HIST 632

Both Keuls and Loraux look at how gender and power operated in ancient Greece, but they do so in very different ways. Keuls (1985) focuses on the larger symbolic system, arguing that male and female bodies were given meanings that supported patriarchy. In the article, she shows how the phallus came to represent power, authority, and public life, while the female body was linked to restriction and control (Keuls, 1985). Loraux (1995), by contrast, turns attention to men and masculinity itself. Rather than treating male power as stable, she shows that manhood had to be protected, displayed and repeatedly proved. Together, the two readings show that gender in ancient Greece was deeply tied to power, but they explain that connection differently. In my view, Loraux offers the more nuanced argument because she shows that masculinity was not fully secure, while Keuls is stronger at showing how widely patriarchal ideas shaped Greek culture.

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One important similarity between the two readings is that both push back against the idea that gender is natural or simple. Keuls (1985) shows that Greek culture gave a very strong social meaning to sexual difference. Male and female body parts were not treated as neutral biological facts. Instead, they were used to support wider ideas about order, hierarchy, and social roles. Her argument is not just about sex. It is about the way anatomy becomes ideology. Loraux (1995) also rejects any simple understanding of gender. She shows that masculinity was not something men simply possessed by nature. It was fragile and had to be made visible. As she writes, “…wounds cause the body to speak” (Loraux, 1995, p. 89). In other words, masculinity had to appear through bodily signs, struggle, and proof. In both readings, gender is shaped by culture and social expectation rather than treated as something fixed.

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The two authors differ most in how they explain power. Keuls builds a strong symbolic framework, and that is both the strength and the weakness of her reading. It is powerful because it makes the politics of sexual symbolism hard to ignore. At the same time, her argument is broad that Greek culture starts to seem more unified than it likely was. This is especially clear when she describes phallic worship as reinforcing the “stranglehold of man over woman” and, in its most extreme form, as having “virtually destroy[ed] the female sex” (Keuls, 1985, p. 67). That claim is forceful and aggressive, but it can also make patriarchy sound too complete, leaving less room for contradiction.

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Loraux is more focused and, because of that, more persuasive. She does not simply show that men had power. She shows that masculinity itself was under pressure. When she describes “the wound as an inscription of manhood” (Loraux, 1995, p. 89), she suggests that masculinity had to be marked on the body and continually upheld, rather than assumed. This gives a more unstable picture of power, which feels convincing because systems like patriarchy often depend on repeated performance and reinforcement (Gupta et al., 2023). At the same time, Loraux’s reading has its own limit. Because she is so concerned with male insecurity, her analysis can shift attention away from women and from the direct effects of patriarchal control on them.

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Read together, the two essays are strongest because they reveal different sides of the same system. Keuls shows how patriarchy worked at the level of symbols, cultural meaning, and social structure. Loraux shows how that same system also shaped men from the inside, producing a masculinity that was never fully secure. For that reason, I find Loraux more nuanced, but Keuls more immediately forceful. Together, they suggest that Greek patriarchy was not only about controlling women. It also depended on men constantly having to prove their manhood.