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The Sophist and The Swarm: Feminism, Platonism and Ancient Philosophy in Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Alex Dressler*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsinat Madison
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Extract

Achilles Tatius' novel Leucippe and Clitophon is widely recognised by critics as generally ‘philosophical’, even ‘Platonic’, but critics also agree that the meaning of this philosophy and Platonism–whether it is serious or satiric, semantic or aesthetic–is unclear. As a result of this ambivalence, a perplexity confronts the reader who wants to understand the particularly political philosophical meaning of Achilles' novel, especially through its depiction of gender norms and hierarchies. The purpose of this article is to revisit the philosophical possibilities of Achilles' novel in view of its various literary and social-historical contexts. To do this, I work through rather than against the perplexity that confronts the reader of L&C, proposing a relational, reflexive mode of reading that attends to the interplay of Platonism, Stoicism and the social-historical associations that Achilles' mobilisation of each imparts. Such a mode of reading suggests, against numerous critical interpretations, that L&C may actually relate the feminine to the world in a progressive way. In addition, the development of this mode of reading in response to L&C potentially undermines, not only the masculinist gender norms that the novel seems to reinforce, but also the very subject-object dualism that underpins mainstream historicist modes of relating to ancient texts as something out there in the walled-off universe of competing textualities that is ‘the past’.

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Research Article
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Copyright © Aureal Publications 2011

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References

Notes

1. Many thanks to Cathy Connors, Ruby Blondell, and Ashli Baker for providing valuable feedback at early stages in the production of this piece, and to the faculty and students of Oberlin College for providing a warm and welcoming audience for it in the form of the Jack Winkler Memorial Lecture of the 2007-2008 academic year.

2. Identification of the feminine presents a Scylla and Charybdis of historicism and anachronism; I aim, briefly here, again in Section 3, but primarily in the Conclusion, to suggest some ways in which such a binary mode of addressing ancient texts may be transcended. For the terms of feminist discussion and indications of feminist interpretations of L&C, see esp. Sections 3 and 4.

3. For example, historicism, on which see Newton, J.L., ‘History as Usual? Feminism and New Historicism’, in Veeser, A. (ed.), The New Historicism (New York 1989), 152–67Google Scholar, or images of women criticism, on which Moi, T., Sexual/Textual Politics (Abingdon 1985 [2002]), 4149Google Scholar; more below, Section 4 and following.

4. This, as an effort to transcend the conflict identified as ‘the poststructuralist attack on “historicism”, which emerges from a no less problematic affirmation of the priority of “synchronic” thought’, by Jameson, Frederic, The Syntax of History (London 1988), 153Google Scholar.

5. Cf. Liveley, G., ‘Surfing the Third Wave? Postfeminism and the Hermeneutics of Reception’, in Martindale, C. and Thomas, R. (eds.), Classics and the Uses of Reception (Maiden 2006), 5566, esp. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17. L&C 2.37f. with e.g. Halperin, D., One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (New York 1990), 134–36Google Scholar.

18. 5.27.4 with Morgan (n. 11 above), 180.

19. Morales (n.10 above), 49f.; see also e.g. Laplace, M., Le roman d'Achille Tatios: Discours panégyrique et imaginaire Romanesque (Berne 2007), 7784Google Scholar.

20. Cf. Hinds, S.E., Allusion and Intertext (Cambridge 1998), 510, and esp. n. 14Google Scholar.

21. Cf. Bartsch, S., Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton 1989), 88fGoogle Scholar.

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23. Rep. 393c, and cf. 393d8; cf. Maeder, G., ‘Au seuil des romans grecs’, GCN 4 (1991), 133, at 5f. and 10-13Google Scholar.

24. Cf. Phdr. 278c1-3, Grg. 502c5-7, Laws 669d7, also Arist. Rhet. 1404b14, Poet. 1447a29, with Murray, P., Plato on Poetry (Cambridge 1996), 208fGoogle Scholar.

