Walking too fast, talking too loud: democratic freedom and the citizen’s body in classical Athens

Pericles in his Funeral Oration proudly proclaims tolerance of divergent lifestyles in private life as part of Athenian democratic values (Thuc. 2, 37): this is of course an ideological claim, and it may be wondered how far this held good in reality. Certainly it is clear that no norms of dress or appearance were legally imposed, unlike at Sparta, and statements in literary sources about the difficulty of distinguishing citizens visually from other groups are substantially borne out by the evidence of vase-painting. However, oratory makes it clear that differences in physical appearance and behaviour could give rise to prejudice (e.g. Dem. 37, 52, [Dem.] 45, 77), and comedy in particular fixes on characteristic such as hair, skin and voice in its ridicule of individuals. Similar tensions can be observed in attitudes to physical capability and disability and likewise suggest limits to social tolerance of bodily individualism, at least in civic contexts.