Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
Statius' Achilleid”
Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in Statius' Achilleid
JUSTIN MURRAY
Introduction: The Rebirth of Achilles
From the moment Statius’ Achilles awakens on Scyros, the stability of his identity is challenged.
This scene (Ach. I.245ff) can only have one model in extant epic: the awakening of Odysseus in Ithaca in
Homer’s Odyssey (XV.188). This scene has long been recognised by scholars as a symbolic rebirth,1 and
Statius must be using the Homeric intertext to create the same effect. What sort of rebirth is this, the
question arises? Subsequent context surely dictates the solution: after Achilles’ awakening, he is coerced
by Thetis into wearing women’s clothes. The Odyssean resonance makes clear that we are dealing with a
shift in gender identity, and not merely garb. One gendered self dies, another emerges in its place.
The moment prompts comparison with Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, a seminal text of queer
theory, which sees gender as entirely constructed by external forces. For Butler, gender identity can
change at any time. Taking this rebirth of Achilles as my starting point, I aim in this study to construct a
reading of Statius’ Achilleid which is informed by the principles of queer theory. This scholarly tradition of
gender studies prioritises performativity and fluidity as ways to expose and undermine the social norms
which control and construct us (the term ‘queering’ refers to this process).Queer theory can and has been
applied in literary studies in this way.2 I will use the work of thinkers from this tradition to analyse the
Achilleid – though scholars who fall outside queer theory but are used to construct its assumptions, such
as Michel Foucault and Esther Newton, are also invoked.
This type of theoretical approach has become accepted in Classical scholarship in recent years.
As Martindale remarks in reference to the use of feminist theory in classics, ‘the common complaint that
feminist readings emphasise some details at the expense of others misses the mark, since this is
something all interpretations do – and must do’ (Martindale’s emphasis).3 A reading from a specific point of
view will prove all the stronger for it. This permits using modern sexual terminology as well as ancient
vocabulary – terms without Latin counterparts such as ‘lesbian’, ‘drag’, and ‘hetero/homo/bisexual’ can be
used freely, as is necessary when approaching the ancient world.4 As highlighted by the Odyssey point
above, the text itself – an intense network of allusion to authors such as Virgil, Catullus, and Ovid, as
scholars such as Hinds, Heslin, and Fantuzzi have noted – also demands the use of intertextuality. 5 This
approach derives new and greater meaning from the text, particularly regarding gender. I will use textual
resonances identified by others where they prove illuminating, and identify hitherto unforeseen ones.
Though I believe that such a reading has resonance for the entire poem, the discussion will restrict
itself to the figure of Achilles. Other characters are discussed insofar as they pertain to his portrayal. The
first three chapters construct three different ‘queer’ portraits of the transvestite Achilles, each focusing
on a different trait and informed by a different theoretical branch. In the first chapter, ‘Achilles the Drag
Queen’, I use Judith Butler’s theory of performative gender, alongside Esther Newton’s anthropological
1
Strauss Clay 1989, 124.
See Barry 2002, 138.
3
Martindale 2006, 13.
4
See also Williams 1999, 5.
5
Hinds 1998, 124, Heslin 2005, xix, Fantuzzi 2012, 73.
2
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
Statius' Achilleid”
analysis of 1960s American drag culture,6 to suggest that the transvestite Achilles can himself be read
as a drag queen, and emphasise the ‘queering’ of Achilles’ (gender) identity. I use the word ‘gender’
parenthetically because, as I will demonstrate, what is truly at stake here is the performativity of Achilles’
identity in the broadest sense.
These considerations can hardly leave the issue of sexuality untouched, and it is this problem to
which I turn in Chapter Two, which builds a picture of ‘Achilles the Lesbian’, drawing on Adrienne Rich’s
concept of the lesbian continuum as evidence for the queering of Achilles. I also invoke the paradigm of
homosociality to explore Achilles’ sexual relations outside his time as a woman.
The third chapter, ‘Achilles the Foucauldian Subject’ uses Foucault’s paradigmatic analysis of power
structures in sexuality, and Butler’s application of this to gender, to argue for an interpretation of Achilles
as a subject of power, before exploring the impact this has on his identity.
Once these three images of the transvestite Achilles have been constructed, I examine whether they
collapse when the female attire, the foundational principle for all of them, is removed. In the final chapter,
‘Achilles and the Progress Narrative’, I argue that the consequences of the cross-dressed episode are
severe enough that Achilles does not return to an unambiguously masculine state by shedding his feminine
clothing, and the work therefore falls outside the ‘progress narrative’, a concept created by queer theorist
Marjorie Garber.
This approach, and its findings, will contradict the discussion of the Achilleid in the mainstream
tradition of scholarship, which chooses to view the poem as unambiguously gender-essentialist.7
One opponent to this way of thinking is Heslin, who argues that the Achilleid stands ambiguously between
the poles of gender essentialism and gender performativity,8 citing many moments where Statius’ narrative
seems to cleave to one point of view, before subverting itself and supporting the opposite argument.9
One must concede that Statius leaves much implicit – were this not the case, there would be no potential
for debate. Heslin’s final sentence, however, leaves the reader of the Achilleid free to read it as perverting
or asserting the masculinity of Achilles.10 I take full advantage of the scope Heslin offers for the former
interpretation, not seeking to refute him on the latter argument, but instead to use the theoretical
framework, coupled with the intertextual resonances, to push the anti-normative, performative
interpretation as far as possible to glean new meaning from the text.
Achilles the Drag Queen
“How could a man perform in female attire and not have something wrong with him?” - Anonymous
Chicago female impersonator, quoted in Newton 1972, 100.
Barchiesi concludes his 2005 article on the Achilleid by alluding to the work of Newton and Butler,
raising the tantalising suggestion that these scholars may be of use to Classicists studying the poem.11
In this chapter, I will explore Barchiesi’s suggestion further by reading these two authors back onto Statius’
Achilles, in order to construct an interpretation of him as a drag queen, and reveal the ramifications this
has for his identity. Statius’ narrative queers Achilles, making him a veritable poster-boy/girl for gender
performativity, and leading the text to reflect on his identity at a fundamental level.
Gender Queering and the Double Inversion
The symbolic rebirth of Achilles discussed above emphasises the potential his new environs have to
queer his gender identity. This interpretation is supported by the simile used to conceptualise Thetis’ reclothing of Achilles:
6
Newton refers to drag queens as ‘female impersonators’. Since the former term no longer has the
negative connotation it did in Newton’s day, the two will be used interchangeably.
7
Eg. Cameron 2009, 19, Cyrino 1998, 209, Sanna 2007, 207, already Crawley 1893, 244.
8
Heslin 2005, xviii.
9
Heslin 2005, 133 et passim.
10
Heslin 2005, 300.
11
Barchiesi 2005, 73.
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
Statius' Achilleid”
qualiter artifici victurae pollice cerae
accipiunt formas ignemque manumque sequuntur,
talis erat divae natum mutantis imago.
(I.332-4)
12
Heslin, following Dilke, analyses this in terms of the wax imagines of Roman male ancestors.13
However, this view does not fully address the palimpsestic aspect of the figure brought out in Statius’ use
of the noun imago .In a literary work, we cannot help but see this word as drawing attention to the poet’s
own artistic creation, as well as to the fact that Thetis is metaphorically moulding her son into a plastic
image. A literary model (pun intended) which accounts for this better is the story of Pygmalion in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses:
interea niveum mira feliciter arte
sculpsit ebur formamque dedit, […]
saepe manus operi temptantes admovet, […]
et credit tactis digitos insidere membris…
(Met. X. 247-257) 14
The verbal reminiscences are clear: hands, fingers, and thumbs appear in both extracts (pollice; cf.
digitos, manus). Pygmalion sculpted with ars, Thetis is an artifex. Where Pygmalion formamque dedit, the
simile-statue accipiunt formas – recalling how the Statian simile preserves the Ovidian poetic forma. 15
Connecting Achilles with the statue (named elsewhere in the tradition as Galatea) takes the costume
change beyond the level of the physical. As everyone knows, Pygmalion’s sculpting of Galatea’s exterior
also affects her interior, thus revealing the potential of outward change to modify internal landscape. By
applying this myth to the Achilleid, Statius shows that this modification can be gendered – just as it is for
Newton’s analysis of drag. Newton argues that cross-dressing presents an opposition between masculine
and feminine,16 since the exterior feminine appearance is subverted by the clearly masculine body beneath
the disguise. This Newton calls the first ‘inversion’ symbolised by drag.17 The transvestite Achilles declares
‘my appearance is an illusion – my exterior is feminine, but my body is still masculine’. But Newton
continues. Drag also speaks a second, contrary, inversion: ‘my appearance ‘outside’ (my biological body)
is masculine, but my essence ‘inside’ (myself) is feminine (because I am dressed up as a drag queen)’.18
Achilles’ cross-dressed body must necessarily assert this statement as well – he is just as much a drag
queen as they are. With this double inversion in mind, it becomes impossible to define Achilles as either
masculine or feminine. As Butler puts it, ‘both claims to truth contradict one another and so displace the
entire enactment of gender signification’.19 The artisan simile therefore shows that Achilles’ genderqueering is inevitably implicit in his transvestism. One cannot write on the body without consequence.
