ANCIENT HISTORY comes to us in a haphazard succession of periods for which we have useful documentation interspersed with periods that remain obscure due to their dearth of written records. The art of writing disappeared at the close of the Bronze Age, with the fall of Mycenae; accordingly, there is little information available to us for the four centuries following the Trojan War (ca. 1200–800 B.C.), and the period has aptly become known as the Dark Age. What little knowledge we have is based on archaeological finds, on some passages from Homer which seem to date from this time, and on inferences from the literature of later periods.
By 800 B.C. writing had been reintroduced into the Greek world, by adapting the Phoenician alphabet to the requirements of the Greek language, though even for this Archaic period (800–500 B.C.) we have but fragmentary remains of the literature. However, our picture of this era is broadened somewhat by evidence from the visual arts, notably sculpture and vase painting.
Our scraps of information come from diverse sources spread over a wide geographical area, yet for each city we consistently know more about the aristocracy than about the lower classes. It would be foolhardy to draw more than the most tentative conclusions on the basis of this sketchy evidence, but there are noticeable similarities in the behavior of aristocrats in various cities.
Among the upper classes can be discerned the survival of attitudes and patterns of behavior that had been preeminent during the Bronze Age. Sex roles where men are ideally warriors and women are childbearers received clear affirmation in the later periods, regardless of either specific locale or the diversity of social and political structures to be found throughout the Greek world. Thus, the role of women—because it was biologically determined—displayed a continuity throughout these obscure times, despite the upheavals that changed men’s lives.
The pre-Classical period was a time of great change, characterized by class struggles and transformations in governmental patterns. The city-state (polis) as an institution was created during this era. Intramural animosities, as well as population pressure, caused the Greeks to found new cities or colonies on almost any unclaimed land around the Mediterranean.
A few women performed a rather mysterious function in the interests of colonization. Often the oracle of Apollo at Delphi was consulted on important matters, such as the undertaking of a colonizing expedition. The god Apollo spoke at Delphi through the medium of a prophetess called the Pythia. That a woman was the mouthpiece of a male deity may be explained by the hypothesis that Delphi was formerly the site of a female chthonic cult, although in historical times no woman but the Pythia was admitted to the temple. A male prophet put the questions to her. Her responses were delivered in a state of frenzy, and interpreted by male priests. Ironically then, although the Delphic oracle was supreme in Greece, the woman through whom the god communicated with mortal men served merely as a courier of sorts and had no direct influence on the meaning of the prophesies.1
The objectives of colonization during this time reveal that the Greeks’ motives for foreign expeditions were no longer the same as those of the Argonauts and other Bronze Age adventurers whose sexual liaisons during their travels were limited to temporary amours with exotic foreign women. The goal of colonists during the later periods was to establish themselves and their descendants permanently in some far-off quarter, rather than merely to reap the spoils of foreign conquests and return with booty to their ancestral homes. Consequently, when colonizing expeditions were predominantly or totally male, the colonists were often forced to find wives among the native population.
One particularly violent episode is related by Herodotus: Athenian colonists did not bring women with them to Miletus, but rather seized the native Carian women and killed their male relatives outright. To revenge this homicide, the daughters of the abducted Carian women swore an oath that was passed down to their female descendants never to dine with their husbands or call them by name. Herodotus also reports the strange practice that developed between the male colonizers of Thera and their native wives at the time the city of Cyrene was founded: the husbands found that their wives had completely different tastes in food, so the men and women in that colony continued to maintain separate diets.2
The Bronze Age mores that judged marriage to be more important to the growth and the strengthening of the polis and the family than to the fulfillment of the individuals involved carried over into the pre-Classical periods in more ways than one. While some colonists in distant reaches of the expanding Greek world literally captured their wives by force, the upper classes in the established centers of power arranged marriages among sons and daughters to aggrandize their political and economic standing much as they had during the Bronze Age. After the mid-seventh century B.C. a number of Greek cities were ruled by extraconstitutional monarchs known as tyrants. Greek tyrants, aristocrats, and foreign rulers were linked by means of a complex matrix of dynastic marriages. This situation implies, of course, that the relationship between husband and wife in these cases did not supplant their relationships with blood relatives. Rather, the wife served primarily as a material bond between her father—and implicitly his political and economic power—and the power of her husband’s family. The benefits of marriage were such that some tyrants were bigamous.3
Elements of Bronze Age prenuptial rivalry were preserved in the lively competition that was generated for the daughters of influential fathers. The extremes to which suitors went to prove their worth is illustrated in the stories surrounding the marriage of Agariste, daughter of Cleisthenes, who reigned as tyrant in Sicyon from 600 to 570 B.C. After Cleisthenes was victorious in the games at Olympia, he proclaimed that he would entertain suitors for his daughter’s hand. Thirteen illustrious suitors from twelve cities entered the competition. Cleisthenes entertained the suitors for a year—they feasted as royally as the suitors of Penelope—and rated them according to their lineage, their manly virtues, their prowess at running and wrestling, their family connections, and other criteria. Hippoclides was chosen, but when he behaved in a ridiculous fashion by dancing at his betrothal feast, he was quickly replaced by Megacles, one of the Alcmaeonidae, a powerful Athenian family.4 Thus the runner-up in the competition was suddenly elevated to the prized status and the marriage of Agariste was celebrated with due extravagance.
