Demosthenes the Kinaidos and Aeschines the Fox

Abstract

Using the speeches of Aeschines (1–3) and Demosthenes (19, 18) as a case study, this chapter explores the overlapping significances of the kinaidos in fourth-century BCE Athens, arguing that this figure is not solely legible in terms of sexuality and gender behavior but that other axes of difference such as sex, status, ethnicity, and performance style come equally into play. After exploring why Aeschines’ rival Timarchus, the “pornos,” can lose his citizen rights for allegedly being sexually penetrated by other men while Demosthenes, the “kinaidos,” does not, it uses an intersectional lens—drawn from the Black feminisms of Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins—to examine how other fields of significance play into Athenian understandings of the kinaidos. It then examines how in Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ paired speeches each orator presents his rival as some form of bad performer: Aeschines as a booming tritagonist of the tragic stage; Demosthenes as Bat(t)alos, a foul-mouthed kinaidos who is described as telling off-color jokes with his shrill and unholy voice.