This dynamic can be seen throughout the Scyros episode, as Feeney shows through his analysis
of shifts in divine comparison. Achilles first appears ‘like Apollo, the Lycian hunter’ (I.165), while Deidamia
is likened to Apollo’s sister – she ‘stood head and shoulders above them as Diana did the Nymphs’
(I.294-5). So far, so normative. But then the paradigm is confused. After the drag show begins, Thetis is
compared to the mother of Hecate, when she ‘wearily…returns to her father and brother’ (I.345).
Dilke suggests that Hecate here is to be identified with Diana,20 and the reference to her brother recalls the
deity Achilles should by rights be compared with.21 Later, when Achilles and Deidamia dance, they are both
said to shine ‘like Diana among the Sicilian nymphs of Etna’ (I.824-5). This is an important aspect of
12
‘Just as the wax takes on new shapes and follows the fire and hand before submitting to the
artist’s fingers, such was the picture of the goddess changing her son’ (All translations are my own).
13
Dilke 1954 n. ad loc; Heslin 2005, 129.
14
‘Meanwhile he sculpted the snow-white ivory with wondrous art, and gave it shape.., Often he runs
his experimenting hands over the creation, and imagines that his fingers press into her limbs…’ Cf.
Feeney 2004, 92: ‘Thetis….works like a Pygmalion on transforming her son’.
15
See Feeney 2004, 87 for further discussion of poetic belatedness in the Achilleid.
16
Newton 1972, 100.
17
Newton 1972, 103.
18
Newton 1972, 103.
19
Butler 1990, 137.
20
Dilke 1954 n. ad loc.
21
Feeney 2004, 90. The choice of Hecate also recalls the epithets of Apollo Hekatos and
Hekatobulos, from which the goddess’ name may be derived (Johnston 2012) suggesting that
Achilles stands mid-way between masculine and feminine.
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
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Achilles’ drag performance. Conventionally, an epic actor will only be compared to one divinity.22 In the
Achilleid, however, Achilles segues from resembling Apollo to resembling his sister in less than two
hundred lines. Comparing a character to multiple divinities of either gender suggests, by rendering
conventional divine comparison absurd, that Achilles the drag queen satirises conventional gender roles.
Butler extends this parodic power of drag to have it mock the very idea of an innate, expressed, gender: ‘In
imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself’.23 The heteronormative
categories of male and female are no less performative than that of the drag queen. As gender is
sociological rather than biological, any given subject can theoretically shift between masculinity and
femininity–becoming ‘gender-queer’. Achilles’ portrayal exemplifies this position.24
The depictions of Apollo and Diana in Roman material culture strengthen this interpretation. Recent
study of the statue of Apollo in his temple at Pompeii has shown that its twin statue of Diana, originally
presented directly opposite it, was cast from the same mould and placed in the same pose.25 All
differences between the two were cosmetic, or sartorial -- dress, hair, headband. Used in sequence, the
two become a symbol of the dependence of gender on surface detail, drawing attention to its fundamental
arbitrariness.26
Figure 1. Left: Achilles; right: Diana at Pompeii (The Getty Museum, Los Angeles)
From Gender Queering to Gender Performance
Achilles ‘passes’ as a woman among the Scyrians, and so does not present his drag-queen persona
to them. 27 The point here is that the poem’s audience is aware of the parody of essentialism. Achilles is
thus cast in the role of the metaliterary drag queen, and the poem’s readers in the role of the punters at the
club, who are treated to the full effect of watching the gender-inversion played out before their eyes. This
dynamic is heightened by the performative context of key narrative moments. A lengthy section, for
instance, is devoted to the maenadic rite in which Achilles participates (I.592-618), and the maidens’
dance forms a component of a welcoming banquet (I. 821-840). It has been noted that the Scyrians find it
difficult to think in terms other than performance:28 when Ulysses expresses interest in Lycomedes’ ‘darling
daughters’ (I.809), the king’s immediate reaction is to invite his guests to watch the girls perform their
maenadic rites (I.812-3). This is a transgressive gesture, as Bacchic rites were not supposed to be a public
22
Eg. Nausicaa in Odyssey VI.101ff, received by Dido in Aeneid I.498ff.
Butler 1990, 175.
24
See also Hinds’ point on comparing Achilles to Bacchus the transvestite (Hinds 2000, 239).
25
Getty Museum 2014.
26
Contra Cameron, who argues that representations of the transvestite Achilles in Roman material
culture, and by extension Statius’ poem, emphasised gender essentialism. (Cameron 2009, 19).
27
Cf. Newton 1972, 15: ‘passing’ for a woman in the real world was widely considered to be
impossible.
28
Heslin 2005, 147.
23
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
Statius' Achilleid”
spectacle.29 Heslin argues that this performative dynamic is a Statian innovation. Statius rewrites Ovid’s
treatment of the Achilles-Deidamia tale in the Ars Amatoria by emphasising the public nature of their
courtship.30 It is fast becoming clear that the gender-queering of Achilles is connected with public gender
performance, just as it is for Butler. Achilles’ parodic act makes this dynamic visible for all to see, further
destabilising essentialist gender categories.
Achilles’ parody of normative performance begins when Thetis educates him into feminine
mannerisms:
She softens his rigid neck
and eases his heavy shoulders and relaxes his strong
arms
(I.326-31)
The details about gait and relaxed shoulders directly controvert advice for the orator given by Cicero
and Quintilian; 31 as Heslin argues, this scene is best read as an inversion of traditional Roman masculine
education.32 Barchiesi likewise suggests that Quintilian’s ‘paranoia’ over proper male instruction likewise
emphasises education to the point of implying constructionism, and suggests that the contemporary
Achilleid’s treatment of the issue points towards the same conclusion.33 The fact that Achilles is learning a
new set of gestures at all implies the arbitrariness of all gestures, including normative masculine ones,
parodying these and subverting their supremacy. As Butler puts it, ‘the effect of gender…must be
understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles …constitute the illusion
of an abiding gendered self’.34 Statius’ emphasis on Achilles’ re-education further underlines the
performativity of gender.
The ‘imitative structure’ of gender identified by Butler is further revealed when Achilles is assimilated
into the Scyrian maidens, who ‘encourage and give him priority and rejoice to meet him’ (I.370) despite the
blatant physical differences between them (‘how he stands out from his neck and hair, and how he
surpasses their shoulders and chests!’ I.368-9).35 The subsequent simile emphasises this further:
Just as Idalian birds [...]
if a foreign fowl comes from a different sky-path
to join its wings to theirs, at first they all marvel and shrink back,
but soon fly closer and closer, and gradually in the sky too
make it one of their own, and with favourable twittering
they crowd round joyfully and lead it to their treetop roosts.
(I. 372-8)
This implies that Achilles’ performance of female behaviour is sufficient to admit him into the ranks
of that gender, despite being a bird of a different feather. Performativity becomes even more pointed when
‘Deidamia became aware of the manhood of Achilles / that lay beneath the façade’ (I.561-2). Nevertheless,
she continues to accept him as a woman, and indeed even becomes complicit in the illusion – ‘now and
again she prevents him / when he prepares to reveal the trickery’ (I.586-7). Achilles’ presence on Scyros
forces the other maidens to implicitly affirm Butler’s principle that physical sex is not as important
as behavioural performance – this is what constitutes one’s gender identity.
29
Heslin 2005, 148. Lycomedes’ attempts to marry off his maidens also characterise him as old and
ineffectual, since he is apparently unaware that Ulysses is already married.
30
Heslin 2005, 268.
31
Heslin 2005, 127.
32
Heslin 2005, 128.
33
Barchiesi 2005, 6.
34
Butler 1990, 140.
35
Mozley (1928) takes a liberty by translating these lines with the feminine pronoun: ‘how she
o’ertops them…how broad her expanse…then they invite her to join the dance’. This only draws
attention to the way the Latin avoids such pronouns, showing the difficulty of conceptualising
Achilles’ gender-bending. Would a Latin speaker have supplied eum, or eam? The deliberate
suppression of these in the Latin (contrary to the strategy employed in Catullus 63, where Attis’
complete transfer to femininity is emphasised by the use of feminine substantives (allocuta
maestast, 63.49)) emphasises Achilles’ gender ambiguity at a linguistic level – it is, impossible to
conceptualise him in terms of masculine or feminine pronouns. It is for this reason that some people
identifying as ‘gender-queer’ nowadays adopt the ambiguous pronoun ‘they’ (Seawell 2014).
