In October 2023, I was honoured to give a public lecture at the Erasmus Darwin House in Litchfield. They have a series of Lunar Lectures, in which academics give talks under the full moon, and I was very excited to be invited to do one. I proceeded to a talk to mostly septuagenarians (and my mum) about toxic masculinity in Greek myth retellings. Although it was a little embarrassing at times, it went surprisingly well, and we even went into a QAnon and Incel segue in the Q&A, which married up my research interests in very interesting ways. My research lately has been focused on modern day masculinity, with a particular focus on the manosphere and online toxic masculinity. It was really interesting to tie that together with my ongoing love for the Classics and adaptations thereof.
I thought I would share a pared down version here, but it quickly became overlong and annoying, more like an essay than a blog post. So I'm going to split it into the different mythic men that I talked about in the lecture. This first instalment was on Atlas and Heracles, the protagonists of Jeanette Winterson's novella for the Canongate Myth Series, Weight (2005). The second blog post was on everyone's favourite angry boy, Achilles.
This time, I'm going to look at one of the most rotten men of Greek myth: Theseus. Expect ranting ahead.
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed revisiting it!
'Ancient Myths, Modern Masculinities: Toxic Masculinity in Greek Myth Retellings'
In this paper, I ask what the specific value might be of analysing mythic men with reference to modern theories of masculinity. If the role of myth in antiquity was to narrate and etiologically explain the social and natural order, adapting myth re-appropriates these ancient myths to shed light on contemporary society.
So, adaptations of ancient men can comment on contemporary masculinities.
Online, Alt-Right, white nationalist, men's rights groups (known as The Red Pill) use classical mythology, philosophy, imagery, and iconography to promote their vitriolic agendas. Donna Zuckerberg researches the weaponisation of the literature and history of ancient Greece and Rome by the men of the Red Pill, to promote white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies in her text Not All Dead White Men (Zuckerberg 2019: 5). She looks at how men on these Reddit pages use, for example, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus to reinforce rape culture (Ibid., 5). For her, this trend cannot be ignored because it has the potential to reshape how ancient Greece and Rome are perceived in the modern world, and because they lend historical weight and legitimacy to discriminatory world views.
But, what we are seeing in contemporary literary retellings of Greek myth are versions of the heroes that engage with modern concerns about masculinity, such as homosocial bonds, hegemonic masculinity, and toxic masculinity.
Theseus
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| (source) |
Theseus is the son of the Athenian king, Aegeus (but also Poseidon, kind of), though he grows up with his mother in the south. Aegeus has left a sword and pair of shoes under a giant rock and says that when Theseus gets strong enough to move the rock, he can claim his birth right in Athens. Theseus reaches maturity, rolls the rock aside, takes the sword and shoes, and sets out on the journey. On his way to Athens, he faces 6 labours, cementing his heroic status before even arriving.
When he gets to Athens, he finds his father in the thrall of the witch Medea, who is seeking sanctuary after killing her children. She tries to kill Theseus, first by sending him to hunt a bull, then by trying to poison him, but he is successful in the first instance and Aegeus foils the second. Medea is banished, and father and son are finally united.
Theseus then goes to Crete to slay the Minotaur, so that Athens will no longer have to send youths to be plopped into Daedalus' labyrinth, where they are hunted by the Minotaur.
While he is shown as the hero of this story, Theseus literally could not have completed this feat without Ariadne, who gives him a ball of thread** so he can navigate the labyrinth. He takes her with him when he escapes back to Athens, promising to marry her... but then abandons her to die on the deserted island of Naxos. Because Olympus-forbid he shares the credit for this feat. (Ariadne doesn't die, though, but more on that later.)
** Fun fact: this ball of thread is called a 'clew', from which we get the word 'clue', to mean a thing that helps achieve the desired outcome.
It's not dissimilar to what Jason does to Medea after the quest for the Golden Fleece, which should tell us plenty about the anxious and spiteful masculinity of many heroes of Greek myth.
Theseus promises to raise special sails so that his father will know he was successful; he forgets and so his father throws himself into the sea in grief, thinking his son is dead. Thus, the Greek seas became known as the Aegean.
What's worse, Theseus reveals himself to have a proclivity for young girls.
He also goes on a quest with another demigod, Pirithous, to secure themselves divine wives. Theseus steals Helen (later, of Troy) from Sparta, when she is a very young girl, and give her to Theseus' mother to raise until she is old enough to marry. She is later rescued by her brothers, the Dioscuri, before Theseus can complete his grooming.
They are unsuccessful on both counts, since they then (very stupidly) go to the Underworld in an attempt to kidnap Persephone, whereupon Pirithous is tortured by the Furies and Theseus is trapped on a rock. It isn't until Heracles' Labours bring him to the Underworld that Theseus is rescued.
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| Theseus carries off Helen, Attic amphora c.510 BC |
Upon returning to Athens and being crowned, he sends for Ariadne's (much) younger sister, Phaedra, to be his wife.
As I said, Theseus is awful.
Jennifer Saint, Ariadne (2021)
Dethroning heroes from classical myth is a key preoccupation in Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne, in which Theseus’ heroic legend is interrogated.
Theseus’ heroic reputation is first built up under Ariadne and Phaedra’s enamoured gaze, and subsequently critiqued as Theseus’ actions reveal that his morals are far from heroic (in the sense of being just, though they are heroic in that they are typical of heroes).
Put simply, Ariadne and Phaedra initially hero worship Theseus. When Theseus regaled them with his journey to Athens, Ariadne ‘could see that Theseus would have known in an instant what to do. […] Beside me, Phaedra was rapt, spellbound by his clean, decisive heroism’ (Saint 2021: 86).
