hektor in mortal danger (Il. 22. 33–4, 77–8), but responds to the death of his favourite son by spending day after day in the part of his courtyard where livestock are fed, wallowing in the dung left by the animals and smearing it on his head and neck.¹²

Despite what might seem an extreme lack of inhibition, some degree of self-control is practised and admired. The Trojans are instructed not to ‘weep’ (klaiein) when they collect their dead from the battlefield, presumably in order not to give the enemy the satisfaction of witnessing their distress; so they shed tears in silence (Il. 7. 426–8). One notes the implication that crying tears is normally accompanied by sounds of wailing. An exceptional hero may be able to restrain even his tears in the most difficult situations. A story told to illustrate the unique bravery of Akhilleus’ son tells how he alone remained steady and dry-eyed when all the other Greeks hidden inside the Trojan Horse were wiping their tears and shaking with fear (Od. 11. 526–30). Similarly, it is an illustration of the self-control for which Odysseus is famous that he manages not to cry when to do so would have betrayed his identity. Although he is deeply moved by the sight of his wife breaking down in tears, ‘his eyes stayed as firm as horn or iron’ (Od. 19. 209–11).¹³

In another episode, Odysseus is twice unable to contain his emotions when at a feast among the Phaiakians he hears a singer tell tales of the Trojan War. Each time he tries to hide his tears by burying his face in his cloak, ‘for he felt inhibited before the Phaiakians’ (Od. 8. 83–92, 521–31).¹⁴ This is at first sight surprising, given that tear...