IN THE sixth century B.C. the Athenian lawgiver 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. As part of his extensive legislation covering many aspects of Athenian life, Solon regulated the walks, the feasts, the mourning, the trousseaux, and the food and drink of citizen women. He is also said to have established state-owned brothels staffed by slaves, and thus to have made Athens attractive to foreigners who wanted to make money, including craftsmen, merchants, and prostitutes. In the Classical period, Solon’s laws continued to exert tremendous influence over the lives of Athenian women.
I would attribute this legislation neither to misogyny nor to Solon’s homosexuality. These regulations, which seem at first glance antifeminist, are actually aimed at eliminating strife among men and strengthening the newly created democracy. Women are a perennial source of friction among men. Solon’s solution to this problem was to keep them out of sight and to limit their influence. Furthermore, much of this legislation—including the limitation on ostentatious funerals (for which large numbers of women would be employed as paid mourners) and the regulation of feasts, trousseaux, and food and drink—was sumptuary in nature and intended to curb the power of the aristocracy in Athens of the late Archaic period.
Whether Solon’s regulations improved the status of citizen women or detracted from it is debatable. Clearly, as members of the citizen class, they advanced over those people living in Athens who were not considered citizens. Yet their advance was predicated on the status loss of lower-class women: the slaves who staffed the brothels. And the status of citizen women and men relative to each other poses still another question, which scholars tend to answer with excessive subjectivity.
While there is general agreement that politically and legally the condition of a woman in Classical Athens was one of inferiority, the question of her social status has generated a major controversy and has become the focus of most recent studies of Athenian women.1 Opinions range from one extreme to the other. Some scholars hold that women were despised and kept in Oriental seclusion, while others contend that they were respected and enjoyed freedom comparable to that of most women throughout the centuries—we may add: “at least before the advent of the women’s movement.” Still others think that women were kept secluded, but in that seclusion were esteemed and ruled the house.
The first position is succinctly stated by F. A. Wright in a book published in 1923 and obviously influenced by the wave of feminism which culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. This book was reissued in 1969 and now appears quaint in its blatant polemicism:
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.2
In reaction to those who considered the life of an Athenian woman little better than that of a harem slave, other scholars asserted that despite her formal handicaps the Athenian woman was neither despised nor secluded. Most modern treatments taking this position go back to the radical essay of A. W. Gomme published in 1925.3 The many advocates of Gomme’s position include Moses Hadas and H. D. F. Kitto.4 These scholars, no less than Wright, were the victims of their own times and social backgrounds. Inspired by their admiration for the Athenians, they were reluctant to believe that the Athenians might not have treated their wives the way cultivated gentlemen in the twentieth century treat theirs. Furthermore, they had no inkling that many wives of such cultivated gentlemen were bitterly dissatisfied with their lot.
Two contemporary scholars who subscribe to neither of these extremes of opinion are Victor Ehrenberg and W. K. Lacey.5 For example, they call attention to a life spent mostly inside a dark, unsanitary house and to women’s lack of access to the educational values of Athenian life. Ehrenberg believes that women did not attend the theater. But Lacey points out that the Athenians were extremely protective of their women, and seclusion may be viewed as the handmaiden of protection.
The wide divergence of scholarly opinion is puzzling, and cannot be attributed to sexist bias—for male partiality can be detected on both sides of the argument, and Lacey is the only one who is aware of modern concepts of women’s emancipation.6 The principal reason for the two viewpoints lies in the genre of the evidence consulted. Gomme and his followers, relying predominantly, or exclusively, on the evidence from Classical tragedy, and believing that the heroines were modeled directly on Athenian women of the fifth century B.C., determine that women were respected and not secluded. Lacey, who explicitly rejects the testimony of tragedy as not representative of normal people in a normal family, and Ehrenberg, who accepts only Euripides, while finding Sophocles and Aeschylus less close to reality, paint a sorrier picture of the position of women.
Lacey and Ehrenberg rely heavily upon the Attic orators, while the majority of the followers of Gomme, in contrast, scarcely cite them. Hadas gives the reason that speeches are too polemical and present a one-sided, abnormal picture. The evidence from comedy is less decisive, and is cited in support of both positions.
The preceding brief survey has demonstrated that the question of the social status of women is part of a larger dispute concerning the appropriate source of evidence for women’s life in Athens. The critical factor appears to be the heroines of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The scholars who consider Antigone and Electra, for example, as “real” evidence for women of the fifth century B.C. will believe that the status of women was high. On the other hand, evidence from orators and other prose writers points usually to a low status, while comedy and Euripides give ambiguous testimony. The scholars surveyed do not give equal weight to all available evidence, but deliberately exclude or explain away the literature not supporting their positions. Moreover, archaeological evidence is not widely used; Ehrenberg even cautions against trusting isolated pieces of material evidence.