A few marriages in ruling families were influenced more by sentiment than by politics. Pisistratus arranged a marriage between his daughter and a young man who loved her so much that he kissed her when he happened to meet her on the street. The marriage of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, and Melissa was also an affair of the heart. Periander first caught sight of Melissa, daughter of the ruler of Epidaurus, when she was pouring wine for workmen in a field, wearing a revealing Dorian-style dress not covered by a cloak. (It is interesting to note that these two young daughters of tyrants were not kept secluded but in fact mingled with men: one on a city street, the other on a farm.) Periander married Melissa, but later in a fit of jealousy he murdered her. His passionate attachment was so strong that he had intercourse with her dead body. When her spirit returned and complained that she was cold and naked, since the clothes that had been buried with her had never been burned, Periander ordered all the women in Corinth to gather in the temple of Hera wearing their best clothing. He stripped them and burned the garments for Melissa.5
Women of wealth—even if they lacked prestigious fathers—were also desirable. In the latter part of the sixth century B.C., Theognis of Megara wrote: “Even the finest man does not mind marrying the bad daughter of a bad father, if he gives much wealth; nor does a woman refuse to be the bedmate of a bad but wealthy man, for she would rather be wealthy than good.” 6
Because the law codes of Sparta and Gortyn, a city in Crete, were established relatively early, there is more written information about the lives of their women than there is for Athenian women in pre-Classical times. But much of our knowledge of the Spartans is derived from non-Spartan authors of later periods, who attempted to emphasize the difference between Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens, and the role of women was an index of the contrast between the two ways of life.
The Spartan regime, developed in the seventh century B.C., was traditionally attributed to the lawgiver Lycurgus. This archaic code remained nominally unchanged throughout Spartan history.7 Bearing children was the most important function of Spartan women, since the state was constantly at war and the production of warriors was of highest priority. Accordingly, the law of Lycurgus on burials forbade the inscription of the name of the deceased on a tomb except for a man who had died at war or a woman who had died in childbirth.8 Because the biological role of the mother in reproduction was seen as at least as important as the role of the father, a program with a goal of physical fitness for girls was prescribed. Unlike the Athenian, the Spartan girls were as well nourished as the boys.9 Housework and the fabrication of clothing were left to women of inferior classes, while citizen women were occupied with gymnastics, music, household management, and childrearing.
There is some doubt about whether the girls exercised in the nude. However, Spartan art of the Archaic period portrays the nude female body, while the art of other Greek cities does not.10 Spartan women’s dress was appropriate to their life style. They wore the Dorian peplos, with slit skirts which bared their thighs and permitted a freedom of movement impossible to women dressed in the voluminous Ionian chiton. Ancient opinions varied on whether their scanty costume encouraged chastity or licentiousness. Herodotus states that at one time all Greek women wore the Dorian dress, which was fastened at the shoulders with broochpins. However, the Athenian women once used these pins as weapons on a man who brought them news of their husbands’ deaths, and were then punished by the men and forced to dress in the Ionian chiton, which, being stitched, did not require pins.11
In Sparta the interests of the community prevailed over those of private citizens. A newborn male was examined to determine if he would become a strong warrior. If he passed the test, he was permitted to live. All girls, apparently, were reared, for Plutarch reports that they were merely handed over immediately after birth to the care of the women.12 The state had no interest in whether any child was born of the husband of its mother, so long as the father was a Spartan citizen. But when at the end of the eighth century B.C. the Spartan men were absent on a campaign of long duration, the women resorted to intercourse with unfree men known as helots.13 It may well be that the state encouraged relations with the helots so that there would be a new crop of young men if there were heavy casualties and the army did not return.14 The children of these unions were euphemistically termed “children of unmarried mothers,” but they were not recognized as Spartan citizens when the army did return home successful from the war. They were sent off to found the city of Tarentum.
Adultery was not as strictly defined as in some societies. Various Athenian writers report on wife-sharing among the Spartans, viewing extramarital relationships in terms of the husband’s lending his wife to another man when that man needed an heir to his estate. The Athenians’ interpretation of Spartan behavior may have been influenced by their own strictly monogamous society. It is difficult to believe that Spartan women, who were notoriously outspoken—so much so that there is an anthology of their witticisms attributed to Plutarch—passively submitted to being lent by their husbands as childbearers to others. While there is no firm evidence to confirm the hypothesis, I find it easier to believe that the women also initiated their own liaisons, whether purely for pleasure or because they accepted the society’s valuation of childbearing. This would not have been difficult when a husband was off on a campaign. The Archaic Spartans may have actually had no particular interest in curtailing extramarital sexual unions, with the proviso that both partners be healthy Spartan citizens, since more frequent intercourse would tend to produce more children who were potential warriors.
Marriage was encouraged at Sparta as the most desirable basis for procreation, however, and bachelors were ridiculed and suffered legal disabilities. Spartan marriage customs were unusual among the Greeks, although the basic pattern was the familiar marriage by capture. One novel way this was accomplished was by shutting up young men and women in a dark room, each man leading home whichever woman he caught—sight unseen.15 Another way. more frequently practiced, was for the groom to carry off his bride in secret. Here the marriage by capture was not a display of real force, but rather a symbolic enactment of a previous engagement. The bride was dressed for her wedding in man’s clothing, with her hair cut short in a mannish style. Whether this transvestitism was to signify her entrance upon a wholly new way of life, or whether—as psychoanalytic interpretation would have it—the groom, accustomed to homosexual involvements in his army career, would find it easier to relate to his bride if she looked somewhat masculine, is uncertain. The husband went on living with his army group until the age of thirty and visited with his wife by stealth. Since Spartan youths were wed at eighteen, married couples did not live together for the first twelve years of their marriage. Lycurgus supposedly made this regulation so that when the couple were together they were never satiated, and their offspring were thought to be as vigorous as their desire. Spartan marriage, then, was a kind of trial marriage, the purpose being to determine whether the woman was capable of conceiving. If the bride did not become pregnant, the marriage—which was held in nearly complete secrecy—could be inconspicuously nullified without public dishonor. The fact of a trial marriage implies that the bride could marry again with the hope of proving her fertility with a different husband.
