CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY provides the earliest glimpse of male-female relationships in Greek civilization. Myths are not lies, but rather men’s attempt to impose a symbolic order upon their universe. Some myths are so primordial as to be undatable, and we are haunted by the question of whether women could have participated in their creation. These myths and others evolving from actual historical events were later recounted and systematized by poets. An investigation of how myths arose and of their connection to external and psychological realities is an essential prelude to the study of the history of women, for the myths of the past molded the attitudes of successive, more sophisticated generations and preserved the continuity of the social order.1 Hence we begin with myths about women both mortal and divine.
Since Homer, the earliest extant Greek poet, does not deal to any great extent with the generations of gods preceding the rule of Olympian Zeus, we have to look to the works of a slightly later poet, Hesiod, for information about them. Hesiod was a dour, bitter poet and farmer living in Boeotia in approximately 700 B.C. His views of gods and humankind not only shaped but probably corresponded to the ideas held by the population as a whole, and thus the Theogony became the standard Greek version of divine evolution. Hesiod details the divine progression from female-dominated generations, characterized by natural, earthy emotional qualities, to the superior and rational monarchy of Olympian Zeus. Whether this corresponds to a historical change in Greek religion from emphasis on the worship of female divinities to that of male divinities is unclear, although more will be said later about the possibility of such worship. It is highly probable that misogyny was one of several factors that motivated Hesiod to organize the dark, evil divinities and their monstrous offspring in the early generations, to be overthrown by the civilizing Zeus.
Ge is the first reigning earth goddess. Her children are primarily deifications of the features of the physical world, while her grandchildren include some of the most dreadful monsters to haunt mythology. Ge’s husband Uranus (who is also her son) hates his children and so hides them deep within Ge. She then persuades her son Cronus to castrate his father with a sickle.
The story repeats itself in the next generation of gods, when King Cronus swallows his children by Rhea, Ge’s daughter. Finally, aided by Ge, Rhea helps her son Zeus to overthrow his father.
Zeus eventually puts an end to the successive overthrowing of kings by conspiracies of wives and sons. Establishing a patriarchal government on Olympus, Zeus introduces moral order and culture by fathering the Hours, the Fates, the Muses, and the Graces. But he denies power to females, even taking away their sole claim to consideration as bearers of children when he gives birth to Athena through his head and to Dionysus from his thigh.
Zeus’s subordination of the female power thus exalted into public philosophy Hesiod’s private unsympathetic view of women. This view is clearly expressed in the story of the creation of the first woman, Pandora.2 Her name is ambiguous. It can mean “giver of all gifts,” making her a benevolent fertility figure, or “recipient of all gifts.” Hesiod chooses the latter interpretation in order to attribute to the first woman the woes of mankind.
And when Zeus made the lovely curse, the price
For fire’s boon, to other gods and men
He brought her, thrilled with Athena’s array.
Amazement seized both gods and mortal men
To see the snare, a futile thing for men.
From her has sprung the race of womankind,
The deadly race and tribes of womankind,
Great pain to mortal men with whom they live,
Helpmeets in surfeit—not in dreadful need.
Just as in ceilinged hives the honeybees
Nourish the drones, partners in evil deeds,
And all day long, until the sun goes down,
They bustle and build up white honeycombs,
While those who stay inside the ceilinged hives
Fill up their bellies from the others’ work,
So women are a curse to mortal men—
As Zeus ordained—partners in evil deeds.
For fire’s boon he made a second curse.
Then, angry, spoke Zeus, gatherer of clouds:
“Prometheus, the shrewdest one of all,
You’ve gladly stolen fire and cheated me,
Which will cause pain to you and men to come.
For fire I’ll give them evil, and they all
Will cheer their hearts embracing this foul thing.”
The sire of men and gods spoke, then he laughed.
He ordered famed Hephaestus to make haste:
Mix earth with water, add a human voice
And strength, a face like deathless goddesses’,
A maiden’s form—desirable and fair.
Athena was to teach her weaving skills,
And Aphrodite drench her head in grace,
And sore longing, and cares that gnaw the limbs.