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. Unless both the sphere of action and the class of women in that sphere are defined, the discussions about status will continue to fail to come to a consensus. The archaeological evidence from Athens of the Dark Age and Archaic period examined in Chapter III showed rigid distinctions between male and female roles, but that was all it showed. The Athenians of the Classical period continued to hold rigid expectations of proper behavior according to sex, but, because there is more material available, we can see that they also applied different standards to different economic and social classes of women and men, according to the categories of citizens, resident foreigners (metics), and slaves. Behavior appropriate to one group of women detracted from the status of another group, and this distinction was confirmed by the laws attributed to Solon.
Political roles in Classical Athens must be considered in terms of duties rather than rights. Obligations to family and state were the strongest compulsion in the lives of citizens, both male and female. The principal duty of citizen women toward the polis was the production of legitimate heirs to the oikoi, or families, whose aggregate comprised the citizenry. Every generation the members of the oikoi were charged with the perpetuation of the cults of their ancestors as well as the maintenance of the lines of descent. In effect, the interest of the state coincided with the interest of the family in seeing that individual families did not die out.
Women as well as men could serve the state in preserving the independence of the oikoi. In families in which a son was lacking, the daughters were responsible for perpetuating the oikos. In such a family the daughter was regarded as “attached to the family property”; hence her name epiklēros. The family property went with her to her husband, and thence to their child. This arrangement shows that although males were preferred to females, succession at Athens was not strictly agnatic in the sense that only males were legally able to inherit, although the epiklēros never truly owned her father’s property. It was the duty or privilege of the nearest male kinsman to marry the heiress. The order of succession to the hand of the heiress was the same order in which the male kinsmen would have succeeded to the father’s estate if there had not been any heiress at all, i.e., brothers of the deceased, then sons of brothers of the deceased; there is some ambiguity as to whether the estate—and the hand of the heiress—then went to sons of the sisters of the deceased or to grandsons of brothers of the deceased. The disparity in the ages of the resulting married couple was not a factor, as long as they were capable of reproduction.
The bizarre ramifications of the epiklerate are too numerous to be fully investigated here.7 An heiress might have already been married at her father’s death, and not necessarily to the nearest male kin. Whether the next-of-kin had the right to dissolve the marriage of a married heiress is debatable. The consensus of scholarly opinion is that the marriage could be dissolved only if it had not produced a son, for if the epiklēros had a son her property was destined for him. However, this has not been satisfactorily proven.
The amount of wealth that accompanied the heiress was the significant factor in attracting the next-of-kin. A wealthy heiress generated lively competition. We know of at least two men who divorced their wives in order to marry heiresses, both providing for the remarriage of their ex-wives.8 Andocides, in his speech “On the Mysteries” in 400 B.C., alleged that the serious charge of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries was framed against him in order to divert him from claiming the hand of a rich heiress. A poorer heiress may have inherited nothing more than her father’s debts. The state obliged the next-of-kin to marry her himself, or to provide her with a dowry sufficient to attract a husband.9
The stipulations regarding Athenian heiresses appear much harsher than those at Sparta and Gortyn (see this page–this page). In Sparta only unmarried girls were subject to the laws concerning heiresses,10 and in Gortyn an heiress could free herself of the obligation to marry by relinquishing part of her inheritance. But if it is at all valid to comment on the Athenian treatment of the heiress, it is reasonable to point out that the regulation that seems cruel and mercenary in the case of the wealthy heiress is protective and charitable in the case of the poor woman, who without the attraction of a dowry would remain husbandless and pitiful. A brief statement by Aristotle implies that the regulations for resident foreigners (metics) in the matter of inheritance and heiresses were similar to those for citizens, inasmuch as he stated that legal actions concerning estates and heiresses which the archon (a chief magistrate) initiates in the case of citizens are similarly introduced by the polemarch (a magistrate with jurisdiction over actions involving persons who are not Athenian citizens) in the case of metics.11
As a logical consequence of the woman’s duty to Athens, marriage and motherhood were considered the primary goals of every female citizen. The death of a young girl often elicited lamentations specifically over her failure to fulfill her intended role as a wife. Epitaphs express this feeling, and some vases of the shape used to transport water for a prenuptial bath mark the graves of girls who died unwed. The dead maiden is portrayed dressed as a bride on these memorial loutrophoroi vases.
Citizen women were perpetually under the guardianship of a man, usually the father or, if he were dead, the male next-of-kin. Upon marriage a woman passed into the guardianship of her husband in most matters, with the important limitation that her father, or whoever else had given her in marriage, retained the right to dissolve the marriage.12 If the husband predeceased the wife, the guardianship of her dowry and perhaps of her person passed to her sons if they were of age, or to their guardians. If a widow had no children, she would return to the power of her original guardian or his heirs. A widow was protected by the archon, who could prosecute offenders in her behalf.
