Women and the City of
Athens:
Public/Private Lives and
Images
1.
Primary source analysis
2. Pomeroy 57-74
1. Status
2. Epiklēroi - Dowry, Marriage and Divorce
3. The Propagation of Citizens
4. Biology of Motherhood and Demographic
Speculations
5. Women at Work, Education and Religion
3.
Pomeroy 79-112
Solon and Sumptuary laws
• Sumptuary:
– Regulating or limiting personal expenditures
– Regulating commercial or real-estate activities
– Regulating personal behaviour on moral or
religious grounds
Solon – the law-giver (6th century BCE)
• To Pomeroy, “Solon
institutionalized the distinction
between good women and
whores. He abolished all forms
of self-sale and sale of children
into slavery except one: the
right of the male guardian to
sell an unmarried woman who
had lost her virginity” (57)
• Solon is seen as the first great
lawgiver of Athenian democracy
– one who created laws that
restored order to the city-state
and was designed to protect its
citizens. How did he affect
women’s status?
Historiographic Debate – the status of citizen
women in Classical Athens: a question of sources?
• On the one hand, citizen
women in Greece were
constricted legally and
politically, but had social
status
Electra
with
shorn
hair
– Source: Greek tragic
playwrights such as
Sophocles and Aeschylus
– Evidence: heroines were
respected and not secluded;
they were modeled on
Athenian women living in the
5th c. BCE
Antigone
Historiographic Debate – the status of citizen
women in Classical Athens: a question of sources?
• On the other hand,
women had low social
status
Lysias
Demosthenes
– Source: Attic orators such
as Lysias On the Murder of
Eratostothenes and
Demosthenes Apollodorus
against Neaera
– Evidence: women who
committed crimes yet were
unable to appear in court to
hear the case;
“Those who do not know the past are
doomed to repeat it.” Santayana
• “The fact is – and it is well to state it plainly
– that the Greek world perished from one
main cause, a low ideal of womanhood and
a degradation of women which found
expression both in literature and in social
life. The position of women and the
position of slaves – for the two classes
went together – were the canker-spots
which, left unhealed, brought about the
decay first of Athens and then of Greece”
(F.A. Wright, Feminism in Greek
Literature”, 1923, reprinted 1969)
• Why might this be seen as a parable for
America?
The larger picture – social status and
appropriate sources of evidence
• Pomeroy feels that these scholars have missed
the point:
• “I feel that the issue of status is in itself
misleading, and that the broad range of
scholarly opinion results from treating women as
an undifferentiated mass. It is also blurred by
the unconscious tendency to view the ancient
world in terms of modern values.” (Pomeroy, 60)
Moving beyond essential
differences
• Pomeroy notes that the sources in
Classical Athens can move beyond “rigid
expectations of proper behaviour according
to sex.” (Pomeroy, 60)
• Instead, different standards apply to
different economic and social classes of
women and men (citizens, resident
foreigners, and slaves) (Pomeroy, 60)
• “Political roles in Classical Athens must be
considered in terms of duties rather than
rights” and obligations to family and state
were highest” (Pomeroy, 60)
Duty is honored in
funeral monument to
Hegeso (400 BCE
Epiklēroi – Dowry, marriage and divorce
• “attached to family property”: without
a male heir, it passed to the female to
her husband
• “As a logical consequence of the
woman’s duty to Athens, marriage
and motherhood were considered the
primary goals of every female citizen.”
(62)
• “The Athenians were protective of
their women.” (63)
– Dowry: remained intact for woman’s life
(63)
– Marriage: contract made between men –
purpose of marriage was procreation (64)
– Divorce: easily obtainable on both sides
(?) (64)
Loutophoroi – placed
in the graves of
unwed women
Propagation of Citizenry
• Parentage determined citizenry
– Some anomalies – low number of
males (in times of war, see
Lysistrata) (66)
– “Foreign” women living in Athens
were sometimes preferred by
Athenian men (68)
– This generally occurred during the
reign of Thirty Tyrants – who killed
many young Athenian men who
might have been rivals
Lysistrata – women
withhold sex from
their husbands until
the war ends
Biology of Motherhood and
Demographic Speculation
• Periclean citizenship law was
enacted because of the large
number of citizens (against foreign)
• How to limit birth? “Homosexuality,
anal intercourse, recourse to
prostitutes and slaves or dislike of
women, and the preference for a
sexually inactive wife continued to
be adaptations for population
control.” (68)
• “time-honoured” contraception
assumed – abortion against
Hippocratic oath
• High infant mortality
Pericles and the
golden age of Athens
Women at Work
• Athens was urban – “The effects of urbanization upon women
was to have their activities moved indoors, and to make their
labour less visible and hence less valued.” (71)
• Urban living stressed class difference
• Spinning and weaving were part of upper-class women’s
education (Socrates)
• Unlike Spartan and Gortyn women, Athenian women had little
real control over their property (73)
The original
agora or open
market
Education
• Education:
– Athenian law and practice placed women
as “a veritable child” (74)
– Her only education was the domestic arts,
her virtues, according to Pericles, were
silence, submissiveness, and abstinence
from men’s pleasures.