To add a bitch’s thoughts, and wily ways
Zeus ordered Hermes, Slayer of Argus.
The gods obeyed the lord Zeus, Cronus’ son.
Renowned Hephaestus molded out of earth
A modest maiden’s likeness—as Zeus bid.
Gray-eyed Athena clothed and girded her.
Persuasion and the Graces draped her flesh
In golden necklaces, and for a crown
The fair-haired Seasons wove the flowers of spring.
In her breast the guide, Slayer of Argus,
Put lies and crooked words and wily ways,
As loud-thundering Zeus had bid. A voice
The gods’ herald bestowed, and then a name,
Pandora (since all Olympian gods
gave a gift)—a pain to hard-toiling men.3
Pandora is comparable to the temptress Eve, and the box she opened may be a metaphor for carnal knowledge of women, which was a source of evil to men.
With Zeus’s defeat of his father, the Olympians take over. This anthropomorphic family included six chief goddesses: Athena, Artemis, Hestia, Aphrodite, Hera, and Demeter. In many ways female immortals resemble their human counterparts, except, of course, that divinities never grow old or die. Both literature and visual arts indicate that the goddesses are clearly differentiated among each other in function, appearance, personality, and in their relationships to both mortal and immortal males.
The most complex of the goddesses is Athena (Roman Minerva). Her activities are better documented than those of other goddesses since she plays an important role in the works of Homer and in the art and literature of the city that derived its name from hers, a city with the richest heritage in Greece. Athena is a masculine woman; some might label her androgynous. She is female in appearance and associated with the handicrafts of women and the fertility of the olive, but many of her attributes are those traditionally associated with males. She is a patroness of wisdom, considered a masculine quality by the Greeks. She is also a warrior goddess, protector of the citadel, armed with shield, spear, and helmet. In this capacity she is patroness of a number of mortal warriors and heroes. At times she disguises herself as a man to facilitate personal contact with her favorites; so she appears to Odysseus and his allies:
Athena, daughter of Zeus, came near them, making herself resemble Mentor in appearance and voice. Seeing her, Odysseus rejoiced, and greeted her, saying, “Mentor, defend me, remember your dear friend who did good things for you. We two were boys together.” These were his words, but he suspected he was addressing the warrior goddess Athena.4
Athena is the archetype of the masculine woman who finds success in what is essentially a man’s world by denying her own femininity and sexuality.5 Thus Athena is a virgin—and, what is more, a virgin born not of woman but of man. While her mother was pregnant, Zeus swallowed her and, in time, at the stroke of the ax of Hephaestus, Athena was born, as befits a goddess of wisdom, out of the head of Zeus, fully armed and uttering her war cry. Because she herself was born of man, Athena is able to affirm that the father is the true parent of any child. This belief is strengthened by the birth of Aphrodite (Roman Venus), who, according to Hesiod, was born out of the foam of the sea from the castrated genitals of the sky god Uranus, and by the birth of Dionysus. In male-female antagonisms related in tragedy and epic, Athena always sides with the male, even hinting that she is suspicious of the motives of the virtuous Penelope.6
As patroness of Athenian industry, Athena presides over crafts, sharing her rule with her half-brother Hephaestus. In this sphere, involving practical knowledge rather than abstract thinking, she can interact with both men and women. A woman’s skill in spinning and weaving is attributed to the grace granted her by Athena.
In contrast to the sociable Athena, Artemis (Roman Diana) is a huntress who shoots arrows from afar. She prefers to spend her days in mountains and forests in the company of wild beasts, remote from gatherings of men and gods. (Atalanta and the Amazons are mortal byforms of Artemis. Atalanta had been exposed to die in infancy because her father wanted a son, and was raised in the forest by a bear. She was a huntress who joined men in legendary expeditions and devised numerous schemes to avoid marriage, but finally yielded to a suitor who had the aid of Aphrodite.) The Amazons worshiped Artemis and resembled her. Both goddess and Amazons wore short tunics, were archers, and avoided the company of males. An apparent exception to Artemis’ principle of shunning mortal men was Hippolytus, the son of the Amazon Hippolyte. Hippolytus was a devotée of Artemis, not only because of his mother’s influence but especially because chastity was not to be found among male divinities. For the Greeks, chastity was a virtue only in women. Thus a youth like Hippolytus, who valued chastity, was forced to worship this quality in a female divinity.
