Chapter Five:
For the Good of the polis: The Working Woman in Ancient Greece
Wives of citizen men in Athens were relegated to the oikos for the majority of their lives.1
They did not need to earn money; therefore, their husbands took care of the economics of the
household. However, they did contribute to the welfare of the oikos through the education of the
young and through making clothing for the members of the family. 2 This, although it had no
monetary value, did contribute towards the well being of the oikos and, therefore, the polis itself.
If a woman was not the wife of a citizen, then she had much more freedom, but she also had to
make money for herself and her family. Sometimes, if she were a foreigner, she would be a
slave, a midwife, or she was compelled to sell her body as a hetaera.3
Outside of Athens, women from many different classes had the freedom, and sometimes the
necessity, to seek employment. In Sparta, Lesbos, and many of the Greek isles, women were
allowed to attend academies, write poetry, and even on occasion contribute towards the political
atmosphere of the polis. One occupation that was available to citizen women in any city was that
of priestess, and this was usually a much exalted position. Caring for the religious houses and
temples of the city was deemed salient to the well being of the polis as a whole. So, even though
citizen women had been subordinated in Greek life to the domestic sphere, there were
opportunities for her to contribute to the city, and women on a whole were able to make an
impact on society monetarily, politically, and philosophically. The polis would not have existed
without her.
1
Pierre Brule, Women of Ancient Greece (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003) 88
Elizabeth Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994)
30
3
Pierre Brule, Women of Ancient Greece, 1
2
1
Female Education
Eva Cantarella cited the Classical Greek philosopher Theophrastus as saying “the education
of women was necessary, on the condition that it be limited to what is necessary to know to run a
household; further instruction would just make them lazy, more talkative, and indiscreet.” 4 This
was a view shared by most other philosophers of the time including Aristotle, 5 women were
supposed to be ignorant of the social world, they were assumed to be too weak- minded to be
able to handle the workings of the polis. Therefore, the education of a woman in Athens was
severely limited.
However, this did not mean that she was illiterate. It was important to know how to write and
compute basic mathematics in order to oversee the household accounts.6 However, she would
not have learned beyond the basic language and certainly would not have been taught the
histories, rhetoric, or philosophy like her male counterpart. There are only a few examples of
women who were taught beyond these rudimentary skills and these were either foreigners in the
polis, related to philosophers, or lived far enough away from the polis as to not be strictly
regulated by the men around them.7
Women of Sparta were taught in the gymnasium so that they could improve their strength
along with the men, but after the age of eighteen, she was supposed to marry. This, however, did
not mean that she was not educated. Sarah B. Pomeroy writes that, contrary to Athens, “the
education of boys was devoted to developing military skills, leaving little time for liberal arts.
Girls, however, … learned reading and writing, as well as other aspects of mousike (music,
Eva Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters: The Role & Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity,
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) 57
5
Cheryl Glenn “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript: Refiguring Aspasia in the History of Rhetoric,” College
Composition and Communication, May 1994 (45:2) 185
6
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity, (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995) 74
7
Kathleen Wider “Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek World: Donning the Mantle,” Hypatia,
Spring, 1986 (1:1) 24
4
2
dancing, poetry.)”8 Therefore, women in Sparta were not just educated more than their sisters in
Athens; they were the intellectuals of their polis. Consequently, women were able to contribute
to the good of the city in many different ways, inside and outside of the home.
Work in the oikos- Weaving
The mothers taught the education of running a household to the daughters and this included
the making of family garments. Weaving was an arduous task that took many hours of scrutiny
to ensure that the garments were properly made. It was an exalted task for the women; ladies
from all social backgrounds took part in this pastime. It was so important to the workings of the
oikos, that it was deemed a salient ritual that all women partook in. Moreover, weaving was such
a large part of a woman’s daily life that it was included in mythology and stood for a metaphor
for the work of women as a whole.9
Within the household, the woman would be able to complete garments for her immediate
family: her husband and children, plus slave women would help with garments for the rest of the
oikos. However, some women sold their clothes to outsiders. This would not have been easy for
those women sequestered within the home, but she usually had help from those around her.
“Whereas the women in their homes did every step from preparing the raw wool to weaving and
sewing the cloth, the men typically broke the work up by specialties. There were wool combers,
flax preparers, spinners, weavers, and tailors.” 10 Thus, the man oversaw the weaving that a
woman completed in her household as “woman’s” work.