25. And for some, see Goldhill, S., The Invention of Prose (Oxford 2002), 8198, esp. 96fGoogle Scholar.

26. In Aristotelis Fragmenta Selecta, ed. Ross, W.D. (Oxford 1955), 28Google Scholar, with Nehamas (n.13 above), 120.

27. Ausland, H., ‘On a Curious Platonic Dialogue’, AncPhil 25 (2005), 403425Google Scholar.

28. E.g. Morales (n.10 above), 57.

29. Martin, R., ‘A Good Place to Talk: Discourse and Topos in Achilles Tatius and Philostratus’, in Paschalis, M. and Frangoulidis, S. (eds.), Space in the Ancient Novel (AncNarr Suppl. 1: Groningen 2002), 159fGoogle Scholar.

30. Nimis, S., ‘Memory and Description in the Ancient Novel’, Arethusa 31 (1998), 99122, at 105f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Anderson, G., Eros Sophistes: Ancient Novelists at Play (Chico 1982), 110Google Scholar.

31. The famous conception of ‘art for art's sake’ or l'art pour l'art, which is usually accompanied by the opposition between ‘art’ and ‘life’, with various references to one imitating the other, is usually thought to be a result of the alienation felt by post-Romantic artists in the modern world (Beardsley, M.C., Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present [New York 1966], 283–90Google Scholar), even in spite of its obvious anticipation in ancient scholarship: Ὦ Μένανδϱε ϰαὶ βίε, πότεϱος ἄϱ’ ὑμῶν πότεϱον ἐμιμήσατο; (‘O Menander and life, which of you has imitated the other?’, Syrian. in Hermog.: Nauck, A. [ed.], Aristophanis Byzantii grammatici Alexandrini fragmenta [Halle 1848], iv.101Google Scholar). For justification of the introduction of the distinction between art and life into the discussion of imperial Greek literature, see Reardon (n.12 above), 3-11, at 10: ‘For the Greeks, l'art pour l'art is less the product of an aesthetic doctrine than the natural result of a faithful adherence to literary tradition’ even if ‘there is no modern equivalent for the term mimesis’ and ‘no Greek word that signifies “art” at all’ (9). Imperial Greek consciousness of a distinction between art and life is, rather, like that of the modern, a consciousness of the degree of application of rhetoric as an ‘art’ (τέχνη with Reardon, 68f.) to various fields, such as history, philosophy, even the novel (Reardon, 28), inverse to its ‘purity’ (Reardon, 26f.) from those fields, its autonomy and production of its own professionals and adherents (Reardon, 29, 102-04). On a similar cultural movement and the comparable ‘invention of a pure aesthetic’ in the ‘emergence of a field’ (e.g., art versus the economy or politics or ‘life’) in the nineteenth century, see Bourdieu, P., The Rules of Art, tr. Emanuel, S. (Stanford 1996), 105–09Google Scholar; compare the ‘sophistic thought world’ identified by Anderson, G., The Second Sophistic (London 1993), 8385Google Scholar.

32. Or λόγοι like to μῦθοι as L&C is defined by L&C 1.2.2; see Maeder (n.23 above), 10, 15f.; Laplace (n. 19 above), 27-30; see also Reardon (n. 12 above), 401f.

33. Cf. 2.23.3: τϱέμων τϱόμον διπλοῦν, χαϱᾶς ἅμα ϰαὶ ϕόβου, with J.P. Garnaud's translation from Achille Tatius d'Alexandrie: Le roman de Leucippé et Clitophon (Paris 1991), 57Google Scholar: ‘alors que je frissonais d'un double frisson, de joie et de crainte.’

34. Cf. 2.34.4, 5.7.7, 5.21.1, 5.27.1, 6.14.2; opposite: 3.17.2; related: 1.8.2. Such pursuit of new combinations of experience is textbook decadence: see e.g. Sen. Ep. 95.17-29.