Responsible fathers in Classical Athens did not raise female babies unless they foresaw a proper marriage for them at maturity. The initial consideration of the father was financial. Custom dictated that a dowry commensurate with the father’s economic status be provided for a woman’s maintenance. Vase paintings representing women seated on clothing chests allude to the dowries possessed by brides.13 A father would not raise more girls than he could provide with dowries, and larger dowries tended to attract wealthier and more desirable suitors. In cases where the father had not shown proper foresight or had suffered reverses, dowries were contributed from other sources. The wealthy frequently dowered their poorer relatives. We are told without further explanation that the law required that dowries be provided for poor girls of even passably attractive appearance, and a few times Athens provided dowries for daughters of men who had served the state.14 Lack of a dowry gave a hostile orator a chance to assert that no legal marriage had taken place, or gave self-righteous husbands an opportunity to boast that they had been compassionate enough to marry without the promise of a dowry.15 The marriage of the dowryless Elpinice to Callias was exceptional, for he was very wealthy and could overlook the dowry in his desire for a marriage alliance with a poor branch of the noble family of Philaidae. There may have been women of citizen origin who lacked dowries or guardians to arrange marriages for them, and who were thus compelled to become concubines, but our evidence for this group of women is meager.16 In addition to her dowry, a bride had a small trousseau, limited by Solon to three dresses and some other paraphernalia of little value.17 The trousseau was usually not included in the dowry, but would customarily remain with her as her personal property at the conclusion of a marriage.18
The Athenians were protective of their women. A woman’s dowry was to remain intact throughout her lifetime and to be used for her support; neither her father, nor her guardian, nor her husband, nor the woman herself could legally dispose of it. Upon marriage, the dowry passed from the guardianship of the father to that of the groom. The groom could use the principal but was required to maintain his wife from the income of her dowry, computed at 18 per cent annually. Upon divorce, the husband was required to return the dowry to his ex-wife’s guardian, or pay interest at 18 per cent. Thus her support would continue to be provided for, and, with her dowry intact, she would be eligible for remarriage. A widow, especially if she had increased her property through inheritance from her late husband, would also be an attractive candidate for remarriage.19
A betrothal was contracted between the guardian of the bride and the groom or, if the latter was still young, the guardian of the groom. Marriage arrangements were made by men on the basis of economic and political considerations, and girls were always obliged to marry the men their male relatives selected for them. The bride and groom may have never set eyes upon one another, but there were many marriages between first cousins or other relatives, who presumably would have seen each other at such family ceremonies as funerals.20 Marriage to relatives was attractive especially among the wealthier families in democratic Athens, when inroads were constantly made against the fortunes of the wealthy: such marriages provided a way of consolidating the resources of the family, facilitated agreement between parties who knew and trusted each other, gave relatives preferential access to brides, and forestalled enforcement of the law of the epiklerate.
The purpose of marriage was procreation, within the limits of the economic resources of the family. Before the groom joined her on their wedding day, the bride ate a fruit with many seeds, symbolizing fertility.21 The birth of a child, especially a son, was considered a fulfillment of the goal of the marriage.22
A girl was ideally first married at fourteen to a man of about thirty.23 The necessity that the bride be a virgin, coupled with the ancient belief that young girls were lustful, made an early marriage desirable.24 The husband who married at thirty could well be dead at forty-five, having begotten two or three children within the marriage and leaving his wife a candidate for remarriage. Late marriage of men in Athens can be attributed to their duty to serve as soldiers for ten years, but it appears also to have been an adaptation to the low proportion of females in the population. A young widow could serve as wife in a number of serial marriages. Since marriage was the preferable condition for women, and men were protective of their women, a dying husband, like a divorcing husband, might arrange a future marriage for his wife.25
Divorce was easily attainable, either by mutual consent or through action on behalf of either one of the spouses, and there was no stigma attached.26 When the divorce was initiated by the husband, he was required merely to send the wife from his house. When the wife wished a divorce, she needed the intercession of her father or some other male citizen to bring the case before the archon. There are only three cases known from the Classical period where an Athenian divorce proceeded from the wife’s side. Two are from the fourth century, and were negotiated exclusively among men. The third case was remarkable in that a woman attempted to obtain a divorce on her own initiative. During the stress of the Peloponnesian War, Hipparete attempted to divorce Alcibiades. She left her husband’s house and moved in with her brother Callias. She then set off to register her divorce with the archon, evidently unaccompanied by her brother, for at the tribunal she was seized by Alcibiades and forcibly carried back to his house.27
Since children were produced to perpetuate the father’s house, they were the property of their father, and remained in his house when marriages were dissolved through death and probably also in cases of divorce. The divorcée or widow was thus entirely free to remarry and to bear children to a new husband.28
The parentage determined the eligibility of children for citizenship—not an unusual criterion, save for the ambiguity of Athenian attitudes toward the value of the maternal contribution to the foetus. For instance, Apollo, in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, presented in 458 B.C., states that the mother contributes to conception in a passive way as a receptacle for the father’s seed:
I shall explain this—and speak quite bluntly, so note.
She who is called the mother is not her offspring’s
Parent, but nurse to the newly sown embryo.
The male—who mounts—begets. The female, a stranger.
