IF RESPECTABLE Athenian women were secluded and silent, how are we to account for the forceful heroines of tragedy and comedy? And why does the theme of strife between woman and man pervade Classical drama? Before proceeding to complex explanations which are directly concerned with women, it is necessary to repeat the truism that the dramatists examined multiple aspects of man’s relationship to the universe and to society; accordingly, their examination of another basic relationship—that between man and woman—is not extraordinary. It is rather the apparent discrepancy between women in the actual society and the heroines on the stage that demands investigation. Several hypotheses have been formulated in an attempt to explain the conflict between fact and fiction.
Many plots of tragedy are derived from myths of the Bronze Age preserved by epic poets. As we have observed, the royal women of epic were powerful, not merely within their own homes but in an external political sense. To the Athenian audience familiar with the works of Homer, not even an iconoclast like Euripides could have presented a silent and repressed Helen or Clytemnestra. Likewise, the Theban epic cycle showed the mutual fratricide of the sons of Oedipus. The surviving members of the family were known to be Antigone and Ismene. Sophocles could not have presented these sisters as boys. In short, some myths that provided the plots of Classical tragedies described the deeds of strong women, and the Classical dramatist could not totally change these facts.
Those who believe in the historical existence of Bronze Age matriarchy also propose an answer to our questions: the male-female polarity discernible in Bronze Age myths can be explained by referring to an actual conflict between a native pre-Hellenic matriarchal society and the patriarchy introduced by conquering invaders.
The Bronze Age origin of these myths does not explain why Athenian tragic poets, living at least seven hundred years later in a patriarchal society, not only found these stories congenial but accentuated the power of their heroines. For example, in the Odyssey Aegisthus is the chief villain in the murder of Agamemnon, but in the tragedies of Aeschylus a shift was made to highlight Clytemnestra as the prime mover in the conspiracy. Electra, the daughter of Clytemnestra, is a colorless figure in mythology, and in the Odyssey Orestes alone avenges his father; but two dramatists elevated Electra and created whole plays around her and her dilemma. Similarly, Sophocles is thought to have been responsible for the story of the conflict between Creon and Antigone. Homer, it is true, showed how Calypso and Circe could unman even the hero Odysseus, who more easily survived other ordeals, but these two were immortal females. The mortal women in epic, however vital, are not equivalent in impact to tragic heroines, nor is their power such as to produce the male-female conflicts that tragedy poses in a pervasive and demanding way.
A number of scholars find a direct relationship between real women living in Classical Athens and the heroines of tragedy.1 They reason that the tragic poets found their models not in the Bronze Age but among the real women known to them. From this theory they deduce that real women were neither secluded nor repressed in Classical times. They use as evidence, for example, the fact that tragic heroines spent much time conversing out-of-doors without worrying about being seen. This argument lacks cogency, since the scenes of tragedy are primarily out-of-doors and female characters could scarcely be portrayed if they had to be kept indoors. The proponents of this argument question how dramatists could have become so familiar with feminine psychology if they never had a chance to be with women. They ignore the fact that playwrights were familiar with their female relatives, as well as with the numerous resident aliens and poor citizen women who did move freely about the city. At least one group of women—the wives of citizens with adequate means—probably was secluded.
It is not legitimate for scholars to make judgments about the lives of real women solely on the basis of information gleaned from tragedy. When an idea expressed in tragedy is supported by other genres of ancient sources, then only is it clearly applicable to real life. Ismene’s statement that the proper role of women is not to fight with men2 can be said to reflect real life, since it agrees with information derived from Classical oratory and from comedy. But when Clytemnestra murders her husband, or Medea her sons, or when Antigone takes credit for an act of civil disobedience, we cannot say that these actions have much to do with the lives of real women in Classical Athens, although isolated precedents in Herodotus could be cited for passionate, aggressive women (including a barbarian queen who contrived the murder of her husband with his successor; another who opposed men in battle; and a third who cut off the breasts, nose, ears, lips, and tongue of her rival’s mother).3 However, as images of women in Classical literature written by men, heroines such as Clytemnestra, Medea, and Antigone are valid subjects for contemplation.