In her relationships with humans, Artemis is primarily concerned with females, especially the physical aspects of their life cycle, including menstruation, childbirth, and death, however contradictory the association of these with a virgin may appear. (She is also cited as the reason for the termination of female life: when swift death came to a woman, she was said to have been shot by Artemis.) The Artemis of classical Greece probably evolved from the concept of a primitive mother goddess, and both she and her sister Athena were considered virgins because they had never submitted to a monogamous marriage. Rather, as befits mother goddesses, they had enjoyed many consorts. Their failure to marry, however, was misinterpreted as virginity by succeeding generations of men who connected loss of virginity only with conventional marriage. Either way, as mother goddess or as virgin, Artemis retains control over herself; her lack of permanent connection to a male figure in a monogamous relationship is the keystone of her independence.
The third virginal Olympian goddess is Hestia (Roman Vesta), sister of Zeus. She was
a queen whom both Poseidon and Apollo courted. But she was completely unwilling to marry, and stubbornly refused. Touching the head of aegis-bearing Zeus, she, that shining goddess, swore a great oath which truly has been fulfilled that she would be a virgin forever. Zeus gave her a high honor instead of marriage, and she holds a place in the middle of the house and the richest share. In all the temples of the gods she has a portion of honor, and among mortals she holds first place among the goddesses.7
There is little myth about Hestia, for she was the archetypal old maid, preferring the quiet of the hearth to the boisterous banquets and emotional entanglements of the other Olympians. Moreover, she is seldom depicted in the visual arts, for instead of having an anthropomorphic conception, Hestia is commonly envisioned as the living flame.
The fourth major goddess, Aphrodite (Roman Venus), represents physical beauty, sexual love, and fertility. According to Hesiod, she, like Athena, was born of man, not of woman. Her origin in sexual organs and the sea—suggestive of amniotic fluid—underlines Aphrodite’s nature as a fertility figure.8
Much of Aphrodite’s seductiveness lies in her frivolous, deceitful character, for these appear to be the qualities of sexually attractive females. Thus these attributes are found in Pandora and in Helen, both Aphrodite’s favorites. She, the most beautiful goddess, is married to the ugliest immortal, the lame Hephaestus. Perhaps this unfortunate union gives her an excuse for marital infidelity. Of all the goddesses, only Aphrodite commits adultery, an indiscretion considered only mildly censurable in a love goddess who is sacred to prostitutes.
The Romans traced their rulers’ descent from Venus’ (Aphrodite’s) son Aeneas. In philosophical discussions on the nature of love in Plato’s Symposium, Aphrodite is said to have a dual nature.9 Aphrodite Urania, born of Uranus without a mother, represented intellectual, nonphysical love. Aphrodite Pandemos, said to have been created by the union of Olympian Zeus and the sky goddess Dione, was the patroness of prostitutes, and represented common or vulgar love. Vulgar love could be either heterosexual or homosexual, but intellectual love could be found only in a relationship between two males. The dichotomy between the two sorts of love survived through the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance to the present. In the late Renaissance the concept of intellectual or heavenly love came to be applied to heterosexual relationships as well.
Hera (Roman Juno), queen of the gods, is a mature female married to her brother Zeus. Both Zeus and Hera are fertility divinities. Zeus, in his aspect of fertility god, exercises the patriarchal prerogative of promiscuous intercourse and fathers numerous offspring; Hera, although outproducing the other fertility goddesses of her generation—Demeter and Aphrodite—bears only four children. The daughters of Hera are the colorless Hebe, cupbearer to the gods, and Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. Her sons are more interesting, though remarkably lacking in celestial qualitities. Ares is stupid and bloodthirsty, a war god who positively delights in bloodshed (unlike the more civilized warrior goddess Athena). That Ares is the product of Zeus and Hera is emblematic of the bellicose nature of their union.
