Hipparchia the Cynic
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Hipparchia (Greek: Ἱππαρχία) of Maroneia was a Cynic philosopher, and wife of Crates of Thebes, who lived c. 325 BC. She is famous for living a life of Cynic poverty on equal terms with her husband on the streets of Athens. Like most Cynics, her influence lies in the example of her life, choosing a way of life which was usually considered unacceptable for respectable women of the time.
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[edit] Life
Hipparchia was born c. 350 BC in Maroneia, Thrace.[1][2] Her family came to Athens, where Hipparchia's brother - Metrocles - became a pupil of the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes.[1] Hipparchia fell in love with Crates, and developed such a passion for him, that she told her parents that if they refused to allow her to marry him, she would kill herself. They begged Crates to dissuade her, and he stood before her, removed his clothes, and said, "Here is the bridegroom, and this is his property."[1] Hipparchia was quite happy with this; she adopted the Cynic life assuming the same clothes that he wore, and appearing with him in public everywhere. Crates called their marriage "dog-coupling" (cynogamy).[3] We are told that they lived in the Stoa of Athens,[4] and Apuleius and later Christian writers wrote salacious accounts of them having sex, publicly, in broad daylight.[5] Although this would have been consistent with Cynic shamelessness, (anaideia), the mere fact that Hipparchia adopted male clothes and lived on equal terms with her husband would have been enough to shock Athenian society. Hipparchia had at least two children, a daughter, and a son named Pasicles.[1][3] It is not known how or when she died. There is an epigram ascribed to Antipater of Sidon, as the sort of thing which may have been written on her tomb:
I, Hipparchia chose not the tasks of rich-robed woman, but the manly life of the Cynic.
Brooch-clasped tunics, well-clad shoes, and perfumed headscarves pleased me not;
But with wallet and fellow staff, together with coarse cloak and bed of hard ground,
My name shall be greater than Atalanta: for wisdom is better than mountain running.[6]
[edit] Philosophy
The Suda says she wrote some philosophical treatises, and some letters addressed to Theodorus the Atheist.[2] None of these have survived. There are some accounts of her encounters with Theodorus:
When she went into a symposium with Crates, she tested Theodoros the atheist by proposing a sophism like this: "That which if Theodoros did, he would not be said to do wrong, neither should Hipparchia be said to do wrong if she does it. Theodoros hitting himself does not do wrong, nor does Hipparchia do wrong hitting Theodoros." He did not reply to what she said, but pulled up her garment.[2]
We are told she was neither offended nor ashamed by this.[1] We are also told that when Theodorus (quoting a line from the The Bacchae of Euripedes) said to her: "Who is the woman who has left behind the shuttles of the loom?" she replied
I, Theodorus, am that person, but do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?" [1]
Apart from anecdotes such as these, nothing is known about her philosophy, although it must have been similar to Crates. We know that Crates taught Zeno of Citium. It is impossible to say what influence Hipparchia had on Zeno in his development of Stoicism, but Zeno's own radical views on love and sex (as evidenced in his Republic) may well be based on the relationship of Hipparchia and Crates.
[edit] Later Influence
Hipparchia's fame undoubtably rests on the fact that she was a woman practising philosophy and living a life on equal terms with her husband. Both facts were unusual for ancient Greece or Rome. Although there were other women who chose to live as Cynics, Hipparchia is the only one who is named to us. She is also the only woman to have her own entry in Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and she continued to fascinate later writers. There are, for example, a set of Cynic Epistles, written in the 1st century AD, some of which purport to give advice from Crates to Hipparchia:
Our philosophy is called Cynic not because we are indifferent to everything, but because we aggressively endure what others, due to being soft or general opinion find unbearable. So it is for this reason and not the former that they have called us Cynics. Stay, therefore, and continue as a Cynic - for you are not by nature worse than we [men] are, for neither are female dogs worse than male - in order that you might be freed from Nature, as all [people] either because of law or due to vices, live as slaves.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d e f Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, vi.
- ^ a b c Suda, Hipparchia.
- ^ a b Suda, Krates.
- ^ Musonius Rufus, 14. 4.
- ^ Apuleius, Florida 2. 49.
- ^ Greek Anthology, 7.413. This translation based on those of: William Paton, The Greek anthology (1918); Arthur Way, Greek Anthology (1939); Mary Ellen Waithe, A History of women philosophers (1991).
- ^ Cynic Epistle 29, from Wimbush, L., Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook. (1990).