Guards a stranger’s child if no god bring it harm.
I shall present you evidence that proves my point.
There may be a father, and no mother. Nearby
Stands my witness, the child of Olympian Zeus
Who was not nourished in the dark depths of a womb.
Yet such a child as no goddess could ever bear.29
These statements are understandable in view of the fact that the mammalian ovum was unknown; hence a woman’s contribution to a baby was not fully understood. This is why an agricultural society would use a metaphor such as “sowing” for sexual intercourse: the (visible) male semen was held to be the seed, sown in what appeared to them to be a fertile field—but merely a field. However, this view is contradicted by the contemporary Athenian law which forbade marriage between siblings who had come from a single mother, while children of the same father but different mothers were permitted to marry. A further inconsistency is found in the regulations we have already discussed concerning the epiklēros, which encouraged a close degree of inbreeding within the paternal line.
We have instances from the late Archaic and early Classical periods of some of the leading citizens—among them Megacles and Miltiades—being married to foreign women while their children by them were considered to be citizens. The influence of powerful fathers-in-law was desirable from the standpoint of the ruling classes, but not so in terms of Athenian notions of democracy. Yet not until the legislation of Pericles in 451–50 B.C. was it necessary that the mother of citizens be a citizen herself. This law was prompted by the realization that the number of citizens was too greatly increased.30 This same law was later relaxed, at a point in Athenian history when the population had dwindled and it was necessary to increase the number of citizens.
Pericles, in the funeral oration he delivered after only one year of the Peloponnesian War, exhorted married women to bear more children.31 The shortage of males became more critical as the war continued. The proportion of women in the city was increased by the departure of a large expeditionary force, consisting of 4,000 hoplites, 300 cavalry, and 100 triremes to Sicily in 415 B.C. Moreover, the occupation of Decelea in 411 B.C. forced the Athenians to fight throughout the year, rather than, as previously, only in the summer. Evidence of the continuing shortage of men can be found in the arming of slaves and in the abnormal deployment of knights for the naval battle of Arginusae.32
One effect on women was that fewer potential husbands were available. This concern is voiced in 411 B.C. in Lysistrata.33 The corollary to the dearth of husbands naturally would have been a decrease in the number of legitimate sons born. The diminution would have been intolerable, in a state engaged in a lengthy war. Therefore, owing to the lack of husbands, and the need to increase the population, the Athenians stretched the concept of legitimacy. As Diogenes Laertius states: “For they say the Athenians, because of the scarcity of men, wished to increase the population, and passed a vote that a man might marry one Athenian woman and have children by another.” This practice, then, explains the stories that Callias, son of Hipponicus (see this page), and Socrates and Euripides each had two wives, and that Myrto was the mother of the two sons of Socrates who were still children in 399 B.C.34 Though bigamy was not normally tolerated in Athens, temporary bigamy was a necessary and expedient response to the high wartime mortality rate of males, the excess number of women, and the need to replenish the population.35
In these three known cases of bigamy, all the wives were Athenian citizens. However, since the chief requirement of the citizenship law had been Athenian parentage on both sides, and citizenship had not been predicated on actual marriage, the relaxation of this law may imply that foreign women were now permitted to be mothers of Athenian citizens. In other words, what was new in this period was not so much the fact of legal bigamy—although it is important that such legalization entitled the children of the second wife to inherit from their father—but rather that the situation of Athens before 451 B.C. was restored, and Athenian men could marry foreign women and have children who would enjoy the privileges of citizenship.
Some Athenian men may well have preferred foreign women to Athenians. One of the more abominable crimes of the Thirty Tyrants (404–403 B.C.) was that they were responsible for the spinster-hood of Athenian daughters.36 They accomplished this, no doubt, by executing many eligible men who were their political adversaries; and, by continuing to countenance the relaxation of the citizenship law, they were not forcing the surviving men to marry Athenian brides. When the democrats deposed the Thirty in 403 B.C., the citizenship law was reimposed, making Athenian women desirable marriage partners if only because they were once again the sole means of producing children who could be legitimate heirs. (The children produced by the mixed unions preceding the reimposition of the law continued to be considered citizens.) 37
Many a play of New Comedy ends happily with the recognition that a young woman of unknown parentage who is about to become a concubine is truly an Athenian citizen and can marry her lover. Foreign women residing in Athens were tempted to pretend they were citizens in order to obtain the security and advantages of marriage to male citizens. The celebrated speech Against Neaira, attributed to Demosthenes, is the prosecution, probably in 340 B.C., of a woman who had practiced prostitution as a foreign slave in Corinth, with several notable and wealthy men among her clients. When freed, she lived in Athens, with the children who had been born to her in slavery, as the legitimate wife of an Athenian citizen. It is indicative of the invisibility acquired by the ex-slave prostitute upon becoming a respectable Athenian wife that her husband in turn was able to pass off her daughter (born in slavery) as a citizen, giving her twice in marriage to citizens, one of whom was no less a personage than the King Archon, a high religious magistrate.