The simplicity and rigorousness of life in Sparta during the Archaic Age gradually gave way to a more relaxed and luxurious way of living. Greek and Roman writers tend to blame the women for this corruption of the earlier regime. Aristotle states that the Spartan women had never really accepted the laws of Lycurgus from the time of their first promulgation.16 Women were not directly responsible for the declining vigor of Sparta after the Peloponnesian War, but they adapted readily to a less archaic and less demanding mode of life.
For women, abandoning the Lycurgan regime meant abdicating their role as child-producers.17 Economic conditions in the society as a whole also encouraged individuals to limit the size of their families, for if the population increased, wealth would have to be divided into very small parcels. As a result of this change of attitude, the Spartan population began to dwindle after 479 B.C., and fell catastrophically in the fourth century B.C.18
The conspicuous prosperity of women while the state was floundering provoked criticism. Formerly women were not permitted to wear jewelry, cosmetics, perfume, or dyed clothing. By the fourth century B.C. they controlled by means of their dowries and inheritances two-fifths of the land and property in Sparta, and some spent their money on expensive racehorses and fancy clothing.
In the mid-third century B.C. King Agis attempted to restore the Lycurgan discipline. According to Plutarch, who gently disapproves of the freedom enjoyed by Spartan women, the reforms failed due to the refusal of the women to give up their ease and luxury in favor of the earlier ideals.19 Aristotle also criticized Spartan women, linking various elements in the decline of Sparta with the degeneracy of its women.20 Here Aristotle anticipated the Roman tendency to connect the vigor of the state with the virtue of the women, and political weakness with moral degeneracy—particularly of women.
Aristotle also noted that the physical absence of men, who were abroad for extended periods owing to military obligations, was largely responsible for the freedom enjoyed by Spartan women. The separation between the sexes and the relative freedom of women can be documented also for the Dorian city of Gortyn during the Archaic period. However, at Gortyn the geographic separation between the sexes was less marked, warfare was not as constant, and, as a result, the powers of the women of Gortyn were less than those of Sparta. Parts of the law code of Gortyn, dating from the seventh or sixth century B.C. and preserved in a fifth-century inscription, have a large number of provisions pertinent to women—many of which are notably liberal. Some scholars believe the Gortynian code represents a stage in the evolution of increasing freedom for women. Others, including those who believe in the existence of matriarchal and matrilineal systems in Bronze Age Crete, suggest that the code documents a gradual restriction of female freedom but retains traces of the earlier patterns.21
Social structures at Gortyn are comparable to those at Sparta. The lives of free men centered around all-male groups in which they were trained for warfare and slept and ate together. Homosexual relationships were not discouraged. The age at which a married man could live at home in Gortyn is not known, but Aristotle suggests that the separation of men and women was encouraged in order to reduce the birthrate.22
Since the men concentrated on their military duties, the women were involved in managing the home and property. Thus, at Gortyn, free women had the right to possess, control, and inherit property, though the inheritance of a daughter was less than that of a son. Upon divorce a wife took her own property and half the produce of the household, and if the husband was at fault, he paid a small fine. A woman’s work was recognized as producing wealth which ought to be evaluated, and there are stipulations in the code indicating the fraction of what she has “woven” that a divorced or widowed woman could take with her. Women not only controlled their own property, but when a father, husband, or son violated the regulations concerning the property of children, the control passed to the mother or wife.
Since the code recognized homosexual relations as valid, there were rules about rape in which the penalty for raping a free person, male or female, was the same: a monetary fine. The penalty was doubled if committed by a slave against a free person, but there was also a penalty for raping a household slave. Elsewhere in Greece the punishment for adultery was severe (for example, at Italian Locri the punishment was blinding), but in Gortyn the penalty was only monetary.23 The fine for adultery was doubled if the act took place in the home of the woman’s father, brother, or husband. No penalty is named for adultery between a free man and a nonfree woman.
If a free woman married a nonfree man and lived in his house, the children were not free, but they were considered free if he lived in her house. Thus, under Gortynian law a woman could have both free and nonfree children. On the other hand, in the provision concerning a baby born after divorce, the child belonged first to the father. The mother was required to present the child to its father; he could accept or reject it. If he rejected the child, the mother could rear it or get rid of it (apoballo—“to throw away”—is the verb employed). Hypergamy was possible only for males; there is no mention of marriage between a free male and a nonfree female. Of course, no Greek state needed to regulate sexual relations between a free man and a nonfree woman, since the children of such a union would not be considered the father’s heirs.
Regulations regarding the patrōïōkos—a fatherless girl without brothers—are interesting in the Gortynian case, especially in comparison with the Athenian stipulations concerning the equivalent epiklēros. The primary obligation for such a girl was to perpetuate her father’s line by bearing a child, and thus to keep her inheritance within the paternal tribe. Her paternal uncles, beginning with the eldest, were first in the order of succession to her hand. They were followed by their sons—her paternal cousins—also ranking by age, and finally by any man within her father’s tribe. Marriage to a patrōïōkos may have not been highly desired, especially if she were not particularly wealthy, because she continued to manage her own property after marrying and did not become part of her husband’s family. Instead, in an inversion of usual dynastic practice, her husband eventually became an instrument in the perpetuation of his late father-in-law’s household. Gortynian law also afforded the patrōïōkos some measure of choice in her marriage. In the case that she did not wish to wed a member of the tribe who presented himself, the patrōïōkos could escape the obligation by paying him a monetary compensation from her inheritance and then marry freely. If no one from the tribe requested her hand, she was also allowed free choice of a husband. The one irony here—a stray matrilineal element in the midst of an otherwise patrilineal tradition—was that although the paternal uncles of the patrōïōkos looked after her property, her maternal uncles were entrusted with her upbringing.
