VOICES OF THE UNDERREPRESENTED IN ANCIENT ATHENS:
Voices of the Underrepresented in Ancient Athens: Women
Ancient Athens was the center of the Ancient Greece and the marvelous and outstanding city that brought us democracy and important values of Western Civilization. Nowadays, due to works of famous Greek scholars and writers, we have enough information about how the Athens’ government was organized and who were the main rulers of the city, and we know that such social groups as metics, slaves, children, and women were underrepresented there. The aim of this paper is to study the role of women in Ancient Athens and the views Athenians had about them. Despite the fact Athenian women experienced gender inequality and had much fewer rights than men, they still continued to influence global decisions and were important as those who gave birth to children, future Athenian generation.
The information about the role of women in the Athenian society can be found in lots of sources and pieces of art, for example, in comedies and tragedies, historical writings and oratory, on potteries, vases, and epigraphy, and this information differs. Let’s consider the Socratic dialogue Meno written by Plato in 380 BCE. In the dialogue, Socrates talks with Meno about men and women and equalizes them in the issues of health, justice, and temperance,
Soc. Then they who order a state or a house temperately or justly order them with temperance and justice?
Men. Certainly.
Soc. Then both men and women, if they are to be good men and women, must have the same virtues of temperance and justice?
Men. True.
Plato continues the same idea in Apology, “The most eminent men of Athens, to whom the Athenians themselves give honor and command, are no better than women.” He was a strong supporter of the idea of gender equality and advocated common education and common service as guardians that can be seen in The Republic. However he was the rare representative of the male half the population who thought so; those days, Socrates and his teachings were not popular among Athenians. On the contrary with Plato, Aristotle proclaimed that men were superior to women. In Politics, he critiques Socrates and writes, “If Socrates makes the women common, and retains private property, the men will see to the fields, but who will see to the house?” Aristotle quotes one of the poets and states, “Silence is the woman’s glory” then highlighting that the same does not suit the man. Pericles supports his point of view and writes, “To a woman not to show more weakness than is natural to her sex is a great glory, and not to be talked about for good or for evil among men.” Demosthenes shares their views and writes his opinion regarding the role of women in the Athenian society, “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons, but wives to bear us legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of our households.”
The mentioned writings clearly give to understand the role of Athenian women and their daily lives. Athenian men mostly perceived women as sources of pleasure, housekeeping, and childbearing. At the same time, women should have kept silence and stay in the background without any interventions to the businesses of men. The childbearing role of the woman was very important. Indeed, it depended on the social status of the woman: slaves gave birth to future slaves that were crucial for maintaining the level of free labor power; free women delivered children who would help to run the household or would work as farmers; noble and royal women brought into life future male political and military leaders or future female spouses for alliances with powerful neighbors. Thucydides mentions the importance of a marriage for alliances talking about Homer’s Iliad, “And to me it seemeth that Agamemnon got together that fleet, not so much for that he had with him the suitors of Helen bound thereto by oath to Tyndareus as for this, that he exceeded the rest in power.” The marriage between Helen and Menelaus should have to marry and nothing should have intervened their marriage for the alliance between Troy and Sparta.
The role of the women as child bearers is the example of the main active role of the women in the polis of Ancient Athens. Another important active role referred to raising children. As far as Athenian men dealt with matters of national importance, women who were little educated, could barely read or write, and had not official right to participate in men’s business dedicated themselves to their houses and families. The first Athenian lawgiver Drakon (about 650-600 BCE) highlighted the importance of women and children in Athens and protected them under the law. According to Kapparis, Drakon recognized “the sanctity of the family and family life.” He stated that nobody had enough power and influence to enter a house and to force or seduce the woman. Raising children was the deal of the primary importance, as any failures were considered to be the attempts to cause collapse of the polis.