The sisters’ rapturous attention and confidence in Theseus’ abilities shows they are enthralled by him and that, in particular, they view him unequivocally as a hero.
Their initial veneration of Theseus speaks to his continued reputation as ‘The great Athenian hero’ that ‘had so many adventures and took part in so many great enterprises that there grew up a saying in Athens, “Nothing without Theseus.”’ (Hamilton 1942: 208).
In Apollodorus’ Library alone, Theseus performed six Labours en route to Athens where he then faced Medea whose plot was to poison him. But ‘Theseus drove Medea from the land’ and then famously delivered Athens from its duty to deliver youths to Crete to feed the Minotaur. Theseus was also involved in the hunt for the Calydonian boar, the Argonauts, Heracles’ katabasis, the Theban Cycle, the mythos of Helen and, of course, the myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus (Apollodorus, trans Hard 1997: III.16; Epit.1; I.8; I.9; II.5; III.6-7; III.10; Epit.5.2).
“Nothing without Theseus”, indeed.
Ariadne describes Theseus thus:
He did stand alone amongst men, this great Athenian hero, of whom so many legends would be woven. He was taller, broader, handsome, of course – and of the bearing not just of a prince but the poised strength of a panther waiting to strike. A man who would inspire songs and poems, whose name would be heard to the ends of the earth.
(Saint 2021: 54)
His heroism, demonstrated by his beauty, status as Athenian royalty, and ferocity, is deliberately accentuated here – it is this heroic reputation that the novel later works to counter-write.
It is this male heroic narrative that Ariadne interrogates. He uses her knowledge to kill the minotaur; he takes her away from Crete, promising her marriage, but then abandons her on an empty island because he doesn’t want Athens to know that he needed a girl’s help.
Ariadne’s anger at Theseus for abandoning her on Naxos is the most clear critique of the masculine hero figure in the novel. She explicitly shouts ‘You are no hero, you faithless coward!’ (128): in this exclamation, Ariadne literally strips Theseus of his heroic legend.
She reflects that ‘he would not tell of how he had crept out before dawn and left me sleeping, unsuspecting, whilst he slunk away. That shameful retreat would not feature in his boasts, would it?’ and asks ‘How many women had he left in his path before me? How many had he charmed and seduced and tricked into betrayal before he went upon his way, another woman’s life crumbled to dust in his fist, claiming every victory for himself alone?’ (128).
As well as her personal anger, Ariadne considers his broader pattern of behaviour; there is dramatic irony here too as the reader may know of Theseus’ other wronged women, including the assaulted Amazon, Hippolyta, as well as Helen and Phaedra while they were both still children. We also see in her rage a criticism of the valorisation of mythical heroic men whose actions were ruinously misogynistic.
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| Ariadne on Naxos, Southall (1861-1944) |
This angry iteration of Ariadne draws upon the Ancient Roman Ovid’s interpretation of her in Heroides X, ‘Ariadne to Theseus’, where she says:
All wild beasts are gentler than you and not one, / could have abused my trust more than you
(trans. Isbell 1990; 2004: l.1-2).
As Isbell notes:
It is difficult to find in this letter anything of love. [...] She succumbed to the conniving opportunism of a man who desired her only peripherally while he acquired everything she could give
(Isbell 1990; 2004: 89).
In myth, after abandoning Ariadne, Theseus marries her young sister Phaedra. In the novel, the scales quickly fall from Phaedra’s eyes, as she transitions from a ‘spellbound’ girl in Crete to a dispassionate and distrusting resident of Athens.
Ariadne ultimately forgives Theseus when they meet again, unable to find ‘any words of reproach or anger’ (Ibid., 265) because of her happy marriage with Dionysus, whereas Phaedra never forgives him:
I hated him for leaving my sister, for leaving me, for his lies, for all of it. […] To think I had ever hung upon his words or gazed at his green eyes and thought him handsome or exciting or noble!
(288)
Phaedra is incredulous that she ever considered Theseus heroic, and she continues to loathe him throughout their marriage.
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| Before she was Hera in Netflix's KAOS, Janet McTeer played Phaedra for the National Theatre (2023) |
Relatedly, Phaedra poses a challenge for feminist adapters, in that it is remarkably difficult to consider her mythos through any feminist lens.
Indeed, Edith Hall has reported an ‘intuitive loathing of Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus’ due to its ‘toxic ideology in which Hippolytus’ stepmother Phaedra falsely accuses him of rape’, thus providing evidence in favour of the misconception regarding the regularity with which women frame innocent men for sex crimes (Hall 2015: np.).
Natalie Haynes builds on this in Pandora’s Jar, where she argues that ‘Phaedra can be used to legitimise the myth that many women lie about being raped’ (Haynes 2020: 210). Moreover, Phaedra’s mythos ‘adds in no small quantity of our own prejudice: against step-mothers, against female sexual desire and, yes, against women who accuse men of injuring them, rightly or wrongly’ (201).
Thus, her myth can be weaponised to discredit women, particularly those who are speaking up against their abusers.
Phaedra in this novel is particularly interesting to consider in the context of masculinities, because Saint exonerates Phaedra from this crime, and places the blame back onto the hero, Theseus.
In Saint’s adaptation, Phaedra had only written Hippolytus’ name, and it is Theseus’ hot-headedness and recollection of his own behaviours – including ‘rapes, forced marriages, kidnaps and child rape,’ – that guide him to the conclusion that he ‘know[s] what men do’ (344).
In this version, then, it is Theseus, not Phaedra, who falsely accuses Hippolytus of rape, which is in line with the dethroning of the heroic legend that is present in Ariadne, as well as in the treatment of heroes in contemporary feminist revisionist myth writing.
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