Women and the City of Athens: Public/Private Lives and Images

Women and the City of Athens:Public/Private Lives and Images Primary source analysis Pomeroy 57-74 Status Epiklēroi - Dowry, Marriage and Divorce The Propagation of Citizens Biology of Motherhood and Demographic Speculations Women at Work, Education and Religion Pomeroy 79-112

Solon and Sumptuary laws • Sumptuary: • Regulating or limiting personal expenditures • Regulating commercial or real-estate activities • Regulating personal behaviour on moral or religious grounds

Solon – the law-giver (6th century BCE) • To Pomeroy, “Solon institutionalized the distinction between good women and whores. He abolished all forms of self-sale and sale of children into slavery except one: the right of the male guardian to sell an unmarried woman who had lost her virginity” (57) • Solon is seen as the first great lawgiver of Athenian democracy – one who created laws that restored order to the city-state and was designed to protect its citizens. How did he affect women’s status?

Historiographic Debate – the status of citizen women in Classical Athens: a question of sources? • On the one hand, citizen women in Greece were constricted legally and politically, but had social status • Source: Greek tragic playwrights such as Sophocles and Aeschylus • Evidence: heroines were respected and not secluded; they were modeled on Athenian women living in the 5th c. BCE Electrawith shorn hair Antigone

Historiographic Debate – the status of citizen women in Classical Athens: a question of sources? • On the other hand, women had low social status • Source: Attic orators such as Lysias On the Murder of Eratostothenes and Demosthenes Apollodorus against Neaera • Evidence: women who committed crimes yet were unable to appear in court to hear the case; Lysias Demosthenes

“Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it.” Santayana • “The fact is – and it is well to state it plainly – that the Greek world perished from one main cause, a low ideal of womanhood and a degradation of women which found expression both in literature and in social life. The position of women and the position of slaves – for the two classes went together – were the canker-spots which, left unhealed, brought about the decay first of Athens and then of Greece” (F.A. Wright, Feminism in Greek Literature”, 1923, reprinted 1969) • Why might this be seen as a parable for America?

The larger picture – social status and appropriate sources of evidence • Pomeroy feels that these scholars have missed the point: • “I feel that the issue of status is in itself misleading, and that the broad range of scholarly opinion results from treating women as an undifferentiated mass. It is also blurred by the unconscious tendency to view the ancient world in terms of modern values.” (Pomeroy, 60)

Moving beyond essential differences • Pomeroy notes that the sources in Classical Athens can move beyond “rigid expectations of proper behaviour according to sex.” (Pomeroy, 60) • Instead, different standards apply to different economic and social classes of women and men (citizens, resident foreigners, and slaves) (Pomeroy, 60) • “Political roles in Classical Athens must be considered in terms of duties rather than rights” and obligations to family and state were highest” (Pomeroy, 60) Duty is honored in funeral monument to Hegeso (400 BCE

Epiklēroi – Dowry, marriage and divorce • “attached to family property”: without a male heir, it passed to the female to her husband • “As a logical consequence of the woman’s duty to Athens, marriage and motherhood were considered the primary goals of every female citizen.” (62) • “The Athenians were protective of their women.” (63) • Dowry: remained intact for woman’s life (63) • Marriage: contract made between men – purpose of marriage was procreation (64) • Divorce: easily obtainable on both sides (?) (64) Loutophoroi – placed in the graves of unwed women

Propagation of Citizenry • Parentage determined citizenry • Some anomalies – low number of males (in times of war, see Lysistrata) (66) • “Foreign” women living in Athens were sometimes preferred by Athenian men (68) • This generally occurred during the reign of Thirty Tyrants – who killed many young Athenian men who might have been rivals Lysistrata – women withhold sex from their husbands until the war ends

Biology of Motherhood and Demographic Speculation • Periclean citizenship law was enacted because of the large number of citizens (against foreign) • How to limit birth? “Homosexuality, anal intercourse, recourse to prostitutes and slaves or dislike of women, and the preference for a sexually inactive wife continued to be adaptations for population control.” (68) • “time-honoured” contraception assumed – abortion against Hippocratic oath • High infant mortality Pericles and the golden age of Athens

Women at Work • Athens was urban – “The effects of urbanization upon women was to have their activities moved indoors, and to make their labour less visible and hence less valued.” (71) • Urban living stressed class difference • Spinning and weaving were part of upper-class women’s education (Socrates) • Unlike Spartan and Gortyn women, Athenian women had little real control over their property (73) The original agora or open market