Retrospective psychoanalysis has been used to analyze the experience of young boys in Classical Athens, and thus to explain the mature dramatist’s depiction of strong heroines. According to the sociologist Philip Slater, the Athenian boy spent his early formative years primarily in the company of his mother and female slaves.4 The father passed the day away from home, leaving the son with no one to defend him from the mother. The relationship between mother and son was marked by ambiguity and contradiction. The secluded woman nursed a repressed hostility against her elderly, inconsiderate, and mobile husband. In the absence of her husband, the mother substituted the son, alternately pouring forth her venom and doting on him. She demanded that he be successful and lived vicariously through him. The emotionally powerful mother impressed herself upon the imagination of the young boy, becoming the seed, as it were, which developed into the dominant female characters of the mature playwright’s mind. The Classical dramatist tended to choose those myths of the Bronze Age that were most fascinating to him, since they explored certain conflicts that existed within his own personality. The “repressed mother” explanation works in inverse ratio to the power of the heroines produced by the son: the more repressed his mother was and the more ambivalent her behavior, the more dreadful were the heroines portrayed by the dramatist-son.
Slater’s theory is an interesting attempt to answer a difficult question. Some readers may abhor the interpretation of classical antiquity by means of psychoanalytic approaches. But since the myths of the past illuminate the present, it appears valid to examine them with the critical tools of the present. Still, there are problems with Slater’s analysis, just as there were with the more traditional ones. First, although adult Athenians lived sex-segregated lives, it is far from certain that fathers were distant from children. Inferences from the modern “commuting father” have too much influenced Slater’s view of antiquity. In fact, comedy shows a closeness between fathers and children: children could accompany fathers when they were invited out, and a father claimed to have nursed a baby and bought toys for him.5 Second, the reader would have to accept Slater’s premise that women constrained in a patriarchal society would harbor rage, whether or not they themselves were aware of it. As noted in the preceding chapter, the epitaphs of women assumed that their lives were satisfactory, although this evidence may be somewhat discounted since the inscriptions were selected by the surviving members of the family, most probably male. But even today many believe that women can find happiness in the role of homemaker, particularly when traditional expectations are being fulfilled. Thus Athenian women may well have lacked the internal conflict of, say, Roman women, who were plagued with the frustrations arising from relative freedom which confronted them with the realm of men, but tantalizingly kept its trophies just beyond their grasp. Is it more reasonable to suggest from a modern viewpoint that the boredom of tasks like constant weaving must have driven Athenian women to insanity, or, in contrast, to call attention to the satisfaction women may have felt at jobs well done?
I am not convinced that we can learn much about the Athenian mother from Slater, but his work is useful for the analysis of the male playwright’s creative imagination. For explanations of the powerful women in tragedy, we must look to the poets, and to other men who judged the plays and selected what they thought best. The mythology about women is created by men and, in a culture dominated by men, it may have little to do with flesh-and-blood women. This is not to deny that the creative imagination of the playwright was surely shaped by some women he knew. But it was also molded by the entire milieu of fifth-century Athens, where separation of the sexes as adults bred fear of the unfamiliar; and finally by the heritage of his literary past, including not only epic but Archaic poetry, with its misogynistic element.
Misogyny was born of fear of women. It spawned the ideology of male superiority. But this was ideology, not statement of fact; as such, it could not be confirmed, but was open to constant doubt. Male status was not immutable. Myths of matriarchies and Amazon societies showed female dominance. Three of the eleven extant comedies of Aristophanes show women in successful opposition to men. A secluded wife like Phaedra may yearn for adultery; a wife like Creusa may have borne an illegitimate son before her current marriage; a good wife like Deianira can murder her husband. These were the nightmares of the victors: that some day the vanquished would arise and treat their ex-masters as they themselves had been treated.
Most important, in the period between Homer and the tragedians, the city-state, with established codes of behavior, had evolved, and the place of women as well as of other disenfranchised groups in the newly organized society was an uncomfortable one. Many tragedies show women in rebellion against the established norms of society. As the Oresteia of Aeschylus makes clear, a city-state such as Athens flourished only through the breaking of familial or blood bonds and the subordination of the patriarchal family within the patriarchal state. But women were in conflict with this political principle, for their interests were private and family-related. Thus, drama often shows them acting out of the women’s quarters, and concerned with children, husbands, fathers, brothers, and religions deemed more primitive and family-oriented than the Olympian, which was the support of the state. This is the point at which the image of the heroine on the stage coincides with the reality of Athenian women.