The rearing of young women was likely to have been a shortlived responsibility, however, as patrōïōkoi, and perhaps all “girls, were considered marriageable at the age of twelve. In Gortyn, the regulations concerning adultery in the house of a girl’s father, then of her brother, and finally of her husband may indicate that a bride did not move out of her parental home until she was of a competent age to manage her own household.24
For Gortyn, though unfortunately not for Sparta, we also have legal regulations governing the women of the lower classes—serfs and slaves. Marriage, divorce, birth, and possession of chattels were subject to laws rivaling in complexity and comprehensiveness those affecting the upper classes. Extensive regulations were required concerning marriage of slaves when the partners were owned by different masters. For instance, the wife of a slave, as well as any children produced by his marriage, became the property of the husband’s master. A married female slave could herself possess property, for the divorce regulations state that she may take her movables (presumably personal property) and small livestock, and—since she does not gain the status of a free woman by divorce—must return to her former master.25 A child born after divorce must be offered first to her ex-husband’s master, in a manner analogous to the presentation of the free divorced woman’s child to her ex-husband. If the ex-husband’s master refuses it, the child becomes the property of the master of its mother. An illegitimate child falls under the jurisdiction of the master of the mother’s father or, if the mother’s father is deceased, of her brother’s master. It appears that decisions about unfree women and their children were in the hands of men to a greater extent than those about free women.
Dorian women, in contrast to Ionians, enjoyed many freedoms, and among Dorians the Spartans were the most liberated of all. The freedom of Spartan women seems to have been a result of the Dorian tradition with its communal social structure and separation of the sexes. But a comparison with Gortyn shows that Spartan women were unique in important details, including their marriage at a mature age and their exemption from women’s traditional work. A chronological arrangement of the codes of Dorian Sparta and Gortyn and the code of Ionian Athens shows that the Spartan code, which antedated the Gortynian by a century or two, was the most favorable to women. The Athenian, codified only in the sixth century B.C., was the most restrictive, as we shall see in detail in Chapter IV.
For Athenian women in the Dark Age and early Archaic period preceding the codification of their city’s laws, the principal source of evidence is archaeological, especially the material from female burials and the depiction of women on pottery.26 The survival and sometimes the excavation and reporting of such material is haphazard, and when the record is so uneven, the historian can more responsibly describe it than venture interpretations. However, where reasonable, I will infer from the dead to the living.
Sex roles that will be familiar to the modern reader were firmly established in the Dark Age in Athens. Both the living members of the family who supplied the dead with gifts for the grave and the craftsmen who fashioned the grave furnishings were concerned that the contents of the grave and the grave-marker itself be appropriate to and indicative of the sex of the deceased. The sex was indicated in various ways. In the Protogeometric period (ca. 1000–900 B.C.), male and female burials in Attica were distinguished by the shape of the amphoras in which ashes were buried or which were used to mark graves. The burials of males were normally associated with neck-handled amphoras, those of females with belly-handled ones with horizontal handles placed at the point of the greatest diameter of the belly. The belly-handled shape may have been used for carrying water, a chore traditionally performed by women.27 In the late tenth century B.C., shoulder-handled amphoras began to replace belly-handled ones for female burials, and became usual in the ninth century B.C. [Plates 2 and 3]
On Geometric vases—which span the Dark Age and the early Archaic period—human figures are depicted for the first time since the fall of Mycenae. The earliest such figure is of a female mourner on a pottery fragment found in the Ceramicus in Attica.28 With respect to the shape of the vases, the tradition established in the Protogeometric period tends to prevail. A belly-handled amphora is used for four of six female burials from Attica in which prothesis (lying-in-state of a corpse) and ekphora (transporting a corpse to its grave) are depicted in the vase paintings. Because the figures are sketched in a simple silhouette, it is very difficult to judge the sex of the deceased at a glance. Therefore an attempt has been made to decode various iconographic features in order to determine the sex of the corpses portrayed on prothesis and ekphora vases. More male corpses than female are depicted on the amphoras so far studied. Judging from the shape of the vases, and the sex of the corpses portrayed, it appears that more vases with scenes of prothesis and ekphora were associated with burials of males than with those of females.
The sex of a deceased Athenian from this time can also be determined by the nature of the offerings placed within the graves. Unlike the Spartans, Athenian women continued to perform the household tasks that were described in the Homeric epics. Thus the graves of women contain such items as spindle whorls, certain types of jewelry, and cooking pots, while those of men were provided with items typifying warriors—spears, shield bosses, and drinking cups. In addition, openwork kalathoi—small models of baskets probably used for produce or wool—though rare, are found in women’s graves, yet another indication of the continuity of their domestic roles.29
Besides depictions of Athenian women as corpses, they are also shown on the Geometric prothesis and ekphora vases in the traditional role of tending the dead. To kinswomen fell the responsibility of washing, anointing, and dressing the corpse in preparation for burial. They also served as the chief mourners—joined by both the slave women of the household and professional female mourners who were hired for funerals. On these vases women may occasionally be recognized by the depiction of breasts, but they are, on the whole, much more readily identifiable in their various attitudes of lamentation—the classic gestures of female grief with both hands raised, or performing the ritual funerary dances, or beating their heads and tearing their hair. Contemporaneous Attic Geometric vases from Ceramicus show mourning women lacerating their foreheads and cheeks until they are bloody. It would have been difficult to depict the women’s singing of the dirge visually, but literary references as early as Homer describe the lamentation as ranging from a wordless keening to a formal antiphonal song.30 By contrast, the males tend to be shown mourning in a more rigid and restrained manner, usually with a single hand raised to the head.
