A voice leaps out at me from the page.
I’ve found it written four different ways:
“I have used for the getting of knowledge all the time which, because of my sex, I was supposed to waste at the loom.” — Hipparchia
“But don’t suppose for a moment that I regret the time I spend improving my mind instead of squatting by a loom.” — Hipparchia
“But do you imagine that I have not taken proper thought about myself, If the time I might have spent on the loom I have devoted to my education?” — Hipparchia
“But do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?” — Hipparchia
***
Each version, adding up to a spirit I’ve been long overdue to find.
I align myself with her.
I copy these lines, repetitively.
Writing her words everywhere, anywhere there’s space.
But to write about her, using words of my own?
I think back to Frede’s essay: He tells me to historically contextualize: So I do: Conditions for women.
What were they like?
She lived around the fourth or third century BC.
A footnote serves as my own “eternal return” to the inferiority of my sex at that time:
“It was axiomatic in the ancient Greek world that men were superior to women”(19).
Hipparchia renounced a life of wealth and security in order to follow her heart. She refused to live any other kind of life, except the one she wanted. Strong-willed. She fell in love with Crates and the philosophical life of a Cynic and never looked back.
When her parents refused: she threatened with suicide.
She won.
She would accompany Crates in public. Attending both lectures and symposiums.
One evening at a party in Lysimachus, Theodorus the Atheist got into a philosophical argument with her. (Another Gorgias?: different, shorter – but public, dialectical.)
She threw this sophism at him: “What Theodorus could not be called wrong for going. But Theodorus does no wrong when he beats himself, therefor Hipparchia does no wrong when she beats Theodorus.”
*Silence*
Unable to come up with a retort, Theodorus felt humiliated. Unable to handle being outwitted by a women, he knew of no other way, except to try to humiliate her — so, he vindictively stripped her of her dress.
However this had the opposite effect. She calmly stood in the room, full of men, stark naked.
“Who is the woman who forsakes her shuttle and loom?” He asked.
She stood with all her womanhood exposed, stripped from the clothes she was suppose to be spending her time making at the loom. She stood there without an ounce of embarrassment.
She states the line that leapt out at me:
“It is I, Theodorus. But do you imagine that I have not taken proper thought about myself, if the time I might have spent on the loom I have devoted to my education?”
A paragon of Cynic virtue: No shame.
She won.
If she could over come all these obstacles, I certainly can over come mine:
I think about these texts.
I should be brave enough to find something to say:
Her section is embedded in Diogenes’ book on the Cynics.
In that book, these men appear quite absurd.
“Ripley’s believe it or not” of philosophers is the fitting phrase we use.
However, when it comes to Hipparchia’s symposium scene, her portrayal
appears tame in comparison to the rest. I sense a tone of respect, but that’s
probably stemming from a personal desire to feel that.
A second thought:
Maybe the absurdity is implicit in her gender. She doesn’t need to be caricatured to any further degree: a woman practicing philosophy is absurd enough.
I also think about the order of which her biography appears.
Not after Crates.
She is the sister of Metrocles of Maroneia.
Her biography appears after his.
The striking juxtaposition:
After accidently breaking wind in public, Metrocles is mortified to the point of suicide, while Hipparchia stands with her bare-bottom exposed in a room full of men, entirely unfazed.
His weak ability to moderate his feelings of shame, accentuates the strength of hers.
I think about Cynic virtues: Poverty, Apathy, Indifference, Celibacy, Ignorance, Suicide, Shamelessness, Simplicity.
I think about if that’s the way Cynics identified wisdom and how they strove for it.
I think about the fact that women weren’t allowed to own property, (which falls in line perfectly with living a life of a Cynic) and always needed a male guardian (Crates?). I pour over the letters he wrote her. He writes, “Women are not naturally the weaker sex. Look at the Amazons; they were physically tough as any man” (Dobbin 70). He believed in her: “You certainly won’t persuade me that you are fragile when backs are turned” (Dobbin 70).
I think about the manner in which women’s histories have trickle down from Antiquity to me.
Kakaphony. Anne Carson words from her essay “The Gender of Sound” rush to my mind: “It is confusing and embarrassing to have two mouths.” Kakaphony is the sound produced by both of them. “The doubling and interchangeability of mouth engenders a creature in whom sex is cancelled out by sound and sound is cancelled out by sex.” She talks about women in Ancient Greece. I think of Hipparchia. I think of her standing there at the dinner party; both of her two “mouths” exposed. Are her philosophical sounds cancelled out?
The philosopher that challenged Hipparchia, Theodorus the Atheist, was a
Cyrenaic: they were also known as “Mother taught.”
He was taught by Aristippus the younger, who was taught by his mother Arete. A Hedonist. I begin to rethink Theodorus actions. Was he just living out the philosophy of the Cyrenaics: Relativists, using pleasure as the measure for actions? Is this a fictional scene Diogenes (who wrote the only biography of Hipparchia we have from Ancient Greece) constructs to exemplify the difference between these two schools of thought? To show their difference through action?
Diogenes was infatuated with the way philosophers died.
Her death is never mentioned.
Immortal.
***
I like to lift philosophers from their texts.
I entirely decontextualize them.
I bring them to work with me.
Φαρμακεια. Pharmakeia. Pharmacy
I sell drugs at a retail chain.
Mixing magic potions in a mortar with my pestle.
Most of the Cynics were peasants.
And when I’m clothed in scrubs (the garb of the lowly pharmacy technician)
I am too.
The pharmacy is located inside a hospital. A violation of some anti-trust law, I’m sure. With an experimental location, comes experimental business ventures.
One of them called “Bedside Delivery.” They send me into the Emergency Room to collect business. The title on my business card says I’m a “pharmacy liaison.” But really, it should say prescription drug hustler.
Corporate rhetoricians.
They have me rigorously practicing rhetoric
– excuse me – practicing “proper verbiage.”
While patients are vomiting, bleeding, missing limbs, Etc., I approach them:
“Hi. I’m Melanie. I work at X pharmacy located here, inside the hospital. We now provide bedside delivery to the ER. I could I fill your prescription and deliver it down to you.” Smile. Smile. Smile. Never let it drop.
If the patient accepts, I transform into an Olympian athlete. I run up and down flights of stairs, in a mad dash, to fill their prescriptions.
This program is supposed to help prevent readmission rates, while providing patient convenience. More rhetoric.
Amidst the artificial, I crave something real.
The smell of rubbing alcohol on all the plastic sets my teeth on edge. I’m unable to endure the sterility of the hospital. During this shift, I have to wear a real flower in my hair.
Our “office” is any one of the plastic blue chairs in the waiting room. I sit amongst a sea of patients, patiently waiting. I observe behaviors, quickly categorizing. This Bedside program is unprecedented, strict corporate rules have yet to be codified.
I’m on company time. I take advantage. I read.
The blue chair becomes my own ceramic tub.
But my tub is located amongst the patients moving in and out of this hospital rather than amongst the people walking around the streets of Athens.
A Spectacle.
A person reading. A girl reading.
The patients always stare.
Some asks: “What are you reading?”
I respond: “Do you want to hear about some bad-ass woman philosopher from Ancient Greece?”
Hipparchia.
I luxuriate in her story.
I romanticize, I idealize, I retell.
I retell (mostly to myself).
I retell (to anyone willing to listen).
Nobody cares.
I tell them anyway.
I make them care.
Well, more like make them pretend to care.
It’s all I can do.
A spectacle:
A person reading. A girl reading.
Melanie Kelliher 