The domination of Zeus over Hera, as well as over the other divinities, is constantly threatened. Hera—as her husband’s sister—is his equal, and is never totally subjugated. Far from omnipotent, Zeus is frequently affected and deceived by such females as Aphrodite and Thetis, and most of all by Hera. According to Hesiod, when Zeus produced Athena from his head, Hera, in jealousy, parthenogenically gave birth to Hephaestus. The pathos of her rebellion is demonstrated by the fact that Hephaestus is a buffoon and, of all the Olympians, the only one who is lame. Homer, on the other hand, relates that Zeus threw Hephaestus out of heaven for taking his mother’s side in the quarrel with Hera; or, inconsistently, that Hera threw her son out in shame at his deformity.10
Hera not only persecutes her own son; she is a wicked stepmother as well. She is continually hostile to her husband’s paramours—often young virgins—and to their progeny. Her victims include Hercules, Dionysus, Io, Callisto, and Leto.
Myth describes Hera’s own marriage as a kind of permanent war, with brief interludes in bed, but in cult Hera was the guardian of human marriage.
The goddesses of Olympus appear in myth never to have had more than narrowly restricted functions, despite the major importance of their cults to Greek cities. On the other hand, gods enjoyed a wider range of activities. Thus Zeus and Apollo are examples of male deities who function as rulers, intellectuals, judges, warriors, fathers, and sexual partners in both homosexual and heterosexual affairs. These gods may engage in any activity available to mortal males. Among the gods there are no virgins, and sexual promiscuity—including rape—was never cause for censure even among the married ones.
In contrast, three of the five Olympian goddesses are virgins. Athena is warrior, judge, and giver of wisdom, but she is masculinized and denied sexual activity and motherhood. Artemis is huntress and warrior, but also a virgin. Hestia is respected as an old maid. The two nonvirginal goddesses come off no better: Aphrodite is pure sexual love, exercised with a pronounced irresponsibility. Hera is wife, mother, and powerful queen, but she must remain faithful and suffer the promiscuity of her husband.
The goddesses are archetypal images of human females, as envisioned by males. The distribution of desirable characteristics among a number of females rather than their concentration in one being is appropriate to a patriarchal society. The dictum of Pseudo-Demosthenes in the fourth century B.C. expresses this ideal among mortals: “We have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our person, and wives for the bearing of legitimate offspring.” 11 In reality, in any era only a wealthy man could afford to surround himself with a number of women, each playing a different role in his life. However, the Olympian pattern survived as the ideal.
A fully realized female tends to engender anxiety in the insecure male. Unable to cope with a multiplicity of powers united in one female, men from antiquity to the present have envisioned women in “either-or” roles. As a corollary of this anxiety, virginal females are considered helpful, while sexually mature women like Hera are destructive and evil. The fact that modern women are frustrated by being forced to choose between being an Athena—an intellectual, asexual career woman—or an Aphrodite—a frivolous sex object—or a respectable wife-mother like Hera shows that the Greek goddesses continue to be archetypes of female existence. If the characteristics of the major goddesses were combined, a whole being with unlimited potential for development—a female equivalent of Zeus or Apollo-would emerge.
In spite of their specialized functions, goddesses were very active in a wide range of human affairs. But the careers of goddesses do not reflect a less-limited scope for women, at least in historical times. Except for those outside the pale of respectability, the lives of mortal women were circumscribed by domesticity. Goddesses, on the other hand, even if married, were not constrained by familial obligations: Hera defied her husband and Aphrodite ignored hers. The other major goddesses chose not to marry at all. Certainly few mortal women would have made—or even been offered—such a choice. This does not mean that goddesses had nothing at all to do with mortal women. In discussing the relationships of goddesses to mortal females, myth must be distinguished from cult. Myths represent goddesses as hostile to women, or show them pursuing many activities foreign to the experience of mortal women. In cult, on the other hand—that is, in the ceremonial veneration of these divinities by women—attention is paid both to the fulfillment of women’s needs and to the delineation of their proper roles in society. Thus, for women, Athena’s patronage of weaving, Hera’s of marriage, and Artemis’ of childbirth were of supreme importance, but these qualities are not emphasized in myth. Some of the cults in which women participated will be described in Chapters IV and X.
