ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the methodology of the study of masculinity; in particular masculinity in classical Athens. As an area of study, in one sense this is relatively new, and there is some reason to find in novelty the promise of better methodology. Gender-related work necessitates greater awareness of the critics’ position in respect of their material; the subject is politically motivated, and one cannot for long avoid the abyss separating what we want to get out of gender studies and what the evidence will reveal. But in spite of self-awareness, interest in masculinity as a historical topic has clearly arisen from other concerns in our own lives, and we must be wary of thinking that a new disciplinary direction will guarantee critical integrity. One might imagine that by lucky chance, men’s studies arose in a climate where a more self-critical vision of historical work was already becoming a consensus, taking Foucault as the emblem of this good fortune. But this tempting vision of our own credentials is illusory, and cannot safeguard us from the discomfort of potentially destructive enquiries into the assumptions with which we look at ancient man. There was no clean break which heralded the arrival of man as an historical topic; and stated like that, it is embarrassing to think that anything remotely novel or even interesting is involved.
