Citizen as Erastes

Abstract

AT A KEY POINT IN THE FUNERAL oration Thucydides has Pericles urge his fellow citizens gaze, day after day, upon the power of the city and become her (II.43.1).1 This article investigates the implications and resonances of Pericles' use of this metaphor. I will show that far from being simply a pleasing turn of phrase, this metaphor does some important, substantive work in the speech. The metaphor suggests a way of thinking about the relationship between citizen and city. In particular, it emphasizes that democratic citizenship pivots on a notion of reciprocity between individual citizens and the polis.2 The manner in which the erastes metaphor stresses the idea of reciprocity is not readily apparent to the modern reader. It emerges only once we restore the historical context sufficiently to recognize that the metaphor alludes to the highly formalized and valorized erotic relations between adult, citizen men (erastai) and adolescent, free-born boys (eromenoi) that were common among Athenians. By appealing to citizens to conceive of themselves as lovers (erastai) of the polis, Pericles is proposing that the Athenians can and should turn to their ordinary understandings of what it is like to love as well as to the well-known, clearly defined codes of conduct regarding legitimate sexual behavior and the maintenance of an intimate relationship between an adult citizen erastes (lover) and free-born boy eromenos (be-