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
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Interestingly, in many of the examples above, Achilles’ performance is flawed: his weaving is inferior
to Deidamia’s, for instance (she has to ‘repair the distaff and the threads broken in his clumsy hand’, I.5823).36 This is not necessarily to be seen a revelation of andreia: rather, these moments facilitate comparison
with the double inversion. Many of the drag performers Newton transcribes employ tactics to remind
audiences of their masculine physiognomy (‘one impersonator routinely tells the audience: “Have a ball.
I have two”’ 37) calling attention to the contradictions inherent in their presentation. We are likewise never
allowed to forget his masculinity, even while he is playing at being feminine. Once again, this is a deliberate
choice by Statius, by contrast to earlier treatments of cross-dressed figures, who were rather good at
women’s work (eg. Propertius 4.9.50).38
From Performative Gender to Performative Identity
So Achilles’ gender-queering drag performance forms a parody of essentialism. Butler extends her
conclusions about performative gender to speak of the performance of identity as well.39 As Barry puts it,
‘We construct instead an anti-essentialist, postmodernist concept of identity as a series of masks, roles, and
potentialities, a kind of amalgam of everything…provisional, contingent, and improvisatory.’40 We reach the
point where it is difficult to speak in terms of a ‘subject’ at all. This fluidity of identity is implicit in several
points already made about the Achilleid. The artisan simile, for instance, raises the issue by substituting
wax (Ach. I.332) for ivory (Met. X.255), which echoes Ovid’s comparison of the softening ivory to wax (ut
Hymettia sole cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas / flectitur in facies, X.284-5; cf pollice Ach. I.332)
suggesting an even higher degree of variability than in the case of Galatea – it is easier to remodel wax than
ivory – and presupposing a radically non-essentialist conception of selfhood. It is perhaps no coincidence
that Plato in the Theaetetus also uses wax to express psychological impermanence:
“I want you to suppose…that we have in our souls a block of wax…we make impressions upon this
of everything we wish to remember….Whatever is impressed upon the wax we remember ourselves, so
long as the image remains…whatever is obliterated or cannot be impressed, we forget and do not know.”
(Plato, Theaetetus 191c-e).
Plato uses this image to solve the philosophical problem of defective knowledge.41 Though it is later
discarded as unsatisfactory, the wax is used in that instance as an image of psychological impermanence
and changeability, just as it is here, suggesting that wax is a locus classicus for interior transience.
Another intertext can be used to justify this interpretation: namely, Euripides’ Helen. In focusing
on the episode on Scyros, many studies of the poem miss the paramount significance of Helen to the poem
as a whole. It is testament to this that Thetis alludes to her before even her own son in the first speech of
the poem: the ‘new daughter of Priam’ (I.33-34) is unmistakeable. Paris’ theft of Helen is used as a
narrative catalyst, since the removal of Helen, by Paris, from Sparta, causes the removal of Achilles, by
Thetis, from Pelion. This sets up a typological comparison between the two which cannot be overlooked.42
As such, earlier works on Helen may provide characterisation for Achilles. Euripides’ Helen provides a
model for the kind of performative identity outlined above.43 Helen here compares herself to ‘a painting’
which can be ‘rubbed out’ and have its appearance changed (Helen 261ff). She acknowledges her status
as a tabula rasa, which can be altered endlessly. Given the similarities between the two elsewhere, it is not
unlikely that Statius’ Achilles is also to be read in this light.
It has been shown that Achilles’ assumption of female clothing is symptomatic of the wider queering
of his gender identity. By exemplifying Newton’s double inversion, he becomes a drag queen, and hence
a Butlerian performative subject. This performance is deliberately represented in the poem as such,
thereby challenging conceptions of gender essentialism in other characters as well as the transvestite.
36
Cf. Ferrari 2002, 89: spinning was for women what learning to bear arms was for men.
Newton 1972, 101.
38
Heslin 2005, 145. Cyrino 1998, 208 suggests, conversely, that Achillean drag constitutes a sort of
appropriative hyper-masculinity which reinforces the power of the male hero.
39
Butler 1990, 142.
40
Barry 2002, 140.
41
Burnyeat 1990, 91.
42
For further similarities, see Heslin 2005, 176.
43
Invoking tragedy as a source-genre is endorsed by Heslin 2005, 198 (suggesting Euripides’
Scyrioi), Barchiesi 2005, 72n.31 (Iphigenia in Aulis) and Fantham 1979, 467 (Seneca’s Troades).
37
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Kaleidoscope 6.2 Special Issue, Justin Murray, „Heroes and Queens: Gender Identity in
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These considerations give rise to a radical instability of identity for the poem‘s leading actor. The image of
Achilles as drag queen will be returned to in the final chapter when the female clothing is finally discarded.
The following chapter will explore another effect of performative gender on the portrayal of Achilles on
Scyros.
Achilles the Lesbian
EDWARD. I like women.
VICTORIA. That should please Mother.
EDWARD. No listen Vicky, I’d rather be a woman. [...] I’m sick of men.
VICTORIA. I’m sick of men.
[Pause.]
EDWARD. I think I’m a lesbian.
– Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine
I showed in the preceding chapter that Butler’s performative gender is alive and well in Achilles the
drag queen. The discussion has thus far stayed away from sexuality, which according to Butler’s theory
becomes equally performative. If subversive bodily acts, such as drag, destabilise conceptions of natural
sex,44 then anybody can theoretically assume any given sexuality. By performing Newton’s double
inversion, Achilles can even be described as a lesbian. I will argue that homoerotic relationships of both
genders dominate Achilles’ sexual experience, and that the way he desires others can be discussed in
terms of Adrienne Rich’s theory of the lesbian continuum, as well as the paradigm of homosociality, before
showing the consequences of this for the moment when he rapes Deidamia.
The Sexualisation of Achilles
An important dimension of the Pygmalion intertext (p.8) is the sexualisation of Galatea: immediately
after he ‘gave it shape’, Pygmalion ‘conceived a great love for his creation’ (Met.VIII.248-9).45 This erotic
dimension of the artisan simile is heightened by its connection to the myth of Laodamia, who made a statue
of her beloved Protesilaus when he did not return from Troy. In the version of this story told in Ovid’s
Heroides XIII, the effigy is again an imago (Her. XIII.155, cf. Ach. I.334), and is made of wax (Her. XIII.156,
cf. Ach. I.332).46 Here Laodamia says her Protesilaus ‘received my embraces’ (XIII.154) and admits ‘I hold
him as if he were my real husband’ (XIII. 157), making the relationship even more overtly sexual.47 Though
there is no suggestion that Thetis is herself attracted to her creation, this connection extends a similarly
erotic dynamic to the Achilleid. Thetis manages to persuade Achilles into the clothes only by presenting
them as a path to Deidamia (‘Is it so great a thing to pretend these things among the dancers, and link
arms in sport?’ I.319-20),48 the object of his lust (we are told he ‘drank up a new flame in all his bones’
I.303).49 It is telling, however, that immediately after Achilles first expresses heterosexual desire, he
becomes, by virtue of the double inversion, symbolically feminine – which must also make his desire for
Deidamia feminine. Thetis thus turns him into a lesbian as much as a woman. This metamorphosis
exposes the arbitrariness of social conventions of sexual assignment, bringing a queer, anti-normative
dimension to his sexuality.
Homosexu/sociality on Pelion
This is, however, not the first time Statius has put a homoerotic spin on Achilles’ sexuality. Pompeo
Batoni’s 1770 depiction of Achilles on Mount Pelion (below) depicts Achilles in feminine society: he is
shown surrounded by an adoring crowd of nymphs, who clearly find him and his youthful body erotically
44
Butler 1990, 140.
And it is through Venus’ agency that the statue comes to life (VIII.277). Compare Brown: ‘Poetry,
the creative act, the act of life, the archetypal sexual act. Sexuality is poetry. The lady is our creation,
or Pygmalion’s statue. The lady is the poem’. (Brown 1970, 95, quoted in Gilbert & Gubar 1984,
13).
46
Reeson 2001, 201 links this story to the Pygmalion myth.
47
Reeson 2001, 200.
48
Cyrino 1998, 234.
49
Cf. Catullus 64.92-3: concepit corpora flammam / funditus atque imis exarsit tota medullis.
45
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exciting. The other male figures depicted are less well-lit, not entirely human, and distanced from Achilles
in the work’s composition. Achilles’ masculinity here stems from his being an exemplar of compulsory
heterosexuality: his normative masculinity is inherently exciting to all available females.
Figure 2. Batoni, Thetis Takes Achilles from the Centaur Chiron (Gatinicha Palace Museum, Rome).