The average age of menarche, as well as the age of a woman’s first marriage, was fourteen.38 J. Lawrence Angel’s studies of skeletal remains indicate that the average adult longevity in Classical Greece was 45.0 years for males and 36.2 for females.39 Other sorts of studies give lower figures for both sexes, but all agree that females predeceased males by an average of five to ten years.40 Without the intervention of war—which would selectively affect the mortality of males—the sex difference in longevity alone would be responsible for a large ratio of men to women in the population. According to Angel, the interval between childbirths was approximately four years. Allowing for two years of adolescent sterility after menarche, if the typical female died at 36.2, she would have borne five or six children. Angel’s examination of female skeletal remains shows an average of 4.6 births per woman, with 1.6 juvenile deaths, resulting in 3 survivors per female. According to these calculations, the Athenian population would have increased each generation, and indeed Aristotle stated that Pericles’ citizenship law was enacted because of the large number of citizens.
What mechanisms did Pericles use to contain the growth of the population? What proportion of the citizenry was male, what proportion female? How many young men died on the battlefields and were buried en masse or cremated, thus depriving us of the opportunity to analyze their skeletons or read their tombstones? Since there is no way of definitely ascertaining the demography of Classical Athens, what follows is an attempt to reconstruct a puzzle with many of the pieces missing.
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. There is little specific information for the Classical period on female contraceptive techniques, but it may be assumed that certain time-honored methods were employed.41 Abortion was practiced, although those who took the Hippocratic Oath promised never to administer abortifacients. Aristotle distinguished between abortion before and after the foetus felt sensation and had life, by stating that the former was sanctionable but the latter was not.42
Cemeteries bear witness to the high rate of infant mortality. The natural mortality of infants in Classical Athens was so high as to preclude the wholesale practice of infanticide.43 Nevertheless, I think that it was practiced to some extent, for it was necessary in order to limit the population in peacetime, and that more female infants were disposed of than male. We also hear little of twins in Classical Greece and can deduce that usually only one of a pair was raised. Since a baby was not a member of the family until the father made a ceremonial declaration to that effect, the distinction between exposure of the newborn and late abortion was blurred. Theoretically, in order to perpetuate each oikos it was necessary that each family contribute at most one daughter to the supply of eligible brides. Through remarriage—which occurred not infrequently during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and is well documented for the upper classes—a woman could produce heirs for more than one family, and an unmarried man who lacked a son could adopt one to perpetuate his oikos. Girls were rarely adopted. The adoption of a niece by the wealthy Hagnias in 396 B.C. may have been a result of the dearth of young men and the surfeit of unmarried women following the disastrous events of the second half of the Peloponnesian War.44
It was necessary to have only one male heir. However, for insurance, a family probably would raise more than one son. There was less compulsion for a family to raise more than a single daughter, although some did raise a number of daughters. Extra males did not threaten to increase the population permanently, for many men were killed in war or could migrate to colonies.
After Pericles’ citizenship law discouraged marriage to foreigners, if my demographic speculations are correct, there was not a sufficient number of citizen brides for those who survived through whom additional families could be engendered. The citizenship law may have been reimposed because, even in the brief time when it was not in force, a sufficient number of citizen children had been produced and the war was subsiding. The quotation from Diogenes Laertius (above, this page) and Aristotle’s statement that the imposition of the citizenship law by Pericles was motivated by the growth in the citizen population show that the Athenians understood that the simplest means of controlling the growth of the population was by increasing or decreasing the number of females who could produce citizen children.45 The increase was effected by the relaxation of the citizenship law, the decrease by female infanticide and the reimposition of the citizenship law. In normal times, when citizen men outnumbered citizen women, there were not enough brides for each man to be able to marry.46 In unusual periods—for example, during the last quarter of the fifth century B.C., when the male population had been depleted by the many years of war and by the loss of a huge contingent of soldiers in Sicily—some men had legitimate relationships with more than one woman.47
It must be recognized that ancient literary sources may merely take note of the children who mattered most: that is, the boys. But a casual survey definitely gives the impression of a preponderance of male children among well-known Athenians. Socrates had three sons, Pericles two legitimate sons and another by Aspasia. Plato had two brothers, one sister, and one half-brother. A study of the propertied and influential families listed in Johannes Kirchner’s classical work, Prosopographica Attica, shows that, of 346 families, 271 had more sons than daughters and that the ratio of boys to girls is roughly five to one.48 These statistics have some significance but cannot be taken at immediate face value, since Herodotus reported that Cleomenes died childless, leaving only a daughter,49 and in modern Greece, when a peasant with three sons and two daughters is asked how many children he has, he is likely to answer, “three.” We may also observe an oversight in Herodotus’ report that before the battle of Salamis, the Athenians asked the rest of the Greek fleet for protection so that they might evacuate their children and women from Attica; but upon arriving in their city the Athenians overlooked the women and actually made a proclamation that each man should save his children and slaves.50
By the late fifth century B.C., owing to the need for the safety afforded by city walls, urban living replaced farming for many Athenians. Thus, when one compares Sparta to Athens, it is necessary to remember that the former never comprised more than a settlement of villages, while Athens was one of the largest Greek cities.51 The effect of urbanization upon women was to have their activities moved indoors, and to make their labor less visible and hence less valued.
