Women in the Apology of Socrates Essay -- essays research papers

Women in the Apology of SocratesThe most striking thing most women in the Apology of Socrates is their absence from where we might expect them. Only two specific women atomic number 18 mentioned 1) the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, who answers Chaerephons question that no one is wiser than Socrates (21a) and 2) Thetis, the m early(a) of Achilles (who himself is not mentioned by name but only referred to as the "son of Thetis"), who warns him that he will die if he kills the Trojan hero Hector (28c). Only two other times does Socrates even mention women 1) a disparaging reference that those who embarrass the city by coming into court, weeping and carrying on to win the sympathy of the dialog box, "are in no way better than women" (35c) and 2) a remark that Socrates would enjoy questioning people in the hereafter, "both men and women" (41c), although everyone he actually name calling is male. Socrates does not mention questioning women in his investigatio ns. Nor do women occur either as spectators to his questions or in relation to all his talk about educating the " youth." The "youth" are obviously all young men. And again, Socrates mentions his family and his sons without mentioning his wife. Plato relates some relationships Socrates had with women (especially with Diotima in the Symposium), but those may be fictional. The only episode of Socrates questioning a woman that is clear historical is related by Xenophon in his Recollections of Socrates Socrates questions the courtesan Theodot, who is famous for her beauty and poses for artists. Socrates lives in a world where the spheres of life of men and women were radically separate. In Platos Symposium, which is a drinking party, both men and women are drinking and partying, but they do so in separate parts of the house. The musicans and dancers go back and forth surrounded by the mens party and the womens party. Political life was regarded by the Greeks as part o f the male sphere of things, and so on that point were certainly no women in Socratess jury but it is hard to know whether there were any in the audience. There has been some dispute about whether women attended Greek plays, the comedies and tragedies, when they were staged -- though there are references by Plato to women in theater audiences. We have this difficulty in part because it was not considered proper for strange... ...ly male and all early nude art shows males, an ideal of effeminate beauty rapidly gained ground in the century around Plato. In the three phases we can distinguish in the decoration of the Parthenon, the female figures are shown with progressively more diaphanous and revealing clothing. One of the earliest complete female nudes was a statue of Aphrodit that the great sculptor Praxiteles did for the island of Cos. He used as a model a famous courtesan named Phryn (the scene of Phryn posing at right is by the National Geographic painter H.M. Herget in curs ory Life in Ancient Times National Geographic Society, 1961). This was all rather shocking for the good people of Cos, who asked Praxiteles to do a more modest statue. He did, but the original went to the island of Cnidos, where it became a major local attraction. In Vamps and Tramps, Camille Paglia mentions that male visitors were so excited by the statue that they sometimes embarrassed themselves after the fashion of constitute Wee Herman. Eventually, the goddess herself was quoted as saying, "Alas, where did Praxiteles see me naked?" By the Hellenistic Age, female nudes were as common as male nudes.Thanks to friesian.com