Both Olympian and lesser goddesses had relationships with mortal men, which could be either erotic or inspirational. In the case of erotic affairs, such as Aphrodite had with Anchises and Adonis or Circe and Calypso had with Odysseus, the gods become jealous and sometimes take revenge. Thus Zeus killed Iasion by lightning in punishment for his affair with Demeter; Tithonus was awarded immortality without eternal youth for his affair with Aurora; and Adonis, who was loved by Aphrodite, was killed by either Hephaestus or Ares. In such cases one can discern the double standard among the immortals: immortal females are expected to fornicate with males of similar rank—that is, gods—while immortal males may enjoy females of the lower, or mortal, status. Similarly among their human counterparts, a man had sexual access to a legitimate wife as well as to the female slaves in his household, while his wife was expected to be faithful to him.
When the relationship between a goddess and a mortal was inspirational or protective, we often find that the goddess was a virgin. Psychoanalytic criticism of classical literature suggests that the very fact of asexuality provides the reason for Athena’s constructive and friendly relationships with most of the major Greek heroes, including Odysseus, Hercules, Perseus, Bellerophon, and Achilles. According to this theory, the fear of mature female sexuality meant that these men could feel secure only with a virgin. This idea is very tantalizing, and applicable to the Greek males’ attitudes toward mortal women as well.
Ariadne, who helped Theseus slay the Minotaur; Medea, who aided Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece; and Nausicaa, the advisor of Odysseus, were all virgins. Yet, when the relationships of another virgin goddess, Artemis, are examined, it becomes clear that virginity in itself is not the only significant factor in fostering the relationships of goddesses and mortals. Rather, personality and inclination lead Athena to be close and helpful to mortals, while her half-sister Artemis coolly maintains her distance.
The mature goddesses are less helpful to men than the virgins. Like Calypso and Circe, they are more likely to detain a hero through their sexual magic. Or, like the monstrous Harpies or Sirens, they may actually devour him. However, Hera guides Jason, and goddesses help their mortal sons. Thus Thetis helps Achilles at Troy, and Aphrodite aids Aeneas. With the exception of the rescue of Ariadne by Dionysus, we do not find the reverse situation of a male god going out of his way to aid a mortal female.
The relationships of male mortals and female immortals fared slightly better than those between gods and earthly women, possibly because the status of the mortals—frequently heroes—approached more closely that of the goddesses. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that in these relationships, the female, being a divinity, remains dominant.
We only rarely find similar nonerotic relationships between male gods and female mortals. Most frequently, such relationships involve a sexual liaison terminating with the suffering or destruction of the woman and the birth of an extraordinary child.
Thus Zeus pays regular visits to Semele, a Theban princess, and has intercourse with her. When forced to reveal his identity to her. his fiery thunderbolts destroy her. She was then seven months pregnant. Zeus rescues the embryo and sews it into his thigh. Two months later, the god Dionysus is born from Zeus. Similarly. Zeus impregnates Danaë with his golden rain and she gives birth to the hero Perseus. Other offspring produced by Zeus’s affairs with mortal women include Hercules, born of Alcmene; Helen and Pollux, born of Leda; and Epaphus, born of Io. Io’s suffering, due to the jealousy of Hera, is so severe that the female chorus of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound was led to pray that Zeus may never take a fancy to any of them.12 In studying other male gods, it becomes evident that Zeus’s role as a fertility god was not the only reason for his multiple liaisons, but rather that patriarchal mores condoned the male god’s exploitation of females.
Apollo’s amatory adventures with human females—and males as well—are even more destructive than those of his father Zeus, for he is not only lustful but vengeful as well. To win Cassandra and Sibyl. Apollo offers both women the gift of prophecy. When they continue to refuse his advances, he punishes Cassandra by causing her prophecies to be always disbelieved, and Sibyl by making her immortal without granting her eternal youth. Daphne, who may have been immortal herself, actually escapes from Apollo’s lust by being metamorphosed into a laurel tree. Cassandra, Sibyl, and Daphne are all destroyed by Apollo’s attention. But looking at their fate from another point of view, these women, like Athena and Artemis, refused to yield to a male and attained a triumph of self-assertion.
