women in ancient greece - faculty server contactfaculty.uml.edu/ccarlsmith/teaching/43.228/greek...
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Women in Ancient Greece
Women in European History – 31 Jan. 2011
Types of Sources re: Ancient Greek women
• Literary (Hesiod, Homer) • Philosophical (Aristotle, Plato) • Theatrical (Aristophanes, Euripides) • Artistic (Parthenon frieze, vase paintings) • Archaeological (houses, artifacts) • Religious (ritual descriptions) • Historical (Thucydides, Herodotus)
Problems with studying women of Ancient Greece
• Ideology vs. reality • Athenian vs. Spartan • Slaves vs. wives vs. haeterae
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Limitations on Greek women
• Prized for being submissive, loyal, patient, domestic, fertile, & productive
• Penelope • Persephone • Antithesis = wild, uncontrolled, fickle (Amazon,
Aphrodite, Pandora)
• Kyrieia (guardianship) by father/husband/brother/uncle/sons
• Limited rights • No vote; no contracts; no travel; no real estate; no
financial indep.
He said.... • “A woman is an imperfect man.” (Aristotle)
• “Teaching a woman to read and write? What a terrible thing to do! Like feeding a snake more vile poison.” (Menander)
• “The greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about by men.” (Pericles)
• “Man is the measure of all things.” (Protagoras)
Pandora
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Privileges of Greek women • Priestesses were
essential to religious rituals, placating gods, & mourning the dead
• Female goddesses were often independent
• Spinning and weaving were fundamental to household economy
• Various pan-Hellenic women-only festivals
Greek public fountain, crowded with women obtaining water
Marriage in Ancient Greece
Demeter & Persephone
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Women in Sparta
Bronze statuette of female runner Artemis, goddess of hunting and patron saint of Sparta
Examples of Greek women in Marilyn Katz, “Daughters of Demeter”
• Genesis (50-51) • Epic heroines (51-52) • Agricultural myth
(55-56) • Theatre (57-58) • History (60) • Medicine (63)
• “the ancient polis was a ‘male club’ from which women were excluded...but they also played important religious, economic, and social roles...in city’s communal life.” (p. 69)
Conclusions
• Difficult to generalize about Ancient Greek women
• Challenge of contradictory primary sources
• Yet clearly many women lived under severe restrictions
• The ideology of submissive Athenian women lives on for 2000 years....