– Aristotle viewed marriage as “benefactor to
beneficiary”
John William
Godard’s
1905
conception of
ideal Greek
matron
Religion
• “Religion was the major sphere in public
life in which women participated, although
it is necessary to remember that at Athens
cult was subordinate to and an integral
part of the state, and the state, as we have
seen, was in the hands of men.” (75)
– Three major cults: Athena, Demeter and Korē
and Thesmophoria
Religion
Establishing the cult of Athena temple
Demeter priestess with
piglet and kanoun
Religion - Thesmorphia
Day 3 Kalligeneia
(beautiful birth) –
a sacrifice, a
sacred vessel,
and approaching
the shrine
Day 1 Anodos (the way up)
Day 2 Nesteia (day of fasting and
mourning)
Private Life in Classical Athens
• Seclusion of Women: “The separation of the
sexes was spatially emphasized.” (79)
• Proof: “The separation of the sexes was
expressed in private architecture by the
provision of separate quarters for men and
women.” (80)
• Clothing: simple, white but confining –
respectable women wore wool and linen;
prostitutes saffron-dyed and transparent (see
Lysistrata)
Physical Condition of Women
Relief of Artemis at
Brauron, where the
robes of women who
died in childbirth
were burned
• Major fear for women: childbirth
– Medea announced she would prefer to stand in the front line of
battle three times than to give birth to one child. (84)
– Mothers and midwives at childbirth
– Male physicians, if Hippocrates is anything to go by, were not
much use (84)
• Menopause lack of information could suggest high mortality
for women but may mean that they really didn’t “exist”(86)
Sexuality for Citizens
• “The sexual behaviour of citizen women was
regulated by laws – mostly those attributed to
Solon, who was himself a homosexual.” (86)
• Rape or seduction: Male seen as legally guilty
party because active, women passive (86).
Rape carried lower penalty than seduction.
Why?
• Athenian law governed what to do as well as
what not to do (87) How often?
Prostitutes
Aspasia
• “Prostitution flourished in Greece as early as the Archaic period.”
(88)
• Reasons: urbanization, port cities, state-owned brothels
• “Prostitutes were notoriously mercenary” (91)
Images of Women
• Women in Tragedy versus Real
Women
– “If respectable Athenian women were
secluded and silent, how are we to
account for the forceful heroines of
tragedy and comedy?” (93)
– “dramatists examined the multiple
aspects of man’s relationship to the
universe and to society: accordingly,
their examination of another basic
relationship—that between man and
woman—is not extraordinary” (93).
– The discrepancy between lives lived
and drama is worth investigating
Deianira – a
good woman
who takes her
own life after
accidentally
killing her
husband
Heracles (The
Trachiniae by
Sophocles)
Point of coincidence
• “Women were in conflict with the
political principle [of subordinating
the patriarchal family under the
patriarchal state], for their interests
were private and family-related.
Thus, drama often shows them
acting out of women’s quarters, and
concerned with children, husbands,
fathers, brothers, and religions
deemed more primitive and familyoriented than the Olympian.” (97)
Ismene –
stay-atThebes sister
of Antigone in
Sophocles’
Antigone
Masculine and Feminine
Characters
• Womanly behaviour by
submissiveness and modesty (98)
• Masculine women’s portrayal was fully
developed in Sophocles Antigone
– She acts “as a man” and says, “For had I
been a mother, or if my husband had died,
I would never have taken on this task
against the city’s will.” (100)
Antigone
confronts
Creon
Euripides’ women
• Most challenging image to confront:
– Only playwright to gain the reputation of
misogyny because of Aristophanes (105)
– But also, “Women are the best devisers of
evil”; “Women are a source of sorrow”
• To Pomeroy, however, “I can scarcely
believe that so subtle a dramatist as
Euripides, who called into question
traditional Athenian beliefs and prejudices
surrounding foreigners, war, and the
Olympian gods, would have intended his
audience simply to accept the misogynistic
maxims.” (107)
• Does she provide evidence? No
Medea
Aristophanes
• A bridge between
Euripides and Plato, his
works were comedies
• He followed Aristotle’s
axiom to present people
as worse than they really
are
• Lysistrata women are
bibulous and lustful (113)
Utopian Literature
• Plato’s is the best example:
– “Greek utopias are invariably stratified by
classes.” (115)
– Plato’s highest regard is for citizen women
as guardians
– Utopians tried to eliminate friction in society
– women represented friction because of
sexual monopoly, thus the hope to separate
the body from the mind
– He prescribed the same curriculum for
women as men – his women were very
“Spartan” (117)
Plato, who
respected
strong women
– with
Aristotle, who
felt they were
made to be
ruled by me