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ABSTRACT
In a way, there is nothing surprising about Plato’s promotion of sport for women in Republic and Laws; it is logically implied by his philosophical theories. In another way, Plato’s vision of female athletes is among the most radical proposals he makes. The purpose of this paper is to examine Plato’s arguments for women in sport and reflect on its relevance in our modern world. His texts include as many misogynist as feminist comments, but Plato’s consistent view in Republic and Laws is that females deserve equal education in gymnastics (i.e. movement activities) and equal opportunity to participate in athletic contests. This position derives from the convictions that athletics serves as training for virtue and communities need to maximize the virtue of all their members. It is his vision of women in civic and military roles, specifically their need for aretē (virtue, excellence) to perform those roles, that motivates Plato to include them in sport. In our modern world, where women are citizens and rulers – and regularly participate in sport – it is worth exploring the educational link Plato saw between the two.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the American Academy in Rome, Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, US–Italy Fulbright Commission, Morningside College, and Exedra Mediterranean Center for supporting my scholarship during the research and writing of this paper. Special thanks also go to Nicholas D. Smith for some very helpful suggestions. No approval or endorsement of its contents is implied.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In Greek mythology, Atalanta was abandoned as a baby because her father wanted a boy. Suckled by a bear and then raised by hunters, she grew up to live independently in the wild. A skilled huntress, she takes her place alongside other Greek heroes like Theseus and Meleager with a series of athla (labors or feats). She slays a pair of drunken centaurs attempting to rape her, draws first blood in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, wrestles with Peleus in the funeral games of Pelias (sponsor of Jason and the Argonauts), and, most famously, defeats a series of suitors racing for her hand. Unlike traditional marriage races, however, they did not race each other, but rather Atalanta herself, and it was only by rolling a series of golden apples in front of her, which she slowed to pick up, that Hippomenes (or Melanion) was able to beat her in a footrace and take her hand in marriage. There are several ancient accounts of her story, including Hesiod, Apollodorus, and Aelian (Citation1997). A good modern treatment can be found in Scanlon (Citation2002, 175–98). For the visual record, see Barringer (Citation1996) and Boardman (Citation1983).
2. For a philosophical overview of the origins of women’s sport in ancient Greece and Rome, see Reid (Citation2020a).
3. Running rituals for girls are attested in Attica at Brauron and Mounichia. Perlman (Citation1983) links the Brauron ritual with Plato’s Laws.
4. For an overview of Plato’s educational use of athletics, see Reid (Citation2007, Citation2016, Citation2017), and ‘Plato’s Gymnasium,’ chapter 5 of Reid (Citation2011). For an analysis of his philosophical use of gymnastic imagery and metaphor, see Reid (Citation2020b).
5. A similar rejection of professional athletics can be found in Laws 807cd ‘As it is, to dedicate your life to winning a victory at Delphi or Olympia keeps you far too busy to attend to other tasks; but a life devoted to the cultivation of every physical perfection and every moral virtue (the only life worth the name) will keep you at least twice as busy. Inessential business must never stop you taking proper food and exercise, or hinder your mental and moral training’. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of Plato are from Cooper (Citation1997).
6. This may hold true not just for male athletes, but also for women concerned about their appearance.
7. An explanation of the needed interplay of gymnastikē and mousikē is provided at Timaeus 88bc: ‘From both of these conditions there is in fact one way to preserve oneself, and that is not to exercise the soul without exercising the body, nor the body without the soul, so that each may be balanced by the other and so be sound. The mathematician, then, or the ardent devotee of any other intellectual discipline should also provide exercise for his body by taking part in gymnastics, while one who takes care to develop his body should in his turn practice the exercises of the soul by applying himself to the arts and to every pursuit of wisdom, if he is to truly deserve the joint epithets of ‘fine and good’.
8. According to Diogenes Laertius (Citation1972), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 3.46, there were at least two women at Plato’s Academy, Axiothea of Philius, and Lasthenia of Mantinea. We know no more than that.