Urban living created a strong demarcation between the activities of men of the upper and lower classes, as well as between those of men and women. Men were free to engage in politics, intellectual and military training, athletics, and the sort of business approved for gentlemen. Some tasks were regarded as banausic and demeaning, befitting slaves rather than citizens. Naturally, a male citizen who needed income was unable to maintain the ideal and was forced to labor in banausic employment. Women of the upper class, excluded from the activities of the males, supervised and—when they wished—pursued many of the same tasks deemed appropriate to slaves.52 Since the work was despised, so was the worker. Women’s work was productive, but because it was the same as slaves’ work, it was not highly valued in the ideology of Classical Athens. The intimacy of the discussions between heroines and choruses of female slaves in tragedy and the depictions of mistress and slave on tombstones imply a bond between slave and free, for they spent much time together and their lives were not dissimilar.53
Yet the hostility engendered by women of the leisured class who did not work, but sat at home as idle parasites, is apparent in Xenophon’s report of a conversation between Socrates and Aristarchus.54 Aristarchus complains that, due to political turmoil following the establishment of oligarchy, fourteen of his female relatives have moved into his house for protection and he cannot afford to maintain them. Socrates suggests that they be put to work; Aristarchus counters that they are freeborn ladies, not accustomed to working. Socrates convinces Aristarchus that labor is not demeaning and that the women themselves would be happier if employed productively. The women are put to spinning and weaving—skills they had learned as part of a gentlewoman’s education, in order to be able to supervise slaves, but which they had never expected to be compelled to use for monetary gain. The result is an improvement in the dispositions of the women, as well as in the attitude of the man of the house toward them. We are led to understand that he kept them at these jobs permanently, and made a profit too. We should keep in mind that Socrates’ suggestions for the amelioration of Athenian life were acceptable only to his own small circle, and that his disciple Xenophon was a theoretician, wealthy, and an exile. However, the problems with which Socrates concerned himself were widespread, and had been noted even in the Archaic period in the poetry of Hesiod and Semonides.
Women of all social classes worked mainly indoors or near the house in order to guard it. They concerned themselves with the care of young children, the nursing of sick slaves, the fabrication of clothing, and the preparation of food. The preparation of ordinary food was considered exclusively women’s work. During the siege of Plataea, when the city was evacuated, one hundred and ten women were left behind to cook for the four hundred men remaining to defend the city.55
The tasks enumerated by Homer for mortal women and goddesses are the same tasks pursued by women in Athens four hundred years later. The only technological advance facilitating women’s work that can be detected in urban Athens was the improvement of the water supply in the late sixth century B.C. Transporting water in a pitcher balanced on the head was a female occupation. Because fetching water involved social mingling, gossip at the fountain, and possible flirtations, slave girls were usually sent on this errand.56
Women did not go to market for food, and even now they do not do so in rural villages in Greece.57 The feeling that purchase or exchange was a financial transaction too complex for women, as well as the wish to protect women from the eyes of strangers and from intimate dealings with shopkeepers, contributed to classifying marketing as a man’s occupation.
Wealthier women were distinguished by exercising a managerial role, rather than performing all the domestic work themselves. Xenophon wrote a treatise elevating household management to the status of a science. According to the Oeconomicus, the wise husband will teach this science to his young bride. The husband and wife are to have a partnership, he performing the outdoor work, including bringing food and wool and other commodities, she supervising the transformation of the raw materials into a finished product. The good wife, according to Xenophon, has a favorable relationship with her slaves, but even more onerous duties than they, since she bears the responsibility of caring for the household’s possessions. The Socratic principle that knowledge is virtue is given practical application. The wife who masters the science of economics has so greatly improved herself that Socrates pays her the ultimate compliment: he says that she displays “a masculine mind.” 58
Poorer women, even citizens, went out to work, most of them pursuing occupations that were an extension of women’s work in the home. Women were employed as washerwomen, as woolworkers, and in other clothing industries. They also worked as vendors, selling food or what they had spun or woven at home. Some women sold garlands they had braided. Women were also employed as nurses of children and midwives. One woman is depicted on a vase as a vase painter, but it is impossible to determine from such a portrayal whether she was a citizen.59
An important source for our knowledge of the occupations pursued by women is the dedications that freedwomen made to Athena when they were released from obligations to their former owners.60 It was customary to offer a silver cup valued at one hundred drachmas, and lists of the dedicators, with their origins and occupations, survive. The respectable occupations available to these freedwomen are not noticeably more numerous or diverse than those open to citizens.
