ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a short treatise within the Hippocratic Corpus known as the Peri Partheniōn, which describes an illness that predominantly affects premenarchal girls approaching the appropriate age for marriage. Affected girls experience, among other symptoms, visions of daimones that compel them to attempt suicide and an erotically charged desire for death. Examining closely both the visions and the desire for death, this chapter argues that both are inherently tied to the socially constructed “nature” of ancient Greek girls, which conditioned them to imagine the transitional period as a time of great sexual and social vulnerability and instilled in them a fear of failure to transition fully into adulthood. Through suicide, the girls express their own agency in defining their status. They themselves assert that their death at this age will not make them into a categorically incomplete restless spirit, like the daimones of their visions, but rather, their death and transfer into another realm is like the transfer and transformation of marriage that Persephone, the mythical bride of Hades, experienced.
