Ky Merkley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
When Achilles dons women’s clothing on the island of Scyros, his new embodiment and habitus call into question his internal self-identity as a man. Habitus, embodiment, and self-identity have a complicated interrelationship (Philo LS 28P; Gill; Gleason; Corbeill). By adopting a new habitus, has Achilles’ placed his masculinity at risk? The platonic answer would be yes; the stoic no; however, even Seneca acknowledges that while crossdressing (the paradigmatic change in habitus) does not destabilize internal self (Sen. De Beata Vita 7.13.7; cf. Sen. Ep. 122.7, Sen. Ep. 47.7) it does call one’s manliness into question opening up the way for more serious consequences (see Sen Contr. 5.6). This paper shows how these tensions around embodiment and identity stand at the ideological center of two different texts, Statius’ Achilleid and Tertullian’s De Pallio. Statius uses the tensions around embodiment and identity to emphasize the liminality of Achilles’ stay on Scyros and to acknowledge the complicated philosophical interplay that a change in embodiment causes. Tertullian then responds to Statius attacking elite Roman conceptions of identity as amoral, against nature, and wrong.
While scholarly readings of the Achilleid vary (ranging from Heslin’s comic Achilles’ in “not a very serious epic,” Cyrino’s heroic crossdressing vir, Augoustakis’ emphasis on the liminality of both gender and geography, Panoussi’s emphasis on female ritual, and Keith’s elegiac/lyric Achilles; see also, Campanile and Surtees), I argue that multivalent readings are an intentional consequence of Statius’ narrative, for Achilles’ gender is voiced in three different ways by different characters: Thetis consistently expresses the Platonic hope that Achilles by adopting the habitus of a woman will be transformed becoming a woman—even if for just a moment (see Stat. Achil. 355–56); Achilles always sees himself as male, secure in the Stoic idea that a changed embodiment does not affect the self. Finally, the narrator falls in between these two views by emphasizing the liminality of Achilles position as a boy, who is not yet a man, and how this position potentially endangers future masculinity (336–337), a danger Calchas’ prophecy reinforces (560–62).
Tertullian’s De Pallio directly responds to the Achilleid and refutes Statius’ presentation of crossdressing as a liminal state that is not inherently immoral (Heslin, Hunink). Tertullian uses Achilles as his first example of how habitus can break nature (concussit naturam … in uirginiem mutando, 4.2). Tertullian’s reception of Statius carefully rebuts Statius’ three main arguments which protect his Achilles’ manliness: sexual desire, youthfulness, and obedience to his mother—stripping Achilles of every excuse provided for his continued dress and actions as a woman. Buttressing his argument with Christian teachings about clothing’s effect on identity (Deut. 22.5; Romans 1; Clem. Al. Stromata 18; cf. Brown, Upson-Saia, Phillips), Tertullian asserts that any action contra natura is a moral wrong. By doing this, Tertullian creates a distinctly Christian intervention concerning the relationship between embodiment, gender, and identity, which he employs to make Christianity seem to be the normative practice decentering the practices and literature of the Roman male elite.