9. I.e. Republic 444e: ‘Virtue seems, then, to be a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being of the soul, while vice is disease, shameful condition, and weakness’.
10. Plato may be punning on the term physis here, which can refer specifically to a person’s genitals (Liddell and Scott Citation1940, VII.2). Thanks to Nicholas D. Smith for noticing this.
11. Levin (Citation1996) notes a literary tradition going back to Homer of speaking negatively of women as a genos or group. But it does not follow that the phusis of all women is bad, frequently women with bad phuseis are contrasted with those who have good phuseis. For example, Hesiod (Citation2018) Works and Days 699–705, Semonides, On Women, Euripides, Bacchae 314–18, and especially fragment 494N, which claims that women have differing natures, and 657N, which criticizes those who generalize about them.
12. According to Annas (Citation1996), Plato’s argument here is ‘seriously incomplete’ because he holds that men can outperform women in anything, yet concludes that there are no specifically male competencies. She thinks the text implies that women are inferior with respect to intellectual capacity, I disagree. She is right, however, that Plato does not consider the woman’s point of view (p. 8), I think this is because he views souls as gender-neutral.
13. There is scholarly disagreement on whether apparently misogynist remarks like this represent Plato’s settled view of women. Levin (Citation1996), follows Vlastos (Citation1989) in concluding that such remarks constitute a vision of women under less than optimal conditions. It is the lack of education, opportunity, and appropriate public scrutiny, rather than a stunted phusis that results in what are recognized as women’s characteristic vices.
14. I have substituted the translation ‘guardian women’ here for the original ‘guardian wives’. In Greek, the word for ‘wife’ and ‘woman’ is the same, so it is a matter of interpretation. Since traditional marriage is explicitly rejected for the guardians, I think it misleading to use the term ‘wives’.
15. In Laws, he says it deprives itself of half its potential.
16. Republic 460d: ‘And won’t they take care that the mothers suckle the children for only a reasonable amount of time and that the care of sleepless children and all other such troublesome duties are taken over by the wet nurses and other attendants?’
17. See Republic 457cd: ‘That all these women are to belong in common to all the men, that none are to live privately with any man, and that the children, too, are to be possessed in common, so that no parent will know his own offspring or any child his parent’. At Laws 739c it is repeated that the ideal society eliminates private property, including wives, though a more conventional idea is ultimately proposed.
18. This is at least partly because Socrates’ audience is distracted from the rationality of the argument by the titillating idea of naked women in public gymnasia.
19. Reeve (Citation2001), 3, citing Republic 433d suggests that artisan women may well perform artisan tasks like carpentry conventionally associated with men.
20. Republic 413c: ‘Then, as I said just now, we must find out who are the best guardians of their conviction that they must always do what they believe to be best for the city. We must keep them under observation from childhood and set them tasks that are most likely to make them forget such a conviction or be deceived out of it, and we must select whoever keeps on remembering it and isn’t easily deceived, and reject the others. Do you agree? Yes. And we must subject them to labors, pains, and contests in which we can watch for these traits’.
21. Attested by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 3.1.4.
22. Laws 771e-772a: ‘Boys and girls must dance together at an age when plausible occasions can be found for their doing so, in order that they may have a reasonable look at each other; and they should dance naked, provided sufficient modesty and restraint are displayed by all concerned’.
23. The Athenian’s next comment is ‘But at present, unhappily, the human race has not progressed as far as that’.
24. This is agreed by several (but not all) scholars, for example, Nicholas Smith (Citation1983). Reeve (Citation2001, 8) suggests that only the rational part of the soul has no gender. This would be problematic for the reincarnation argument, though.
