Quotes from Thomas Van Nortwick

The need to control others as a prerequisite for male agency presupposed self-control. That imperative, in turn, included both the physical and emotional dimensions of a man's bodily self.

Faced with parts of ourselves that we do not recognize, would like perhaps not to recognize, we deny the kinship, and often lean away from the new and into the old, accentuating the familiar qualities that complement the strange new ones.

because women were also believed to be closer to the raw forces of nature than were males, controlling their power was, for the adult male, part of the larger project of creating human civilization itself.

women had to be controlled and kept from going wild because of their inherent susceptibility to lust; thus men had to exercise aidos, "shame," and sophrosyne, "soundness of mind," to keep women from transgressing the bounds of propriety.

our contemporary ideas about manliness, reflected in action movies and westerns, generally prohibit so-called real men from displaying high emotion, with the exception of anger. John Wayne doesn't cry. By contrast, Achilles, the epitome of manliness in Homer's Iliad, weeps openly and at length over the loss of his friend Patroclus.

As the Greeks saw it, to be a man was to be defined by your ability to exert power in a world articulated through transcendent forces ultimately beyond human control. The apparent futility of this perspective was outweighed by the nobility that came with the struggle.

Regardless of approach, the past holds something valuable for all of us. It is literally the root of who we are, physically through our actual ancestors and culturally in establishing the foundations for our current beliefs and practices in religious, social, domestic, and political arenas. The same ancients that we study were themselves drawn to their own pasts, often asking questions similar to the ones we pose today about our past.