{"id":599,"date":"2021-04-04T15:08:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T20:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/?p=599"},"modified":"2023-03-20T08:32:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T13:32:47","slug":"dr-deborah-kamen-insults-in-classical-athens-review-by-dr-donald-lateiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/trident\/2021\/04\/04\/dr-deborah-kamen-insults-in-classical-athens-review-by-dr-donald-lateiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Deborah Kamen: Insults in Classical Athens Review By Dr. Donald Lateiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

This review was written by Dr. Donald Lateiner, Professor Emeritus of at Ohio Wesleyan University Humanities-Classics & AMRS departments, regarding a book recently published by Dr. Deborah Kamen discussing insults and derogatory language among the Ancient Greeks. We would like to thank Dr. Lateiner for contributing this article, and for being willing to work with the OWU Trident.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kamen introduces her understudied, dark corner of Athenian social and anti-social history with a flourish. She assembles contemporary cross-cultural anthropological and sociological approaches to insults before addressing ancient Attic comments and acts that denigrate others. Such discourse helps negotiate status, especially in an agonistic society\u2014one in which competitive values are displayed more obviously than cooperative ones. The five chapters that follow treat the creative varieties of doing down others\u2014intimidating equals, inferiors, and superiors\u2014in classical Athens, chosen for its rich evidence. Kamen discusses the regulation of insults, especially the extreme level\u2014<\/span>hubris<\/span><\/i>. Public and private, informal and legal means of preserving honor and blocking or redressing objectionable behaviors receive due attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her five chapters advance from playful banter, \u201cbenign insults,\u201d to more seriously offensive active and passive forms of one-upmanship and literal smack-downs. First come three categories of socially acceptable \u201cbenign insults:\u201d<\/span> nasty comments, then mockery in comedy, third, abuse and railery. She then turns to forbidden insults, that is, hurtful words that could be litigated. Kamen\u2019s fourth category of slander and libel, anticipates <\/span>hubris<\/span><\/i> of the legal kind\u2014not tragic aggressive pride but verbal assault and physical battery. The law here poses conceptual pitfalls, knots of intentionality and attitude. The Athenians meant harm for which you could not apologize.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One has no scale now to measure the degree of humiliation involved in the \u201cpervasiveness of mockery in many different Greek rituals\u201d (28).\u00a0 Mockery (chapter 1) featured prominently at Demeter festivals. Rituals included visual obscenities, originating according to myth in the miserable goddess Demeter\u2019s sidekick Iamb\u00ea\u2019s playful joshing. Humans too suffered \u201chazing\u201d (22) in Eleusinian initiation, a series of verbal and ritual events into an Athens-based Mystery cult promising a joyful afterlife.. \u201cPlayful whipping\u201d (24) seems a more problematic category of festive mockery. Carnivalesque social reversals may explain some vigorous vigorous venting of insults in Dionysiac phallic processions. The fun of the symposium or drinking party, when not Platonic, included barbed remarks, gestures, and rejoinders, Some scholars discern unwritten limits (cf. 31 discussing Aristophanes\u2019 <\/span>Wasps<\/span><\/i> 1222-49). Kamen thinks insults at these parties \u201ccould aid in the cohesion of the group\u2019s members through laughter,\u201d but offers no examples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kamen\u2019s\u00a0 rosy view of Spartan \u201cbenign insults\u201d misunderstands Plutarch\u2019s fantastic and anachronist report about their their severe rules for \u201cpreventing light hearted mockery from turning abusive\u201d (33, Plutarch<\/span>,<\/span><\/i> Life of<\/span><\/i> Lycurgusurgus<\/span><\/i> 12.4). That harsh but poorly documented society offered no mercy to chosen victims of humiliation, whether cadet cadet citizens, full Spartiates, or the defenseless serf-like class of helots. As we all know, shaming insults often cross the invisible line from witty jest to permanent hurt for the victim\u2019s self-esteem or public status.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter 2 surveys mockery in Attic Old Comedy, the parameters of insults against public and private persons tolerated in a specific public, state-sponsored venue. One cannot determine their \u201crelative harmlessness\u201d (37) when cast chiefly at people of \u201cwealth, high birth, and influence\u201d (see Pseudo-Xenophon <\/span>Government of the Athenians<\/span><\/i> 2.18). She doubts any ban ever passed prohibiting making fun of politicians by name. They are mocked for foreign birth, especially when it was barbarian, low origins (servile), and menial occupations, cowardice in battle, sexual or gender deviance such as multiple available receptor orifices), animality, abuse of parents, and decrepit old age. Kamen could have added to these forms of character assassinations excessive wine-consumption.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter 3 focuses on invective in Attic oratory, and how court briefs progressed from the self-imposed courtesy of the fifth-century orators to the coarse genealogical and sexual gibes uttered in the later fourth century.\u00a0 In Demosthenes, for example, the sexual escapades for pay performed by\u00a0 a competitor\u2019s mother took place in an outhouse next to a hero\u2019s shrine. \u201cThe right to denigrate\u201d faced few Athenian law-court limits\u2014a theatrical branch of government. Humorous gibes gained bored citizen-jurors\u2019 grateful goodwill. Such invective both diminished one\u2019s opponent\u2019s standing, boosted a speaker\u2019s credibility, and aligned him with community morals (85).<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter 4 advances from permitted insults (religious and convivial, stage, and court) into taboo verbal abuse, statements actionable at law by a variety of private law-suits. One could not say a man was a \u2018killer,\u2019 a father- or mother-beater, or a shield-thrower in battle. It remains unclear whether truth was a defense (100-1). How often did mocked persons sue their enemy? Such litigation advertised the insult and suggested humorlessness (112). It <\/span>might<\/span><\/i> be easier and more pleasurable (Aristotle <\/span>Rhet<\/span><\/i>oric 2.26) in a rowdy performance culture to retaliate, to escalate to night street-violence (as Demosthenes argues) or in daylight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kamen\u2019s fifth category of abuse unleashes the elephant in Athens\u2019 insult agora. Revenge could be sought legally or extra-legally (thrashing, stomping, punching), running the risk of litigation. <\/span>Hubris<\/span><\/i> acts were open to a <\/span>public<\/span><\/i> lawsuit (<\/span>graph\u00ea<\/span><\/i>), that is, the law regarded such \u201cexuberant, deliberately dishonoring arrogance\u201d offenses as harmful to the commonwealth of the polis and to the immediate victim. Verbal and nonverbal assaults on person and honor multiply\u2014think of gestures, looks, tone\u2014attitude crucial! Somewhat oddly, no example of such a prosecution survives among many law-court briefs. While various speakers insist they had the elements of a <\/span>graph\u00ea hybre\u00f4s<\/span><\/i>, none chose that route (130), usually preferring the less risky <\/span>private<\/span><\/i> charge of outrageous behavior <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(<\/span>dik\u00ea aikeias<\/span><\/i>). After the bully Konon crowed over Ariston lying prostrate, behaving like a cock flapping his arms–arguably symbolic rape–even humiliated but anxious Ariston chose this path of lesser offense (Demosthenes speech 54, <\/span>Against Konon<\/span><\/i>). <\/span>Hubris<\/span><\/i> was difficult to prove because showing intention was essential. Moreover, losing a <\/span>hubris<\/span><\/i> suit opened one up to serious penalties. Demosthenes\u2019 brief <\/span>Against<\/span><\/i> Meidias<\/span><\/i> employs the word <\/span>hubris<\/span><\/i> 101 times, a script of vulnerability. But the lawyer and politician expresses the idea without running the risks of bringing a <\/span>hubris<\/span><\/i> suit.<\/span><\/p>\n

