Pseudo-Lucian’s Cnidian Aphrodite: A Statue of Flesh, Stone, and Words

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse a literary response to antiquity’s most alluring work of art, the Cnidian Aphrodite. It argues that the ecphrasis of the statue in the Amores develops textual and verbal strategies to provoke in the recipients the desire to see the Cnidia, but eventually frustrates this desire. The ecphrasis thereby creates a discrepancy between the characters’ aesthetic experience of the statue and the visualisation and aesthetic experience of the recipients of the text. The erotic mechanisms of the ecphrasis, simultaneously arousing and frustrating the recipients’ desire, mirror the effect of the statue on its viewers and disclose the erotic programmatics of the whole dialogue. The analysis shows that the Amores surpass the ongoing discourse on love from Plato’s Phaedrus to the ancient novel – and Achilles Tatius and Longus in particular. The Amores, like the nude statue of the Cnidia, threaten to cross all bounds of decency in sexuality.