Martina Astrid Rodda (University of Oxford)
How to Write a Disabled God: Disability in Lucian of Samosata’s Dialogues
My talk presents the first small set of examples from a broader study of the reception of disabled characters from Greek myth in Lucian of Samosata. I will focus on representations of disability in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods (DDeor), arguing that Lucian's treatment of disabled characters marks an impressive and deliberate departure from their mythical history. My reading aims to address how literary depictions of disability can reflect broader societal trends and at the same time serve an author’s (satirical) goals.
Lucian either highlights disabilities that were obscured in the literary tradition, or offers a reimagining of the most well-known disabled figures, such as Hephaestus. As far as the representation of literary characters reveals changing societal views of different impairments, my talk will be of interest to scholars trying to situate Plutarch’s representations of disability in their broader social context. The choice of Lucian, an author with an undisputable interest in literary reception and the satire of contemporary genres, including both biography and philosophy, should also offer a particularly useful point of comparison for the use of literary tropes in Plutarch’s works.
I adopt a more literary-focused approach than studies of disabled figures in cult (Bremmer 2010, on gods, and Sneed 2020, on worshippers), or in technical and historical writers (Laes 2017). I situate myself in a line of work that aims both to show that literary depictions also offer an essential contribution to our understanding of disability in history (Thomson 1997, Rose 2003, Barker and Murray 2018), and to address the ways in which our reception of ancient texts is shaped by modern ableism (Silverblank and Ward 2020). Lucian’s writings are often read in order to shed light on questions of gender, sexuality, and racial identity in Imperial times (Goldhill 2002; Jope 2011; Dench 2017); this makes it even more striking that such an important axis of identity as disability has so far remained unexplored, despite being clearly present in the same texts.
My case studies all cluster around the intersection of disability and gender, in particular masculinity. I start from the representation of Hephaestus in DDeor 17 and 21, in which the god enjoys a level of agency in the sexual and affective sphere that is unparalleled in both Homeric epic (Brockliss 2019) and portrayals of disabled men today (Shakespeare 1999; Smith and Hutchison 2004; Siebers 2012). I will then move on to more peripheral but no less interesting examples: the god Pan, whose physical and social impairments lead to familial rejection in DDeor 2, and Zeus’ traumatic pregnancies in DDeor 12 and 13, which open interesting windows into views of chronic pain and gynaecological issues. Are we supposed to view these depictions as comically ‘monstrous’ phenomena, as positive and sympathetic re-readings, as a form of social criticism? I will discuss how Lucian positions himself relative to his Homeric and contemporary models in portraying disabled masculinity, as well as its connections with class, family relationships, super-human and post-human status.