Atalanta as Model: The Hunter and the Hunted - Robert Bedrosian's ...

BARRINGER: Atalanta as Model 57
of the ephebeia is not attested in Greek literature or inscriptions until the fourth
century B.C. (the earliest inscription is 361/0 B.C.),40 some scholars argue that
some version of it existed already in the fifth century B.c.41 At the very least,
ephebes-young men who are undergoing military training, but are not yet part
of the adult community (and that is how I will use this word in the remainder
of this study)42--are recognizable in Attic red-figure vase painting by their lack of
beards and their nudity. Admittedly, the very idea of a fifth-century B.C. ephebeia
in Athens is tenuous, and that such an ephebeia might have included hunting in
one form or another as part of military training is also speculation. Yet hunting
was part of military training or initiation rites in other locations (the examples of
Spartan youths hunting helots or Cretan boys hunting in the wild with their adult
male lovers come to mind), and Pierre Vidal-Naquet argues that the same was
true of Athens. According to Vidal-Naquet, the myth of Xanthos (the fair one)
and Melanthos (the black one), the aetiological myth of the Apatouria at which
young Athenian men entered their phratry at the end of the ephebeia,43 provides
a model for the Athenian ephebe. Melanthos, frequently aided by Dionysos of
the black goatskin, defeats his opponent using trickery, apate, and Vidal-Naquet
claims that such activity is the hallmark of the later Athenian ephebeia. Just
as the myth took place in a border region (between Attica and Boeotia), so
the Athenian ephebe swears to protect the borders. The emphasis on the color
black in the myth corresponds to the black chlamys that the Athenian ephebes
wore.44 Assuming that hunting was part of Athenian military training or initiation,
the fifth-century vase paintings of the Calydonian boar hunt that show youths
beardless and nude except for a chlamys, the typical ceremonial dress for ephebes
(at least as attested in the fourth century B.C.45) engaged in hunting, a typical rite de
40. See O. W. Reinmuth, The Ephebic Inscriptions of the Fourth Century B.C. (Leiden, 1971).
41. See John J. Winkler, "The Ephebes' Song: Tragoidia and Polis," in J. J. Winkler and F. I.
Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do With Dionysos? (Princeton, 1990) 31; Vidal-Naquet (supra, n. 11) 97-99,
106; 0. W. Reinmuth, "The Genesis of the Athenian Ephebia," TAPA 83 (1952) 34-50, esp. nn. 3, 5
with bibliography; H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Couretes (Lille, 1939) 307-308 n. 1. P. Siewert, "The
Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens," JHS 97 (1977) 102-111, argues that passages of Thucydides
and perhaps of Aeschylus and Sophocles make reference to the ephebic oath as we know it from later
inscriptions, thus supporting the view that some form of the ephebeia existed in the fifth century B.C.
Moreover, Siewert argues that the oath is actually archaic and that it should be dated at least a century
before the introduction of hoplite warfare. Vidal-Naquet (supra) 97 also accepts the "archaic quality"
of the oath, but notes the possibility of an archaizing text.
42. See Winkler (supra, n. 41) 31 for a similar working definition of ephebe. See infra, n. 43. On
the age of the ephebes, see Vidal-Naquet (supra, n. 11) 98-99, 108-109.
43. Vidal-Naquet (supra, n. 11) 98-99, 109-122; Schmitt (supra, n. 12) 1059-61. Winkler
(supra, n. 41) 33-37 points out that Melanthos is beardless and that beardlessness is the "iconographic
sign for ephebes" (35).
44. Vidal-Naquet (supra, n. 11) 106-28.
45. See, e.g., Philostr., VS 2.550; Winkler (supra, n. 41) 35 n. 43; Vidal-Naquet (supra, n. 11)
112, 116-17; P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, "Remarks on the Black Cloaks of the Ephebes," PCPS n. ser. 16
(1970) 113-16; P. Roussel, "Les chlamydes noires des ephebes ath6niens," REA 43 (1941) 163-65.
Whether the cloaks were black or white is irrelevant to this discussion of Attic red-figure vase
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