The proper behavior of women and men is explored in many tragedies. This is not to say that it is the primary theme of any tragedy. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon is about the workings of justice, but the discussion of this tragedy in these pages will set aside the principal idea and focus on the secondary theme of sex roles and antagonisms.
Womanly behavior was characterized then, as now, by submissiveness and modesty. Ismene in Antigone, Chrysothemis in the plays dealing with the family of Agamemnon, Tecmessa in Ajax, Deianira in Trachinian Women, and the female choruses in tragedy act the role of “normal” women. Because of the limitations of “normal” female behavior, heroines who act outside the stereotype are sometimes said to be “masculine.” Again, it is not a compliment to a woman to be classified as masculine. Aristotle judged it inappropriate for a female character to be portrayed as manly or clever.6
Heroines, like heroes, are not normal people. While in a repressively patriarchal culture, most women—like Ismene—submit docilely, some heroines—like Clytemnestra, Antigone, and Hecuba—adopt the characteristics of the dominant sex to achieve their goals. The psychoanalyst A. Adler termed the phenomenon “masculine protest.” 7 In Agamemnon, the first play of the Oresteia trilogy, Aeschylus shows Clytemnestra with political power, planning complex strategies involving the relaying of signal beacons from Troy, outwitting her husband in persuading him to tread upon a purple carpet, and finally planning and perpetrating his murder. Unrepentant, she flaunts her sexual freedom by announcing that the death of Cassandra has brought an added relish of pleasure to her, and that her situation will be secure as long as her lover Aegisthus lights the fire on her hearth (1435–36, 1446–47). The double entendre is especially shocking because a woman traditionally lit the fire on her father’s or husband’s hearth.
Thus the chorus of old men of Argos considers that her ways are masculine and reminds her that she is a woman, addressing her as “my lady” (351). When it quizzes her as though she were a silly child, she answers with a brilliant, complex speech displaying her knowledge of geography (268–316; cf. 483–87). To a chorus slow to digest the fact that she has murdered Agamemnon, Clytemnestra impatiently retorts, “You are examining me as if I were a foolish woman” (1401). The chorus continues to meditate upon the fact that their king has been killed by a woman (1453–54). Had Aegisthus himself performed the murder, as he was reputed to have done in the Odyssey, the chorus would better have accepted it. The old men find the reversal of sex roles in Clytemnestra and Aegisthus monstrous (1633–35; 1643–45).
In the Eumenides, which was the final play of the Oresteia, Aeschylus restores masculine and feminine to their proper spheres. Orestes, who chose to murder his mother in vengeance for her murder of his father, is defended by Apollo and Athena. The power of the uncanny, monstrous female spirits of vengeance (formerly called “Erinyes” or “Furies”) is tempered and subordinated to the rule of the patriarchal Olympians. Henceforth, as Eumenides, or fair-minded spirits, they will have a proper place in the affections of civilized people.
The portrayal of the masculine woman as heroine was fully developed in Sophocles’ Antigone. The play opens with the daughters of Oedipus lamenting the laws established by the tyrant Creon. Their brother Polyneices lies dead, but Creon has forbidden that the corpse be buried, as punishment for the dead man’s treachery against his native land. While Antigone urges that they perform the burial rites, her sister Ismene seizes upon the excuse that they are not men: “We were born women, showing that we were not meant to fight with men” (61–62). She uses the frequently significant verb phyō, implying that it is by nature (physis) rather than by man-made convention that women do not attempt to rival men.
Creon, a domineering ruler, reveals particular hostility in his relations with the opposite sex. His prejudices are patriarchal. He cannot understand his son Haemon’s love for Antigone, but refers to a wife as a “field to plow” (569). The sentiments of Apollo in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (657–61; see this page) must be recalled here: since the male seed is all-important, any female will suffice. Apollo’s idea is restated by Orestes in Euripides’ Orestes.8 Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, traced the phallus/plow-woman/furrow as a common symbol of patriarchal authority and subjugation of woman.9 Moreover, as modern feminists have pointed out, the repressive male cannot conceive of an equal division of power between the sexes, but fears that women, if permitted, would be repressive in turn. So Creon, the domineering male, is constantly anxious about being bested by a woman and warns his son against such a humiliation (484, 525, 740, 746, 756).
