The free male citizen stood at the center of Classical Greek civilization. In ancient art he is depicted as the ideal: courageous, controlled, noble, and good. Free, Greek men lived as the embodiment of kalos kagathos- the beautiful and virtuous. The elevation of the male form took on unique potency when defined in contrast to what it was not. Following the inception of democracy in the late 6th century and the Peloponnesian Wars in the 5th century, an oppositional worldview became a successful method of defining “Greekness.” Threats to the fledgling democracy in the form of the barbaric, foreign, grotesque, and feminine obtained resonance as oppositional forms of Greek self-definition. This exhibition explores how the “othering” of women within classical Greek society manifested in depictions of of mythologized man-killers and
their victims. These varied representations simultaneously reveal both the Greek cultural ideal and the taboo. Representations of feminized monsters, manslayers, and militant women that exist outside the classical ideal highlight anxieties and discomforts the Greeks felt towards other ethnic groups, irregular performances of gender, and female disobedience.