Wisconsin (2016) h/b 261p £59.95 (ISBN 9780299308209)
All that many of us know about the Adonia is that once a year Athenian women cultivated short-lived plants like lettuce and fennel in pots and carried them up to the rooftops, from which they lamented the death of the young Adonis. In addition, you may be under the impression, like the Official in Lysistrata, that the festival was a private, apolitical affair celebrated by drunken, depraved women banging tympana and wailing in audible locations. After reading The Athenian Adonia in Context, you will know better.
The author is not so much interested in reconstructing the practices of the festival, although in the introduction she summarises its known elements as well as the myth of Adonis itself, but is concerned more with its meaning in a wider context of evidence drawn from iconographic and literary sources. Chapter One examines ancient and modern trends in representation of the Adonia, treating the themes, myth and realia of the cult. Chapter Two contains detailed analysis of the iconographic evidence, focusing particularly on the Karlsruhe lekythos, presented along with black and white illustrations of 22 other pieces of painted pottery, votive reliefs and a Hellenistic terracotta figurine. It compares the Adonis myth with stories of relations between other goddesses and mortal men in an inversion of customary wedding rituals with the youth as ‘bride’. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with literary evidence. Chapter 3 focuses on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, pointing out its alternative title of Adoniazousai and producing a convincing case for viewing the Adonia as a possible vehicle for political protest, where lamentation over youths dying before their time critiques the war ethos promoted by Pericles’ funeral oration. Chapter Four turns to Plato’s Phaedrus, showing Socrates using the Adonia as a metaphor to discuss philosophy, presenting himself as playfully cultivating Phaedrus like a delicate young plant in an activity where writing (like gardens of Adonis), although a less worthwhile pursuit than talking apparently fruitless philosophy, should be taken seriously since it has the potential to bear educational fruit.
With extensive notes, bibliography and indices, the book presents a closely argued case for regarding the Adonia as in fact bound up with mainstream events like weddings, public funeral orations and the growth of philosophy at Athens. All Greek is translated so as to be accessible to non-linguists, as well as students and serious scholars of ancient religion and women’s studies. Although the author’s enthusiasm sometimes leads her to labour her arguments with repetitions of material, who could resist chapter subtitles like Nudity and Potted Plants or Sex, Drugs and Kettledrums? This book is a significant contribution towards disarming those who persist in perpetuating the Victorian male fantasy that Greek women were passive, obedient and housebound without ideas or voices of their own.
Claire Gruzelier