We do, however, have evidence of some women in Athens who worked at the loom alone for
profit. Andria, of Athens was not the wife of a citizen; therefore, she was not sequestered and
8
Sarah B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 5
Barber, Women’s Work, 30
10
Barber, Women’s Work, 277
9
3
could sell her wares at the market.11 She was a businesswoman who made her own cloth and
made profit from it. Her skills are evidence of the philanthropic choices that were available to
women in Ancient Greece. However, this was still a woman’s job and she was allowed to sell in
Athens because she was a foreigner. She sold cloth, which was considered a woman’s livelihood.
The cloth, therefore, was associated with the feminine: so much so, that we see evidence of
women and weaving from the Bronze Age of Greece all the way to the Classical Age. What this
proved, was that women from all social backgrounds and locales in Ancient Greece had
something to contribute to the good of the household.
Moreover, women did not just weave for garments and daily necessities, they wove stories.
The oral story- telling tradition in Ancient Greece arose in the time of Homer and it was still
strong in Classical Athens. However, at this point in history, the storytellers had started to
express their words in different ways: in plays, on paper, and also on woven tapestries made by
the women of the polis. “We know that Greek women sometimes did produce large storytelling
cloths and that some were kept in the treasuries of the Greek temples.”12 This acknowledgement
of superior workmanship reflects the affinity that the Greeks felt not only for their myths, but
also for the abilities of the women who made the cloths.
The fact that these tapestries were held in the temples shows that the Greeks revered them as
sacred. In fact, weaving was so closely related to religion, that two goddesses were the keepers
of weavers: Athena and Aphrodite. Weaving was so important to the lives of women, that the
gods blessed their work. 13 Athena was the patron goddess of weaving and spinning and,
therefore, some women owed their livelihood to her. “She was worshipped as a goddess of
handicrafts, and in particular as the inventor of spinning and weaving,… the goddesses’
Barber, Women’s Work, 278
Barber, Women’s Work, 153
13
Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters, 109
11
12
4
association was commemorated at the Great Panathenaea, an Athenian festival celebrated in her
honor.”14 Women not only owed their livelihood to the goddess, but she also gave them a reason
to be seen in public. Religious festivals were one of the few occasions in which citizen women
could socialize.
These gifts bestowed by the goddess onto women have their origins in the very beginning of
Greek literature when Hesiod wrote of the very first woman: Pandora. Her unfortunate fate, like
Eve, was to be the bringer of all sin, disease, and pain to mankind. Hesiod described her as the
scourge of men, adding onto the already masochistic treatment of women in his Works and Days,
but he did take a small amount of time to discuss her gifts and talents. Zeus “bade famous
Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of
humankind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden shape, like to the immortal goddess in face; and
Athene to teach her needlework and the weaving of the varied web.”15
Therefore, weaving had not only graced the lives of women since the dawn of time, but it
was a skill to be worshipped and nourished as a gift direct from Olympus. Weaving continued to
be associated in the myths of Homer and its relationship to women was again exacerbated. In
The Odyssey, Odysseus landed upon the paradise island of the enchantress Circe, and he was
bewitched by her woman’s world. “Low she sang in her beguiling voice, while on her loom she
wove ambrosial fabric sheer and bright, by that craft known to the goddesses of heaven. No one
would speak.” 16 Circe, then, emitted two of men’s greatest fears; female independence and
inescapable sexuality.17
14
Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (London: British Museum Press, 1995) 26
Hesiod, Works and Days, Theogony, and The Shield of Heracles trans. Hugh G. Evelyn- White
(Digireads.com, 2009) 36
16
Homer, The Odyssey, X 234-6, Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (New York, W.W. Norton &
Co. 1999) 322
17
Bruce Thornton, Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (San Francisco: Encounter
Books, 2000)
15
5
When Circe weaved, she was not like Odysseus’ wife Penelope, weaving frantically to save
her marriage, she was weaving for leisure, for her own enjoyment and this had nothing to do
with man. Therefore, Circe was called a witch and a charmer. She was unnatural. All the women
in Athens wove because they either needed to earn money or had no other way of passing the
time: Circe wove as part of her entrapment. This serves to shed light on why Athenian men kept
women away from the rest of society; they were afraid to be emasculated, or cuckolded if they
cheated on them. If they wove in the privacy of their own houses, they were harmless.