35. E.g. Foucault, M.The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, tr. Hurley, R. (New York 1985Google Scholar), Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, tr. Hurley, R. (New York 1988Google Scholar), with e.g. Detel, W., Foucault and Antiquity (Cambridge 2005), 5892CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Annas, J., Platonic Ethics, Old and New (Ithaca 1999), 137–61Google Scholar; Nussbaum, M., ‘Erôs and Ethical Norms: Philosophers Respond to a Cultural Dilemma’ in Nussbaum, M. and Sihvola, J. (eds.), The Sleep of Reason (Chicago 2002), 5594CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Goldhill (n. 11 above), 94f. This, as a slight complication to S. Montiglio's understanding of morality in the novel as concerned with goodness against pleasure in ‘My soul, consider what you should do”: Psychological Conflicts and Moral Goodness in the Greek Novels’, AncNarr 8 (2010), 2558Google Scholar. In fact, in his development of ‘complex’ pleasure, pleasure mixed with pain, Achilles is meeting the challenge posed by stern Epicurus who held that pleasure could not be increased beyond a certain point, but only varied (compare Long and Sedley [n.16 above] texts 21 A7, E1); for Epicurean influence in the Second Sophistic period, see Reardon (n.12 above), 35. Acknowledging a kind of isosthenia (or ‘equipollence’), only of passions rather than of judgments, Achilles may even align himself with the Sceptics in this connection.

36. Long, A.A., From Epicurus to Epictetus (Oxford 2006), 2339CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Striker, G., Essays in Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge 1996), 298315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bett, R., ‘L'utilité de technai’, in Lévy, C., Besnier, B., and Gigandet, A. (eds.), Ars et Ratio: Sciences, art et métier dans la philosophie hellénistique et romaine (Bruxelles 2003), 4448Google Scholar.

37. Cf. Laplace (n.19 above), 35-38, and cf. 90-92.

38. All of this, of course, makes L&C more ‘feminine’ if complexity of pleasure characterises, as its protagonists tell us, the experience of being with women: ἁπλούστεϱοι παῖδες γυναιϰῶν (‘boys are simpler than women’, 2.35.3); cf. Goldhill (n.11 above), 82f.

39. E.g. Culler, J., On Deconstruction (Ithaca 1982), 8589Google Scholar, with Jameson, F., Valences of the Dialectic (London 2009), 2527Google Scholar; cf. Hall, S., ‘Introduction: Who Needs “Identity?”’, in Hall, S. and du Gay, P. (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (London 1996), 117, at 1fGoogle Scholar.

40. See Foucault (n.35 above), iii.289-32, with Morales, H., ‘The History of Sexuality’, in Whitmarsh, T. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Ancient Novel (Cambridge 2008), 3955, at 47f.Google Scholar; cf. Winkler, J.J., ‘The Invention of Romance’, in Tatum, J. (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore 1994), 2338, at 29Google Scholar; Konstan, D., Sexual Symmetry (Princeton 1994), 57Google Scholar; Perkins, J., The Suffering Self (London 1995), 71f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swain (n.12 above), 122f., 126f. For the sociology in general, see Williams, C., Roman Homosexuality (Oxford 1999), 6372Google Scholar; Bartsch, S., The Mirror of the Self (Chicago 2006), 95-103, 168–71Google Scholar. Throughout L&C, discussions of the gender of the object of desire are zero-sum: see e.g. 1.8.1-9,1.11.2,2.11,2.34.1-35.3. More below in Sections 3 and 4.

41. 1.12.1, 2.34; Goldhill (n.11 above), 80; Burrus, V., ‘Mimicking Virgins: Colonial Ambivalence and the Ancient Romance’, Arethusa 38 (2005), 4988, at 66fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. 458d5: ἀνάγϰαι; cf. Winkler, J.J., The Constraints of Desire (New York 1990), 8284Google Scholar.