Juxtaposition of this image with the Achilleid’s approach only calls attention to the more maledominated community created here. Batoni’s nymphs are mentioned – sperata diu plorant conubia
Nymphae (I.240) – but not until after Achilles has been spirited away. While he is still on the island,
mention of these females is deliberately suppressed in order to portray Thetis as an intruder into the
exclusively masculine society of Achilles, Chiron, and Patroclus, introducing a more homosocial
dimension.50 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains homosociality as the idea that relations between men can
always be seen in homoerotic terms, even if the relationship has no overt erotic content.51 These
homosocial relations often emerge in the form of a force to divide and control women.52 Such a discourse is
evident in the activities Achilles engages in on Pelion: when she first sees him, he has recently ‘stabbed a
pregnant lion with his sword and left her there, but carries the cubs away and sharpens their claws’ (I.16870).Achilles actively eradicates the feminine (here represented in one of its archetypes, the reproductive),
and privileges the male offspring.53 The choice of a phallic ferrum as hunting weapon, as well as the
weaponisation of the cubs’ claws, underlines this hyper-masculine dynamic further.
Achilles’ homoerotic relationship with Patroclus on Pelion connects this dynamic with the wider
paradigm of homosociality. The latter is hot on Achilles’ heels when he first appears, described as
magno…conexus amore / Patroclus (I.74-5). This description is, Uccellini suggests, designed to recall the
moment in Aeneid IX where Euryalus is described as magno…percussus amore / Euryalus (Aen. IX.197).54
Nisus and Euryalus are the two males most commonly associated with homoerotic desire in Virgil55 (‘one
love was theirs and they rushed into battle together’, Aen. IX.182) and the verbal reminiscence here implies
a similar relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, suggesting that Achilles’ homosexuality begins much
earlier than the moment of lesbian desire for Deidamia. According to homosociality, the relationship with
Patroclus is intimately connected with the misogynistic dynamics present in the description of the lioness.
These two thus combine to dominate Achilles’ early conception of masculinity and sexuality.
Achilles and the Lesbian Continuum
Adrienne Rich uses a similar framework to Sedgwick in her discussion of the lesbian continuum.
Rich expands the term lesbian to mean ‘a range….of woman-identified experience’ (not necessarily sexual)
50
Cf. Barchiesi 2005, 52.
Sedgwick 1985, 2.
52
Sedgwick 1985, 2.
53
Heslin 2005, 189 argues similarly for a metaphorical interpretation of these lines.
54
Uccellini 2012 n.ad loc.
55
Oliensis 2006, 309.
51
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which signifies female unity and solidarity. 56 The invocation of this approach here is justified by the fact
that the tale of Laodamia, invoked above, also appears in Catullus 68, where, as Feeney notes, the poet
feminises himself and his desire by comparing his beloved’s arrival at his house to the arrival of Laodamia
at Protesilaus’ ( Cat. 68.73-4), before enacting a reversal by implicitly associating himself with Laodamia,
since they have both lost a loved one at Troy, as well as losing a sexual beloved.57 Catullus’ work can also
be analysed in terms of the lesbian continuum, due to this deliberate self-feminisation here and at other
points,58 and so the use of the Laodamia in the artisan simile further suggests the possibility of treating
Achilles in lesbian terms. As Butler’s theory shows, the signifier of woman does not have to be attached to a
female-sexed body,59 and therefore there is nothing to prevent a man performing female gender roles from
being placed on Rich’s lesbian continuum. Indeed, since he feels sexual desire for a woman, Achilles qua
woman in some ways draws even closer to ‘lesbian existence’ than some of the women Rich cites, who
never do so.60 This means that Achilles has segued from homosociality to lesbian existence – all the
lioness-killing macho he exhibited on Pelion dissipates at the point of his rebirth on Scyros. The effect of
this can only be to subvert the misogynistic norms presented on Pelion, implicitly affirming lesbian
existence, and subverting the mechanics of homosociality.
It may be objected that the experience in question is not sufficiently ‘woman-identified’ – generally
female authors, rather than characters, are placed on the lesbian continuum;61 and even if Statius is writing
lesbian desire, he is not a woman, and cannot speak for lesbian experience. This criticism may be
deflected by pointing out that Statius deliberately places his narrative in dialogue with an earlier text
reflecting female experience: namely, the lyrics of Sappho. The courtship of Deidamia and Achilles owes a
debt to fragment 94, which details a relationship between women:
‘Close by my side you put around yourself
[many wreaths] of violets and roses and saffron…
And many woven garlands
made from flowers
around your tender neck […]
And on a soft bed....
….tender....
you assuaged your longing...
Nor was there any…
Nor any holy…
from which we were away…
…nor grove….
(Sappho fr. 94 12-27)
Snyder argues that the ‘longing’ expressed in line 23 is unequivocally sexual,62 making this one of a
few poetic descriptions of lesbian sexuality in antiquity. It is significant, then, that each of the details given
here has a counterpart in Statius’ narrative. Sappho’s garlands are suggested by the ‘light garlands’ Achilles
throws at Deidamia (I.571). The setting of the maenadic rite in a ‘grove’ (I.594), moreover, is designed to
echo the ‘grove’ and ‘holy [things] of the Sappho fragment,63 while the ‘couches’ where Achilles and
Deidamia recline together (I.770) perhaps recall Sappho’s ‘soft bed’. There is, admittedly, a plethora of
allusion to Sappho in heterosexual contexts.64 However, in the context of a female homoerotic relationship,
the resonance takes on a new meaning. Fantuzzi argues for a Sapphic presence in Bion’s Epithalmium,
a possible source-text for the Achilleid: 65 here, Achilles himself strategically references Sappho when
56
Rich 1980, 648.
Feeney 1992, 40.
58
Cf. Catullus 11.19ff, where the poet compares himself to prati / ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
/ tactus arato est (a feminising impulse by dint of intertext with a Sappho fragment, which compares
the speaker to a hyacinth (see Quinn 1973 n.ad loc)) and masculinises his female beloved, who is
described as penetrating her male lovers (rumpens). Cf. Barchiesi 2005, 61.
59
Butler 1990, 135.
60
Rich 1980, 651.
61
Galvin 1999, 2.
62
Snyder 1997, 57.
63
And again at I.812.
64
Eg. Anacreon, Catullus 51 recalling Sappho 31.
65
Fantuzzi 2012, 73.
57
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persuading Deidamia to have sex with him.66 Achilles’ use of Sappho here may be programmatic for
Statius’ use in his version – though it is telling that although Sappho is undoubtedly present, verbal
persuasion of any sort is absent in Achilles’ attempts to seduce Deidamia. This suggests that Achilles is not
using the lesbian mode consciously: a natural consequence of his sexual performance, rather than a
sophistic device. This precludes the objection that Statius fails to engage with a female voice: indeed, Rich
herself names Sappho as a paradigmatic figure for the sort of broadly ‘lesbian’ experiences she is
discussing.67
Achilles’ desire can usefully be compared with another Ovidian relationship: that of Iphis and Ianthe.
Iphis is a girl performing as a boy (‘was bought up as a boy’, Met. IX.712) who desires the girl Ianthe (‘Iphis
loves…and a maiden burns for a maiden’, IX.724-5) . But Statius goes even further than Ovid in subverting
normative sexuality. 68 Iphis metamorphoses into a biological male before his marriage, and Ianthe never
finds out h/er partner’s previous sex (‘for you who were once a girl / are now a boy!’ Met.IX.790-1).69
The exact opposite happens to Achilles. As noted above (p.13) Deidamia’s discovery of Achilles’ manliness
does not change how she feels about him – she still ‘marvels at the sound of his voice and his grip when he
holds her’ (I.583-6). Essentialist interpretations are forced to rationalise this as some sort of ‘innate
preference’ for men by women, imbuing Deidamia with a sort of truffle-hunting sixth sense for the innate
phallicism beneath Achilles’ disguise. However, this is exactly the kind of heteronormative assumption
which Rich’s lesbian continuum is designed to expose,70 and we would do well to follow her program here.
There is an alternative, equally valid, interpretation of Deidamia’s actions, based upon the fact that
when she feels desire for Achilles, he is still dressed as a woman. Masculine traits beneath a feminine
mask are, for her, sexually desirable. She even makes efforts to preserve him this way (I.586-7). In
simplistic terms, Deidamia has a fetish for drag queens. Their complex sexual arrangement fits much less
neatly into normative arrangements than does the Iphis/Ianthe story – indeed, it would not seem out of
place in the Caryl Churchill play quoted above. Achilles motivates within Deidamia an anti-normative desire
which she chooses to indulge – not a choice presented to Ianthe. Achilles’ queering of sexual norms thus
extends, infectiously, much further than his own transvestism.
Lesbian Rape
The Achilleid thus sets up a clash between homosociality and lesbian existence. By this analysis,
when Achilles initiates the action of rape (‘he gained his wishes by force and strained his true embraces
in his whole breast’ I.642-3) he has no experience of heterosexual relationships. The rape appears to be
intended to reintroduce to Scyros the homosocial domination he was used to on Pelion, as is evident from
his prefacing his speech with the masculine pronoun ille (I.650).71 It appears in fact that Achilles thinks of
masculinity as homosociality – his sudden mention of Patroclus before he rapes Deidamia, for the first time
in over five hundred lines, implies a desire to see him and to have this relationship back (I.632-6). This
appears to be one of his impulses for the rape, suggesting that the act is to be seen as an attempted return
to homosociality.
