Religious Women in Greece and
Rome
1. Religious women in Greece
and Rome
2. Introducing Anderson pp. 2466
Greek Women in Religion
• Pomeroy’s description of three cults in which
women were prominent emphasizes several
features of women’s history:
– The close association with sexuality – virgins involved
in purification rituals, for instance
– From sexuality to reproduction – women in
Thesomorphian fertility ritual
– Production: weaving a new robe for Athena every four
years (two girls between 7 and 11) Why? What has
not yet “happened” to their bodies?
Importance of the rituals?
• Pomeroy claims that
when one woman was
rejected to serve as
kanēphoroi, her brother
Harmodius and his friend
Aristogiton killed
Hipparchus, Pisistratus’
son
• They were both killed for
their assassination
Mother-Daughter Ceremony
• Pomeroy also looks at two cult
festivals to Demeter – Mother
nature
• She hid her daughter, Korē or
Persephone, away in a cave
where the “maiden worked in
wool”
• However, intrigued by the
narcissus, she wandered away
from her mother and was
captured by Hades
Demeter and wheat stalks
Why women’s rituals?
• Pomeroy suggests two
reasons:
– Matriarchy
– Natural connection between
birth and fertility
• She ignores, however, the high
value on virginity, the constant
affirmation of women’s daily
roles and expectations in the
rituals (at work, serving,
maintaining a good reputation
in order to participate, etc.)
Korē
Roman religion
• For Roman women, “participation in religion could be
both an obligation and a pleasure.” (Pomeroy, 205)
• Two categories, religious ceremonies native to Rome
and “Oriental” imports, such as Isis rituals
• For Roman women, unlike Greek, participation was
much more “categorized”:
–
–
–
–
Plebian and patrician
Respectable women and disreputable
Age, free or slave, etc.
young virgin, celibate adult, wife, wife married only once (univira)
and widow
Fortuna – goddess of fortune
• To Pomeroy, Romans
used religious
sanctions to promote
socially desirable
behaviour
• Guaranteed fruits of
the earth and
women’s physical
maturation and sexual
fulfillment
Men’s commentary on women’s
religion
• Livy’s writing demonstrate that he served
Augustus’ marital principles (cults centered
on child-bearing, chastity and family)
• Juvenal satirized women’s participation in
the rituals, suggesting that while a
ceremony was on, women could drink and
make lewd gestures (etc.!!!) but he did not
criticize the Vestal Virgins
Vestal Virgins
• Vestals lasted from about 600
BCE to 394 CE
• “Persecution” of the vestals in
times of political strife shares
the belief in the close
relationship between the virtue
of women and the welfare of
the political state
• Commentators include:
Aristotle, Livy and Tacitus,
speaking of several states and
the women’s lack of virtue the
major contribution to the fall of
these states (Sparta, Etruria,
Rome)
Vestal virgin statues (Rome)
Emancipated women?
• “The lives of Vestals were
severely regulated, but in
some respects they were the
most emancipated women in
Rome” (213)
• The XII Tables gave these
women the legal right to be
freed of pater familias
• They could drive through
Rome in a chariot
• They had preferred seating at
theatre and games
• Yet they became increasingly
difficult to find
Ceres and Tellus
ceres
• Both associated with
agriculture and human
fecundity
• Both were goddesses of
marriage
• Roman expansion
assimilated Ceres with
Demeter (syncretism) and
the myths and rites of
Demeter/Ceres were
performed by women
Tellus
• Tellus, Terra Mater – the earth mother (as with Greek Gaia or Ge)
• Three separate festivals during the year for her
Oriental cults
• Isis cult is very different
• It addressed the emotional
and religious needs of both
men and women
• Isis could be all things to all
people and thus;
• Henotheistic “belief in one
god without denying the
existence of others”
• Wife, mother, whore, supreme
Egyptian god in Hellenistic
and Roman worlds
Mithras
• On the ultra-male
side, one group not
interested in Isis were
Roman soldiers, who
instead followed the
cult of masculinity and
militancy found in
Mithras
Mithras slaying a bull
Epilogue
• To Pomeroy, “the women who are known to us are those
who influenced matters of interest to men” (228)
• Prostitutes, political women and masculine women are
the most prominent – do you agree?
