Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T08:54:43.804Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

MOBILITY AND SEXUAL LABORERS IN MENANDER'S DIS EXAPATON AND PLAUTUS’ BACCHIDES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2021

Susan Lape
Susan Lape*
Affiliation:
University of Southern [email protected]
Get access

Extract

Greek new comedy is infused with characters on the move, whether they be mercenaries, traders, economic migrants, refugees, or the many and various victims of trafficking (slave and free). While it is unclear exactly how closely comic mobility tracks historical circumstances, mobility in and out of Athens was certainly more frequent in the later part of the fourth century. Witnessing free and enslaved others—both in comedy and in culture—forced to contend with the consequences of migration and displacement gave audience members new opportunities to perceive and respond to the newly relocated and the dispossessed, and to take a closer look at their own circumstances and perceptual processes. This study investigates the way comedy brings the precarities faced by female economic migrants into view, and what this reveals about gender, freedom, and cultural frames, using Menander's Dis Exapaton with Plautus’ Bacchides as test cases.

Type
I. Mobility
Information
Ramus , Volume 50 , Special Issue 1-2: In Terms of Athens , December 2021 , pp. 25 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Ramus 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to express gratitude to Demetra Kasimis for the invitation to contribute to this special volume, to the editors, Johanna Hanink and Demetra Kasimis, for improving this essay with their insightful suggestions, and to the anonymous referee for their valuable feedback.