Moreover, weaving was not just associated with the chaste virgin goddess Athena, it was also
the pastime of the most sexual, and scariest, goddess: Aphrodite. This goddess of passion and
lovemaking was born of the castrated genitals of Uranus, a horrific and ungainly fact for men. 18
Moreover, Aphrodite not only represented castration, she also made a cuckold of her husband
Hephaestus when she lay with Ares. Thereby, Aphrodite brought passionate love, sex, and
everything that was pleasurable in a marriage, but she also represented men’s deepest fears of
feminine power.19 That she also patronized the weaving of women again added to the dimension
of this popular pastime.
Aphrodite’s image of the Venus de Milo found on the island of Melos depicts the goddess
with her arms outspread, Elizabeth Barber, suggested that she was depicted in the act of weaving.
“The musculature of what is left of her arms suggests that she stood in the typical position for
spinning thread in the Greek manner. Spinning was a symbol for the creation of new life in
Greece and elsewhere.”20 So, Aphrodite did not only spin, blessing the work of the women, but
she also symbolized the birth of a child, another important part of the woman’s life.
18
Morford & Lenardon, Classical Mythology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 63
Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, 8
20
Barber, Women’s Work, 237
19
6
These metaphors of the act of cloth- making add to the various dimensions of this allimportant task. We can see this weaving as a prelude to the making of a net, or snare, as Pierre
Brule suggests 21 Hesiod thought when he gave Pandora this skill. Moreover, one could see
weaving as the downfall of man, when Deaianeira wove the cloak that killed Heracles 22 or one
could see it as an element of sophrosyne (self- control) of the woman. Her hands are busy, so
they cannot be busy elsewhere; either way, this occupation of the female was a double- edged
sword to the typical Athenian man.
This was not true, however, of the Spartan women who wove. Pomeroy states that usually it
was the slaves of citizen women in Sparta who did most of the weaving, when the citizen women
did weave, it was for ritual purposes. “Spartan women could weave and supervise their slaves’
work, but they were not encouraged to weave endlessly, nor did their reputations depend upon
it.”23 This serves us to understand that Spartan women were trusted more than their Athenian
counterparts; they were allowed out into society and had other things to occupy themselves with
besides weaving. Furthermore, Pomeroy evokes that Spartan women did not need to weave as
often as the Athenians because their clothing was less elaborate and more revealing and,
therefore, they had less work to do.24
What this discussion does arise, however, is who does perform the weaving in Sparta: the
slave girls. Even though they were bought and had to adhere to what the woman of the house
demanded, she was still female, and she still performed work that was essential to the running of
the oikos and the polis itself.
21
Brule, Women of Ancient Greece, 36
Mary R. Lefkowitz, Women in Greek Myth (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) 49
23
Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 30
24
Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 31
22
7
Work in the Oikos- Slavery
Slaves were essential to the oikos.25 The female slave assisted with the household chores, the
rearing of the young children, and, if they were city- state owned slaves, worked in the city’s
various public buildings for the good of the polis as a whole. The women were either born into
slavery or had been captured as prisoners of war; these slaves were known as metics.26 Their lack
of citizen status meant that they depended on other families for economic and sheltering needs.
The metics were especially important to the Athenian women. The wives of citizens spent a
lot of time in the company of other female slaves, as they were often robbed of the company of
other women of the same class. This led, on occasion, to strong friendships between the mistress
and the female slave. Robert Garland wrote “Scenes of mistresses and maid figure prominently
on Athenian grave monuments, testimony to the fact that the two spent much time together in the
gynaikeion, or women’s quarters.”27 The female slave would help her mistress to dress, to bathe,
to weave, and to take care of the offspring of the citizen; therefore, the presence of the female
slave was salient to the running of the oikos in Athens.
Furthermore, the slave woman would have to step outside of the oikos for various essential
needs of her mistress. As the wife could not venture forth into the marketplace, her maid would
have to purchase any essential goods for her. The slave, therefore, despite being owned by the
citizen, had more physical freedom than her mistress. This ironic status of the female slave
enabled her to venture forth where her mistress could not, but still barred her from indulging in
any leisurely activity or taking part in any publicly sanctioned religious festivals. She was able to
roam the streets, yet she was unprotected from violence, and the goods, which she purchased,
were not to be enjoyed by her, but by her mistress.