Female figures are also differentiated by long robes, in silhouette; and when males, as charioteers, begin to be shown in robes, the females are distinguished by being given long hatched skirts. At times, too, the female members of the family of the deceased are distinguished from the professional mourners by their different clothing, and a few females, who must be relatives, are shown seated with children on their laps.
Women’s association with rituals concerning the dead is still customary in Greece. Women have always been freer than men to indulge in displays of emotion, and are therefore more impressive participants at funerals. The washing and dressing of the corpse has certain analogies to the caring for infants; the cycle of life takes us from the care of women and returns us to the care of women.
As a realistic consideration, kinswomen had the most cause to be deeply grieved at the death of their male relatives, for the lives of women lacking the protection of men were truly pitiful. Women’s dependency on men, which was apparent in the legends of the Bronze Age, can be documented for the Dark Age as well. Indeed, many of the similes in Homeric epic are thought to date from this period rather than from the Bronze Age. One such description is of a widow balancing wool in a pair of scales in order to earn a miserable wage for her children. The poetry of the early Archaic period gives a similar picture of women attempting to support themselves. A female day-laborer, especially if burdened with a child, would find it difficult to obtain employment. Hesiod advises the farmer to hire a servant with no baby to nurse.31 A hymn to Demeter, probably composed in the seventh century B.C., describes how a free elderly woman may seek employment as a child nurse or a domestic. She waits for prospective employers at the village well.32 Such a woman might be offered temporary employment as a mourner. At the funerals of her own father, husband, and sons, she must have cried for herself as much as for the dead.
Not only the offerings to the dead but the skeletons themselves can be eloquent, since inhumation and cremation were practiced simultaneously. However, a very small number of these from the Dark Age have been analyzed to determine their sex and age at death. The reader may wonder at my temerity in drawing any conclusions at all from the paltry amount of material available. The fact that our Dark Age evidence is consistent with the demographic patterns found in later pre-industrial societies where there is fuller documentation justifies its inclusion here. J. Lawrence Angel has analyzed the skeletal remains of one group of twenty-two graves (nine infants, two children, four female adults, seven male adults) from a family burial plot within the Athenian Agora by the Tholos which dates from the last quarter of the eighth century to the second quarter of the seventh.33 The years associated with childbearing were apparently hazardous for the women, since the ages of death of three of the female skeletons were determined at 16—, 18+, and 50+; those of the males that could be determined were 34, 43, 44, and 48.
While it would appear likely that the people enshrined in durable tombs and the users of well-made Geometric pottery were wealthy or held positions of prestige, more comparatively poor burials have been found than rich ones, but some of the more opulent burials were those of women. The two richest burials in the Agora family plot were those of the young women, although the skeleton of the eighteen-year-old shows that she was not a woman of leisure, for she flexed her feet often either in climbing steep hills (common to Athenian topography) or in squatting before a cooking fire. One of the wealthiest Geometric tombs thus far excavated in Athens also belonged to a woman.34 After cremation, this woman’s ashes were buried with the jewelry she had worn at her prothesis. In addition to the usual offerings, her tomb contained two ivory stamp seals and a model of a granary. I assume that it is unlikely that wealthy Athenian women were personally involved in commercial activities, although they did work around the house. Therefore the stamp seals and granary model may symbolize the affluence and economic activity of the woman’s father and husband, or may refer to some items in the woman’s dowry or to her job as guardian of the household store-chamber. It may also be suggested that rich burials of women are a vicarious display of the wealth of the husband, father, or son who buried them.
The male-female population ratio at this period is startling: the Agora burial plot by the Tholos shows almost twice as many male burials as female, and the study of prothesis and ekphora vases also shows more male burials than female. This imbalance could be explained away by speculating that more men were honored with prestigious burials than women. But Homer, who is probably relating a Bronze Age tradition, although he may be reflecting the Dark Age, states that Priam had fifty sons but only twelve daughters; Nausicaa is an only daughter with a number of brothers; Andromache mentions her seven brothers. We have also seen that some Greek colonies were founded by men alone, who were then compelled to find wives among the native population. No doubt population pressure on the mainland was a factor in colonization: a rise in fecundity coupled with a decrease in infant and juvenile mortality has been traced for this period.35 An ecologically sound method of limiting population is the destruction of the reproducing members of the group, the females, and the most likely reason for sexual imbalance in a population is female infanticide.36 While it cannot be proven beyond doubt that newborn females were selectively eliminated, the evidence seems to point that way. Whether the resulting scarcity of women produced more competition for them is not known. However, it would not be correct to infer that mature women were despised during the Dark Age, just because female infanticide was practiced.
