A Case Against the Greeks

[Cultural Criticism] Written for ENGL 4462: The Journalism of Ideas

Sleeping Hermaphroditus by François Milhomme, originally published on Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

From April 18th through July 17th of 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World”—an exhibit showcasing ancient Greek art spanning from the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.) to the suicide of Kleopatra VII (30 B.C.)—featured the provocative Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a life-size marble sculpture of the intersex deity on loan from the National Museum of Rome. According to Ovid’s recounting of the myth, Hermaphrodite was once son to Hermes and Aphrodite (thus the name), but, upon merging with the salacious naiad Salmacis, they came to possess a female figure with male genitalia. In the showing’s audio guide, curator of the exhibit Dr. Seán Hemingway speaks to what he thinks is the work’s cultural-historical significance: “In a way,” he says, “the hermaphrodite is a kind of ultimate erotic fantasy for an ancient Roman, because you have the voluptuous female, and you have the male.”¹

Modern-day conceptions of effeminacy and androgyny do feature prominently in Greel and Roman depictions of Apollo, Dionysus, and Tiresias, as well as in Plato’s Symposium, wherein Aristophanes’ absurdist cosmogony postulates that heterosexual love originated from the splitting of a hermaphroditic entity, which is made whole again with the discovery of one’s soulmate.

Yet there is a temptation—an ignorant one, I think—to attribute today’s open-mindedness to the ancient Greeks. The New York Times’ Daniel McDermon keenly identifies in his June of 2016 review that Sleeping Hermaphrodite has a particular contemporary charge, but fails to articulate more than a shared preoccupation with identity between ourselves and the Greeks. He ventures that the image of the hermaphrodite “seems little changed,” signaling “a kind of cosmopolitanism, just as it did in the 2nd century.” Prompted by the exhibit’s Curator In Charge Dr. Carlos A. Picón’s final remark that “they had it formulated pretty clear all the way back then,” McDermon ignores Picón’s warnings that “it would be a mistake to interpret the popularity of these works as a sign of ancient tolerance”; that “the birth of intersex people was seen as a bad omen”; that “those born with ambiguous genitals were usually killed.” Instead, McDermon argues that the Greeks and Romans not only tolerated, but embraced gender nonconformity long before such ideas felt new to us.²

(It must be acknowledged that the heretofore mentioned “us” describes a leftist politic with which I identify, and which, though it claims radical inclusivity, more often than not does only that. For thoroughness’ sake, however, consider conservative cultural critic Mary Eberstadt’s op-ed “The Lure of Androgyny,” which posits that the collapse of the nuclear family in the wake of the 1960s sexual revolution is responsible for the recent change in global stylistic preference. Suffice it to say that Eberstadt misconstrues history toward her own ends as heedlessly as McDermon.)

There is a disturbing, long-identified trend of mis-historicizing the ancient Greeks as progressive, even as they might fit into our current political landscape.³ In recent years, many have cited the Hellenistic period as a precursory model to our own society’s acceptance of homosexuality, and thus sexual acceptance as a whole. They fail to acknowledge the basis of ancient Greek homosexuality: an unprecedented, inflexible worship of the male physique through pederasty and ruthless sexism. The same misconstruction occurs with the physical forms of Apollo and Dionysus, which we today perceive as androgynous, but in reality reflected some of the hypermasculine ideals (athleticism, restraint, youth; domination, frenzy, virility) of their time. It must be remembered that cultural ideals need not mutually exclude; do we not prize material success as readily as humility? Honesty as politeness? Conviction as open-mindedness? In this manner, Apollo and Dionysus characterize a portion of the ancient Greek masculine which is made whole by Zeus, Ares, and Hercules, etc.

Sleeping Hermaphrodite is no exception to the rule. Originally conceived as a voyeuristic joke, the 2nd-century Roman noble was supposed to have strolled through his pleasure garden, become allured by its feminine posterior, and upon rounding the corner, been met with the humorous surprise of its uncorrelated nether regions. Rather than the “ultimate erotic fantasy,” as Hemingway claims, the hermaphrodite occupied a similar role to the deceptive, lustful satyr of Classical mythos. Its very depiction—counter to what McDermon would have us believe—did not connote an idealized blurring of the line between male and female; rather, its twisted posture played on the initial attraction of the form, and subverted it to comic effect, in so doing reinforcing a prehistoric, heteronormative gender binarism. So although the Romans might have executed a real-life Hermaphrodite, their sculpture found its aesthetic purpose in the realm of the grotesque. Such are the contradictions of any productive culture: that which art deems worthy of life, the world condemns to death.

In our day and age we too aestheticize the androgyne, while marginalizing (though less extremely) those born, or who identify as, non-binary. Our celebrities perform the avant-garde, sporting high fashion which prods hegemony only for as long as the night’s entertainment endures; similarly, the Dionysian rites of the Bacchae featured temporary gender transgression. Our corporations advertise their products as unisex—to maximize profit—by evoking the moral values most prized at time of sale; just the same, statues of Apollo and Dionysus manifested the ethics of their makers’ communities. I even observe in myself that I have begun to truly cherish those more epicene attributes of my appearance and personality. But lean superficially though I may, I am as yet unwilling to unmoor myself from the docks of manhood; we are allured by the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, but must laugh at its strangeness. Hence the Greeks are no better than us, and we, of course, are no better than the Greeks.

Had I solely ingested the Met’s provided resources on Sleeping Hermaphrodite, I could easily have emerged with my implicit assumptions of ancient Greek liberalism confirmed by the voice of a supposed resident expert. But as I peer over Hermaphrodite’ s figure, I am left with the distinct impression that supremacist rhetoric justifies itself in the convenient crevices of our ignorance. Selective embrace of the past, especially in such bastions of public learning as museums, perpetuates historical amnesia and nostalgia for a civilization whose beliefs and practices were not precedentially ahead of their time. In order to wholly accept in our present day those who do not conceive of themselves in gender binary, we first must swallow that ugly truth—to look upon the off-putting appendage on the shadowed side of Hermaphrodite: that our role models had no sympathy for such outliers we can almost find beautiful. Whether the Greeks despised the androgyne cannot devalue our incipient appreciation of them. To equate ourselves with such obsolete priorities is to tie ourselves to their limits. As of now, we are the Greeks. Let us move swiftly on.

1. “Sleeping Hermaphrodite | Roman | the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/259522.

2. Luc Brisson in Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity concurs. | Brisson, Luc. Sexual Ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. University of California Press, 2002.

3. See Said.