Sanna maintains that the rape successfully concludes Achilles’ feminine phase.72 However, as
Heslin and Fantuzzi have convincingly argued, it absolutely fails as a masculine reassertion, since Achilles
remains in drag for at least another nine months before finally shedding the disguise.73 Statius rewrites
Ovid’s treatment of the incident, which overtly states that Deidamia ‘discovered he was a man through the
rape’ (Ars am. I.698) – a better example of the ‘reassertion’ interpretation – to further the humiliation of the
hero in his failure.74 Again, Statius avoids using the rape as an argument for the compulsory heterosexuality
refuted by Rich: nowhere in his version is found the disturbingly rape-apologetic detail that Deidamia
66
Fantuzzi 2012, 56.
Rich 1980, 651.
68
Boehringer 2014, 156.
69
Raval 2002, 151: Ovid’s myth emphasises gender-performativity, but remains a progress narrative
(see below, p.31).
70
Rich 1980, 637.
71
Heslin 2005, 269.
72
Sanna 2007, 207.
73
Fantuzzi 2012, 90.
74
Heslin 2005, 269.
67
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‘wanted to be conquered by force’ (Ars am. I.700). If Achilles designed his act as a return to homosociality,
the text ensures that he remains safely enclosed in the lesbian continuum.
There are several reasons why Achilles’ rape does not achieve what he wants it to. The first, and
most obvious, is that he is still dressed as a woman. The text takes pains to describe his maenadic ‘fawnskin’ (I.609), but neglects to say he takes this off, making this feel more like a deliberate omission. The act
thus remains one of female desire. There is therefore little to separate the resultant sexual act from that of
a woman committing a penetrative sexual act on another woman using a dildo. Heslin’s discussion of
Lacan’s detached phallus can be used in support of this interpretation. Having the maenadic rite, with its
focus on the phallic thyrsus (eg. I.617) precede the rape symbolises Achilles’ separation from his phallus.75
As Lacan argues, the phallus is more than simply the anatomical penis. As a symbol which can be
detached from the biological body in the form of the thyrsus, it signifies the possibility of substitution. The
phallus does not denote masculinity so much as the difficulties of asserting masculinity. 76 Achilles’ attempt
to use it without the proper sartorial-symbolic context (ie. masculine dress) is thus doomed to failure.77 A
dildo is, in this system, an excellent example of a detached phallus, as it places the user in the masculine,
penetrative role in the relationship – Pintabone stresses that all relationships in antiquity, including lesbian
ones, were bound by the eromenos/erastes opposition.78 So penetration is not a sufficient condition for the
masculinity Achilles is seeking. The fact that his detached phallus is still physically attached to him is, in
symbolic terms, immaterial.
Another reason for the failure of reassertion is that Achilles misses the significance of the literary
models he is following and invoking. Heslin argues that this is one of the strategies used to characterise
Thetis at the outset.79 A similar phenomenon occurs at the moment of Achilles’ rape: it is significant that in
this episode, ‘the horns of the slender Moon grew rosy’ (I.644), thus diverging from the masculine, Homeric
tradition (where ‘rosy-fingered Dawn’ is the norm, rather than Moon80) and replacing it with a less common
Sapphic variant: in fragment 96 the moon is described as ‘rosy-fingered’ (9). 81 At the moment of attempted
masculine assertion, the invocation of a feminine, lesbian model suggests the failure of the act is inevitable.
Like his mother, then, Achilles is insufficiently aware of the tradition he invokes, and for this reason his
attempted reversion to homosociality implodes.
It has been shown that it is justified to read Achilles as a lesbian. The Achilleid’s sexual discourse at
every turn reinforces and extends the points made above about Achilles’ exposing Butlerian gender
performatives. The Achilleid posits a world where the dynamics of compulsory heterosexuality are
deliberately removed from Achilles’ life, thus also queering Deidamia’s desire. The lesbian continuum on
Scyros subverts the normative homosociality of Pelion, and the failed self-assertion that is the rape
completes this. The paradigms established here will be revisited in the final chapter, when the female
clothes, used here as the basis for arguing towards a lesbian dynamic, are put aside.
Achilles the Foucauldian Subject
“Galatea never does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion: What Happened Next
One might assume from all this that Statius’ Achilles is a sort of queer hero, a living subversion of all
the norms and binaries which society places upon us. But the discussion of the rape emphasised Achilles’
lack of control over his body and its signification. There are forces working against him which are more
powerful than his individual will. This chapter now turns to a more sinister implication of analysing Achilles’
identity as ‘constructed by external forces’: by giving these forces such a role in his makeup, we lend them
immense power over him. The Achilleid’s discourse of sexuality and power can be mapped on to Foucault’s
75
Heslin 2005, 278.
Heslin 2005, 282.
77
Heslin 2005, 285.
78
Pintabone 2002, 256.
79
Heslin 2005, 107.
80
Eg. Odyssey II.1, IX.437.
81
Snyder 1997, 50.
76
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contribution to the subject.82 This chapter will construct a third image of Achilles as the subject of power,
before examining the ways this power is exerted, and the effect this has on him.
Achilles as Subject of Power
The artisan simile emphasises the power Thetis holds over Achilles’ identity – none of the changes
he undergoes are his own choice. As Bernard Shaw clearly observed, the Pygmalion myth contains
a similar power-dynamic, and the intertext here adds to this effect, as is highlighted by the description
of the wax as ‘submissive’ (victurae, I.332). Achilles, like Galatea, is subject to his creator. For Foucault,
power is always implicated in sexualisation in this way. Sexuality is to be seen as part of a social discourse,
rather than as an absolute, ahistorical fact,83 which uses various social mechanisms to exert power over its
subjects. It is not ‘real’, in the conventional sense, at all.84 The sexualisation of the body is an excellent
example of how sexuality uses the body to gain power, or ‘biopower’ as Foucault terms it, over the
subject.85 This is reflected in the way Thetis uses Achilles’ body, and its clothing, to bring him under her
control. As long as Achilles is sexualised by another, he has power exerted on him. That Thetis wants to
exert power over Achilles through his sexuality is evident when she gives her instructions to Lycomedes,
ordering him ‘remember to keep him away from the shore and harbour’ (I.360), offering an example of the
prohibitions which Foucault argues power provokes.86 The Scyrian beach was the locus for Achilles’ gender
rebirth. Thetis here initiated
a destabilisation, but will not permit a further one.
Foucault’s theory is an improvement on a more traditionally feminist approach to the poem, because
the controlling influence in Achilles’ life is not male, but female. For Foucault, a patriarchal, hegemonic
discourse of power is not sufficient to explain its complexity.87 The Achilleid shows awareness of this:
Thetis is hardly at the top of the poem’s pecking-order – she initially fails to exert power over Neptune and
is forced to turn to a more deceitful method of getting her way when dealing with Chiron, Achilles, and
Lycomedes. This mirrors Foucault’s principle that the discourse of power can take on many variations and
stem from a multiplicity of centres.
Butler takes Foucault’s analysis of the biopolitics of sexuality and applies it to gender:
‘The redescription of intrapsychic processes in terms of the surface politics of the body [ie. as Foucault
does to sexuality] implies a corollary redescription of gender as the disciplinary production…. [which]
effects a false stabilisation of gender.’88 Just as power manufactures sexuality, so too does it use repetition
to create the illusion of gender identity and prevent us from activating the kind of absolute fluidity which
Butlerian performativity might grant. Though the transvestite Achilles exemplifies the instability of gender,
he is also subject to this ‘false stabilisation’ – more a drag puppet than a drag queen.
Mechanisms of Power: Speech and Gaze
Speech is a common mechanism for exerting power in the Achilleid. In the first chapter Helen was
suggested as a type-figure for Statius’ Achilles, and an intertextual relationship with Euripides’ Helen was
established in order to expand upon the theme of unstable identity (see above, p.15). There is a second
text in the corpus of Greek literature on Helen which can be used to explain the power of speech on
Achilles: Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen. For Gorgias, Helen is not to be blamed for following Paris to Troy,
as she was subject to the power of sophistic arguments: ‘under the influence of speech, just as if ravished
by a force of pirates’ (Gorgias, Encomium 12). The rape analogy highlights the significance Gorgias places
on language in the arsenal of force relations. Helen thus becomes a byword for domination by an external
82
Ironically, it is Foucault himself who prohibits the use of modern sexual terminology in ancient
contexts, since sexuality is dependent on its contextualising discourse (Ormand 2014, 58). However,
given the critical approach taken here, it is possible to jettison Foucault’s specific objections and still
engage with the more theoretical side of his thought, represented in Book I of The History of
Sexuality.