43. Rep. 451c : δϱᾶμα…γυναιϰεῖον versus L&C 1.8.4: τὰ τῶν γυναιϰῶν δϱάματα; cf. Ar. Th. 151, Plu. Agis et Cleom. 60.1.

44. Cf. Föllinger, S., Differenz und Gleichheit (Stuttgart 1996), 8285Google Scholar.

45. See Sissa, G., ‘The Family in Ancient Athens (Fifth-Fourth Century BC)’, in Burgière, A. (ed.), The History of the Family, Vol. 1: Distant Worlds, Ancient Worlds (Cambridge 1996), 194227, at 210-13Google Scholar.

46. Rep. 461d-e; cf. Garnsey, P., The Idea of Property (Cambridge 2007), 2430Google Scholar. Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus recommends the same technique (14.42-61 Lutz), as does his near contemporary, Hierocles (Long and Sedley [n.16 above] text 57 G); see Reydams-Schils, G., The Roman Stoics (Chicago 2005), 159–61Google Scholar, and cf. Brennan, T., The Stoic Life (Oxford 2005), 159–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Roman influence on ‘Greek’ philosophy in this matter, see Wörhle, G.Wenn Frauen Platons Staat lesen, oder: Epiktet und Musonius konstruieren Geschlechtsrollen’, WJA 26 (2002), 135–43, at 136f.Google Scholar; for the related Roman construction of the Second Sophistic, see Gelzer, T., ‘Klassizismus, Attizismus und Asianismus’, in Gelzer, T. and Flashar, H. (eds.), Le classicisme à Rome, aux lers siècles avant et après J.-C (Geneva 1979), 155, at 14-17Google Scholar; also G.W. Bowersock, ‘Historical Problems in Late Republican and Augustan Classicism’, ibid. 57-78, at 59-65.

47. Reydams-Schils (n.46 above), 53-82; cf. Inwood, B., ‘Hierocles: Theory and Argument in the Second Century AD’, OSAP 2 (1984), 151–84Google Scholar.

48. For the term in connection with the Stoics, see Algra, K., ‘The Mechanism of Social Appropriation and its Role in Hellenistic Ethics’, OSAP 25 (2003), 265–97Google Scholar; on the general influence of Stoicism in the reconfiguration of ideals of solidarity and intimacy, see Swain (n.12 above), 119: ‘This new conjugality has a Stoic feel.’

49. Cat. 68b.160, cf. 3.5, 14.1, 82, 104.1f.; cf. Ter. Ad. 14, 701, 903, Plaut. Mil. 984, and in Greek, Aesch. Sept. 530, Mosch. 4.9, Theocr. 11.53, with Otto, Sprichwörter 249, s.v. oculus, for parallels from the Hebrew bible as well.

50. Compare the Homeric ‘possessive’ philos in, e.g., ‘my dear hands, soul': cf. Benveniste, E., La vocabulaire des institutions Indo-européennes (2 vols.: Paris 1969), 347–53Google Scholar, s.v. ϕίλος; Robinson, D., ‘Homeric “philos”: Love of Life and Limbs, and Friendship with One's “Thumos”’, in Craik, E.M. (ed.), Owls to Athens (Oxford 1990), 97108Google Scholar.

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53. Cf. Winkler (n.42 above), 101-26.

54. Morales (n.52 above), 42f.

55. In Comedy in Callipolis: Animal Imagery in the Republic’, The American Political Science Review 72 (1978), 888901CrossRefGoogle Scholar, A. Saxonhouse suggests that it is, while Socrates apparently thinks it is not (see e.g. Rep. 452a-d). Musonius Rufus (Fr. 13) took it seriously, as did the second century CE Stoic Hierocles, at Elements 1.37-50 in Ramelli, I., Hierocles the Stoic: Elements of Ethics, Fragments, and Excerpts (Atlanta 2009Google Scholar).