On the other hand, Ismene—perhaps because she stayed at Thebes while Antigone shared the exile of her father—has been indoctrinated into the beliefs of patriarchal society: men are born to rule, and women to obey. Antigone bitterly rejects her sister’s notion of the natural behavior of women. Polynices is buried secretly, and Creon, the guard, and the chorus all suppose that only a man could have been responsible (248, 319, 375). Thereupon forced to confess to Creon that she has in fact buried her brother, Antigone refers to herself with a pronoun in the masculine gender (464). Creon, in turn, perceives her masculinity and refers to Antigone by a masculine pronoun and participle (479, 496). He resolves to punish her, declaring, “I am not a man, she is the man if she shall have this success without penalty” (484–85). (Similarly, Herodotus notes that Queen Artemisia, who participated in Xerxes’ expedition against Greece, was considered masculine, and that the Athenians were so indignant that a woman should be in arms against them that for her capture alone they offered a financial reward.) 10
Feeling, then, that in daring to flout his commands Antigone has acted as a man—for a true woman would be incapable of opposition—Creon, when he declares sentence upon the sisters, asserts that “they must now be women.” However, he continues to refer to them in the masculine gender (579–80). The repeated use of a masculine adjective to modify a feminine noun is noteworthy, because in classical Greek, adjectives regularly agree with the gender of the modified noun (the masculine gender may be used in reference to a woman when a general statement is made).11
We may note the male orientation of the Greek language, in which general human truths, though conceived as referring specifically to women, can be cast in the masculine gender. Perhaps this grammatical explanation will suffice when the change in gender is sporadic. However, the masculine gender used to refer to a female in specific rather than general statements—a rare occurrence in Greek—occurs with significant frequency in Antigone. It is, I believe, a device used by the playwright in characterizing the heroine who has become a masculine sort of woman. In her penultimate speech, Antigone explains her willingness to die for the sake of a brother, though not for a husband or child.
For had I been a mother, or if my husband had died, I would never have taken on this task against the city’s will. In view of what law do I say this? If my husband were dead I might find another, and another child from him if I lost a son. But with my mother and father hidden in the grave, no other brother could ever bloom for me. (905–12)
Herodotus also relates a story about a woman who. when offered the life of a husband, a son, or a brother, chooses a brother for the same reason as Antigone.12
A number of Sophoclean scholars have judged the speech spurious, or pronounced the sentiments unworthy of the heroine.13 They consider the choice of a brother over a child bizarre. And yet, in the context of Classical Athens, Antigone’s choice is reasonable. Mothers could not have been as attached to children as the ideal mother is nowadays. The natural mortality of young children would seem to discourage the formation of strong mother-child bonds. In addition, patriarchal authority asserted that the child belonged to the father, not the mother. He decided whether a child should be reared, and he kept the child upon dissolution of a marriage, while the woman returned to the guardianship of her father or, if he were dead, her brother. Thus the brother-sister bond was very precious.
The preference for the brother is also characteristic of the masculine woman, who may reject the traditional role of wife and mother as a result of being inhibited by external forces from displaying cherishing or nurturing qualities.14 The masculine woman often allies herself with the male members of her family. In this context we may note Antigone’s firm and repeated denunciations of her sister (538–39, 543, 546–47, 549). She also judges her mother harshly, blaming her for the “reckless guilt of the marriage bed,” while the chorus, seeing only her father’s disposition in her, calls her “cruel child of a cruel father” (862, 471–72). Her disregard of her sister is so complete that she actually refers to herself as the sole survivor of the house of Oedipus (941).15
In the end, Antigone reverts to a traditional female role. She laments that she dies a virgin, unwed and childless (917–18), and commits suicide after being entombed alive by Creon. In classical mythology, suicide is a feminine and somewhat cowardly mode of death. Ajax, like Deianira, Jocasta, and Creon’s wife Eurydice, had killed himself because he could not live with unbearable knowledge. Haemon, like Phaedra, Alcestis, Laodamia, Dido, Evadne, and Hero, kills himself for love, justifying Creon’s earlier concern over his “womanish” tendencies. Of all tragic heroines, Antigone was the most capable of learning through suffering and achieving a tragic vision comparable to that of Oedipus. Her death erased that possibility.
