The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens [Paperback]

Eva C. Keuls (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520079299 | ISBN-13: 978-0520079298 | Publication Date: April 27, 1993

At once daring and authoritative, this book offers a profusely illustrated history of sexual politics in ancient Athens.
The phallus was pictured everywhere in ancient Athens: painted on vases, sculpted in marble, held aloft in gigantic form in public processions, and shown in stage comedies. This obsession with the phallus dominated almost every aspect of public life, influencing law, myth, and customs, affecting family life, the status of women, even foreign policy.
This is the first book to draw together all the elements that made up the "reign of the phallus"--men's blatant claim to general dominance, the myths of rape and conquest of women, and the reduction of sex to a game of dominance and submission, both of women by men and of men by men.
In her elegant and lucid text Eva Keuls not only examines the ideology and practices that underlay the reign of the phallus, but also uncovers an intense counter-movement--the earliest expressions of feminism and antimilitarism.
Complementing the text are 345 reproductions of Athenian vase paintings. Some have been reproduced in a larger format and gathered in an appendix for easy reference and closer study. These revealing illustrations are a vivid demonstration that classical Athens was more sexually polarized and repressive of women than any other culture in Western history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The first book to inquire at length into the conditions of women's lives in fifth-century Athens. In the process of groping to reconstruct a 'thick description' of ancient Athenian culture, Professor Keuls's book significantly thickens our understanding of one aspect of Athenian life." -- Eva Stehle, Newsletter of the Women's Classical Caucus of the APA

"This book is well written and intended for a wide audience; both the professional scholar and the general reader will find it provocative and diverting." -- Sarah B. Pomeroy, Classical World

"[Keuls's] powerful indictment of Athenian society in large measure rings true and throws down a challenge to any who would still idealize the Golden Age of Athens." -- H.A. Shapiro, American Journal of Archaeology --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Eva C. Keuls is Classics Professor at the University of Minnesota, the author of many scholarly articles, and a recognized authority on both Greek literature and vase painting. She is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Product Details

• Paperback: 477 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (April 27, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520079299
• ISBN-13: 978-0520079298
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #804,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A keen analysis that simply goes too far., May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Paperback)

If a book can be said to have a dual personality, Reign of the Phallus is it. The author, who has a vast knowledge of Greek pottery and who keenly analizes it, reveals interesting and penetrating aspects of classical Athens. She describes a society in which women are secluded wives or common prostitutes, with little in between. She describes men who are violent and dominating in their sexual relationships with both women and other men. She butresses her arguments with plentiful data and a massive number of pottery illustrations. However, she consistently reveals her biases as she presumes conclusions and then gathers evidence to support them. Several of her arguments are anachronistic -- sometimes by centuries! The author's greatest failing is to interpret images to fit her theses -- calling attention to many images and declaring them supportive, but dismissing images that are contrary to her theses. The text would be a good tool for a freshman college expository class, where it could be used to illustrate inconsistencies, unsupported assertations, and selective evidence. In spite of the author's political agenda, Reign of the Phallus can be rewarding for readers willing to sift through the assumptions and biases that structure the book. It provides a view into classical Athenian society revealed by the symbols and icons and stylized structure of its pottery. After finishing the book, I felt that the author gave me a look into classical Greeece, but who then went overboard in pushing her portrait of men who were opressive and violent in all their relationships, expecially sexual ones. The book was a lot of work.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating, occasionally over-reaching, August 22, 2003

By 

Kinnison (Lancaster, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Paperback)

Scholars of the social and private life of antiquity face the difficult task of constructing a coherent narrative out of bits and pieces of information widely scattered through classical art, litterature, and archeaology, and Keuls does an excellent job of this. Her analysis of pictorial art and its various representations of men, women, boys, prostitutes, and sex acts is particularly illuminating. On the down side the book is not always very well organized, and the discussions of group ritual, including tragedy, as an examination of and cathartic release from the pressures of sexual antagonism offer some very interesting insights but could have been better developed.

My biggest problem is with the book's tendency, already noted by some reviewers, to overreach, to read certain historical and mythological complexities purely according to its own thesis. Thus, Keuls takes the prevalence of the Amazonomachia, the story of an Amazon assault on prehistoric Athens, as a sign of Athenian preoccupation with aggressive women and the battle of the sexes. But the Greeks are of course known for their artistic tendency to approach history through myth, and the myth of the oriental Amazons' assault on Athens almost perfectly mirrors the assault of the Persians in 490 and 480. These struggles were central not only to Athenian pride but also to their moral justification for empire, and it would surprising if Athenians _didn't_ reproduce them as often as possible, sexual politics aside.

I also don't think much of the book's biggest claim, that the women of Athens were responsible for the mutilation of the Herms in 415. Keuls acknowledges that, if she's correct, the women's responsibility could not be kept for long, but vaguely explains this away by saying the truth was "too shocking to acknowledge." This does not really address the obvious problems of attributing responsibility for one of the greatest mysteries of Antiquity to a group that couldn't keep it a secret. More simply, while Keuls represents the mutilation as a protest, it was to the Athenians an act of sabotage, exposing the expedition and the city to the deadly wrath of the gods. Protest is one thing; sabotage, deliberately endangering their men, their city, and themselves is something else altogether. The simple fact is that only a really well disciplined, organized, and ruthless conspiracy (my money's on oligarchic revolutionaries) could have carried the mutilations out and gotten away with it.

But don't get the wrong idea. This is a good book on the fascinating subject of ancient social and sexual mores, though readers would do better to start with Dover's classic "Greek Homosexuality."

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading for the vase paintings alone, October 22, 2003

By 

Isabeau (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Paperback)

Keuls's controversial contention that she's solved the mystery of who smashed the herms of Athens has overshadowed the real strength of this book, which is the documentation. She has amassed a wealth of vase paintings, as well as references to women in Athenian legal documents, that paint a clear picture of the reality of women's lives in ancient Athens. By the end of the book, she's proved her case that women's lives in the world's first democracy weren't that much different from modern women's lives in Saudi Arabia - except the slaves in general, and the slave prostitutes in particular, certainly had it worse.
It's a must read for anyone who still believes all Athenian women were heroines like Antigone.