References

Adams, J. (1983), ‘Words for Prostitute in Latin’, RhM 126, 321–58.Google Scholar
Anderson, W.S. (1993), Barbarian Play, Plautus’ Roman Comedy (Toronto).Google Scholar
Arnott, W.G. (1979), Menander (Cambridge and London).Google Scholar
Bain, D. (1979), ‘Plautus vortit barbare. Plautus, Bacchides 526–61 and Menander, Dis Exapaton 102–12’, in West, D. and Woodman, T. (eds), Creative Imitation in Latin Literature (Cambridge), 17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barbiero, E.A. (2016), ‘“Dissing” the Dis Exapaton: Comic One-Upmanship in Plautus’ Bacchides’, Mnemosyne 69.4, 648–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barsby, J. (1986), Plautus: Bacchides (Oak Park).Google Scholar
Batstone, W. (2005), ‘Plautine Farce and Plautine Freedom: An Essay on the Value of Metatheatre’, in Batstone, W. and Tissol, G. (eds), Defining Genre and Gender in Latin Literature: Essays Presented to William S. Anderson on his 75th Birthday (New York), 13–46.Google Scholar
Brown, P.G.M. (1990), ‘Plots and prostitutes in Greek New Comedy’, Pap. Leeds Int. Lat. Sem. 6, 241–66.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (2009a), ‘Performativity, Precarity, and Sexual Politics’, Antropólogos Iberoamericanos en Red 4.3, i–xiii.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (2009b), Frames of War. When is Life Grievable? (London/New York).Google Scholar
Carawan, E. (2006), ‘The Athenian Law of Agreement’, GRBS 46, 339–74.Google Scholar
Cinaglia, V. (2014), Aristotle and Menander on the Ethics of Understanding (Leiden).Google Scholar
Cohen, E.E. (2015), Athenian Prostitution: The Business of Sex (Oxford).Google Scholar
Damen, M. (1992), ‘Translating scenes: Plautus’ adaptation of Menander's Dis Exapaton’, Phoenix 46.3, 205–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, J. (1997), Courtesan and Fishcakes (New York).Google Scholar
Del Corno, D. (1973), Bacchides, con testo e commento dei nuovi frammenti del ‘Dis Exapaton’ di Menandro. Collana di classici latini diretta da Luigi Alfonsi (Turin).Google Scholar
Dutsch, D. (2008), Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy (Oxford).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantham, E. (1975), ‘Sex, Status, and Survival in Hellenistic Athens: a study of women in new comedy’, Phoenix 29, 44–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fineman, M. (2008), ‘The vulnerable subject: anchoring equality in the human condition’, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 20.1, 1–23.Google Scholar
Futo Kennedy, R. (2014), Immigrant Women in Athens. Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the Classical City (New York/London).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, D.T., and Malone, P.S. (1995), ‘The Correspondence Bias’, Psychological Bulletin 117, 21–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilson, E. (2014), The Ethics of Vulnerability: A feminist analysis of social life and practice (New York).Google Scholar
Gilula, D. (1980), ‘The Concept of the Bona Meretrix: A Study of Terence's Courtesans’, RFIC 108, 142–65.Google Scholar
Glazebrook, A. (2015), ‘Beyond Courtesans and Whores: Sex and Labor in the Greco-Roman World’, Helios 42.1, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, S. (1990), ‘Act to Action in Plautus’ “Bacchides”’, CP 85.3, 191–201.Google Scholar
Goldberg, S. (2013), Terence Hecyra (New York/Cambridge).Google Scholar
Goodrich, P. (1990), Languages of Law, From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks (London).Google Scholar
Handley, E.W. (1968), Menander and Plautus: A Study in Comparison (London).Google Scholar
Henry, M.M. (1995), Menander's Courtesans and the Greek Comic Tradition, Studien zur klassischen Philologie 20 (Frankfurt am Main) [orig. publ. 1988].Google Scholar
James, S. (2006), ‘A Courtesan's Choreography: Female Liberty and Male Anxiety at the Roman Dinner Party’, in Farone, C. and McClure, L. (eds), Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient Greek World (Madison), 224–51.Google Scholar
Kapparis, K. (2011), ‘The Terminology of Prostitution in the Ancient Greek World’, in Glazebrook, A. and Henry, M.M. (eds), Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE–200 CE (Madison), 222–55.Google Scholar
Kasimis, D. (2018), The Perpetual Immigrant and the Limits of Athenian Democracy (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, E.F. (1999), Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Gender (Abingdon/New York).Google Scholar
Konstan, D. (1995), Greek Comedy and Ideology (New York).Google Scholar
Kosmopoulou, A. (2001), ‘“Working Women”: Female Professionals on Classical Attic Gravestones’, The Annual of the British School at Athens 96, 281–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, S.R. (2015), Freedom Beyond Sovereignty (Chicago).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunda, V., and Sinclair, L. (1999), ‘Motivated Reasoning with Stereotypes’, Psychological Inquiry 10, 12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurke, L. (1997), ‘Inventing the hetaira: sex, politics, and discursive conflict in archaic Greece’, CA 16.1, 106–50.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By (Chicago/London).Google Scholar
Lape, S. (2004), Reproducing Athens: Menander's Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City (Princeton).Google Scholar
Lape, S. (forthcoming), ‘The Precarity of Female Immigrants in Greco-Roman Comedy and Athenian culture’, in Moatti, C. and Cheverau, E. (eds), L'expérience de la mobilité de l'Antiquité à nos jours, entre précarité et confiance (Bordeaux).Google Scholar
McClure, L. (2003), Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus (New York/London).Google Scholar
McElduff, S. (2013), Roman Theories of Translation (New York).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackenzie, C. (2014), ‘The Importance of Relational Autonomy and Capabilities for an Ethics of Vulnerability’, in Mackenzie, C., Rogers, W., and Dodds, S. (eds), Vulnerability, New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford/New York), 33–60.Google Scholar
Markell, P. (2003), Bound by Recognition (Princeton).Google Scholar
Marshall, C.W. (2013), ‘Sex Slavery in New Comedy’, in Akrigg, B. and Tordoff, R. (eds), Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama (Cambridge), 173–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, M. (1986), The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Oliver, G.J. (2007), War, Food, and Politics in Early Hellenistic Athens (Oxford/New York).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, W.M. (1994), ‘The Third Deception in the Bacchides, Fides and Plautus’ Originality’, AJP 115, 381–407.Google Scholar
Patterson, C. (2000), ‘The Hospitality of Athenian Justice: The Metic in Court’, in Hunter, V. and Edmondson, J. (eds), Law and Social Status in Classical Athens (Oxford/New York), 93–113.Google Scholar
Petherbridge, D. (2018), ‘How do we respond? Embodied Vulnerability and Forms of Responsiveness’, in Fischer, C. and Dolezal, L., New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment (London), 57–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, P. (2014), Just Freedom: a Moral Compass for a Complex World (New York).Google Scholar
Questa, C. (1970), ‘Alcune strutture sceniche di Plauto e Menandro’, in Turner, E.G. (ed.), Ménandre: sept exposés suivis de discussions. Entretiens sur l'antiquité classique 16 (Geneva), 181–215.Google Scholar
Questa, C. (2008), Bacchides (Urbino).Google Scholar
Richlin, A. (2017), Slave Theater in the Roman Republic (New York/Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riggsby, A. (2010), Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosivach, V.J. (1998), When a Young Man Falls in Love: the Sexual Exploitation of Women in New Comedy (London/New York).Google Scholar
Sandbach, F.H. (1990), Menandri reliquiae selectae (Oxford).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandridge, N. (2008), ‘Feeling Vulnerable but not too Vulnerable: Pity in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Ajax and Philoctetes’, CJ 103, 433–48.Google Scholar
Scafuro, A.C. (2003/04), ‘The rigmarole of the parasite's contract for a prostitute in Asinaria: legal documents in Plautus and his predecessors’, Leeds International Classical Studies 3.4, 1–21.Google Scholar
Silver, M. (2011), ‘Contractual Slavery and the Roman Economy’, AHB 25, 73–132.Google Scholar
Slater, N. (1985). Plautus in Performance. The theatre of the mind (Princeton).Google Scholar
Sommerstein, A. (ed.) (2013), Menander Samia (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Todd, S. (1993), The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford).Google Scholar
Traill, A. (2008), Women and the Comic Plot in Menander (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, D. (1977), The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Williams, P. (1992), The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Diary of a Law Professor (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Witzke, S. (2015), ‘Harlots, Tarts, and Hussies?: A Problem of Terminology for Sex Labor in Roman Comedy’, Helios 42, 7–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wohl, V. (2010), Law's Cosmos: Juridical Discourse in Athenian Forensic Oratory (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagagi, N. (1980), Tradition and Originality in Plautus: Studies of the Amatory Motifs in Plautine Comedy (Göttingen).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmermann, R. (1990), The Law of Obligations: Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition (Oxford/New York).Google Scholar