Although some prostitutes acquired a transitory wealth, few women became rich by working.61 A few metic women did engage in large-scale financial transactions, but it was very unusual for a citizen woman to do so. Women could not buy or sell land. Athenian law restricted women and minors to contracts valued at less than a medimnus of barley (a medimnus could sustain a normal family for six days).
In the fifth and fourth centuries, Athenian women could acquire property through their dowries, or by gift, or by inheritance as sisters, cousins, nieces, and aunts, though probably not as mothers. Some women were acutely aware of financial matters, but their property was nevertheless managed by male guardians.62 The Athenian provisions are in stark contrast to those of Sparta and Gortyn, which gave women real control over their property.
Direct participation in the affairs of government—including holding public office, voting, and serving as jurors and as soldiers—was possible only for male citizens. The advanced education of a boy concentrated on the art of rhetoric, with the aim of delivering persuasive speeches at public meetings and winning a fine reputation among men. Physical education was also stressed in order to provide the state with strong soldiers. The qualities admired in girls were the opposite from those desired in boys: silence, submissiveness, and abstinence from men’s pleasures.63 The statesman Pericles, in his funeral oration delivered in 430 B.C., advised the widows of fallen soldiers that the greatest glory would accrue to the woman who was least talked about by men, whether in complimentary or scandalous terms.64 Since citizen girls were not to look forward to the public careers that brought status to men, it was sufficient for them to be instructed in domestic arts by their mothers. While her male contemporary was living in his parents’ house and developing mental and physical skills, the adolescent girl was already married and had young children. Thus the discrepancy in the educational levels of men and women, added to the huge age differential between bride and groom, resulted in feelings of condescension and paternalism on the part of the husband, and a marriage characterized by a lack of friendship in the modern sense between husband and wife.
Athenian law of all periods tended to regard the wife as a veritable child, having the legal status of a minor in comparison to her husband. Although males came of age at eighteen, females never did; the childbearing wife was really a child herself. That the husband would rule over the wife and children was considered natural by Aristotle. He deduced that the friendship between husband and wife was “unequal” and that the connubial relationship was based on utility, in contrast to the equitable relationships between men which are the basis of social and political organization. Man and wife need each other, Aristotle admitted, but their relationship was as a benefactor to beneficiary.65 Aristotle was describing the patriarchal family of Classical Athens, but his influence was widespread and enduring.
Religion was the major sphere of 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. Since it would be impossible to survey here all the Athenian cults in which women played a role, we shall examine only three, and these in a limited way: the cult of the Olympian goddess Athena, the Mysteries of Demeter and Korē at Eleusis, and the exclusively female celebration of the Thesmophoria.66
Athena Polias was the patron goddess of Athens, and the priestess of Athena Polias was a person of great importance and some influence. The priestesshood was hereditary in the noble family of the Eteoboutadae. Herodotus gives two early indications of the political use of the prestige of the priestess on behalf of democratic factions.67 In 508 B.C., when the Spartan King Cleomenes attempted to meddle in Athenian politics by opposing the popular reformer Cleisthenes and approached the shrine of Athena, the priestess reminded him that it was not lawful for Dorians (sc. foreigners) to enter. Again, the priestess supported the decision to evacuate Athens before the battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. by reporting that the sacred snake of Athena had already departed from the Acropolis. Inscriptions and dedications honoring the priestesses of Athena are common, especially from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and some of their names are inscribed on seats in the theater of Dionysus.68 Women and men participated in the Panathenaea, a festival celebrated annually on the birthday of Athena, and quadrennially with greater magnificence. From the religious viewpoint, the essential feature of the festival was the sacrificial offering of animals. Preceding the sacrifice was a procession that conducted the sacrificial victims to the altar. The Parthenon frieze depicts women in this procession mingling with men. Of particular note are the young girls, called kanēphoroi, who carried sacred baskets in the procession. The kanēphoroi were virgins selected from noble families. Their virginity was a potent factor in securing the propitious use of the sacred offerings and sacrificial instruments carried in their baskets. To prevent a candidate from participating in this event was to cast aspersions on her reputation. High on the list of women around whom—as passive and unwitting objects of insults to be avenged—the course of history has turned is the sister of Harmodius. The sons of the tyrant Pisistratus first invited her to be a basket-bearer and then rejected her, claiming she was unsuitable. This insult to his sister provoked Harmodius and his friend Aristogiton to the act of assassination in 514 B.C., an act that earned them reputations as the liberators of Athens.69
Every fourth year at the Greater Panathenaea a new peplos (robe) was manufactured to be worn by an ancient image of Athena.70 The weaving of the cloth was begun by two of the arrēphoroi, who were girls between the ages of seven and eleven, chosen from noble families by the King Archon to perform a variety of religious functions for a year. Other women continued the weaving and embroidering of the peplos. For the Panathenaic procession the peplos was spread like a sail above a ship on wheels. The Parthenon frieze depicts the presentation of the peplos to Athena.