25
Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, 96
Robert Garland, Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Inc. 1998) 72
27
Garland, Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks, 71
26
8
If a female slave were lucky enough to have a pleasant mistress, her life would not have been
too bad. She lived in the gynaikeion with the other females of the household and shared in the
“woman’s work” available there, but she was forever dependent on the whims of her mistress
and her master also. If a slave was unhappy with her situation, she could never escape the
clutches of her masters. She would be branded and, if she ran away, was more than likely to be
found again and flogged. If the slave wanted to complain against any abuse, she was denied a
voice in court.28 Therefore, the lives of the slaves depended utterly on the view of the master.
Moreover, the female slave did not even have control over her own body, or her own familial
condition. “Only specially- favored slaves were allowed to marry and rear children, and casual
sexual relations with fellow- slaves may also have been prohibited in most cases.”29 Therefore,
not only did the slave not have control over where she lived or what she did to earn a living, she
also had no control over her personal life. There is also evidence that the female slave may be
bought simply for the pleasure of her master,30 thereby, sometimes diminishing the friendship
with her mistress.
The female slave in Athens was expected to perform any duty required of her. She was a
commodity; therefore, she had to be of some use to the oikos. “Slave women contributed to their
owner’s economic prosperity by working as domestics or in manufacture or in service industries
such as prostitution.”31 So the female slave in Athens, even though her physical boundaries were
wider than her mistress, was under the complete control of her master.
The Spartan slaves, on the other hand, did have more choices available to them, but they
were brutalized more routinely than their Athenian counterpart. The helot population in Sparta
28
Garland, Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks, 72
Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, 146
30
Cantarella, Pandora’s Daughters, 39
31
Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 78
29
9
was said to have numbered around 200,000 in the early fourth century BCE.32 This meant that
the slave population more than doubled that of the Spartan citizens. Because the Spartan men
were constantly training their young men in their militaristic milieu, or contributing towards the
political atmosphere of the city, more or less everything else was left to the running of the helots.
There were so many helots that, unlike Athens, they did not belong to any particular
household, but to the state. Therefore, they had more freedom to marry and have children, but
they were brutally subjugated or maltreated by the Spartans at any given opportunity. 33 Any
citizen man could sexually abuse helot women in Sparta and, because she had no legal rights,
neither her nor her husband could do anything about it. The close proximity between the female
slave and sexual license can be related to the one method where female slaves could earn their
own money. Even if the women were not slaves, but were noncitizens, the most popular
occupation for the women of Greece without protection was prostitution.
Women in the Public Service: Prostitution
Prostitutes or hetaerae were a prolific force in Athens in particular. The career offered a
monetary source available to metic women that enabled them some form of freedom. For the
most part, the brothels were run by previous hetaerae and this offered them money in later life.
Other women, of higher social status or education, were lucky enough to be the specific
concubine of a wealthy aristocrat or politician. These women were the personal companions to
those men who could not bring their wives to social occasions. So, even though prostitution was
not the most exalted position, those hetaerae that managed this level of concubinage were
considered rather lucky. They attended symposia, were taken care of in terms of dress,
32
33
Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 101
Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 96
10
accessories, and housing, and they were sometimes fortunate enough to be in the company of the
great minds of the western world.
Perhaps the most famous prostitute of Ancient Greece was Aspasia who was the personal
concubine of Pericles for most of her adult life. Aspasia was not only beautiful; she was also
incredibly intelligent. The philosopher Socrates praised her mind, on more than one occasion,
and she was even consulted by Pericles himself on matters of state. Plutarch wrote in his Life of
Pericles “Aspasia, some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her
knowledge and skill in politics. Socrates himself would sometimes go to visit her, and some of
his acquaintance with him.”34 Aspasia was one of the lucky metics in Athens. She was not just
courted for her body, but her mind, a rarity for a woman in Ancient Greece, no matter what her
social status.
Aspasia had come to Athens by way of Miletus, which was in modern day Turkey.