56. Morales (n.52 above), 42.

57. Morales (n.52 above), 40.

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60. Reardon (n.12 above), 361f.; Morales (n.40 above), 41-43; cf. Barstch (n.21 above), 35-39, 62-79. See also Ormand, K., ‘Testing Virginity in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus’, Ramus 39 (2010), 160–97, at 161fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. This aspect of the text, and of texts, usually leads critics to ascribe to it or even exhibit Barthesian pleasure at ‘subversion’ vel sim.: cf. Maeder (n.23 above), 7-10; Whitmarsh, T., ‘Reading for Pleasure: Narrative, Irony, and Erotics in Achilles Tatius’, in Panayotakis, , Zimmerman, and Keulen, (n.59 above), 191205, at 192f.Google Scholar; Burrus (n.41 above), 52f., 84f.

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65. Compare the second Charmides, who falls in love with Leucippe and needs to be begged off from what, with her menstruating, ‘her belly/womb [γαστήϱ] has…prevented’ (4.4.8). Leucippe's second death is more emphatically anatomising, even mereological, than the first, ‘divided’ [διαιϱούμενον] as she will be (5.7.4, 8).

66. Perkins (n.40 above), 41f.; cf. Chew (n.59 above), 131-35, and 138 on L&C 2.33, 3.15, 6.21. On modern horror, see Glover, C., Men, Women, and Chainsaws (Princeton 1992), 3235Google Scholar.

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70. Ormand (n.60 above), 176-79, 183. Burrus (n.41 above), 54, shows that the revolutionary tendency of the Jewish and Christian martyr tales makes these sentiments more explicit.

71. Nimis (n.30 above), 112.

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73. Nimis (n.30 above), 112f., esp. n.29.

74. Clitophon described his intended, Calligone, as not ξένη at 1.11.2; Leucippe qua Alexandria then? See Freud, , SE (n.72 above), xvii.156219Google Scholar, with Morales (n.10 above), 46f., 104, on the risks of using psychoanalysis diagnostically.

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78. See Reydams-Schils (n.46 above), 143-76; cf. Asmis, E., ‘The Stoics on Women’, in Ward, J. (ed.), Feminism and Ancient Philosophy (New York 1996), 6892Google Scholar; Nussbaum, M., ‘The Incomplete Feminism of Musonius Rufus’, in Nussbaum, and Sihvola, (n.35 above), 283326Google Scholar.

79. Wöhrle (n.46 above), 139f.; cf. Schofield, M., The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge 1999), 8Google Scholar. Suggestive in this connection is the possible female readership of the ancient novel: Wesseling, B., ‘The Audience of the Ancient Novels’, GCN 1 (1988), 6779, at 72Google Scholar; Perkins (n.40 above), 42f.