How consequential were the insults of public mockery? Kleon, insulted frequently in Athens\u2019 theater, himself insulted the Athenian generals (as not \u201creal men\u201d) when they were stumped about how to seize Pylos island from the besieged Spartans. Subject to mocking laughter himself in the assembly for his crude style and fatuous boasting (Thucydides <\/span>Histories<\/span><\/i> 4.27-8), he nevertheless maintained his popular support. After deserting immediately at the start of the battle of Amphipolis and being quickly speared dorsally, Kleon died ignominiously. Is the shaming death-scene that Thucydides wrote a malicious riposte by an enemy, since he was another Athenian general embarrassed defending Thrace (5.10)? Plato has Sokrates claim in court that Aristophanes\u2019 comic mockery harmed his reputation (<\/span>Apology<\/span><\/i> 18c-19c). Joined to other parties\u2019 irritation and humiliation having served as targets of Sokrates\u2019 frequent and barbed ironic insults, it proved fatal to him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kamen regrettably does not treat the visual evidence that vase-painters produced in this period rich in daily-life satire. Many vases sketch the pleasures experienced in insulting out-groups such as barbarians, women, and slaves. We observe drunken (often aristocratic) symposiasts engaged in less than convivial, violent brawling, with or without impromptu weapons. Kamen purposely sidesteps epic forerunners of the Athenians–Homeric insults (D. Lateiner 2004: <\/span>Homeric Insults. Dis-Honor in Homeric Discourse<\/span><\/i>, San Diego). She could also investigate behaviors including threats and thrashing in contemporary Athenian historiography, tragedy, philosophical texts, and stylish pottery, even graffiti and curse tablets in a polis which was most civilized of the primitive and most primitive of civilized states. These sources illustrate the lush ecology of conceptually egalitarian Athenian and wider Hellenic <\/span>kakology<\/span><\/i>\u2014the study of bad-mouthing and ancient gestural insults equivalent to \u201cgiving the finger.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of which, Kamen\u2019s only illustration appears on the cover: a detail from Jacques-Louis David\u2019s 1787 painting, <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Death of Socrates<\/span><\/i>. Socrates, accepting the poison hemlock, sits in neoclassical colors with raised left hand and forefinger extended. The martyr\u2019s neo-Classical gesture indicates either an appeal for rational (not emotional) attention from his weeping disciples or an appeal to the Olympian gods. On the \u201ccheeky\u201d cover, however, his hand has been pixelated, as if the publisher were censoring Sokrates\u2019 Sicilian or American obscene gesture (extended <\/span>middle<\/span><\/i> finger, anachronistic for Athenians). Plato (<\/span>Phaedo<\/span><\/i> 117b) mentions Sokrates\u2019 peculiar \u201c<\/span>look<\/span><\/i>\u201d (<\/span>taur\u00eadon, <\/span><\/i>a downward bullish head-tilt)–but no gesture. Kamen has usefully hierarchized Attic insults and disparagement, but her analysis remains more legal than social.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Lateiner<\/span><\/p>\n

Humanities-Classics and AMRS Emeritus,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Ohio Wesleyan University<\/span><\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Insults in Classical Athens. <\/span><\/i>By Deborah Kamen.. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press. 2020. Pp. xv, 258.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This review was written by Dr. Donald Lateiner, Professor Emeritus of at Ohio Wesleyan University Humanities-Classics & AMRS departments, regarding a book recently published by Dr. Deborah Kamen discussing insults and derogatory language among the Ancient Greeks. We would like to thank Dr. Lateiner for contributing this article, and for being willing to work with… <\/p>\n

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