83
Foucault 1978, 83.
84
Foucault 1978, 105.
85
Foucault 1978, 140.
86
Foucault 1978, 83.
87
Kelly 2013, 77.
88
Butler 1990, 135.
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agent. Statius seemingly recognises this important feature of the Helen tradition, and applies it in his
narrative, just as he did with the Euripidean intertext. If not for the persuasions of Thetis, Achilles would
never have considered donning drag.89 Admittedly Thetis’ initial sophistic arguments are not entirely
successful,90 but the event which causes him to be ‘softened’ and obey her (I.323) is her verbal pressure to
follow his desire for Deidamia: ‘is there any such creature beneath freezing Ossa and the ridges of Pelion?’
(I.320-1). Thetis, crucially, has the monopoly on speech in this episode; Achilles is denied it. Like Gorgias’
Helen, he is brought entirely under the power of another’s speech, forced into his drag queen and lesbian
status as vigorously as if he had been straitjacketed, and the clothes placed over his head. Thetis’ imposing
sexuality upon him, through speech, which he cannot retaliate, constitutes a ‘linguistic rape’, of sorts. This
is reversed in the scene where Achilles rapes Deidamia: here he can speak, and when she attempts to
(‘sed pater –‘, I.657) he cuts her off.
A second way in which power relations are expressed is through the gaze. The vocabulary of looking
and gazing is prevalent in all cases when Achilles finds himself subject to another’s will. We are told that
Thetis ‘looked upon’ (aspicit, I.325) her son at the moment when she succeeds in persuading him to
reclothe himself – the same word that was used nine lines earlier (and in the same position in the line) to
denote Achilles’ desirous gazing at Deidamia. This is emphasised by the prefix ‘ad’, which adds
connotations of direction and objectification. Deidamia follows Thetis’ lead in this respect, first by ensuring
that Achilles does not give himself away, first during their courtship (see above, p.13) then when she keeps
Achilles concealed from Ulysses: ‘she holds his naked arms and shoulders in her robe / and forbids him
from leaping up from the couches and demanding more wine’ (I.768-70). When Achilles tries to drop the
imitative performance, Deidamia wordlessly (or at least not in speech which we can hear) regulates his
behaviour to ensure he maintains the performance of female subservience.91 The text again uses the gaze
to express this intention: she is here described as ‘sharp-eyed’ (provida, I.802), again highlighting the
importance of the regulatory eye in the scene.92 Speech and gaze thus continually exert constraints on
Achilles’ autonomy during his time on Scyros.
For Foucault and Butler, power plays an inestimable role in the construction of identity. In narrative
terms, power makes things happen to characters, and since no character can rise above their social
context, it makes them who they are. This interplay of power is an entirely necessary part of human
existence.93 Thetis, by sexualising Achilles, and thereby bringing him into the field of power, constructs him
as a human subject and imbues him with an identity. Foucault and Butler’s discussion of power’s necessity
in identity here works in counterpoint to the fluidity argued for in the first chapter (see above, p.15).
The Achilleid’s identity politics constitute a lethal combination of these two: on the one hand, Achilles could
theoretically be anyone; on the other, he is bound into only being one kind of person by Thetis. By making
it impossible for Achilles to transcend this power, Statius constructs Achilles as a Foucauldian subject.
Out of the Frying-Pan…
Though he is not entirely conscious of his own gender performance, Achilles is clearly aware of the
power discourse operating on him. The last words of his speech-act to Deidamia after the rape, ‘we shall
not obey our mother in all things’ (I.660), demonstrate that the act can be seen as an endeavour to free
himself from the power structures his mother has trapped him in, a fact further underscored by Achilles’
attempted use of the first person plural form to place himself in a position of authority. But it fails in this
respect as well: nine months later, as shown above, Deidamia is still controlling Achilles by ensuring he
remains in drag. Achilles has not succeeded in dislodging feminine power.
It is no surprise, then, that he tries his best to be noticed when Ulysses and Diomedes appear.
These two are the first ostensibly virile men Achilles has ever met. As such they present a useful antithesis
to the women who are forcing him to remain female. As soon as they arrive, they subject everything to the
gaze (Ulysses ‘scours with his gaze / and searches the house I.742-3) and use it as an instrument to
control the women: ‘Ulysses carefully examines bodies and faces / with his gaze’ (I.761-2). This would have
reminded Achilles of his homosocial, lioness-bashing existence on Pelion, which permitted him more power
89
Heslin 2005, 119.
Heslin 2005, 123.
91
Heslin 2005, 154.
92
See Heslin 2005, 155 for an alternative discussion of Deidamia’s gaze as a panoptic refraction of
Ulysses’.
93
Foucault 1978, 159, Butler 1990, 148.
90
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and autonomy than he has on Scyros. This analysis offers an alternative to speaking of Achilles in terms
of any sort of masculinity-inhibiting repression which Thetis’ reclothing visits upon him. As Foucault sees it,
we are not repressed, in the conventional sense, at all. Repression itself is a myth created by power
to cloak its own origins, because it encourages the assumption that sexuality is an innate psychological
force rather than a discursive mechanism.94 Achilles’ attempts to free himself from drag, then, do not
necessarily indicate a desire to return to an innate masculinity. Clearly, Achilles sees Ulysses as a way out
of the crucible of power structures he is currently embroiled in. His behaviour around him – dancing badly
in chorus, for instance (I.837) does not constitute a proof of his essential masculinity, but rather signifies
a desire to exempt himself from the discourse of power.
Performative gender, then, does not permit Achilles liberation. His identity remains constrained by
external forces. Through the mechanisms of gender and sexuality, operating via speech and gaze, he is
transferred from the power of Thetis to that of Deidamia, never permitted the autonomy which might have
accompanied a drag performance. He thus emerges as the quintessential Foucauldian subject. The next
chapter will explore whether Achilles is successful in his attempt to use Ulysses to exempt himself from
female power.
Achilles and the Progress Narrative
What I do as a woman
I do as a man
I howl for the heavens
To hear where I am
– Arthur Beatrice, ‘Ornament & Safeguard’
So far, three interconnected portraits of the transvestite Achilles have been constructed: the Drag
Queen, the Lesbian, and the Foucauldian Subject. Achilles enacts a radical subversion of gender norms
and sexual politics, but a complex network of power relations has been deployed to hammer him into a
prescribed social shape. Achilles’ transvestism has been the foundation for the argument throughout; I will
now examine what happens when the female clothes are removed. Statius comes to a narrative
crossroads: either he construes the tale as a ‘progress narrative’, or he does not. Garber argues that tales of
transvestism the world over can fit such a narrative,95 whereby a character’s transvestite phase is treated
as a liminal: when they are reintegrated into normative discourse, the cross-dressing is denied its potential
as ‘a space of possibility structuring and confounding culture’.96 However, if the cross-dressing is treated as
an end in itself, with a lasting effect beyond the transvestite episode, then its subversiveness is
maintained.97 The Achilleid has been placed on both sides of the coin by scholars;98 I argue here that
Statius’ treatment of Achilles constitutes a wholehearted rejection of the progress narrative, and use the
analysis from the last three chapters to support this.
The End of the Drag Show – Or Is It?
A progress-narrative approach here would spell an end to Achilles’ queer performance. If the show
ended when the clothes were removed, all the points made about performative gender and identity would
be challenged – the progress narrative rests on the assumption that the character was male all along.
Achilles wants the episode to be progress narrative: in Book II he dismisses his female clothes as
‘unseemly attire, the crimes of the fates’ (II. 45). But we should beware of taking Achilles’ self-presentation
at face value. There are other moments when Achilles attempts to distance himself from the drag episode,
such as when he asks Lycomedes ‘how could Deidamia have resisted our force’? (I.905). (We observe the
resurfacing of that first-person plural which appeared after the rape.) However, Achilles is not on firm
ground here. As the second chapter showed, the rape is an act of lesbian desire – inadmissible as
evidence for his vires. With these attempts to self-define as manly, Achilles is clearly fighting against
something within himself.
94
Foucault 1978, 35.
Garber 1992, 69.
96
Garber 1992, 17.
97
Garber 1992, 71.
98
Cyrino 1992, 213, contra Heslin 2005, 299.
95
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An obvious example of a progress narrative is the Ars Amatoria: here Deidamia discovers Achilles’
innate masculinity and that is that.99 To this might be compared other examples from traditions around the
world, which demonstrate further permutations.100 For a while, it does indeed seem that Achilles is finally
on track to being the swift-footed, masculine hero we know from Homer: ‘the shield and javelin disappear
into his hand’, becoming almost an extension of his body (I.879-83). But then the picture is subverted.