The fate of Haemon illustrates the destructive quality of love. The chorus gives voice to this idea:
Love, invincible love, who keeps vigil on the soft cheek of a young girl, you roam over the sea and among homes in wild places, no one can escape you, neither man nor god, and the one who has you is possessed by madness. You bend the minds of the just to wrong, so here you have stirred up this quarrel of son and father. The love-kindling light in the eyes of the fair bride conquers. (781–96) 16
Antigone is a complex and puzzling play. According to Athenian law, Creon was Antigone’s guardian, since he was her nearest male relative.17 As such, he was responsible for her crime in the eyes of the state, and his punishing her was both a private and public act. He was also the nearest male relative of his dead nephews, and he, not Antigone, was responsible for their burial. Creon put what he deemed to be the interests of the state before his personal obligations.
The differences between Creon and Antigone are traditional distinctions between the sexes. According to Freud, “Women spread around them their conservative influence.… Women represent the interests of the family and sexual life; the work of civilization has become more and more men’s business.”18 The civilizing inventions of men are listed by the chorus of Antigone: sailing, navigation, plowing, hunting, fishing, domesticating animals, verbal communication, building houses, and the creation of laws and government (332–64). These were mainly masculine activities.
The Greeks assumed that men were bearers of culture. For example, according to myth, Cadmus brought the alphabet to Greece; Triptolemus—albeit prompted by the goddess Demeter—brought the use of the plow; while Daedalus was credited with the scissors, the saw, and other inventions. The specific achievements of women—which were probably in the realm of clothing manufacture, food preparation, gardening, and basketmaking, and the introduction of olive culture by Athena—do not appear in Sophocles’ list, nor in a similar list in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.19
Creon’s lack of insight into the necessity of the duality of male and female led to the death of Antigone and to his own annihilation as well. Creon’s wife died cursing him. Moreover, in a society where sons were expected to display filial obedience, Haemon chose Antigone over his father and his choice was not held against him. His death was not a punishment for disobedience. Antigone and many other tragedies show the effect of overvaluation of the so-called masculine qualities (control, subjugation, culture, excessive cerebration) at the expense of the so-called feminine aspects of life (instinct, love, family ties) which destroys men like Creon. The ideal, we can only assume—since Sophocles formulates no solution—was a harmonization of masculine and feminine values, with the former controlling the latter.20
Streams of holy rivers run backward, and universal custom is overturned. Men have deceitful thoughts; no longer are their oaths steadfast. My reputation shall change, my manner of life have good report. Esteem shall come to the female sex. No longer will malicious rumor fasten upon women. The Muses of ancient poets will cease to sing of my unfaithfulness. Apollo, god of song, did not grant us the divine power of the lyre. Otherwise I would have sung an answer to the male sex.21
Thus sang the female chorus of Euripides’ Medea in 431 B.C. Were they directly reflecting the attitude of the poet? Noting the absence of female tragedians, did Euripides turn his gift of poetry to compositions in behalf of women? Of all the images of women in classical literature, those created by Euripides pose the greatest dilemma to the modern commentator.
Among ancient critics, Euripides was the only tragedian to acquire a reputation for misogyny. In the comedy Thesmophoriazusae, by his contemporary Aristophanes, an assembly of women accuse Euripides of slandering the sex by characterizing women as whores and adultresses:
By the gods, it’s not out of any self-seeking
That I rise to address you, O women. It’s that
I’ve been disturbed and annoyed for quite some time now
When I see our reputations getting dirtied
By Euripides, son of a produce-salesgirl,
And our ears filled with all sorts of disgusting things!
With what disgusting charges has he not smeared us?
Where hasn’t he defamed us? Any place you find
Audiences, or tragedies, or choruses
We’re called sex fiends, pushovers for a handsome male,
Heavy drinkers, betrayers, babbling-mouthed gossips,
Rotten to the core, the bane of men’s existence.
And so they come straight home from these performances
Eyeing us suspiciously, and go search at once
For lovers we might hide about the premises.
We can’t do anything we used to do before.
This guy’s put terrible ideas in the heads of
Our menfolk. If any woman should start weaving
A wreath—this proves she’s got a lover. If she drops
Anything while meandering about the house,
It’s Cherchez l’homme! “For whom did the pitcher crack up?
It must have been for that Corinthian stranger!”