• “In this account, I have attempted to find about the
realities of women’s existence in the ancient world rather
than concentrate on the images that men had of women”
(229). Did she succeed?
• Confining women to the domestic sphere and the antifemale thought of poets and philosophers are the most
devastating legacies.
Anderson and Zinsser
• Inherited traditions:
• “Despite differences of culture, law, and
circumstance, the Greek, Roman, Celtic,
Germanic, and Hebrew traditions about
women are more similar than they are
different. The bulk of the pre-Christian
traditions inherited about women
subordinate and limit them, seeing women
as inferior to and dependent on men” (25).
Inherited traditions, continued
• “Some of these pre-Christian traditions,
however, consist of images and eras in which
women’s equality, power, and independence
flourished. Never totally erased, they too form
part of the legacy of Europe’s women” (25).
• Christianity’s role: emphasis on equality of
believers came to change a few traditions but,
“The pattern of freedom followed by restriction,
set in the early Christian Church, provided a
model for later Church actions regarding ♀” (25)
Traditions Subordinating
• The written record: Homer, Celtic and
Germanic law, Roman law, the
Pentateuch, all subordinated women as
inferior to and dependent on men
• These became axioms: natural, inevitable,
God-given.
• Women’s bodies: menstruation, uterus,
birth, meant no war, law, government and
much of religion
Male thinkers Subordinating ♀
• Aristotle – scientific authority until 16th
century
• Cicero – jurist – “weakness of intellect”
• Philo – Genesis – female sex irrational
and akin to bestial passions
Women’s inferior bodies
• Menstruation as mysterious,
dangerous, contaminating and
for women, debilitating
• Uterus and reproduction even
more derogatory, a “deformed
male”
• Wandering womb, uterus as
“animal within an animal”
(Plato)
• Hippocrates – the womb
wandered in the body, looking
for love, and bumped into other
parts to cause disease
• “cold” and “moist” not “hot” and
“dry”
Turn outward the woman’s, turn inward, so to
speak, and fold double the man’s, and you
will find the same in both in every respect Galen
Male and Female reproductive organs
as drawn by Andreas Vesalius in
Tabulae Sex Written in xxx
Women’s approved roles-daughter
• Daughter, wife, mother and
widow
• Sidenote: avuncular (from the
uncle’s side)
– Distaff: from the aunt’s side
(what is a distaff?)
• Defined in relation to men,
women were categorized
primarily by their sexual
activity with men” (33)
• Virginity and chastity are
obedience
• Most writing and legends in
these cultures focus on the
girl’s virginity
Women’s approved roles-wife
• “There was nothing casual about the
transfer of authority over a young woman
from one man to another” (36)
• Also, the gift, to compensate the bride’s
family, to provide for the new relationship
• Sexually faithful, fertile, bearing healthy
boys, to manage the household or perform
its duties herself, support her husband’s
military endeavours
Women’s approved roles-mother
• Childlessness was a woman’s fault
• Divorce was usually easy for a man to get if his
wife did not produce children
• Those who had children got into the “double
burden” – performing housework and childcare
and earning extra income
• “The role of the chaste wife and mother, who
was prolific, hardworking, and devoted to her
housekeeping and her family was one of the
most powerful traditions inherited.” (44)
Women’s Dishonour: Slave,
Prostitute and Concubine
• Earliest writings of all cultures
have slave women serving
warrior’s needs
• Celtic and Germanic cultures had
no prostitutes because of slaves
and polygamy
• These women were stigmatized,
marginalized, regulated
• Courtesans: also hostesses and
companions, such as Aspasia
Either up here or down there
Not the norm, from prostitute to Empress of
the Roman Empire in the East
Theodora
Women as men’s enemies-myth
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Myth-list:
Circe (men to swine)
Schylla (rock)
Charybdis (hard place)
Echidna (mother of Cerberus)
Chimera and Sphinx
The Furies
Harpies (birds with women’s
heads)
• Gorgons (women with snake
hair)
• Sigurd (starvation, famine)
• Grendel’s mother (old hag)
Furies
Harpies
Women as enemies-ordinary
• Semonides poem (in Pomeroy) only one
woman of ten types is a good wife-the bee
• Woman as nag
• Standard joke in Greek and Roman
comedies to make fun of wives
• There is no equivalent term or example for
misogyny; misanthropy, interestingly,
means hating humankind (yes, mankind)