Several details suggest Achilles is not making an Ovidian break from his feminine persona. One of these is
his blush at the moment prior to discovery, when he looks into Ulysses’ shield: ‘he shivered and blushed at
the same time’ (I.866). As Feeney notes, blushing is not an appropriate gesture for an epic hero.101 It is
telling that the blushing Achilles uses the shield not as a shield, but as a mirror; another inappropriate
action for a male hero102 – the only other character in epic to do this is Aphrodite in the Argonautica.103
Indeed, the blushing moon was above analysed as derived from Sappho (see above, p.25). This
unconscious physiognomic gesture validates invocation of Butlerian performativity. Were Achilles’ innate
masculinity secure, he would be incapable of blushing. But since gendered behaviour is imitative, he can
learn to blush, betraying the latent femininity in his interiority – the gesture betrays the emotional world
behind it.
A second subversion is the way Achilles ‘drops the shield’ (I.889) right after picking it up, upon
hearing Deidamia’s weeping. This challenges a straightforward analysis of the grasping of manly objects as
symbolising Achilles’ reversion to masculinity. The narrative comment ‘his manhood was broken by the
hidden burning [calore]’ (I.888) reinforces this. The use of the word calor here undercuts the usage just a
few lines before in the same metrical position to denote the blaze of masculine glory Achilles appears to
take on (I.881), implying that this calor may not in fact have been as overtly virtus-affirming as it first
appeared (virtus may be read in its sense of ‘masculinity’ here104). Even when the clothes have been
shrugged off105 several lines before (I.878), there is enough intrusion from the cross-dressed episode to
break the spirit of his masculinity. A third is Achilles’ honouring Lycomedes as ‘father dearer to me than
my great parent and sweet Chiron’ (I.892-6). Fantham points to the significance of father-figures such as
Chiron throughout the narrative,106 while Heslin notes the significant absence of the biological father Peleus
– a deliberate divergence from the Iliadic account107 – and the way Ulysses sets himself up as a Peleus-like
father figure.108 What advantage does Lycomedes have over these other surrogate fathers? The only
possible reason for this privileging is that, despite (or due to) his paternal ‘incompetency’,109 Lycomedes is
the only one who recognises Achilles as a woman first, and a man second. It has been suggested that
Achilles’ speech is purely political, designed to secure Lycomedes’ blessing;110 however, the blush and
dropping the shield do not support this interpretation. Achilles is clearly grateful to the man who provided
space for his gender-queering. Furthermore, we are told that the newly-masculine Achilles addressed
Lycomedes ‘just as he was’ (I.891). This phrase is highly ambiguous – it tells us nothing about ‘how’
99
See above, p.9.
In the Norse Thrymskvida the gods take revenge for the theft of Thor’s hammer Mjollnir by the
giant Thrym by dressing Thor as Thrym’s bride-to-be (Thrymskvida 19). The poem concludes when
the transvestite Thor retrieves Mjollnir and defeats the giants. The brevity of Thrymskvida allows no
evidence that the episode affects Thor after the clothes are removed. The Sanskrit Mahābhārata
features a hero, Arjuna, who is forced to spend a year dressed as a eunuch. On the final night of his
concealment, Arjuna re-dons masculine attire and defeats the invading enemy single-handed.
However, after Arjuna redons manly attire, he is said to dance among his enemies (Mahābhārata
4.57.9) recalling his eunuch identity the very moment when his masculinity is reasserted (Hiltebeitel
1980, 168). The Mahābhārata subverts the progress-narrative trope.
101
Feeney 2004, 98.
102
Feeney 2004, 98.
103
Barchiesi 2005, 17.
104
s.v.‘Virtus’. Oxford Latin Dictionary.
105
Fantuzzi 2012, 77’s explanation of intactae with recourse to magic is unnecessary.
106
Fantham 1999, 70.
107
Heslin 2005, 170.
108
Heslin 2005, 292.
109
Heslin 2005, 291.
110
Cameron 2009, 5.
100
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Achilles is at this point, whether he is truly male, or female, or anything else,111 highlighting the difficulty of
gender-signification generated by a transvestite episode.
These details undercut Achilles’ masculine impulse and suggest rejection of the progress narrative.
But the shadows of femininity do not end here. Residues of the time spent as a woman continually come to
light up until the end of Book II as we have it. When he tells Ulysses ‘speak: I want to summon up some
rage’ (II.48), seeking that quintessential trait of the Homeric Achilles,112 the only result of Ulysses’ speech
is, once again, a ‘huge blush’ (II.84-85). The attempt to fill the shoes of the Homeric Achilles is frustrated
because Achilles does not have the masculine interiority of his predecessor. We as readers know that the
drag performance has queered Achilles’ identity – there is something within him which is feminine, and he
can never change that. After his return to male attire, Achilles is still performing Newton’s double inversion,
saying ‘my appearance is an illusion’ – my exterior is masculine, but, as demonstrated from my blushes et
cetera, my interior is feminine. Through gestures like the blush, he also exemplifies the second, contrary,
inversion: ‘my essence is masculine (because there is something that makes me want to act like a man
now) but my appearance is feminine (because I am blushing)’. Symbolically speaking, Achilles has become
a drag king – a woman who dresses in men’s clothes and parodies masculine behaviours.
The fact that Achilles even needs Ulysses’ encouragement to get his rage flowing challenges the
innateness of his masculinity – if he were the Homeric Achilles, his anger would arise naturally, but
because of the stay on Scyros, this will never happen. Cyrino compares Achilles to masculine film stars like
Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes who have no problem playing drag queens in their movies.113 This would
be more appropriate if Achilles seemed comfortable with his cross-dressed past – as Hercules does in
Propertius 4.5114 –rather than trying to subject it to damnatio memoriae in Book II.115 When Ulysses so
much as mentions it, even in the context of Achilles’ latent masculinity (‘it is not due to us that you take up
arms - you would have done so anyway…’ – II.41-2) Achilles interrupts him and confines the episode to
silence: ‘it would take too long to discuss the causes, and my mother’s crime’ (II.43-4). All this suggests
that Achilles has to work very hard to perform as a man116 – it is not coming naturally to him, and requires
him to suppress elements of himself. Compare Newton: ‘The superordinate role in a hierarchy is more
fragile than the subordinate. Manhood must be achieved, and once achieved, guarded and protected’.117
Achilles follows this pattern perfectly. His newfound masculinity is not a more ‘essential’ form of identity,
but a more respectable role within his social framework. Indeed, the amount of work he clearly has to put
in to maintain it only underlines its performativity.118
The Birth of the Bisexual
Achilles’ presentation of his and Deidamia’s child at Lycomedes’ feet (I.908) makes it harder to
ignore the fact that Achilles’ symbolically detached phallus is fertile, and must be biologically male.
Coupled with the removal of male attire, this challenges the ‘lesbian’ status of their relationship. This would
be a reason to see the Achilleid as a progress-narrative, were it not for the fact that the relationship does
not end at this point – the sexuality is simply reformatted. Achilles and Deidamia are, like Iphis and Ianthe,
in the unusual position of both being bisexual without changing sexual orientation. The difference, of
course, is that no divine intervention changes Achilles’ body. All the differences are inscribed on the
surface, rendering gender more culturally contingent. Statius once again rewrites Ovid to bring his narrative
closer to Butler’s theory, underlining the ongoing queerness of Achilles’ sexuality. If relations with Deidamia
had ended after the cross-dressed episode, things would be more straightforward. But any character who
can utter the sentence ‘My wife and I were once lesbians, but now we’re in a straight marriage’ is hardly a
bastion of heteronormativity.
As a result of this experience, Deidamia expounds her own theory of performative gender at the end
of Book I: ‘why could I not bear the weapons of Mars? You bore the sacred Bacchic thyrsus with me…’
111
Feeney 2004, 96.
Cf. Iliad I.1: ‘Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles’.
113
Cyrino 1998, 208.
114
Manibus duris apta puella fui (Prop.4.9.50; Heslin 2005, 145).
115
Hinds 2000, 242.
116
Heslin 2005, 175.
117
Newton 1972, 101 n.3.
118
Barchiesi 2005, 52.
112
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(I.949-51).119 Having two types of sexual relationship with the same person has helped her understand that
she can, at choice, perform as male or female, homosexual or heterosexual. Her love for Achilles leads her
to be sexually attracted to cross-dressers. Once again, despite his current male attire, Achilles has through
his subversive example managed to queer the sexuality of another character. On this score, the lesbian
continuum has the last laugh and the progress narrative is rejected.