25. ‘Natural potential’ may take into account social factors. As Frank (Citation1947) notes, at Laws 792a Plato explains that moral weakness begins in infancy when babies’ cries are immediately tended to. He says such indulgence is the root of poor character. In so far as female infants are indulged more than males, due to their perceived weakness, their potential for virtue will be accordingly reduced. It is also noteworthy that Plato recommends keeping babies constantly in motion outdoors to prevent distress and begin building virtue. This movement will be continued in the form of children’s games and then organized gymnastics.
26. Annas (Citation1996, 12) would disagree again. She says that by time he writes Laws, ‘Plato has stopped thinking that women should do the same jobs as men’.
27. For example Aristophanes’s character Lampito.
28. At Laws 673b The Athenian also notes that his countrymen criticize Sparta for the ‘easy virtue’ of their women.
29. I do not think that criticizing behaviors like dropping one’s shield in battle as ‘womanish’ is criticism of women. If I call you a ‘chicken’ because you do something cowardly, I am insulting you and not chickens. Likewise, if I call you lion-hearted, I am complimenting you and not lions. Likewise, calling athletic women masculine would not be an insult to them, but rather a compliment insofar as men have desirable traits. I personally have been called ‘a stud’ and said to ‘have a lot of balls’ in athletic contests, but I never took it as an insult, or a challenge to my gender.
30. There is some controversy over which offices are and which aren’t. Unlike the Republic, where women were eligible to be philosopher-rulers, in the Laws they are explicitly excluded from the Nocturnal Council, Chorus of Dionysus, and other offices. For an analysis, see Folch (Citation2016).
31. Republic 387e suggests that cowardice is an equal-opportunity vice that can be eradicated through training: ‘We’d be right, then, to delete the lamentations of famous men, leaving them to women (and not even to good women, either) and to cowardly men, so that those we say we are training to guard our city will disdain to act like that’.
32. As the Phaedo makes clear (82b-83b), it is education and especially philosophy that keeps the soul from being dragged down from the forms by the body. Since gender is connected with body, education also helps women to transcend their gender.
33. This is consistent with the historical existence of running rites of passage for girls at places like Brauron and Mounichia, as well as the Thesmophora festival of Demeter, which did not include athletics as far as we know, but rather functioned a bit like a Mardi Gras for women only.
34. The locution megistōn agōnōn also appears at Republic 403e in discussing the education of the guardians. There, it does not refer to war but to internal struggles to be good. It will be remembered, however, that the biggest contest in an individual’s life was an internal one between pain and pleasure, good and bad. The function of athletics, like everything in the state, has always been aretē, which is designated as the most reliable protection against injury. See, for example, Laws 840bc. “Well then, [athletes like Ikkos of Taranto] steeled themselves to keep off what most people regard as sheer bliss, simply in order to win wrestling matches and races and so forth. But there’s a much nobler contest to be won than that, and I hope the young people of our state aren’t going to lack the stamina for it. After all, right from their earliest years we’re going to tell them stories and talk to them and sing them songs, so as to charm them, we trust, into believing that this victory is the noblest of all. CLINIAS: What victory? ATHENIAN: The conquest of pleasure. If they win this battle, they’ll have a happy life – but so much the worse for them if they lose. See also Laws 647cd: ‘The key struggles are between pain and pleasure within a person and he needs training in order to win them’”.
35. Also the phrase ‘fight for life’, may be a pun on ‘fight for soul’, since the word psychē means both.
36. Some scholars, i.e. Bury (Citation1967) think the heavy and lightly armed cross country runners compete against each other.
37. The restriction of athletic contests to unmarried women (i.e. parthenoi) was true historically through the Roman period.
38. One reason to keep women out of the military is suggested at Laws 832c. The Athenian argues that some cities don’t go in for the gymnastic and military training because the rulers rule by fear and not the consent of the governed and they don’t want the governed to build up virtue and maybe topple them. ‘They hold it by constant resort to a degree of force, and they are never prepared to allow any of their subjects to cultivate virtue or acquire wealth or strength or courage – and least of all will they tolerate a man who can fight’. Can this be applied to women, too?