History and Literature

Honors Block

December 10, 2018

The Myth of Heteira and Vatsyayana

     “Surely a symposium like this is what it means to be Athenian,” the young man sighed with contentment as he passed the kylix1 to the man besides him, “for what could lift the weight of grief off our hearts better than women and wine? How did your Pericles phrase it today, Aspasia? ‘The pleasures that…’”

“‘The delights which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish sorrow’(Thucydides),” Aspasia answered. Phyrne, the best student of Aspasia, strolled around the andron2.

“You speak as though his words were your own,” she said, glancing at her teacher. “I wonder, Aspasia, if our strategos composed his oration alone or with the aid of another?”

Aspasia had been the mistress of Pericles for a number of years, not simply for her looks but for her “rare political wisdom” (Plutarch, 24.3). But a comment like Phryne’s would win more enemies than friends.

“I agree with you,” Aspasia said, deftly ignoring Phryne’s remark, “that a symposium perfectly displays our way of life. But what single feature of the symposium would best describe Athens?”

“The kylix,” answered one man as he took a deep drink from the cup, “because ‘the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us’ (Thucydides).”

“The strong men, because they are truly the ‘lovers of the beautiful’(Thucydides),” Phryne said, winking across the room at the man who just spoke.

“The *hiccup* couches *hiccup* because…” the drunk’s words trailed off into a symphony of snores as he buried his face into a cushion.

“All good answers,” Aspasia replied, “but I propose that hetairai such as Phryne and myself are the best example of Athenian values.”

“How so?” Phryne asked.

“Every core value of Athens can be found in the hetairai. They display moderation in the symposium by controlling the urges of men and in their own drinking, they exhibit the metis of Athena in their speech, and they are examples of arête in both body and mind. Not all societies respect women like us, who are as wise as they are beautiful.”

“If the hetairai uphold all the righteous virtues of Athens, what was society like before them? Do we need to follow the example of our friend Socrates and construct, in this case, an imperfect city to prove our point (Plato, 369a)?” Phyrne replied.

“There is no need.” Aspasia now addressed the entire symposium. “Have any of you heard of the Myth of Hetaira and Vatsyayana?” Silence filled the room. “Well then,” she took a deep breath and an even deeper drink of wine, “it goes like this:

After Hephaestus caught his wife Aphrodite and the god Ares in the act of infidelity (Homer, 8. 300-400), the gods decreed that Aphrodite must pay penance for her wrongdoing and provide an end to adultery. To do this, Aphrodite chose one of her children, Hetaira, and sent her to the East to kill a scholar by the name of Vatsyayana. Although he was wealthy and educated, all Vatsyayana ever thought about was seducing women. But Vatsyayana lacked moderation and was not content with seducing only free woman but also the wives of others. (Vatsyayana, 5.2) If he was left alive, he would pass on his methods to unruly men for generations to”

“What a backwards country,” a man interjected, “if the role of men was to seduce women, and not the other way around.”

“Indeed,” Aspasia continued, “this was against the natural order of the gods, for the power of seduction was only meant to fall to the daughters of Aphrodite. When Hetaira first arrived in the East, she was met with unbearable heat, for the lust of Vatsyayana and men like him burned uncontrollably. Even in death, the desires of men were so hot that their wives were forced to lay on their funeral pyres to satisfy them (Duiker and Speilvogel, 47).”

Aspasia had almost vomited when she saw the widow writhing in the flames. Even if she had not been recruited by Aphrodite to kill Vatsyayana, the sight had filled her with so much disgust and rage that she would have murdered any man who stood watching as the woman burned to death. Aspasia had screamed at the man next to her, imploring him to pull the woman out of the flames. The man had merely told her to be quiet. He said that to pull the woman out would be to violate dharma and the ancient custom of King Rama. He said that the great god of fire Agni was purifying her (Narayan, 149), and that the Ganges would bring salvation to her ashes (Narayan, 17). But the image of that young woman in the flames would forever haunt Aspasia, no matter how many times she retold her experience with Vatsyayana as a myth.

“It was at one of these funerals that Vatsyayana first saw Hetaira (Vatsyayana, 5.2). Even among the screams of the burning woman, he was enamored by Hetaira and could think of nothing else besides her beauty and fair skin.”

At that moment, Aspasia knew what had to be done. For better or for worse, she was committed to her mission. She was already enraged at the docility of the men around her, but when she saw Vatsyayana staring at her, pulling at his moustache and biting his lip while a woman died (Vatsyayana, 5.2), she abandoned all divine incentive. She was going to kill Vatsyayana for herself, for the simple fact that he was too busy failing at flirting to give the dying woman any respect.

“What evil!” Phryne pulled Aspasia out of her memories. “At our funerals, Athenian woman are commended for mourning in moderation (Thucydides). Vatsyayana must truly have been immoderate to think of seducing a woman during a funeral like that!”

“Indeed,” Aspasia replied, “Before Hetaira, men like Vatsyayana would often attempt to seduce women in public at marriage ceremonies, sacrifices, festivals, and funerals (Vatsyayana, 5.2). In order to prevent these holy days from being defiled, Hetaira invented the symposium. Now, if men desired to indulge themselves in seduction, they would do so inside the andron after festivals. But back to the story of Vatsyayana,” Aspasia took a sip from the kylix. “After the funeral, Vatsyayana invited Hetaira back to his house.”