…Into the Fire
The last chapter suggested that Achilles sees Ulysses as a way out of the Thetis-centric power
network in which he is entangled. But the attempt is flawed. By exposing himself, Achilles plays right into
the hands of power. There is, indeed, an entire discourse waiting to receive him with open jaws: that of the
normative masculine world of the Greeks en route to Troy, with the legions of the Homeric and Virgilian
epic tradition at their back. Since Achilles first digressed from his military destiny into women’s clothes, this
discourse has been trying to reclaim him. This is evident in the prophecy of Apollo voiced by Calchas: when
Apollo cries ‘I will not bear it – he is mine, mine!’ (I.528) he expresses awareness that Achilles has switched
gender-allegiance from himself to his sister (see above, p.9). The poem thus generates a power-struggle
over Achilles’ body, with the Greek men on one side, Deidamia and Thetis on the other. When Ulysses
whispers to Achilles: ‘no more delays: let your father rejoice to hear these things, let cunning Thetis be
ashamed to have feared for you’ (I.872-4) he subverts the gynocentric rule and replaces it with a
patriarchal one. As Heslin argues, Ulysses establishes himself as a symbolic embodiment of paternal
power.120 Though he is not entirely successful in this endeavour (see above), it lends enough leverage to
break Deidamia’s power over Achilles, and jolt him out of his feminine clothes. To Achilles, the promise of a
life without ‘cunning Thetis’ is the promise of a life ‘without trickery’ (I.872) and all the deceptive power
accompanying this.
But this is absolutely not what occurs. Ulysses’ speech lures Achilles into two interconnected
assumptions which the poem has (for the audience only) already deconstructed: firstly, that there is a life
outside power; secondly, that there is such a thing as innate masculinity. For Foucault, there is no escaping
power; it is immanent in all areas of life, and to refuse it is to deny one’s own subjectivity.121 Achilles is not
freeing himself from power, but swapping one jurisdiction for another. The poem has already delivered
a devastating critique of the notion of innate masculinity through the gender destabilisation implicit in
Achilles’ drag performance. But Achilles does not appreciate his actions’ liberating potential, and Ulysses
ensures he never does. The only way to ‘be a man’ is to believe in the fiction of innate masculinity which
Ulysses perpetuates when he asks ‘whether this silent manhood should grow limp beneath the shade’
(II.38). By requiring Achilles to believe this fiction, Ulysses encloses Achilles in a set of masculine social
norms which force him to perform in a certain way, as Butler argues they do for us all.
The previous chapter suggested that Achilles envies Ulysses his power to subject women to the
gaze. Achilles does not realise that Ulysses employs the same means to gain control over him. Ulysses is
also gazing at him and seeking him out, so he can force him into the open – a fact emphasised by the
comparison of him to a huntsman searching for prey (I.745-9). For Foucault, one of the roles of power in
sexuality is in forcing us to confess our sins and deviances.122 This is a particularly potent avenue for power
to construct us as subjects, since we are performing the act of confessing, and have done the thing
confessed.123 Power deceives us into thinking we ought to give up our darkest secrets, when really we are
giving it leverage over us.124 Ulysses here is using the gaze to extort a confession of ‘masculinity’ (itself a
deception) from Achilles. His success in this endeavour is demonstrated by the fact that after his first
secret is exposed, Achilles then immediately tells Lycomedes the second secret of his child with Deidamia:
once the confessions begin, they keep spilling forth. This power not only allows Ulysses the power to
reconstruct Achilles’ identity as he chooses, but also traps him in the notion that his masculinity is
something innate which he ought to confess.
Moreover, despite Achilles’ three earlier attempts of Achilles to throw off his clothes, Deidamia does
not lose her struggle for control until Ulysses whispers in his ear (‘in a low voice he said: “Why do you hold
119
See Heslin 2005, 139 for an alternative interpretation of Deidamia’s speech here.
Heslin 2005, 290.
121
Foucault 1978, 101.
122
Kelly 2013, 50.
123
Kelly 2013, 49.
124
Foucault 1978, 159.
120
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back?”’ I.867-8), deploying the power of speech which Thetis used when persuading Achilles to adopt
female clothes, and which Achilles used after raping Deidamia. Like Gorgias’ Helen, Achilles is once again
‘ravished’ by speech. Perhaps Achilles blushes because he can see the similarities between his situation
and Helen’s. Heslin argues that Ulysses’ words denouncing Paris what if someone were now to steal
Deidamia from her father’s shores / and tear her from her lonely chamber? (II.81-2) are designed to tar the
rapist Achilles with the same brush.125 This is valid, but there is another possibility: Achilles can see the
similarities between Helen and himself, twice linguistically raped and stolen from a place where the rapist
was a guest (Thetis from Pelion, Ulysses from Scyros). Worman notes how the Greek tradition presents
Helen as ‘shunted’ around the Mediterranean, moved from one place to another by various controlling
agents.126 There is little to separate Achilles from Helen on this score – he has been moved from Pelion, to
Scyros, to Troy, under the power of others. Both become two problematic feminine creatures shifted
around the Mediterranean by forces beyond their control. Book II’s movement towards Troy, and Helen,
further symbolises Achilles’ similarity to her. The direct transfer of Achilles from Thetis’ control to Ulysses’
rejects the progress narrative approach – in this respect, he makes no real progress at all.
It has been shown that interpreting the Achilleid as progress narrative is highly problematic, for all
the reasons highlighted above. Achilles’ femininity lingers even when his feminine clothes are removed,
suggesting a continuation of the drag-queen dynamic. The seamless transformation from lesbian to
heterosexual continues to queer Achilles’ sexuality. Furthermore, the drag episode is not self-contained,
because it produces the power politics which catapult Achilles into the next segment of his life. The queer
images of Achilles presented in the first three chapters are not erased by the removal of female garb: they
have a meaningful and lasting effect on his characterisation.
Conclusion: The Queen’s Tragedy
It has been shown that a reading of the Achilleid informed by queer theory is neither untenable nor
incoherent. In Chapter 1 I argued that Statius’ queer Achilles has much in common with Newton’s drag
queens and hence with Butler’s theories of gender performance, proposing a radically fluid identity for the
character. Chapter 2 highlighted how Achilles’ sexuality was queered by his transvestism, and showed that
heterosexuality is entirely absent from his early life. In Chapter 3 it was shown that Foucauldian power
structures are implicit in the poem’s discourse of gender and sexuality, and the ways in which Achilles’
identity becomes dependent on these was discussed. All these issues converged in the final chapter, which
illustrated how the return to masculinity neither put an end to the Achillean drag show, nor halted the
queerness of its performer’s sexuality, nor liberated him from the power structures in which he was
embroiled, causing a enthusiastic rejection of Garber’s progress narrative.
Based on these findings, we can make some inferences about what might have happened if Statius
had continued with the poem.127 The rejection of the progress narrative at the moment of transformation
suggests that vestiges of Achilles’ drag performance would have accompanied him to Troy. Certainly the
reader would never be able to forget the precariousness of Achilles’ masculinity demonstrated by the
destabilisation in Book I, and would have searched eagerly for later chinks in his virile mask. Given the
lesbian content of Achilles’ relationship with Deidamia, these might have surfaced in moments when
Achilles interacted with women such as Briseis. I suggest that the connection between Achilles and Helen
established in the extant Achilleid would have been somehow continued by uniting Achilles and Helen as
objects which Agamemnon is perpetually trying to gain power over – this is, after all, the main plot of the
Iliad. It also seems likely that Apollo’s role as the guardian of the ‘correct’, Homeric plotline would have
persisted, and that he would have continued to lay power-traps for Achilles right up until the moment he
exercised his rights over his death.
Some closing remarks about Achilles’ identity are required here. There is something fundamentally
tragic about Achilles in this epic. His performance as a drag queen reveals the potential for fluidity inherent
in the realisation of performativity. His Helen-like immersion in power, however, holds this realisation out of
his field of vision. He is imprisoned in womanhood by Thetis, then convinced of his innate masculinity by
125
Heslin 2005, 176.
Worman 1997, 155.
127
Fantuzzi 2012, 21 suggests that Statius abandoned the Achilleid after writing these passages.
Heslin 2005, 299 infers that events in the Achilleid would have coloured certain events at Troy, such
Ulysses’ persuading Achilles to put down his wrath. Subscribers to the progress narrative argue the
episode would not have had meaningful input in what followed (Cyrino 1998, 220).
126
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Ulysses and forced to work to perform this role. Heslin is not entirely correct that Achilles ‘botches’ being
a woman:128 at some points he even, parodically, exemplifies the category of woman. Rather – and through
no fault of his own – he botches being a person, since he has no distinguishable, autonomous identity at
all.
Thus the Achilleid can be said to welcome and embrace a queer reading which emphasises its
performative, constructionist dimensions. Heslin’s comment that the work can be read this way has been
vindicated. The points made above have also illustrated the depth and power of intertextuality in the poem:
examining Statius’ use of authors including Catullus, Gorgias, and Sappho has enhanced our
understanding of the poem. The study has, I hope, at least shown that ideas from modern queer theory are
‘good to think with’ when approaching this text.
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Justin Murray
St. Aidan’s College
Durham University
Justin Murray has just completed a BA in Classics at St Aidan’s College, Durham University. He is a
passionate feminist and holds a keen interest in the study of transvestism and the subversion of gender
binaries in literature. This paper was prepared as part of a dissertation in Classics under the guidance
of Dr Peter Heslin.
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