Education • Education: • Athenian law and practice placed women as “a veritable child” (74) • Her only education was the domestic arts, her virtues, according to Pericles, were silence, submissiveness, and abstinence from men’s pleasures. • Aristotle viewed marriage as “benefactor to beneficiary” John William Godard’s 1905 conception of ideal Greek matron

Religion • “Religion was the major sphere in public life in which women participated, although it is necessary to remember that at Athens cult was subordinate to and an integral part of the state, and the state, as we have seen, was in the hands of men.” (75) • Three major cults: Athena, Demeter and Korē and Thesmophoria

Religion Demeter priestess with piglet and kanoun Establishing the cult of Athena temple

Religion - Thesmorphia Day 3 Kalligeneia (beautiful birth) – a sacrifice, a sacred vessel, and approaching the shrine Day 1 Anodos (the way up) Day 2 Nesteia (day of fasting and mourning)

Private Life in Classical Athens • Seclusion of Women: “The separation of the sexes was spatially emphasized.” (79) • Proof: “The separation of the sexes was expressed in private architecture by the provision of separate quarters for men and women.” (80) • Clothing: simple, white but confining – respectable women wore wool and linen; prostitutes saffron-dyed and transparent (see Lysistrata)

Physical Condition of Women Relief of Artemis at Brauron, where the robes of women who died in childbirth were burned • Major fear for women: childbirth • Medea announced she would prefer to stand in the front line of battle three times than to give birth to one child. (84) • Mothers and midwives at childbirth • Male physicians, if Hippocrates is anything to go by, were not much use (84) • Menopause lack of information could suggest high mortality for women but may mean that they really didn’t “exist”(86)

Sexuality for Citizens • “The sexual behaviour of citizen women was regulated by laws – mostly those attributed to Solon, who was himself a homosexual.” (86) • Rape or seduction: Male seen as legally guilty party because active, women passive (86). Rape carried lower penalty than seduction. Why? • Athenian law governed what to do as well as what not to do (87) How often?

Prostitutes Aspasia • “Prostitution flourished in Greece as early as the Archaic period.” (88) • Reasons: urbanization, port cities, state-owned brothels • “Prostitutes were notoriously mercenary” (91)

Images of Women • Women in Tragedy versus Real Women • “If respectable Athenian women were secluded and silent, how are we to account for the forceful heroines of tragedy and comedy?” (93) • “dramatists examined the multiple aspects of man’s relationship to the universe and to society: accordingly, their examination of another basic relationship—that between man and woman—is not extraordinary” (93). • The discrepancy between lives lived and drama is worth investigating Deianira – a good woman who takes her own life after accidentally killing her husband Heracles (The Trachiniae by Sophocles)

Point of coincidence • “Women were in conflict with the political principle [of subordinating the patriarchal family under the patriarchal state], for their interests were private and family-related. Thus, drama often shows them acting out of women’s quarters, and concerned with children, husbands, fathers, brothers, and religions deemed more primitive and family-oriented than the Olympian.” (97) Ismene – stay-at-Thebes sister of Antigone in Sophocles’ Antigone

Masculine and Feminine Characters • Womanly behaviour by submissiveness and modesty (98) • Masculine women’s portrayal was fully developed in Sophocles Antigone • She acts “as a man” and says, “For had I been a mother, or if my husband had died, I would never have taken on this task against the city’s will.” (100) Antigone confronts Creon

Euripides’ women • Most challenging image to confront: • Only playwright to gain the reputation of misogyny because of Aristophanes (105) • But also, “Women are the best devisers of evil”; “Women are a source of sorrow” • To Pomeroy, however, “I can scarcely believe that so subtle a dramatist as Euripides, who called into question traditional Athenian beliefs and prejudices surrounding foreigners, war, and the Olympian gods, would have intended his audience simply to accept the misogynistic maxims.” (107) • Does she provide evidence? No Medea

Aristophanes • A bridge between Euripides and Plato, his works were comedies • He followed Aristotle’s axiom to present people as worse than they really are • Lysistrata women are bibulous and lustful (113)

Plato, who respected strong women – with Aristotle, who felt they were made to be ruled by me Utopian Literature • Plato’s is the best example: • “Greek utopias are invariably stratified by classes.” (115) • Plato’s highest regard is for citizen women as guardians • Utopians tried to eliminate friction in society – women represented friction because of sexual monopoly, thus the hope to separate the body from the mind • He prescribed the same curriculum for women as men – his women were very “Spartan” (117)

Women and the City of Athens: Public/Private Lives and Images