Term 1: Outline• 1: Who Were the Women of Ancient Greece?

2: Myth & Religion: Athena, maenads3: Sex Goddesses: Aphrodite, Eos (Dawn) & Lady Monsters4: Seminar: The Hymn of Aphrodite5: Images of Greek Women6: Reading Week7: Women in Greece: A Survey8: Seminar: Cities of Women: Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae (Lysistrata), Plato Republic V9: Marriage and Adultery: Lysias 1, On the Murder of Eratosthenes10: Courtesans and Hetairai: Neaera, Theodote

Sex & Gender in Ancient Greece

Who Were the Women of Ancient Greece?

The Beginnings of ScholarshipPomeroy, 1975 – introduced new era of study – ‘Women in Antiquity’

Evidence – The Challenges

• Textual and material culture• Bias in sources & in traditional scholarship• Sources cannot be taken at face value

Literary Testimony

• ‘Grave problems’ with biased sources• Majority of literature produced by men• Range of literature: histories, speeches, legal

documents, tragedy, and comedy

Men Praising Women

It was not clothes, it was not gold that this woman admired during her lifetime; it was her husband and the good sense that she showed in her behaviour. But in return for the youth you shared with him, Dionysia, your tomb is adorned by your husband Antiphilus

Dionysias, Athens 4th Century BC

Men Hating Women

Talking of Pandora; “From her is descended a great pain to mortal men, the race of female women, who live with men, and who cannot put up with harsh poverty, but only with plenty… the man who gets a wife of the wicked sort, lives with undying pain in his heart and his evil is without cure”

– Hesiod, Theogony, 590-612

Men Hating Women

• “The two best days in a woman’s life are when someone marries her and when he carries her dead body to the grave”

– Hipponax, 6th century fragment

Sappho

Attic red-figure vase, 470 BC

When I look at you, fr. 31.G

The man seems to me strong as a god, the man who sits across from you and listens to your sweet talk nearbyAnd your lovely laughter – which, when I hear it, strikes fear in the heart in my breast. For whenever I glance at you, it seems that I can say nothing at all

But my tongue is broken in silence, and that instant a light fire rushes beneath my skin, I can no longer see anything in my eyes and my ears are thundering,

And cold sweat pours down me, and shuddering grasps me all over, and I am greener than grass, and I seem to myself to be little short of death

But all is endurable, since even a poor man …

Female Poets

• Insights into women’s lives – importance of other women, festivals, household games

• Poems written to goddesses• Sappho – most famous female poet

Comedy

Aristophanes

Are the women in Aristophanes plays more realistic depictions of women?

Law Courts

Against Neaera, Mid-fourth century

Apollodorus

The Murder of Eratosthenes, Fourth-century

Lysias

Who were the women of Ancient Greece?

• You are making a presentation on this topic to the Coventry History Society – what are the three most important things they MUST know about?

• You have 5 mins to prepare!

Material Culture

• Images of women limited in ‘elite’ arts – sculpture, stela, coins and gems

• More variety in affordable art – vase painting, small-scale terracotta figurines

• The Greeks didn’t have ‘art for art’s sake’ – everything had to have a function

Women in SculptureThe Lady of Auxerre, mid-7th century

Copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos, original 350-340 BC

Attic red-figure skyphos

Attic red-figure cup

Women on Pots

Households

Loom weight

Women in Religion

Source Questions

• How does the purpose of this text/sculpture effect its representation of reality?

• What are the potential issues with this source?

• What insights into the world of ancient Greek woman does this source provide?

Herodotus

• “In their manner and customs the Egyptians seem to have reversed the ordinary practices of mankind. For instance, women go to the market and engage in trade, while men stay home and do the weaving.” The Histories, 2.35