The type of transgression of norms I am claiming for the dedication of Rhodopis may appear to be too subtle; yet an examination of some Heavenly Bodies 63
monuments to prostitutes in Greek sanctuaries attested solely by liter- ary sources demonstrates that not all forms of transgression in the lit- erary record are immediately obvious. Violation of the normal customs governing votive dedications is a subtext, which has gone unrecognized in the case of some of the monuments to prostitutes in Greek literature. One case in point is the so-called portrait of Leaina on the Athenian Acropolis. According to Pausanias (1.23.1–2), the Athenians of his own time explained the bronze statue of a lioness standing at the entrance to the acropolis beside a statue of Aphrodite as a monument commemorat- ing Leaina (“Lioness”), a mistress of the tyrant-slayer Aristogeiton tor- tured and killed by Hippias after the assassination of Hipparchus in 514 BCE. Pliny (Natural History 34.72) and Plutarch (Moralia 505e) go Pau- sanias one better by adding the detail that the lion lacked a tongue be- cause Leaina had refused to name her co-conspirators.
Though archaeologists have generally accepted the monument com- memorating Leaina itself as authentic, the story of Leaina that became attached to the statue of a lioness over the course of time is not; rather it speaks to the development of an oral tradition responding to three as- pects of this votive monument: its placement next to a statue of Aphro- dite; its missing tongue, more likely a result of damage than an original attribute; and, most obviously, the fact that Leaina, the supposed mis- tress of Aristogeiton, is named “Lioness.”21Votive monuments normally
were not inscribed with the names of the subjects they represented or specifics about the occasion motivating their dedication; oral traditions tended to fill the gaps left by inscriptions, and in this case the connection with Leaina effectively explained why there was a statue of a lioness standing next to one of Aphrodite on the acropolis—herself a “visiting god” there whose presence potentially called for some explanation— and for this reason the tradition spread and endured.
When interpreted as a “portrait” of the courtesan Leaina, the bronze lioness on the acropolis is transgressive in at least one respect. The lion- ess statue functions as a canting device, namely a representation of an animal used as a pun on the name of the one being honored, just like the marble lion set up over the tomb of Leonidas at Thermopylae (Herodo- tus 7.225.2). Yet, with the exception of one example on an Athenian state document relief of the fourth century, all other known examples of animals used as canting devices appear as funerary monuments, not sanctuary dedications (see Ritti 1973–74 for examples and discussion). Leaina’s monument thus stands out in transgressing the normal generic
boundaries between funerary and votive commemoration in Archaic and Classical Athens. In this case, a transgressive interpretation un- related to the original intent of a votive dedication attaches itself to it, recasting it as a “portrait” commemorating a prostitute.
It is possible to consider another monument associated with prosti- tutes by literary sources in a similar light. Athenaeus (13.573c–d), citing earlier sources, refers to a dedication made by the Corinthians in the temple of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth: this consisted of a votive plaque
(pinax) on which the names of Corinthian hetairai were written, accom-
panied by an epigram attributed to Simonides. The epigram makes it clear that the occasion for the dedication was the supplication of Aph- rodite by the hetairai of Corinth on the eve of the Persian invasion of mainland Greece in 480 BCE. Two other late sources, Pseudo-Plutarch (Moralia 871b) and a scholion on Pindar (Olympian 13.32b), change the women in question from hetairai into Corinthian citizen women and the dedication itself from a name list into either a group of bronze por- trait statues (Pseudo-Plutarch) or a votive painting representing these women (Pindar).22
In spite of justifiable scholarly disagreement concerning the relative reliability of Athenaeus and the competing explanations of the Corin- thian dedication, the dedicatory epigram as it has been transmitted by each of the sources identifies itself clearly as belonging to a representa- tion of a group of women, either in the form of a catalogue of their names or an artistic representation.23Though the epigram is most likely
authentic, the true nature of the votive dedication it accompanied has become impossible to recover. The dedicatory epigram itself is nonspe- cific, referring to the women in question only epideictically as “these women.” An inscribed catalogue consisting of exclusively female names would have been anomalous in the fifth century BCE and would surely have called for some explanation even in the fourth century, the date of the sources Athenaeus cites as his authorities.24 Representations of
groups of women in votive sculpture and painting were also unusual both in the fifth century and in the fourth.25The fame in the Roman im-
perial period of both the temple prostitutes of Aphrodite and of legend- ary Corinthian courtesans such as Leaina, the mistress of Demetrius Poliorcetes, would have encouraged later observers to read the dedica- tion and its accompanying epigram, both prominently displayed in the temple of Aphrodite on Acrocorinth, as a dedication commemorating prostitutes rather than ordinary Corinthian citizen women.