Female Characterization in Greek Declamation

Abstract

Abstract During the past twenty years or so, classical scholarship has seen a phenomenal growth in two areas which have seldom overlapped: the examination of gender in antiquity and the study of so-called ‘later’ Greek literature. This paper is a contribution to both spheres. Classical scholars are now constantly reminded of how ancient texts constructed social ideals of masculinity and femininity. But most literary critics have clung to the safe and traditional classical period, from archaic times to the second century AD. The second current of criticism which has inspired this paper is one for which Donald Russell has provided much impetus. He has so often and eloquently performed an encomium of later Greek literature that the generations of scholars who have flourished under his inspiration are now reassessing these intriguing texts. The central texts of this brief paper will be the declamations and progymnasmata (preparatory exercises) of the fourth-century AD rhetor Libanius, but many of the observations can be applied to others among the rhetores Graeci.