The mentioned above historical examples mostly refer to a woman who had an official status of a wife regardless their social stratification. And what about the women who had less formal statuses? According to Kapparis, the first to officially legalize prostitution was Solon, “he introduced a law which stated that if a man is caught with a woman who practices some form of prostitution, either organized or free-lance, he cannot be accused of adultery.” It is important to note that prostitution was an essential part of the Athenian society. In Athens, men usually got married in the thirties, and with no strings attached relations between them and the respectable women were not welcomed. Athenian prostitutes, or hetaeras, had short careers built on their beauty and young age, but the most successful of them were able to earn enough money to provide themselves comfort lives. The great source of the information that shows men’s attitude toward hetaeras and courtesans is Athenaeus’ The Deipnosophists, “but I have been speaking of regular professional Hetæræ— that is to say, of those who are able to preserve a friendship free from trickery . . . that is to say, mistresses.” In his work, Athenaeus glorifies hetaeras, “They sing, and comfort us, and make us cheerful, and straightway banish all our care and grief, and make our faces bright again with smiles.” Hetaeras and courtesans were the sources of sexual and mental pleasure, and a lot of powerful Athenians liked to spend time with their favorites. The belief those men had to their hetaeras raises the new, passive role of women - their ability to influence Athenian politics. For example, one can consider Pericles and his courtesan Aspasia. In 440 BC, Pericles took part in the war between Samos and Miletus and defeated Samos despite the fact Athenian participation was not necessary. Plutarch writes, “Now, since it is thought that he proceeded thus against the Samians to gratify Aspasia, this may be a fitting place to raise the query what great art or power this woman had, that she managed as she pleased the foremost men of the state.” His opinion is based on the fact that Aspasia was from Miletus.
The passive, or predominant role of the Athenian “traditional” women, or the ones who were married, was their inability to be accepted separately from her husband. The historical evidence has a lot of examples when after the death of the husband his wife and children were sold and enslaved. At the same time, woman and children are usually nameless, while the name of the husband is compulsive. It is often seen in comedies and tragedies, for example, in Thesmophoriazusae written by Aristophanes.
In the Athenian society, women performed both active and passive roles, but the role of a woman as a priestess was completely different. Priestesses and founders of religious cults were a separate class of Athenian females. Religion was crucial for Ancient Greece, and the connection between Gods and people was taken seriously. As the result, women who provided that connection were treated with extreme respect. In Histories, Herodotus mentions priestesses separately from other women. According to Dewald, priestess represented the clash between morality and politics among people who consulted her. Priestesses usually were the women from noble and upper-class families who started their religious way as girls of the right age, between seven and ten. The military and political leaders of Athens often came to priestesses to ask advice regarding their decisions, and one can say, priestesses had a lot of influence on Athenian politics and Athenian men, and that influence was often more powerful than the one courtesans had as was rooted in religion. The evidence of the role of priestesses in the global decisions can be found in several historical sources. For instance, one can consider the Panathenaic Festival that was essential for supporting status of Athens as a powerful polis. However, such religious festivals were often used for political deals. Thucydides writes about two brothers Hippias and Hipparchus who were Athenian tyrants. Hipparchus failed to seduce Harmodius and decided to revenge him inviting his sister to be the leader of the Panathenaic Festival, “he had resolved, by first inviting a sister of his, a young girl, to come and bear a basket in a certain procession, and then rejecting her, on the plea that she had never been invited at all owing to her unworthiness.” The imperishable rule the leader of the Festival should have followed was the virginity, and by “unworthiness” Thucydides means the rule was broken. The incident caused reaction from Harmodius and became the reason of killing Hippias and Hipparchus.
O’Pry writes, “Athens was the cradle of philosophy, where a person could become a great scholar, poet, politician or artist, unless that person was a woman.” Indeed, the role of women in Ancient Athens was significantly limited; however, they were not completely powerless. Respectful and traditional women sat at homes, raised children, and did housework, while their husbands were busy with work or governmental and military issues, but the key role of the woman as a child bearer was important as maintained the level and amount of the Athenian population and delivered future Athenian generation. Courtesans led frivolous lives, were loved by men, and had an opportunity to influence their decisions, but their age was short, as their beauty and youth were fleeting. Priestesses had even more power than courtesans due to their connection with Gods, as religion was an essential part of the Athenian society and Athenian leaders often visited temples to get an advice. According to Dewald, Herodotus’ Histories show women as significant contributors to Athenian culture due to their abilities to balance active and passive roles and to control and limit them. Despite their social status and duties, women were crucial for Athenian society.
Bibliography
Dewald, Carolyn. “Women and Culture in Herodotus’ Histories.” In Herodotus: Volume 2: Herodotus and the World, edited by Rosaria Vignolo Munson, 151-180. Oxford, UK: OUP Oxford, 2013.
Kapparis, K. “Women and Family in Athenian Law,” in Adriaan Lanni, ed., “Athenian Law in its Democratic Context” (Center for Hellenic Studies On-line Discussion Series). Republished in C.W. Blackwell, ed., Dēmos: Classical Athenian Democracy (A. Mahoney and R. Scaife, edd., The Stoa: a consortium for electronic publication in the humanities [www.stoa.org]) edition of March 22, 2003. http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/article_women_and_family?page=all
O’Pry, Kay. “Social and Political Roles of Women in Athens and Sparta.” Saber and Scroll 1, no. 2, article 3 (2012): 7-14. http://digitalcommons.apus.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=saberandscroll