Aspasia had no other option than to accept. Aphrodite had dropped her in a foreign land at a funeral with no provisions or accommodations besides a vial of hemlock and the order that Aspasia always refer to herself as a married woman whose husband was travelling. But where was Aspasia to stay? It was either Vatsyayana’s guest house or the street, and the closer she stayed to him, the faster she could kill him and return to Pericles.

“At his home,” Aspasia continued, “Vatsyayana and Hetaira were accompanied by many other men and women. Even though his goal was to seduce Hetaira, Vatsyayana refused to speak to her directly. Instead, he held conversation with the other men about her, hoping to stir up her interest (Vatsyayana, 5.2).”

The only emotion stirred up was hate. Aspasia had entertained the elite of Athens. Socrates and his disciples had even traveled to her home to hear her speak (Plutarch, 24.3), but Vatsyayana would not even address her while she sat in the same room.

“Women and children were also in the room. Whenever a woman would sit near Vatsyayana, he would ignore her and feign sleep (Vatsyayana, 5.2). However,” Aspasia took a deep sip from the kylix, “the most disturbing and immoderate habit of Vatsyayana was concerning children. When a child approached him, he would not hold back from embracing and kissing him in an attempt to show his affection to Hetaira (Vatsyayana, 5.2).”

Aspasia had never believed that the gods had given women a greater love for children until she witnessed how Vatsyayana acted around them (Xenophon). Now she never wanted to see a child and a man in the same room again.

“This evil of Vatsyayana disturbed Hetaira so much that when she invented the symposium, she only allowed men and other daughters of Aphrodite to reside inside the andron. Therefore, the women and children would be free from the seduction of men like Vatsyayana and able to pursue arête in their own tasks, the women by weaving and the children by learning their daily lessons.

“Hetaira stayed in the guest house of Vatsyayana for a time, waiting for the opportune moment to employ her cunning metis and dispose of him. In the attempt to seduce her, he gifted her with a small sum of money and a portion of nuts native to that region. Vatsyayana used this as an excuse to visit her at his leisure, as he would take out a portion of that money or some betel nuts during every visit (Vatsyayana, 5.2). But Hetaira was never paid for her service. This is why the daughters of Aphrodite take a fee for their time, since Hetaira decreed that men should only visit them on their own terms.”

The only reason Aspasia had agreed to such a demeaning task was for her end goal. As a youth, she had arrived at Athens as a foreigner and a nobody. Now, she was an independent business owner, as she maintained her own house of hetairai (Plutarch, 24.3). But in the country of Vatsyayana, Aspasia had no way to distinguish herself besides supervising his betel nuts.

“The day came when Hetaira intended to remove the evil seducer Vatsyayana from the world. He visited the guest house, and in conversation with her, he requested one of his betel nuts. But Hetaira had poisoned the betel nuts by soaking them in hemlock. Once Vatsyayana chewed on the nut, the inner fire that had filled the man with lust and passion was snuffed out. For her service to Aphrodite, Hetaira returned to Athens and held the first symposium, quelling the fire of men by the services of the daughters of Aphrodite. They were then named hetairai and now continue to uphold moderation in Athens by their metis in speech and arête in body and mind…”

If anything good came from Aspasia’s mission, it was the Myth of Hetaira and Vatsyayana. Aspasia had seen the dangers of a world where women were treated as a means to an end and burned once their usefulness was depleted. She would not allow herself to ignore the horrors she had seen in the East. Her encounter with Vatsyayana had also provided her with the perfect myth to justify the necessity of hetairai in Athens.

“and so ends the Myth of Hetaira and Vatsyayana,” Aspasia concluded, justifiably proud of herself. But the andron was completely silent as the early rays of dawn peeked through the windows. All the men and other hetairai had fallen asleep during Aspasia’s myth. All but one. On a couch, Phyrne sat upright, the head of a sleeping man resting on her lap. She stared at Aspesia with amazement in her eyes and smug grin on her face.

“So, Hetaira,” Phryne said, smiling at her teacher, “was Vatsyayana much to look at?”

Works Cited

Duiker, William J. and Spielvogel, Jackson J. The Essential World History, 7th Edition. Boston: Wadsworth, 2014. Print.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. London: Penguin Classics, 1997. Kindle Edition.

Narayan, R.K. The Ramayana. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Print.

Plato. Republic. Trans. C. D. C. Reeve. Indianopolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 2004. Print.

Plutarch. Life of Pericles. trans. Bernadotte Perrin. London: Harvard University Press, 1916. Perseus Digital Library. Web. 9 Dec. 2018.

Thucydides. Pericles’ Funeral Oration. trans. Richard Hooker, 1996. Human Rights Library— University of Minnesota. Web. 9 Dec. 2018.

Vatsyayana. Kama Sutra. Bibliomania. Web. 9 Dec. 2018.

Xenophon. Oeconomicus. trans. E.C. Marchant. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923. (taken from EWH page 101)

1. kylix: drinking cup used in symposia

2. andron: the room used for hosting symposia