A Masculine Study Of The Athenian Society

Aνδρεια is a common term in the classical period describing masculinity,literally meaning "acting like a man" with the extended meaning as "masculinity",referring to "the man’s courage" or "bravery" in a narrow sense.First appearing in the middle of the 5th century BC,this term wasn’t common in the works of the early classical writers,and at that time was often used to indicate excessive masculinity that was associated with masculine physical characteristics and physical violence.Then from the late 5th century BC to the early 4th century BC,the term ανδρεια frequently appeared and was equipped with a positive connotation,representing the quality of male bravery in the military struggles for safe guarding their polis.Aνδρεια was widely used in the works across all the phases of Plato’s creation,including in Laches,Protagoras,Cratylus,Symposion,The Republic,The Statesman and The Laws,,etc.ανδρεια in Plato’s rhetoric was defined as virtue,and it also embodied the contradiction of this term.This thesis gives a discussion on ανδρεια in Plato’s rhetoric from the perspective of masculinity combined with the theory of discourse analysis.It can be divided into three chapters.Chapter One is a literature review on ανδρεια in the works of the classical writers before Plato and introduces about the social background in the late 5th century BC to the early 4th century BC when the connotation of ανδρεια was transformed.The second chapter centers on the philosophy construction of ανδρεια in the Plato’s philosophy dialogues,discussing how Plato defined and reconstructedανδρεια in the dialogues,and finding that through bringing ανδρεια into the category of "virtue" and establishing connections between ανδρεια and other virtues as well as making a distinction between "ανδρεια" and "θυμοζ",Plato endowed ανδρεια with new connotations in the discourse and thus reformed the term.Chapter Three analyzes the essence of power and hierarchy behind the discourse construction of ανδρεια,demonstrating how Plato utilized the new discourse connotation of ανδρεια to depreciate traditional military masculinity and through describing masculinity under different regimes,Plato constructed the social gender which excluded women,children,barbarians and slaves from the category of ανδρεια.In conclusion,Plato’s rhetoric expression of ανδρεια reflects that the male elites in Athens between the late 5th century BC and the early 4th century BC attempted to reestablish their male identity in a chaotic democratic regime through constructing the discourse of αvδρεiαto return to the center of the discourse order.