Athenian Women

Daughters of Demeter

Polarities

Limit---Unlimited

One --- Plurality

Right --- Left

Male --- Female

Straight --- Crooked

Light --- Darkness

Good --- Evil

Warm --- Cold

Hard --- Soft

Polarities are a way of understanding a complete phenomenon (e.g. humanity) in light of its naturally opposing elements (e.g. men and women)

“Daughters of Demeter” by Marilyn Katz

Genesis and Generation

Hesiod’s Theogony: from Chaos (characterized by feminine generation and influence), divine order is established by patriarchal authority (Zeus).

Athena represents “the magnitude and beneficence of female potency when submitted to benign male control”

In the polis, human society is characterized by male control over females.

Kyrios: guardian

Epikleros: heiress

Heroes and Heroines

Homer: an ideal marriage-relationship is shown as a “union of complementaries” (Hector and Andromache, Odysseus and Penelope)

“Women are preoccupied with spinning and weaving, with safeguarding the household stores, and with the care of their children; they are responsible for petitioning the gods in time of war and for mourning over the dead, and they are the victims consigned to slavery when the city falls.”

“Man’s job is in the fields, the agora, the affairs of the

city; women’s work is spinning wool,

baking bread, keeping house.”

Women’s Virtues

No man is allowed to sell a daughter or a sister, unless he finds that she is no longer a virgin.

(Solon)

“We have hetairai for pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children and to be the trusted guardians of our household” (Demosthenes)

Hetaira: “companion,” a high-quality prostitute

A hetaira at work

The Ludovisi throne contrasts the modest wife and the very available hetaira in a monument to Aphrodite (c. 460)

“It is better for a woman to remain within than to wander about.”

(Xenophon)

Oikos: household

Women’s Virtues

A woman who travels outside the house must be of such an age that onlookers might ask, not whose wife she is, but whose mother.

(Hyperides)

Women’s Virtues

Your reputation is glorious if you do not prove inferior to your own nature and if there is the least possible talk about you among men, whether in praise or blame.

(Thucydides [Pericles])The memory of your virtue, Theophile, will never die: Self-controlled, good, and industrious, possessing every virtue.

(Funeral epigram)

No finer, greater gift in the world than that...when man and woman possess their home, two minds,two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.

Homer, Odyssey

Women’s Virtues

Everyday Life

Getting water

Courtyard structure of houses

Prevalence of female domestic slaves

Work for pay as something to be avoided if possible: a sign of poverty and / or immodesty

Poor women and slaves in the agora, wealthier women at home

Evidence of women (mostly not in Athens) in professions

Farewell, tomb of Melitte; a good woman lies here. You loved your husband Onesimus; he loved you in return. You were the best, and so he laments your death, for you were a good woman.

And to you farewell, dearest of men; love my children.

Everyday Life

Everyday Life

•Andron (men’s room) = dining room

•Women upstairs but using courtyard

•Shifting domestic usage

Everyday Life

A nice, upper class home

withseparate men’s and women’s

quarters

Everyday Life

When we are young and in our father’s house, I think we live the sweetest life of all of humankind … Now outside my father’s house I am nothing.

(Sophocles [Procne])

Young women:

•Assisting with household tasks

•Education in singing and dancing

•Full of dangerous sexuality – dangerous to themselves and others

Everyday Life

Everyday Life

•Child care central

•Pregnant women seldom if ever depicted

Where we can tell the gender of babies shown in Greek art, they are almost always male

Women’s role was to produce citizen children

But citizenship was important for women too in Athens

Everyday Life

A woman offers her baby to its father

Men had the ability to accept or refuse children born to their household

Infant exposure of unwanted children:

“If it is male, keep it, if it is female, expose it.”

finis