If a girl’s tired out, then her brother remarks:
“I don’t like the color of that girl’s complexion.”
If a woman just wants to procure a baby
Since she lacks one of her own, no deals in secret!
For now the men hover at the edge of our beds.
And to all the old men who used to wed young girls
He’s told slanderous tales, so that no old man wants
To try matrimony. You remember that line:
“An old bridegroom marries a tyrant, not a wife.” (383–413)
If he cuts up Phaedra,
Why should we worry? He’s neglected to tell how
A woman flung her stole in front of her husband
For scrutiny under the light, while dispatching
The lover she’s hidden—not a word about that!
And a woman I know claimed that her delivery
Lasted ten whole days—till she’d purchased a baby!
While her husband raced to buy labor-speeding drugs
An old crone brought her an infant, stuffed in a pot,
Its mouth stuffed with honeycomb so it wouldn’t cry.
When this baby-carrier gave the signal, she yelled,
“Out, husband, out I say! I think the little one’s
Coming” (the baby was kicking the pot’s belly)!
So he runs out, delighted; she in turn pulls out
What had plugged up the infant’s mouth—and he hollers!
The dirty old woman who’d brought in the baby
Dashes out to the husband, all smiles, and announces,
“You’ve fathered a lion—he’s your spitting image
In all of his features including his small prick
Which looks just like yours, puckered as a honeycomb.”
Why, don’t we do such naughty things? By Artemis
We do. Then why get angry at Euripides?
We’re accused of far less than what we’ve really done! (497–519) 22
Since the borderline between levity and seriousness in Aristophanes’ comedies is ambiguous, and the world is often topsy-turvy, in antiquity, as now, it has been difficult to decide whether he truly thought Euripides was a misogynist or the opposite. Influenced by Aristophanes, many biographical sketches written about Euripides after his death presented him as a misogynist and repeated the insulting charge that his mother was a vegetable-monger. According to Aulus Gellius, writing in the mid-second century A.D.:
Euripides is said to have had a strong antipathy toward nearly all women, either shunning their society due to his natural inclination, or because he had two wives simultaneously—since that was legal according to an Athenian decree—and they had made marriage abominable to him.23
The ancient biographies of Euripides are unreliable, since they do not hesitate to cull material from the author’s creations and apply it indiscriminately to his life. Therefore inconsistent with Gellius is the anecdote reported by Athenaeus at the end of the second century A.D.:
The poet Euripides was fond of women. Hieronymus, at any rate, in Historical Commentaries, says, “When someone said to Sophocles that Euripides was a woman-hater in his tragedies, Sophocles said, ‘When he is in bed, certainly he is a woman-lover.” 24
In addition to the pronouncements of ancient critics, the plays themselves provide evidence of misogyny, although one ought not attribute to a playwright the remarks of his characters. Apparently obvious sources are the anti-female pronouncements scattered through the tragedies. In Euripidean tragedy, misogynists like Hippolytus and Orestes (in Orestes), masochists like Andromache, aggressive women like Medea and Phaedra, and sympathetic female choruses are equally capable of misogynistic remarks. In these statements women are usually lumped together as a nameless group, defined simply as the “female sex,” in a manner rarely applied to males. These statements are platitudes, familiar to women even today, but are so arresting by their stark hostility that it is easy to overlook how few they are in the context of Euripides’ extant work.
Some of the abbreviated platitudes are: “Women are the best devisers of evil.” 25 “Women are a source of sorrow.” 26 Others point out that if their sex life is satisfactory, women are completely happy;27 clever women are dangerous;28 stepmothers are always malicious;29 upper-class women were the first to practice adultery;30 and women use magical charms and potions with evil intentions.31 The longest and best-known tirade against women was delivered by Hippolytus:
O Zeus, why, as a fraudulent evil for men,
Have you brought women into the light of the sun?
For if you wished to engender the mortal race,
There was no need for women as source of supply,
But in your shrines mortal men could have offered up
Either gold or iron or heavy weight of bronze
To purchase their breed of offspring, each paid in sons
According to his own gift’s worth, and in their homes
They could live without women, entirely free.
Yet now to our homes we bring this primal evil,
And—without a choice—drain the wealth from our households.
Woman is a great evil, and this makes it clear:
The father who sires her and rears her must give her
A dowry, to ship off and discard this evil.
