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.11.4) and we hear elsewhere of the infamous Neairawas allegedly purchased as a child by a freedwoman named Nicarete,who called her and six other bought girls her daughters ([Demos-thenes] 59.18 19).This pattern appears in later comedy as well, for ex-ample in Plautus s Cistellaria, where Selenion, the putative fosterdaughter of a whore, later learns that she is really the daughter of afree citizen who exposed her at birth.15 This older courtesan mother, moreover, in addition to being the administrator of the household, also apparently instructed the younger girls (like the girlfriends men-tioned in Socrates in Xenophon s Memorabilia) in the tricks of the trade(see n.69 in Cohen s essay in this volume), as is evident in a speechfrom a lost play of the comic writer Alexis, in which someone describeshow a courtesan, once she has made enough money, can take in andteach younger women the trade (frag.98).I began this essay by observing that modern critics treat Aristopha-nes Lysistrata in two contradictory ways, either praising it as the firstfeminist tract in history or condemning it as the first pornographic one.We can now see that this wide disparity in the recent reception of theplay most probably arises from the very different kinds of dramaticinteractions that involve Lysistrata.In the scenes with the youngerwomen, she is repeatedly cast as a manipulative and gold-diggingmadam, a traditional figure of scorn and abuse in comedy, who in thisplay repeatedly treats women as mere sexual objects, to be stripped en-tirely (like the mute and naked character of Reconciliation in the end)of their clothes and their voices.On the other hand, when Aristophaneshas Lysistrata interact with the men as their intellectual and political 222 christopher a.faraoneequals, he is clearly drawing on the traditional figure of the elite courte-san, not the madam, a popular comic figure who in fact appears to havebeen the earliest female comic protagonist in Athens and who probablyinfluenced Aristophanes portrayal of Lysistrata (Henderson [2002]).Ifwe add to this the undeniably positive allusions that connect Lysistratato Athena and her priesthood, we see that Aristophanes brilliantlyplays on the commonalities between brothel and sanctuary and be-tween the dynamic female leadership of priestesses and courtesans.Forhe manages to give Lysistrata a consistently intelligent character,endowed with the various rhetorical and strategic skills necessary forgood leadership, while at the same time switching back and forth withgreat wit and humor between the morally opposed roles of madam andpriestess and the very different realms of Aphrodite and the virginAthena all without sacrificing the dramatic unity of her character.It isno wonder that the modern reception of this play has been so fraughtwith paradoxes! Indeed, the poet has grandly capitalized on the simi-larities between the only two kinds of women who could in fact assumeroles of real leadership in their communities: the wealthy courtesan andthe aristocratic priestess.16Notes1.The division of female characters by generation and the generally morepositive presentation of the older generation is a feature of Old Comedy; seee.g.Henderson (1987b).2.For the duties of the priestess of Athena Polias, see Foley (1982, 9 n.20)and Loraux (1980 81, 144 45).Lines 740 52, where Lysistrata turns back thefive women trying to sneak back home, are filled with detailed allusions toAthena and her cult on the acropolis; see Bodson (1973).3.Henderson (1987a, ad loc.) provides most of the information and insightsin this paragraph and the quote near the end of it.4.All translations from Lysistrata are from Henderson (1987a).5.In the literary versions of the story, Zeus simply sends a shower of rainthat douses the fire, but in the painted depictions of the myth, the rain showeris imagined as two women who stand on either side of a rainbow and pour jugsof water down on to the flames; these woman are presumably rain nymphs act-ing on the orders of Zeus, who himself stands nearby in the upper register ofthe painting.See LIMC, s.v. Alkmene, nos.5 7.6.Foley (1982, 11 12); Henderson (1987a, ad loc.); and MacDowell (1995).Loraux (1980 81, 135 36) makes the intriguing suggestion that all of these ritu-als were performed on or near the acropolis where the action of the play isstaged.7.I follow Henderson (1987a ad loc.) and others who argue that in an Athe-nian context we understand the Founding Goddess to mean Athena. Priestess and Courtesan 2238.I follow (with one minor exception) the interpretation Page (1981, 207 11; Simonides XIV); for a more detailed version of the arguments that follow inthis paragraph, see Faraone (1997, 54 57).See Keesling s essay in this volumefor further discussion.9.Although Dover (1972, 152 n.3) dismisses it, the communis opinio about theequation of Lysimache and Lysistrata continues to gain support; see, e.g., Foley(1982, 7), Loraux (1981 82, 148 49), and MacDowell (1995, 239 40).Henderson(1987a, xxxviii xl) considers the identification plausible but unnecessary.10.A duty that would have been overseen (in part) by the priestess ofAthena Polias; see e.g.Foley (1992, 9 n.20) and Loraux (1981 82, 144 45).11.See Faraone (1999, 64 69) on the iunx-spell, one traditionally used bymales and (1999, 149 60) on the subject of courtesans co-opting the use of theiunx.12.See Davidson (1997, 120 30) for an excellent analysis of this passage anda very nuanced understanding of the use of the word friends. 13.See Faraone (1999, 1 2) where I suggest that Socrates humorouslypresents himself as an aging courtesan/philosopher who (as her charms fade)resorts to magic to keep her customers/students coming back to her and at thesame time also begins to teach the same magic spells to younger women in heremploy who will eventually take over the business.This equation of philoso-pher and courtesan loses some of its shock value, of course, when we rememberthat elsewhere Socrates claims to be the student of a similarly witty andwealthy courtesan: Aspasia, the lover of Pericles, who is alleged in Plato s Me-nexenos to have taught Socrates the funeral oration that he ends up reciting inthat dialogue.14.Until recently both of these rituals were thought to be female initiationrites, but this has recently been questioned: see Donnay (1997) for a new assess-ment of the arrhephoroi and Faraone (2003) for the Brauronian bears. 15
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