The basic type of grave-marker in the Archaic period became the stele, a narrow tapering rhomboidal slab of stone frequently showing a profile of a standing figure. Females never appear alone on these monuments in Athens at this time, but occasionally a male warrior is accompanied by a small figure of a female who must be a relative.37 In other parts of the Greek world, dead women are commemorated by these steles. These monuments were very expensive, so sumptuary legislation may be responsible for the absence of steles erected to women in Athens.38
Marble statues of maidens (korai) and youths (kouroi) are characteristic examples of large-scale, free-standing sculpture in the Archaic period. [Plates 4–6] Several of the kouroi but few of the korai were used as grave-markers. What purpose the korai served otherwise is still in question. Gisela Richter speculates that the korē represents “a beautiful girl in the service of the goddess,” since many were dedicated to various goddesses.39
Apparently, the earliest korē was dedicated about 660 B.C. to Artemis by a woman, Nikandre, who identifies herself by adding the names of her father, brother, and husband. But this is an exception; most korai are dedicated to goddesses by men. There was no difference between the dedications made by women and by men, nor by dedicators of different social classes who, in the case of Athenian women, run the range from a washerwoman to a magistrate’s wife. The former may have used her dedicatory inscription as an advertisement of her profession, the latter as an announcement of her own and her husband’s prosperity.40
The figures of korai and kouroi are derived from Egyptian prototypes of standing draped statues of males and females. The Greek adaption shows nude males while the females remain draped. Some korai are dressed in the Dorian peplos, which reveals the body, but most wear the heavier Ionian costume, concealing the figure with its multiple folds of cloth. Despite the drapery, the girls’ buttocks are often voluptuously delineated, paralleling the representations of boys.41 In the homosexual context of Greek antiquity, buttocks, not breasts, were the most attractive feature of a female figure. Long dark hair with a flower tucked in it was also admired, as we learn from the poetry of Archilochus and Semonides, and long curls are found on both kouroi and korai.42 The marble was painted, and adorned with real earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. It seems reasonable that the korē should be represented fully clothed since she was to serve such modest goddesses as Artemis, Athena, and Hera, who are themselves always shown dressed. Due to her confining garments, the korē throughout her history stands with one foot slightly advanced, while the kouros figure developed into the male nude capable of a variety of poses. Owing to the solid columnar immobility of the heavily draped korē and to the practice of living women of carrying burdens on their heads, the female figure is occasionally employed instead of a column to support roofs. The supporting female statue, called a caryatid, was used in the Archaic treasuries of Siphnus and Cnidus at Delphi long before the well-known Classical caryatids of the Erechtheum in Athens. [Plate 7]
The Archaic period was an age of individualism in poetry. Attitudes toward women ran the full range from echoes of the misogyny discerned in Hesiod’s description of Pandora (see this page) to the love of women expressed by both male and female poets.
Hesiod’s hostility toward women was part of a general bitterness produced by the poet’s feeling that he was living in an age of social and economic injustice. Beset by poverty, Hesiod considered a woman a necessity, but an economic liability whose vices resembled those of the first woman, Pandora:
Who shuns wedlock and women’s troubling deeds—
And will not marry—comes to dire old age
With none to nurse him, despite ample means;
So, once he dies, his distant kinfolk split
His substance. He who opts for wedlock’s fate,
And gets a wife who’s good and fit of mind,
Pits good against misfortune all his life.
But he who gets one of the baneful sort,
Lives with endless sorrow in his breast,
Of heart and soul—this is a fatal ill! 43
Do not let a woman with a sexy rump deceive you with wheedling and coaxing words; she is after your barn. The man who trusts a woman trusts deceivers.
Bring home a wife when you are of the right age, not much under thirty nor much more—this is the right age for marriage. Let your wife have been grown up four years, and marry her in the fifth. Marry a maiden, so that you can teach her careful ways, and especially marry one who lives near you; but examine everything around and see that your marriage will not be a joke to your neighbors. For a man wins nothing better than a good wife, and, again, nothing worse than a bad one.44
The hostility of Hesiod is reiterated by Semonides, a poet-philosopher of the seventh century B.C., and by Phocylides in the sixth century B.C., who both compare women to species of livestock. Only one—the woman who is compared to a bee—is praiseworthy. The bee was notable not only for its industrious nature but for its asexual manner of reproduction.45 Hence the virtuous wife must not display any interest in sex, for she might otherwise be led to commit adultery and make her cuckolded husband the laughingstock of his neighbors. Moreover, aside from pride, there was a practical reason for wanting a frigid wife. Hesiod tells us that only one son was desirable, although Semonides speaks of a number of children. A wife without a proclivity to sex would be more likely to bear a limited number of children. It is notable too that the woman with a small rump was not considered desirable, owing, no doubt, to the practice of anal intercourse which was also a useful method of contraception.
The great satire on women written approximately seven hundred years later by the Roman Juvenal was anticipated by the catalogue of women’s vices by Semonides of Amorgos:
ON WOMEN
From the beginning the god made the mind of woman
A thing apart. One he made from the long-haired sow;
While she wallows in the mud and rolls about on the ground,
Everything at home lies in a mess.
And she doesn’t take baths but sits about
In the shit in dirty clothes and gets fatter and fatter.
The god made another one from the evil fox,
A woman crafty in all matters—she doesn’t miss a thing,
Bad or good. The things she says are sometimes good
And just as often bad. Her mood is constantly shifting.
The next one was made from a dog, nimble, a bitch like its mother,
And she wants to be in on everything that’s said or done.
Scampering about and nosing into everything,
She yaps it out even if there’s no one to listen.
Her husband can’t stop her with threats,
Not if he flies into a rage and knocks her teeth out with a rock,
Not if he speaks to her sweetly when they happen to be sitting among friends.
No, she stubbornly maintains her unmanageable ways.
Another one the Olympian gods fashioned from the dust of the earth,
And gave her to man: the simple-minded type. This kind of woman
Can’t distinguish between good and bad. The only thing she understands how to do
Is eat. Not even if the gods have sent a bitter winter storm
Does she have the sense (though she’s freezing) to drag a chair close to the fire.
Another is from the sea, and she has two kinds of dispositions;
One day she’s full of laughter and good spirits,
And a friend who came to visit would remark of her:
“There’s not a better or a fairer woman than this
In the whole of the human race!”