80. For bibliography, see Halperin (n.17 above), 192 n.21; Halliwell, S., Plato: Republic 5 (Warminster 1993), 3638Google Scholar. Föllinger (n.44 above), 57f. (cf. 14, 56) provides a judicious review of the scholarly controversies that characterised feminist studies of Plato from the liberal feminist 1970s to the difference feminist 1980s; see further Witt, C., ‘Feminist History of Philosophy’, in Zalta, E.N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/feminism-femhist/bib.htmlGoogle Scholar, s.v. Plato. For helpful typological explications of feminism, especially around the core concepts of liberal feminism, see Jaggar, A., ‘Political Philosophies of Women's Liberation’, in Vetterling-Braggin, M., Elliston, F.A. and English, J. (eds.), Feminism and Philosophy (Totowa 1977), 521Google Scholar; Stefano, C. Di, ‘Autonomy in the Light of Difference’, in Hirschmann, N.J. and Stefano, C. Di (eds.), Revisioning the Political: Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory (Oxford 1996), 95116Google Scholar; Friedman, M., ‘Feminism in Ethics: Conceptions of Autonomy’, in Fricker, and Hornsby, (n.6 above), 205–24Google Scholar. See also Cavarero, A., In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy (New York 1990 [1995]Google Scholar); other than this almost lyrical work, there is, as far as I can tell, no comprehensive, explicitly feminist study of women and Plato. See however Kochin, M., Gender and Rhetoric in Plato's Thought (Cambridge 2002), esp. 6086Google Scholar; Buchan, M., Women in Plato's Political Thought (New York 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar) with the reviews of Blondell, R., CW 94 (2001), 199f.Google Scholar, and Saxonhouse, A., Hypatia 17 (2002), 235–38Google Scholar; for a longer view, see Bluestone, N., Women and the Ideal Society: Plato's Republic and Modern Myths of Gender (Amherst 1987Google Scholar), with summary in Bluestone, , ‘Why Women Cannot Rule: Sexism in Plato Scholarship’, Philosophy of Social Science 18 (1988), 4160CrossRefGoogle Scholar (also in Tuana, N. [ed.], Feminist Interpretations of Plato [University Park PA 1994], 109–30Google Scholar). In Classics, Föllinger (n.44 above), 57-117, is certainly the most thorough and exhaustive, and probably also the most insightful, study, outlining, at 60f., a position consistent with my position on Achilles' position on Plato's position on women, namely that it is, ‘in spite of certain ruptures, or rather precisely in its ambivalence, consistent [in sich stimmig]’. Obstacles to a historically Platonic feminism include the near ubiquitous possibility that Plato or his speakers are being ‘ironic’ (e.g., Aristophanes at Symp. 189d5-192d10 with Föllinger [n.44 above], 64-66) and frequent expression of negative ethical-political or else negative-tending scientific views about women, especially outside the Republic (e.g., Laws 781b, Tim. 42a, b, 90e, Pol. 262c-e, but also Rep. 455e with Föllinger, 66-72), or else outright contradiction (Laws 802e vis-à-vis 804c1-806c7 with Föllinger, 78f.).

81. Autonomy, even ‘self-sufficiency’, in ancient philosophy was rarely an unproblematic value to begin with: see Nussbaum, M., The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge 1986Google Scholar) and Therapy of Desire (Princeton 1994Google Scholar).

82. See Ward (n.78 above), xiii n.1. More generally, see the catholic and accessible volume of Press, G., Who Speaks for Plato? Essays in Platonic Anonymity (Lanham 2000Google Scholar), pace the traditional view of Kraut, R., ‘Introduction to the Study of Plato’, in Kraut, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge 1992), 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the philosophy side, compare the ‘revolutionary’ approach of Rowe, C.J., Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing (Cambridge 2007), 2, 19, 36, 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, called ‘revolutionary’ at 23-32, with, e.g., (literary?) Fish, Stanley, Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley 1972), 121Google Scholar. There remains no communis opinio on how to interpret a Platonic dialogue: see e.g. Nails, D., Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (Dordecht 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and cf. Blondell, R., The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge 2002), 452CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. Brown, Wendy, ‘“Supposing Truth Were a Woman…”: Plato and the Subversion of Masculine Discourse’, in Tuana, (n.80 above), 157–80Google Scholar. Building on the work of Arlene Saxonhouse, particularly ‘The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato’ in the same volume (67-85), Brown at 157f. escapes the limiting binary of pessimism or optimism in feminist approaches to antiquity by focusing on Plato's critique of the masculinism of Greek culture where it overlaps with modern feminist projects (for the optimism/pessimism binary, see Richlin, A., ‘The Ethnographer's Dilemma and the Dream of a Lost Golden Age’, in Rabinowitz, N.S. and Richlin, A. [eds.], Feminist Theory and the Classics [New York 1993], 272304Google Scholar).

84. Brown (n.83 above), 158.

85. Brown (n.83 above), 167f. on epistemology and 159f. on agonism.

86. Brown (n.83 above), 168.

87. See Republic 1,passim, as well as Gorgias 484d-485d with Brown (n.83 above), 161f.

88. Brown (n.83 above), 163-68.

89. See Ormand (n.60 above), esp. 165-68.

90. Brown (n.83 above), 163; cf. Derrida, J., Dissemination (Chicago 1981), 76Google Scholar: ‘[I]t would suffice to pay systematic attention…to the permanence of a Platonic schema that assigns the origin and power of speech, of precisely logos, to the paternal position.’