Lesser and Greater Mysteries were celebrated annually at Eleusis in honor of Demeter and her daughter Korē (Persephone).71 [Plate 8] The rituals in earliest times were connected with the death and rebirth of grain and developed into an allegory of human immortality. The Eleusinian Mysteries survived as the most revered Greek cult until the end of paganism. Yet little is known for certain about the Mysteries, and there is scarcely any indication of the reason for their popularity.
Originally a private family cult of the noble Eumolpidae, the Mysteries came under the control of the Athenian state before 600 B.C. The chief priest, the hierophantēs, most exalted of all Athenian priests, was a Eumolpid and held office for life. There were additional male officials, among whom the dadouchos, or torchbearer, was next in importance after the hierophantēs. He was assisted by a priestess called the dadouchousa. Other female celebrants included two priestesses known as hierophantides, also Eumolpidae, who held office for life and who could be married. One hierophantis served Demeter, the other Korē, and both were the main assistants of the hierophantēs. A group of priestesses panageis (sacrosanct), also known as melissae (bees), lived together in segregated dwellings and had no contact with men. The name “bees” probably alludes to the asexuality associated with these insects (p. 49). The function of these priestesses is unknown.
Rivaling the hierophantēs in prestige was the chief priestess of Demeter. She came from the family of either the Phileidae or the Eumolpidae. The priestess of Demeter, like the hierophantēs, was paid an obol (a small coin) daily by everyone being initiated into the Lesser or Greater Mysteries. The priestess was eponymous—that is, at Eleusis events were dated by the name of the priestess and her successive years in office.72
All women, men, children, and slaves of Greek speech, untainted by homicide, were eligible for initiation into the Mysteries. The preliminary rites included a bath of purification, fasting, sacrifices, and the drinking of the kykeōn, a barley potion. Only female initiates participated in the kernophoria, the bearing of the sacred vessels, which was one of the preliminary ceremonies. The initiates also watched women perform sacred dances, in commemoration of the time when the women of Eleusis danced in honor of Demeter. Included in the ritual were recitation, the revelation of sacred objects, and a dramatic performance probably showing the sorrow of Demeter at the abduction of Korē and her subsequent joy at her daughter’s return. The priestess of Demeter played the roles of both Demeter and Korē.73 In view of the multiple manifestations of the mother goddess and son-consort dyad throughout antiquity, especially in the Middle East, one may well be astounded at the appeal that a unique religion centering on a mother and daughter held for Athenians.
Another festival honoring Demeter, but strictly reserved for women, was the Thesmophoria.74 Unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Thesmophoria never developed into more than an agrarian festival, but it was noted for preserving its ancient rituals without alteration. At Athens the celebration took place at the autumn sowing in order to ensure the growth of the seed grain by means of fertility magic. The precise nature of the rites and the days on which they were enacted are much disputed, but the following interpretation seems plausible.
The Thesmophoria was celebrated for three days. The first day was titled kathodos (going down) and anodos (rising up). Pigs, which were animals sacred to Demeter, had been thrown into subterranean caves early in the summer, probably at the festival of Demeter and Korē known as the Scirophoria. On the first day of the Thesmophoria, women went down into the caves and recovered the remains of the pigs, which they mixed with seed grain and placed on altars. The second day was titled nēsteia (fasting). The women fasted sitting on the ground, mimicking Demeter’s behavior at the loss of her daughter. On the third day, kalligeneia (fair birth), the remains of the pigs and seed grain were scattered in the fields.
Only free women of unblemished reputation were permitted to participate in the Thesmophoria.75 They were chaste for three days in preparation for the festival and continued to abstain during the course of it. Yet they indulged in the foul language and obscenities characteristic of fertility rituals. The women chose their own officials from among themselves.76 Men were involved only to the extent that, if they were wealthy, they were compelled to bear the expense of the festival as a liturgy or tax in behalf of their wives.77
The existence of exclusively women’s festivals has been variously explained. One hypothesis is that women’s cults were survivals from a matriarchal period when all religion was in the hands of women. Another explanation notes that women in early societies were in charge of gardening, and hence involved in fertility cults. Regardless of the social structure, women’s connection with birth and fertility is obvious, and it is not difficult to understand the urge to apply women’s influence to the crops.
A comparison between Archaic and Classical Athens gives the impression that women were forced into obscurity in the latter period. Certainly there are no stories of respectable women in the fifth century B.C. to compare with those surrounding the members of Pisistratus’ court. It may be suggested, on the basis of comparisons between Archaic and Classical Athens and between Athenian and Spartan or Roman society, that some women—at least those of the upper class—flourished in an aristocratic society, while none fared as well under the democracy. The curbing of the aristocrats by the democracy of the fifth century B.C. entailed the repression of all women, but leaned especially heavily on the aristocrats who had the time and the means to make and enjoy displays of wealth. It may also be suggested that after the class stratification that separated individual men according to such criteria as noble descent and wealth was eliminated, the ensuing ideal of equality among male citizens was intolerable. The will to dominate was such that they then had to separate themselves as a group and claim to be superior to all nonmembers: foreigners, slaves, and women.