https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/956 Publications de Auteurs Giulia Sissa fr 0 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1047 This is a comparison of Agathon’s role, in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae and Plato’s Symposium. Firstly, I examine the platonic version, and the unique, idiosyncratic part Plato gives Agathon to play, as a host to all, and a hostage to Socrates. Secondly, I discuss his interaction with Inlaw, the ordinary Athenian, in Aristophanes’ play. Such parallel reading allows us not only to refine our outlook on the dramatic construction both of the “talking party” and of the comic performance, but also to capture how really poikilos, for better or worse, that urban love could be. Finally, I analyze the significance of this juxtaposition, as an intertext. Plato, I argue, produces a proper palinode of Agathon, as an erotikos and a mimetic poet. By taking seriously the face-to-face between Agathon and Agathon, two dissonant, and yet compatible, variations on one man, our picture of Athenian erotic culture emerges sharper, and in greater detail. jeu., 16 juin 2022 08:31:02 +0200 ven., 13 oct. 2023 10:38:15 +0200 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/1047 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/949 The first section of this paper will discuss the semantic field of the Greek words parthenos (virgin), and parthenia (virginity). More precisely, I will revisit the arguments made in Le Corps virginal (1986: Paris: Vrin,), and translated into English, as Greek Virginity (1990: HUP). The second section of the paper will advance a new hypothesis on the medical knowledge that lay in the background of the representations of virginity, to be found in different sources. The two sections are connected. While re-examining the terminology, I will argue that ancient medical writers did not include “the hymen”, in the anatomy of a healthy young woman. Soranos of Ephesus (II century CE) was the first physician to mention a membrane obstructing the vagina, but he claimed that this was just a false belief. There could be imperforation, which was an anomaly, but there was no normal occlusion. The ancient Greeks, therefore, failed to identify what modern forensic medicine calls “the physical signs of virginity”. They relied, however, on a different kind of sign of vaginal intercourse: pregnancy. As long as they could trust the conception of a child as the predictable effect of heterosexual coition, pregnancy revealed the loss of virginity. Contraception was to disturb that trust. Soranos, the first physician who discusses the anatomy of an un-penetrated woman, is also the first to provide an extensive collection of contraceptive remedies – not just abortifacients. The transition from a representation of virginity as sexual inexperience (but without the anatomical support of the hymen) to the need to pin down sexual integrity via a membranous structure, is correlated to the increasing awareness that women might tamper with their bodies, and that heterosexual coition, therefore, might go unobserved. mar., 14 juin 2022 14:09:58 +0200 ven., 13 oct. 2023 14:02:05 +0200 https://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/949