91. See e.g. Derrida n.90 above), 149, on which now Chapter 5 of Miller's, P.A.Postmodern Spiritual Practices (Columbus 2007Google Scholar); see also Annas, J., ‘Plato on the Triviality of Literature’, Moravcsik, J.M.E. and Temko, P. in Plato on Beauty, Wisdom, and the Arts (Totowa 1982), 128Google Scholar, and Nehamas (n.13 above), 251-78.

92. Berger, H., ‘Phaedrus and the Politics of Inscription’ in Shankman, S. (ed.), Plato and Postmodernism (Eugene 1994), 76114, at 76fGoogle Scholar.

93. Halperin, D., ‘Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity’, in Shankman, (n.92 above), 4375, at 55Google Scholar; cf. Maeder (n.23 above), 8f.

94. For bibliography relating to meaning and authority in the Platonic dialogues, see n.82 above.

95. Halperin (n.93 above), 52 on the Official doctrine’ and 62 on the ‘unofficial doctrine’.

96. Halperin (n.93 above), 69.

97. Halperin (n.93 above), 69.

98. Cf. Halperin (n.17 above), 142-51.

99. Winkler (n.8 above), 284.

100. Cf. Repath, I.D., ‘Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon: What Happens Next?CQ 55 (2005), 250–65, esp. n.3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. Repath (n. 100 above), 259.

102. Reardon (n.12 above), 365: ‘Evidently, Thersander does not know the Greek novel. Achilles, for his part, knows it well.’ See Ormand (n.60 above), 171f.

103. Whitmarsh (n.60 above), 199f.

104. Whitmarsh (n.60 above), 191 f., 197-204, 208; cf. Hunter, R., ‘Response’, in Somerstein, and Atherton, (n.11 above), 191205, at 192Google Scholar, with Morgan (n.11 above), 179-81; cf. Repath's (n.100 above) solutions (a) and (b) at 256.

105. Whitmarsh (n.60 above), 191f.

106. Most, G., ‘The Stranger's Stratagem: Self-Disclosure and Self-Sufficiency in Greek Culture’, JHS 109 (1989), 114–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 129 for the preconditions of autobiography; 131 for the following quotation.

107. Repath (n.100 above), 255.

108. See e.g. Whitmarsh, T., The Second Sophistic (Oxford 2005), 4fGoogle Scholar.

109. For the ‘marriage plot’, see Winkler (n.40 above), 23-38. For its socio-ideological implications, see Egger, B., ‘Women and Marriage in the Greek Novels: The Boundaries of Romance’, in Tatum, (n.40 above), 260–80Google Scholar; Perkins (n.40 above), 41-44; Haynes, K., Fashioning the Feminine in the Greek Novel (London 2003), 156–62Google Scholar; Burrus (n.41 above), 65f.–each more interrogative than the last (cf. Laplace [n.19 above], 25f). My ‘solution’ to the problem of the ending is then consistent with Repath's (n.100 above, 258-62) solution of ‘deliberate discrepancies’ except that, by combining Most's attention to power and my own attention to the gendered associations of Achilles’ Platonic architext, I insist on a generally political and specifically feminist interpretation. On the relationship of texts such as Achilles and Plutarch's Amatorius, see Swain (n.12 above), 121f. n.67 for bib100ography.

110. ϰἀϰεὶ τοὺς πολυεύϰτους ἐπιτελέσαντες γάμους ἀπεδημήσαμεν εἰς τὴν Τύϱον. Cf. Repath (n.100 above), 255: ‘Why did Achilles Tatius choose a stranger for Clitophon to narrate his adventures to, instead of a friend?’ See Ormand (n.60 above), 168-71.