Apollo’s actual seduction and betrayal of Creusa causes the child of the union to reflect that the gods maintain a lower standard of morality than mortals.13 Coronis, while pregnant by Apollo, has an affair with a mortal. When her divine lover learns of her infidelity, he sends his sister Artemis to kill her. He rescues his unborn son Asclepius from the corpse of Coronis on the pyre. Apollo, otherwise renowned for his rationality and moderation, loses these qualities when rebuffed by women.
Analysis of the amours between gods and mortal women reveals the vulnerability of the woman; the wretched helplessness of the unwed mother; the glory awarded her, sometimes posthumously, for bearing a divine child; and the passivity of the woman in that she never enticed or seduced the god but instead was the victim of his spontaneous lust. Poseidon was not as active a lover of mortal women as his brother Zeus, but the sole divine exception to male dominance and exploitation of mortal females was Dionysus. After Ariadne, the Cretan princess, has been seduced and abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, Dionysus rescues her, marries her, and remains a faithful husband. Dionysus, of course, was a popular rather than an aristocratic god.
The two gods most frequently involved in sexual liaisons with mortal women were Zeus and Apollo, the most powerful figures in the Greek pantheon. But the discrepancy between the status of male and female partner had led to the exploitation and destruction of the powerless by the powerful.
The endless catalogue of rape in Greek myth includes some merely attempted and other fully consummated attacks of gods not only on mortal women, but also on goddesses. The grim picture, one would presume, was painted by men. But the erotic fantasies of modern women give us another perspective from which to view the rape myths. According to current psychology, women frequently enjoy the fantasy of being overpowered, carried away, and forced to submit to an ardent lover. Helene Deutsch claims that such erotic images are but another indication of the innate masochism of women. Karen Horney agrees that these fantasies are a symptom of masochism, but adds that the fantasies, like the masochism, are the result of women’s repression by society. We will never know whether Greek women dreamed of being Leda enfolded in the soft, warm caress of Zeus, or flattered themselves that they were as desirable as Europa, who was carried off by a most intriguing Zeus—masquerading as a bull. Perhaps they alleviated their anxieties by fantasizing that, like Danaë, they avoided suffering penetration and were impregnated by a golden shower; or perhaps they freed themselves from the guilt attendant on an adultery fantasy by imagining that they were Alcmene, and innocently accepted Zeus as a lover because the king of the gods had disguised himself as their husband.
There are a few instances of erotic relationships between mortal men and gods. The story of Ganymede, who caught the fancy of Zeus, has a happy ending, for the boy ends up on Olympus as the cupbearer of the gods. Hyacinthus, on the other hand, is loved by Apollo and by Zephyrus. Apollo accidentally slays his beloved with a discus which Zephyrus jealously directs against the boy. There is little to conclude from so few examples except that the existence of sexual attraction between males was recognized in myth. Other than the stories about the Amazons, there are no classical myths alluding to female homoerotic associations.
The inspirational, nurturant, and sexual relationships of some goddesses with mortal men may be reminiscent of the tradition of mother goddess and male consort. Mother goddesses were prominent in the Bronze Age cults of Minoan Crete. Numerous statuettes from the Bronze Age and earlier periods that may represent the mother goddesses and their worshipers or priestesses have been found. Minoan statuettes of females wearing flounced skirts and blouses revealing the breasts, as well as fresco painting of the period, allude to the primacy of the female in the religious sphere. Mother goddesses appear later in Greek myth as Ge, Rhea, Hera, Demeter, and Cybele. These goddesses were primarily fertility powers, the fertility of the female being associated with agricultural productivity.