Another day she’s completely unbearable—you can’t even look at her
Or come near her, but at such times she rages terribly,
Snarling like a bitch over her pups;
Unfriendly and out of temper with everyone,
No less with her friends than with her enemies.
Just as the sea itself is often smooth and calm
And safe—a great delight to sailors
In the summer season; but it often rages
And swells up with deeply resounding waves.
It’s this that such a kind of woman is most like
In her temperament; for the sea’s nature is changeable.
Another woman is from the stumbling and obstinate donkey,
Who only with difficulty and with the use of threats
Is compelled to agree to the perfectly acceptable things
She had resisted. Otherwise in a corner of the house
She sits munching away all night long, and all day long she sits munching at the hearth.
Even so she’ll welcome any male friend
Who comes around with sex on his mind.
Another kind of woman is the wretched, miserable tribe that comes from the weasel.
As far as she is concerned, there is nothing lovely or pleasant
Or delightful or desirable in her.
She’s wild over love-making in bed,
But her husband wants to vomit when he comes near her.
She’s always stealing and making trouble for the neighbors,
And she often filches the sacrificial offerings from the altars.
Another woman is born of the delicate, long-maned mare,
Who maneuvers her way around the slavish and troublesome housework,
And wouldn’t put a finger to the mill, or so much as lift
The sieve, or sweep the dirt out of the house
Or go into the kitchen, for fear she’ll get dirty.
She introduces her husband to the pinch of poverty.
Every day she takes a bath at least twice,
Sometimes three times, and anoints herself with fragrant oil.
She always wears her hair long and flowing,
Its deep richness highlighted with flowers.
And so such a woman is a thing of beauty for others to look upon,
But she’s only a burden to her husband
Unless he happens to be a tyrant or a prince,
The kind whose heart is delighted by such things.
Another one is from the monkey. In this case Zeus has outdone himself
In giving husbands the worst kind of evil.
She has the ugliest face imaginable; and such a woman
Is the laughingstock throughout the town for everyone.
Her body moves awkwardly all the way up to its short neck;
She hardly has an ass and her legs are skinny. What a poor wretch is the husband
Who has to put his arms around such a mess!
Like a monkey she knows all kinds of tricks
And routines, and she doesn’t mind being laughed at.
Not that there’s anything that she can do well—no. it’s this
That concerns and occupies her all day long:
How can she accomplish the greatest amount of harm.
Another woman is from the bee; the man who gets her is fortunate.
To her alone no blame is attached,
But life flourishes and prospers under her care.
She grows old cherishing a husband who cherishes her,
After she has borne to him a lovely and distinguished group of children.
Among all women her excellence shines forth,
And a godlike grace is shed about her.
She does not take pleasure in sitting among the women
When they are discussing sex.
Such women are granted to husbands as a special favor from Zeus,
For they are the best of all and exceptionally wise.
These are all the various tribes of women that exist now
And remain among men by the devising of Zeus.
For Zeus designed this as the greatest of all evils:
Women. Even if in some way they seem to be a help;
To their husbands especially they are a source of evil.
For there is no one who manages to spend a whole day
In contentment if he has a wife,
Nor will he find himself able to speedily thrust famine out of the house,
Who is a hateful, malicious god to have as a houseguest.
But whenever a man seems to be especially content at home,
Thanks either to good fortune from the gods or to his good relations with the rest
Of mankind, she’ll find fault somewhere and stir up a dispute.
For whosever wife she is, she won’t receive graciously
Into the house a friend who comes to visit.
And you know, the very one who appears to be most moderate and prudent
Actually turns out to be most outrageous and shameful.
And when her husband is still in shock from finding out about her, the
Neighbors are having a good laugh because even he made a mistake in his choice.
For each man likes to regale others with stories of praise about his own wife,
While at the same time finding fault with any other man’s wife.
We don’t realize that we all share the same fate.
For Zeus designed this as the greatest of all evils
And bound us to it in unbreakable fetters.
Therefore Hades welcomes into his realm
Men who have fought together for the sake of a woman.46
On the other hand, the lyric poems of the female writers of the Archaic Age give us the happiest picture of women in Greek literature. Nine of these poets were later considered to be the best of their age, but some are little more than names to us; others are known through a few fragments of their poetry, which survive because they were praised and quoted in later Classical literature. None of the women poets came from Athens. What is known of their lives is generally unreliable, since it is based on anecdotes and biographies written long after their deaths, which assume their poetry was autobiographical. Thus we are told that Corinna defeated Pindar five times in competition, and he in exasperation called her a sow; Pausanias said that she owed her victory in part to her extraordinary good looks.47 Somewhat inconsistent with her own supposed competition with Pindar is Corinna’s criticism of her teacher Myrtis, a woman who was said to have been the teacher of Pindar as well:
Even I find fault with Myrtis
Of the sweet clear voice.
Although she was a woman poet,
Yet she challenged Pindar.48
Both Corinna and Pindar were Boeotian poets, but her work does not bear comparison to his. Pindar’s is international, and little concerned with women except to note that they all hope to have a husband or son who is a victorious athlete.49 Corinna’s poetry is parochial in language and subject matter.
Sappho, the most admired of all female Greek poets, was said to have a following of students. The authority of the classical scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff enshrined the theory that Sappho was the leader of a cult of young girls chastely worshiping Aphrodite and studying a curriculum suitable for nice young ladies.50 There is little support for this theory either in her poetry or in the ancient literary gossip. Sappho’s poems are often addressed to women, and they show a passionate involvement comparable to that found in the works of her contemporary male poets addressed to women and men:
He seems to me just like the gods,
That man who sits opposite you
And, while close to you, listens to
You sweetly speaking
And laughing with love—things which cause
The heart in my breast to tremble.
