Making Space for Bicultural Identity: Herodes Atticus Commemorates Regilla
Maud W. Gleason (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, July (2008)
Abstract
Herodes’ friend Favorinus owned a human toy, a black Indian slave, ‘Who would entertain them when they drank together, mixing Atticisms with Indicisms as he jibbered broken Greek.’ The linguistic hybritidy of this domestic slave contrasts with the linguistic purity of Herodes’ ‘Herakles’, a freeborn rustic strongman, clothed in wolf-skin, who spoke perfect Greek. The Attic hinterland was his teacher, or so he claimed; pure and healthy speech was hardly to be found in the city, where, by welcoming floods of paying students from barbarous parts, the Athenians had corrupted their own language.
These two mascots represented two approaches to Greek language and identity. Heracles from the hinterland represented an inward-looking model that emphasized Greek uniqueness and the historical particularity of Attic tradition. The Indian slave gestured toward a more outward-looking, cosmopolitan model of Greek paideia as a game men of any race could play. Listening to the hybrid babble of their slave permitted Herodes and Favorinus to enjoy the sophisticated frisson of recognizing the Attic self in the barbarian ‘other’. This Attic self, however, was a deliberate posture. Each sophist in his own way straddled the ambiguous border between Greek and Roman identities –hence their shared taste for cultural incongruity. This paper explores Herodes’ position between Greek and Roman identities by looking at how some of his building projects, undertaken during his marriage and modified after the death of his Roman wife, symbolized the symmetries and asymmetries of their marriage and social position. As we observe the grieving Herodes ‘at play with his marbles’ (his own expression),5 we see how he used built space and poetic inscriptions to express complex issues of gender and bicultural identity.
Maud W. Gleason (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, July (2008)
Abstract
Herodes’ friend Favorinus owned a human toy, a black Indian slave, ‘Who would entertain them when they drank together, mixing Atticisms with Indicisms as he jibbered broken Greek.’ The linguistic hybritidy of this domestic slave contrasts with the linguistic purity of Herodes’ ‘Herakles’, a freeborn rustic strongman, clothed in wolf-skin, who spoke perfect Greek. The Attic hinterland was his teacher, or so he claimed; pure and healthy speech was hardly to be found in the city, where, by welcoming floods of paying students from barbarous parts, the Athenians had corrupted their own language.
These two mascots represented two approaches to Greek language and identity. Heracles from the hinterland represented an inward-looking model that emphasized Greek uniqueness and the historical particularity of Attic tradition. The Indian slave gestured toward a more outward-looking, cosmopolitan model of Greek paideia as a game men of any race could play. Listening to the hybrid babble of their slave permitted Herodes and Favorinus to enjoy the sophisticated frisson of recognizing the Attic self in the barbarian ‘other’. This Attic self, however, was a deliberate posture. Each sophist in his own way straddled the ambiguous border between Greek and Roman identities –hence their shared taste for cultural incongruity. This paper explores Herodes’ position between Greek and Roman identities by looking at how some of his building projects, undertaken during his marriage and modified after the death of his Roman wife, symbolized the symmetries and asymmetries of their marriage and social position. As we observe the grieving Herodes ‘at play with his marbles’ (his own expression),5 we see how he used built space and poetic inscriptions to express complex issues of gender and bicultural identity.
Click here to read this article from the Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics
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