According to Cheryl Glenn, Miletus was “a cultivated city renowned for its literacy and
philosophies of moral thought and nature.”35 Therefore, Aspasia would have been subjected to
philosophy and education in a way that the citizen women of Ancient Athens were not. It is not
surprising that Pericles was enchanted with her mind. Furthermore, Aspasia did not keep a
monopoly as Athens’ most educated courtesan, she even educated younger concubines in the art
of speaking so that they too could further their careers.36
The price of being such a high profile, educated woman in Athens, however, was her
reputation or her kleos. The only real possession that a wife of a citizen owned in Athens was her
reputation, and the restrictions placed upon her meant that guarding that reputation was salient to
Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives: Life of Pericles trans. John Dryden (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006) 243
Cheryl Glenn “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript: Refiguring Aspasia in the History of Rhetoric,” College
Composition and Communication, May, 1994 (45:2) 181
36
Glenn, “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript,”184
34
35
11
her life. Glenn wrote that, despite the appreciation of Socrates and his fellow philosophers,
others saw her as “self- indulgent, licentious, and immoral.”37 This was more than likely due to
the fact that Aspasia was not only conqueror of the women’s sphere of beauty and sexual desire,
but she had also breached into the world of man: intelligence, politics, and society. This was
frowned upon by most citizens of the time. Aspasia had dared to step out of her place.
What Aspasia represents to us is the fact that women could, given the opportunity, contribute
towards the good of the polis itself, not just as a child bearer, or as chattel, but as a cosmopolitan
mind capable of thought as potent as the men around her.
The Philosopher/ Poetess- The Female Thinkers of Ancient Greece
Aristotle, student of Plato, very rarely gave women any credence in terms of intelligence.
Glenn states “Aristotle makes no provision for the intellectual woman, except for his nod to
Sappho: “Everyone honors the wise… The Mytilenaeans honor Sappho, though she was a
woman.””38 This condescending “nod” to Sappho is typical of most men in Athens during the
fourth and fifth centuries in Ancient Greece, but the fact that women like Sappho and
philosophers like Hypatia existed, shows that women were sometimes given the opportunity to
learn, and when they were, they took full advantage of the ground given to them.
Kathleen Wider managed to find evidence of sixty- five women philosophers in Ancient
Greece including the wife of Socrates, Xanthippe. 39 Wider alludes to the fact that the
Pythagoreans were particularly generous in terms of their education and the women in their
neighborhoods. She states that women and men were admitted equally to their schools.40 The
Glenn, “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript,” 186
Glenn, “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript,” 192
39
Wider, “Women Philosophers,” 21
40
Wider, “Women Philosophers,” 26
37
38
12
Pythagoreans were based around the Mediterranean Sea, and the school in Crotona, Italy shows
“clear indications of a revival of matriarchal conditions.”41 This shows that women were not only
admitted to the schools, but they were even given power and teaching authority within them. The
philosopher Theano, the wife of Pythagoras, taught philosophy to female students and Arête, the
daughter of Aristippus, even owned her own philosophy school. Yet, these women were special
cases. They were, in the first case, related to male philosophers and were given opportunities to
witness first hand the value of education. Moreover, these women did not live in Athens, where
the most stringent restrictions were placed upon women.
Perhaps the most famous and celebrated female poet/ philosopher was Sappho, who was born
on the isle of Lesbos around 630BCE. She opened a school of philosophy and poetry for young
girls and the fragments of her poetry that exist reveal a keen mind. She wrote to the gods to
protect her brother in warfare:
“O Cypris and Nereids, grant that
my brother arrives here unharmed
and all that he wants to happen
comes to pass,
and that he atones for all his past errors
and becomes a joy to all his friends.”42
This fragment of poetry from Sappho reveals her knowledge of the violence of warfare and
the sins that come with being a soldier in the Ancient world. Her poetry is filled with images of
golden, utopian dreams and reveals a world that she craves where women were celebrated for
their beauty inside as well as outside. Sappho was lucky enough to be born on the isle of Lesbos
where she was free to write her feelings and to promote the education of young women. Most
women of the age were not given such opportunities.
41
42
Wider, “Women Philosophers,” 27
I.M. Plant, Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Equinox Publishing, 2004) 13
13
Theano, wife of Pythagoras, wrote of the only opportunities most women had to be educated
in Ancient Greece: the advice given to them by older matrons. “For it is good to learn in advance
what you do not know, and to consider the advice of older women as best.” 43 These women
philosophers wrote to advise the women of the future on how they could contribute to the good
of the polis, and whether they did so from their own oikos as a wife or a slave, or from the
position of hetaera, these women were needed for the good of the city. The one occupation
available to women that was exalted above all others was that of a priestess. Her occupation and
her responsibilities are discussed in the next chapter.
43
Plant, Women Writers, 72
14