It has been thought that fertility goddesses were worshiped in Crete as well as by an autochthorious matriarchal population on the mainland of pre-Bronze Age Greece.14 Greek-speaking invaders brought with them the worship of Zeus, with its emphasis on male dominance and patriarchal law. The invaders, to consolidate their conquests, married their gods to the native goddesses. The numerous sexual liaisons of Zeus have been interpreted as attempts to unite the worship of the invading god with the cults of the female divinities of the native population. The male-female tension in Greek myth, manifest at its most trivial level in the frequent bickering between Hera and Zeus, can be explained as the result of a forced marriage between the conquering god and a formerly powerful but vanquished goddess. Their marriage was not modeled on human marriage. As described by Homer, the relationships of Hector and Andromache, Hecuba and Priam, and Alcinous and Arete were far more tranquil than that of Zeus and Hera.15
The existence of the mother goddess in prehistory has been seriously challenged by scholars in recent years. In a study of anthropomorphic figurines from late neolithic Crete—the period postulated for the dominance of the mother goddess—it was discovered that 37.3 per cent were female, 9.2 per cent male, 40.7 per cent sexless, and 12.8 per cent indeterminate.16 Some scholars claim that to attempt to connect a hypothetical earth mother of prehistory to mother goddesses of classical mythology is fallacious. Modern anthropology has also demonstrated that anthropomorphic figurines can serve a wide variety of functions, and that female figurines emphasizing buttocks and breasts in ways similar to prehistoric figurines can be used for pubertal rites, rather than as representations of goddesses.
While some steatopygous neolithic figures, particularly those from Çatal Hüyuk in Anatolia, emphasize the sexual features of the female, those from the western Mediterranean do appear to stress her fatness in a comforting teddy-bear fashion. Perhaps hunger was more of a concern than sexuality in the latter case. The historian Moses Finley concludes that the primacy of the mother goddess is only a “remarkable fable,” and unequivocally attacks the notion of female dominance in prehistory.17 Yet the mother goddess theory and its corollary—that female dominance in religion may indicate a feminine force in other spheres of a society—continue to find some support.18
Jungian psychology transfers the theory of the mother goddess from the realm of objective historical existence to the sphere of the psychic development of the individual. Erich Neumann, a disciple of Jung, analyzing ancient mythology in terms of modern psychology, considers that the mother goddess is an archetypal figure, dominating the ego of the child, who, in turn, experiences the world of his youth as a matriarchy.19 According to Neumann, the Great Mother can be a good mother, giving food and nurture to the child, but she can also be a devouring, seductive, and castrating mother, evoking retributive hostility in the child. These speculations belong to the realm of modern psychology rather than to classical studies or ancient history. The Great Mother, viewed by a modern Jungian, may well be an appropriate archetype in the evolution of the individual consciousness. But the archetypes of the masculine intellectual goddess, or the huntress, or the mature woman whose guardian yields to her preference not to wed, imply nothing about the existence of a flesh-and-blood Athena, Artemis, or Hestia in antiquity. Accordingly, a historian could only very cautiously and tentatively attempt to interpret prehistory—a time for which we know very little about family organization or social systems—in Jungian terms. On the other hand, the notion that the Great Mother is also a subjective archetype does not eliminate the possibility that she may have played an important role in communal cults in prehistory.
Modern feminists find the theory of female dominance in religion as well as in other areas of prehistoric culture attractive, as though what had happened in the past could be repeated in the future. This popular view is understandable, since, if women were not subordinate in the past, we have ipso facto proof that they are not so by nature. Therefore, the question of the role of females both divine and mortal in prehistory has become an emotional issue with political implications as well as a topic of scholarly debate.
For the classical scholar, the mother goddess theory provides a convenient, if unprovable, explanation of the following puzzles: Why are there more than four times as many neolithic female figurines as male ones? Why do females predominate in Minoan frescoes? Why does Hesiod describe earlier generations of divinities as female-dominated, while the last generation, the Olympian, is male-dominated? However, to use the mother goddess theory to draw any conclusions regarding the high status of human females of the time would be foolhardy.20 Later religions, in particular Christianity, have demonstrated that the mother may be worshiped in societies where male dominance and even misogyny are rampant.
If Moses Finley and others of his opinion are correct, and it is impossible to draw any conclusions about social systems in prehistory in the absence of written documents from the time or with the archaeological evidence now available, then we must recognize that it is as foolish to postulate masculine dominance in prehistory as to postulate female dominance. The impartial scholar will be forced to confess that the question is open and may never be answered.