Permission to Speak? Cleobulina/Eumetis in Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages and Mary in the Pistis Sophia

In his life, Plutarch publicly claims to have had intellectual conversations with women such as Clea, the dedicatee of both De Iside et Osiride and Mulierum virtutes. Within the Lives women are permitted reported speeches, and his work Lacaenarum Apophthegmata preserves the bons mots of brave women. Yet, in his multiple philosophical dialogues, none of these philosophical or verbal women are allowed to carry on conversations out loud while “on-stage.” Plutarch’s Septem sapientium convivium provides the clearest example of this avoidance. Cleobulina/Eumetis, although depicted as wanting to speak, maintains silence while Aesop speaks up for her, quoting her previous speech, and leaving her maidenly modesty intact. In this essay, I contrast Plutarch’s use of silent women in his dialogues with the Christian dialogue gospels written between the second to fourth centuries CE, which sometimes depicted female disciples in privileged conversation with the resurrected Jesus. As in Plutarch’s Septem sapientium convivium, their verbal participation is resisted by some of the men present within the fictional world but speaking rights are granted to them from Jesus himself. In particular, I will examine the roles played by Mary in the Pistis Sophia (third century CE). Plutarch’s strategies of ventriloquism are abandoned in these early Christian dialogic texts. This was to herald a new period of dialogic writing, when women would begin to be depicted “on-stage” speaking in their own voices. Examining the “hinge generation” of Plutarch and the dialogic gospels will illuminate the causes of this change in generic expectation.

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Research Award, “The Female Voice in Ancient Philosophical Dialogues (DE220100854).

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