In The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens, Kate Gilhuly explores the relationship between the prostitute, the wife, and the ritual performer in Athenian literature. She suggests that these three roles formed a symbolic continuum that served as an alternative to a binary conception of gender in classical Athens and provided a framework for assessing both masculine and feminine civic behavior. Grounded in close readings of four texts, Against Neaira, Plato s Symposium, Xenophon s Symposium, and Aristophanes Lysistrata, this book draws upon observations from gender studies and...

Landscape and place are currently important topics in the study of classical literature. This volume examines how ancient Greeks of the archaic and classical period used geography in literary contexts, and how the representation of place in texts can be linked to contemporary social practices. The contributors explore how the Greeks related to the spaces and places around them and how they invested these places with meaning. They use examples from key texts in ancient Greek literature and treat a variety of textual places, from the intimate to the expansive, including the bedroom, ritual...