Then he who takes in his home this baneful creature
Revels in heaping upon his most vile delight
Lovely adornment, and struggles to buy her clothes,
Poor, poor fellow, siphoning wealth from his household.
He cannot escape his fate: gaining good in-laws
Brings joy to him—and preserves a bitter marriage;
But an excellent wife with worthless male kinfolk
Weights him down with good luck and misfortune alike.
A nobody’s simplest to marry, though worthless,
A woman of guilelessness set up in the house.
I hate clever women. May my home never house
A woman more discerning than one ought to be.
For Cypris more often produces wrongdoing
In clever females. An untalented woman
Through lack of intelligence stays clear of folly.
No servant should have to come close to a woman.
Instead they should live among dumb, savage creatures,
So they would have no humans whom they could talk to
And no one who’d respond to the things that they say.
But now evil women sit at home and plan evils—
Plots their servants execute when they go outside.
And so, evil woman, you’ve come, to propose that
I sleep with her whom my father alone may touch.
I’ll wipe out your words with streams of running water,
Drenching my ears. How, tell me, might I be evil
When I feel impure from even hearing such things?
Be certain my piety protects me, woman.
If my oaths to the gods hadn’t caught me off guard,
I would not have refrained from telling my father.
But now, while Theseus is out of the country,
I’ll depart from this house—and keep my mouth silent.
Returning when my father does, I shall witness
How you and your mistress manage to confront him.
I’ll have firsthand knowledge of your effrontery.
Go to hell, I’ll never have my fill of hating
Women, not if I’m said to talk without ceasing.
For women are also unceasingly wicked.
Either someone should teach them to be sensible.
Or let me trample them underfoot forever.32
I can scarcely believe that so subtle a dramatist as Euripides, who called into question traditional Athenian beliefs and prejudices surrounding foreigners, war, and the Olympian gods, would have intended his audience simply to accept the misogynistic maxims. Rather, he uses the extreme vantage point of misogyny as a means of examining popular beliefs about women. On the other hand, Euripides does not present a brief for women’s rights. Not only is Greek tragedy not a convenient vehicle for propaganda, but the playwright saw too many contradictions in life to be able to espouse a single cause. Euripides is questioning rather than dogmatic. Judgments about his presentation of heroines vary, some critics believing he is sympathetic, some antipathetic.
My subjective estimate of Euripides is favorable. I do not think it misogynistic to present women as strong, assertive, successful, and sexually demanding even if they are also selfish or villainous. Other feminists share my opinion, and British suffragists used to recite speeches from Euripides at their meetings. Yet, it is fair to add that conventional critics—who far outnumber feminists—judge that Medea and Phaedra disgrace the entire female sex, and label Euripides a misogynist for drawing our attention to these murderesses. The controversy that the doctrines of women’s liberation invariably arouse among women is analogous to the dilemma posed by subjective judgments of Euripides. For every feminist who insists that women have the same capabilities (whether for good or for evil) as men, but that they have been socialized into their present passivity, there have been countless conservatives denying that women are what the feminists claim they are.
Many women perpetrate villainous deeds in Euripidean tragedy. However, old myths are paraded not to illustrate that the female sex is evil, but rather to induce the audience to question the traditional judgment on these women. Euripides counters the ideas expressed in the misogynistic platitudes by portraying individual women and their reasons for their actions. The crime of Clytemnestra had tainted the entire female sex ever since Agamemnon’s judgment of her in the Odyssey.33 Euripides reiterates the accusations but adds a strong defense for Clytemnestra in her speech to her daughter Electra:
Tyndareus placed me in your father’s care,
So that neither I nor my offspring would perish.
Yet he promised my child marriage to Achilles
And left our household, taking her off to Aulis,
Where the ships anchored, stretched her out above the flames,
Then slit the white throat of my Iphigenia.
Had it been to save our state from being captured,
Preserve our homes, or protect our other children,
One death averting many, I’d be forgiving.
But because Helen proved lustful, and her husband
Didn’t know how to punish his wife’s seducer,
For the sake of these people he destroyed my child.
