Jesse Obert, University of California, Berkeley
Debra Martin wrote that “masculinity is more a verb than a noun” (Martin 2021, 171). It was something performed, like an athletic competition or an oral poem, so it fundamentally depended on cultural context. Traditionally, scholars have closely associated violence and warfare with masculinity (see Van Nortwick 2008). However, detailed studies of violence and further engagement with disability studies complicate these uncritiqued equivalencies between masculinity and violence. This paper presents the art, archaeology, and literary references to violence on Crete in the Archaic and Classical periods, and it suggests that the Cretan warrior was an anatomically ambiguous, perhaps even intersex, character with much deeper socio- political intentionality than scholars have traditionally assumed.
In the Archaic and Classical periods, there were two ways of depicting a Cretan warrior. At extra-urban sanctuaries, warriors worked together against common inhuman foes, were always beardless, and always had shields obstructing their torsos. In the famous Lion Hunt Shield from Mt. Ida, each warrior has a beardless head, two arms, two legs, a shield for a torso, and a little skirt below their shield (Heraklion Museum no. 7). Λεμπέση called this the shield-as-citizen motif (Λεμπέση 1976, 170-1), but these characters are actually relatively inhuman – more shield than citizen. To apply Garland-Thomson’s theory, the normate body of warriorhood at extra- urban sanctuaries was both impossible to achieve yet vague enough to be inclusive and welcoming to anyone who could make the trek up to these isolated sanctuaries (Garland- Thomson 1997, 40). This normate stands in stark contrast to the detailed anatomical features that were forged onto hoplite body armor. This is the second way in which Cretans depicted warriorhood. Within the urban sanctuaries at the center of Crete’s earliest poleis, warriors had a distinctly human torso. Their armor always emphasized their shoulder blades, pectoral muscles, costal margin, and linea alba. These were the features of a youth, but they were still vague enough and unrealistic enough on an adult torso so as to welcome deviation. Moreover, the most important piece to the urban panoply was the mitra, or groin guard. Although we might assume mitrai might have been the perfect venue for emphasizing masculinity and maleness, they were typically undecorated. Indeed, the anatomy of urban warriorhood was young, prepubescent, and unexpectedly nonanatomic.
I argue that this ideological dichotomy suggests that there were two of Garland-Thomson’s normates active on Crete in the Archaic and Classical periods. They operated within two different social fields that elites navigated simultaneously to reach different audiences. The anatomy of warriorhood was intentionally broad so anyone who could travel to extra-urban sanctuaries or dedicate armor to urban sanctuaries could self-identify as a warrior. But both arenas were only accessible to the wealthy. Thus, elites brandished these dual normate anatomies to withhold the legitimate use of violence from their poleis and exclude non-elites politically, socially, and economically. Finally, my project emphasizes how disability studies can be employed to better understand warrior identities, social inequalities, and elite ideologies in the ancient world.