An Other View: Intersectional and Identity in Classical Greece

Abstract

This dissertation examines how ancient people’s multiple intersecting identities affected their lived experiences of the ancient world. I argue that to understand history, we must grasp how individuals navigated on the ground the societal norms and ideals relating to their multiple identities. I employ the concept of intersectionality to unpack how a person’s ethnic identity, gender, and legal and social statuses interact and construct unique lived experiences. Both texts examined in this dissertation, namely Herodotus’ Histories and Apollodoros’ Against Neaira, deal with individuals on the margins and with multiple different vectors of identity. My research demonstrates that the marginalization of people results from the conflict between a person’s various identities and the societal standards, which assume a person only has the singular identity with which the law or norm is concerned.

The chapters of this dissertation explore the dynamic interactions between ethnic identity, gender, legal and social status. Chapters II and III focus on narratives in Herodotus’ Histories, while Chapter IV focuses on the speech Against Neaira. In chapter II, I analyze how the ethnic identity is constructed socially through attribution by others and through an individual’s self-ascription. I investigate individuals who find themselves in between standard categories of ethnic identity. In particular, I examine four case studies of polyethnic individuals, people born to parents from different ethnic groups. I conclude that polyethnic people are allowed flexibility to identify with either of their parents’ ethnic groups, so long as they do not disrupt the socio-political order.

In chapter III, I explore Herodotus’ treatment of gender. The examples in this chapter demonstrate a greater complexity of female characters in Herodotus’ Histories than previous studies. I call attention to portrayals of female agency beyond their ability to transfer and legitimize men’s power. Not only do women act in a broader variety of circumstances, but they also use power structures based on other identities than gender to their own advantage. Both men and women are capable of great deeds, as well as horrible ones. I further argue that Herodotus recognizes the cultural relativity of gender systems. In particular, I show that Herodotus portrays the Amazons as coming from a non-binary society.

In chapter IV, I present a new perspective on immigrant women in Athens through an investigation of the case of Neaira. I re-evaluate Athenian civic terminology, in particular the terms astos/astē and xenos/xenē, and argue that these were terms indicating belonging and non-belonging in Athens, in contrast to the orthodox view that these were formal legal terms. In a close reading of Against Neaira, I demonstrate that Apollodoros fails to prove his claim that Neaira was xenē. I further show how he attempted to mitigate his lack of evidence. I argue that Neaira, although clearly a metic, was in fact an astē instead of a xenē.

This dissertation demonstrates that intersectionality allows us to understand the dynamic tension between identities and how they affect a person’s lived experience. It is thus a productive lens with which to appreciate diverse experiences of the ancient world