For whenever I look at you,
I can speak no more.
My tongue freezes silent and stiff,
Light flame trickles under my skin,
I no longer see with my eyes,
My ears hear whirring,
Cold sweat covers me, shivering takes
Me complete captive, I become
More green than the grass, near to death
To myself I seem.51
Sappho’s poetry can be compared to the love poetry of numerous males who found young women attractive, though not necessarily to the exclusion of homosexual interests. The following work was written by Alcman, a male poet of Sparta, in the mid-seventh century B.C.:
… with limb-loosening desire, and more softly
Than sleep or death she glances,
Nor is she sweet in vain.
Astymeloisa does not reply to me,
Like a star shooting through
The blazing firmament
Or a golden sprig or soft down …52
Many modern scholars have vehemently denied that Sappho’s sentiments occasioned overt erotic activity. The Greeks certainly realized that Sappho wrote about the sexual activities of women. Few fragments survive from this portion of her work: on one papyrus fragment the first five letters of olisbos (leather phallus) may be read with near certainty. Part of another poem preserved on parchment relates: “… on a soft bed you satisfied your desire.” “You” in Greek can be masculine or feminine, but Sappho is not known to have written erotic poems to men.53 In Greek literature generally, references to the women of Lesbos connoted unusually intense eroticism, both homosexual and heterosexual. Anacreon, writing in the generation after Sappho, complained that the girl from Lesbos whom he desired “gapes after some other woman.” 54 The homosexual reputation of Lesbian women was the theme of Lucian’s fifth “Dialogue of the Courtesans,” written in the second century A.D. On the other hand, in Athenian comedy the verbs lesbiazein and lesbizein (“to play the Lesbian”) and other references to the women of Lesbos connote enthusiasm for all sorts of sexual experiences and “whorish behavior.” 55
If her poems do have biographical elements, Sappho could well have been bisexual, like aristocratic Greek males, for although she did not address erotic poetry to men, she was married and had a daughter:
I have a lovely child, whose form is like
Gold flowers, my heart’s one pleasure, Cleis,
For whom I’d not give all Lydia, nor fair …56
She was born into an aristocratic family in 612 B.C. on the island of Lesbos, which she was forced to leave for a time when the tyrant Pittacus came to power. That Sappho did not live a secluded life is testified to by her political poems as well as by her indignation when her extravagant brother made himself ridiculous by buying a famous courtesan at a high price and setting her free.57 The stories that Sappho committed suicide by leaping from the Leucadian Rock for the love of a sailor and that she was small and ugly were probably invented in later antiquity to show that she would have preferred male lovers to female, if she could have attracted them.58
As a poet, she was inventive, using new poetic structures and meters, but she was a self-conscious artist too, often addressing herself. Although so little of her poetry survives, the power of her writing is great enough to show that she merits the praise she earned from antiquity, when Plato called her the tenth Muse,59 to the present.
In contrast to the personal poetry of the aristocratic Sappho, there are some songs surviving that were performed by choirs of maidens and women. Judging from the extant fragments and remarks of ancient authors, these songs ran the full range from the informal folksongs of spinners and weavers to performances by professionals at festivals.
Apart from dirges, already mentioned, there were maiden songs, partheneia, which were formal choral hymns sung by unmarried girls to the accompaniment of the flute. A large fragment of one of these maiden songs, written by the poet Alcman in Sparta, has been preserved.60 This song mentions a number of myths and cult practices, but I am interested here in the personal references in it. The choir names most of the girls in it, and singles out some for special praise. Girls are compared to the sun, their hair to gold, their ankles are lovely, and they run swiftly like fillies. They say of their leader, “Hagesichora exhausts me.” We may choose to interpret this phrase as “exhausts me” with praising her, or with trying to win at a festival, or sexually and emotionally. The last interpretation is supported by our knowledge that erotic attachments between older women and young girls were encouraged at Sparta.61 It is likely that in the female atmosphere of the girls’ choir lesbian relationships flourished.
The most important factor, both at Sparta and at Lesbos, in fostering female homoerotic attachments was that women in both societies were highly valued. They were admired and loved by both men and women. Personal beauty was cultivated by women at both Lesbos and Sparta. Lesbos was one of the places where beauty contests for women were held,62 and the poem of Alcman gives some attributes considered desirable in young women. In addition, the talents of accomplished women like Sappho and Hagesichora must have made them attractive to people of both sexes. Women did not, as has been suggested, turn to other women in desperation, due to men’s disparagement of them. Rather, it appears that they could love other women in milieux where the entire society cherished women, educated them comparably to men of their class, and allowed them to carry over into maturity the attachments they had formed in the all-female social and educational context of youth.
The women poets were not unique, for their works allude to groups of women involved in literary pursuits. Sappho mentioned other women poets in Lesbos, and Corinna addressed some of her lyrics to “white-robed Boeotian women.” In Rhodes, the philosopher Cleobulus in the sixth century B.C. advocated that girls be educated, and his daughter, Cleobuline, in imitation of her father, was able to compose riddles in verse.63 As far as can be determined, the educated women of Archaic Greece were all members of the upper class. Unlike some men of the Archaic period, they did not write poetry because they were lame, or angry at political or social issues. Rather, the poetry of the women is the product of leisurely contemplation. It is interesting that there are no traces of literary activity among Athenian women. The city whose men would be responsible for the most notable artistic creations in Classical Greece produced no female artists.