111. Whether or not any comparison between the Greek novels is possible on an historical basis (Laplace [n. 19 above], 21-5, cf. Reardon [n. 12 above], 365f), L&C implies such a comparison with its sidelights to the more ideal ‘romance’ of Callisthenes and Calligone at 8.17f, with Morgan (n.11 above), 186; cf. Swain (n.12 above), 102f.; Morales (n.10 above), viii-x; Maeder (n.23 above), 12f.; Chew (n.59 above), 130f; Repath (n.100 above), 262-65; for the autonomy of Leucippe, less obvious than her peers in the Greek but clearer by comparison with those of the Christian Romances, see Burrus (n.41 above), 57-63, and cf. Ormand (n.60 above), 167f.; on the other hand, cf. Perkins (n.40 above), 112f.

112. See Konstan (n.40 above) for the phrase, with the qualification of Haynes (n.109 above), 16 n.37; Burrus (n.41 above), 63f, qualifies further, as does Ormand (n.60 above), 172. Cf. Swain (n.12 above), 122: ‘We should also not be surprised to notice that the theoretical respect for wives did not extend to women in general (the new conjugality was not about the equality of the sexes), nor to find that pederasty and homosexuality continued to be practised’; to me at least, this appears, pace Swain 119 n.62, with reference to ‘technology of the self’ at 128, generally consistent with Foucault's account: ‘one sees how a new type of problem emerged, where it was a matter of defining the way in which the husband would be able to form himself as an ethical subject within the relation of conjugality’ (Foucault [n.35 above], iii.80 [my italics]). See now Ormand (n.60 above), 165-67.

113. Goldhill (n.11 above), 136f. As Ormand (n.60 above), 173-76, realises, the characters in L&C may be conscious of this asymmetry.

114. Johne, R., ‘Women in the Ancient Novel’, in Schmeling, G. (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden 1996), 141208, at 169Google Scholar; cf. Maeder (n.23 above).

115. Todorov, T., The Poetics of Prose, tr. Howard, R. (Ithaca 1977), 8588Google Scholar.

116. Arist. Poet. 1451a-b; cf. Todorov (n.115 above), 80-88.

117. Richlin, A., ‘How Putting the Man in Roman Put the Roman in Romance’, in Hewitt, Nancy, O'Barr, Jean and Rosenbaugh, Nancy (eds.), Talking Gender: Public Images, Personal Journeys, and Political Critiques (Chapel Hill and London 1996), 1435Google Scholar. The theory was originally developed by Rohde, E., Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer (Leipzig 1876Google Scholar), reviewed in Reardon (n.12 above), 312f. For the juridical aspect of verisimilitude, see Todorov (n.115 above), 80f.; cf. Swain (n.12 above), 101: ‘[T]he novel..is marked out by its unmistakable combination of abstract form and lived experience.’ See Reardon (n.12 above), 363f., 365f. n.134, and esp. 401f, for suggestive remarks on the connection between the personal and political and particular and universal in the novel.

118. Todorov (n.115 above), 43: ‘Every great book establishes the existence of two genres, the reality of two norms: that of the genre it transgresses…and that of the genre it creates.’ In Achilles' case, the genre that his work creates is not a second genre but a third, following on the transgression of the ‘ideal’ novel and the Platonic dialogue.

119. Winkler (n.8 above), 174. Compare Foucault, M., ‘A Preface to Transgression’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, tr. Bouchard, D.F. and Simon, S. (Ithaca 1977), 2952, on Georges BatailleGoogle Scholar.

120. E.g. Haynes (n.109 above), 55f.

121. Haraway, D., ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies 14 (1988), 575–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

122. Morales (n.10 above), 9-35.

123. Haraway (n.121 above), 595.

124. Cf. Whitmarsh (n.60 above), 192.

125. Richlin (n.117 above), 17.

126. Foucault, M., ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical inquiry 8 (1982) 777–95, at 781CrossRefGoogle Scholar.