In this I was wronged, but for this I would never
Have behaved like a savage, nor slain my husband,
But he returned to me with a crazed, god-filled girl,
And took her into our bed—so the two of us,
Both of us brides, were lodged in the very same house.34
Elsewhere, Phaedra ponders the moral impotence of humanity, not specifically of the “weaker sex,” noting that people may know what virtue is, but not achieve it.35
Helen was reviled in every classical tragedy where her name was mentioned, including those by Euripides.36 Yet Euripides also wrote an entire play, Helen, using the myth that she was not at Troy at all but imprisoned in Egypt, remaining chaste throughout the Trojan War.
Self-sacrifice or martyrdom is the standard way for a woman to achieve renown among men; self-assertion earns a woman an evil reputation. But in Euripides this formula is not so simple. Medea and Hecuba are lavishly provoked. They refuse to be passive, and take a terrible revenge on their tormentors. Medea murders her own children and destroys her husband’s new bride and father-in-law with a magic potion. Hecuba kills the two children of her son’s murderer and blinds their father. The desire for revenge is unfeminine,37 as had been noted for Sophocles’ Antigone; Hecuba is often referred to with masculine adjectives.38 Her vengeance is considered so ghastly that she ends up metamorphosed into a barking bitch. Medea escapes, but since she clearly had loved her children, one can imagine her perpetual anguish. When I compare Euripidean to Sophoclean heroines, I prefer Euripides’ Medea and Hecuba, for they are successful. Deianira, in Sophocles’ Trachinian Women, naïvely mixes a potion intended to restore her husband’s affection for her; instead, the potion tortures and kills him. Antigone courageously and singlemindedly defends her ideals, and is willing to die for them, but her last words dwell not upon her achievements but lament that she dies unwed. Medea and Hecuba are too strong to regret their decisions.
Euripides shows us a number of self-sacrificing heroines who win praise from the traditionally minded. But it seems to me that the playwright does not totally approve of them. Among self-denying young women, Iphigenia is willing to submit to the sacrificial knife, arguing that in wartime “it is better that one man live to see the light of day than ten thousand women.” 39 Similarly, Polyxena wins the praise of soldiers for the noble way she endures being sacrificed to the ghost of Achilles.40 Evadne kills herself because she cannot live without her husband,41 and Helen is expected to do the same if she learned of her husband’s death.42 Alcestis died to prove her love for her husband, and thereby won honor for all women, but her father-in-law suggests that she is foolish.43 Euripides structures these plays so as to leave us doubtful whether the men for whom the women sacrificed themselves were worth it.
The double standard in sexual morality is implicit in many of the myths Euripides chose as the basis of his plots. He is the first author we know of to look at this topic from both the woman’s and the man’s point of view. Many husbands are adulterous. Enslaved after the fall of Troy, Andromache laments:
Dearest Hector, I, for your sake, even joined with you in loving, if Aphrodite made you stumble. I often offered my breast to your bastards so as not to exhibit any bitterness to you.44
Some wives, notably Medea and Clytemnestra, reacted with overt hostility to their rivals and husbands. Hermione, on the other hand, reasoned that the legitimate wife was in a better position regarding money, the household, and the status of her children and that it was better to have an unfaithful husband than to be unwed.45 Euripides appears to question the patriarchal axiom that husbands may be polygamous, while wives must remain monogamous, when he shows us Phaedra committing suicide because she merely thought about adultery and points out that women suspected of sexual irregularities are gossiped about, while men are not.46 Euripides does not advocate that women should have the same sexual freedom as men, but rather suggests that it is better for all concerned if the husband is as monogamous as the wife.
Even when they are not essential to the plot, the horrors of patriarchy compose a background of unremitting female misery. Grotesque marriages or illicit liaisons humiliating or unbearable to women abound in Euripides. Andromache is forced to share the bed of her husband’s murderer. Cassandra becomes the concubine of Agamemnon, destroyer of her family and city. Hermione marries Orestes, who had threatened to kill her. Clytemnestra marries Agamemnon, the murderer of her son and first husband. Phaedra is married to the hero who seduced her sister and conquered her country. Alcestis returns from the dead to “remarry” the husband who let her die in his stead.47
Euripides shows us women victimized by patriarchy in almost every possible way. A girl needs both her virginity and a dowry to attract a husband.48 Women are raped and bear illegitimate children whom they must discard. The women are blamed, while the men who raped them are not.49 When marriages prove unfruitful, wives are inevitably guilty.50 Despite the grimness of marriage, spinster-hood is worse.51
Women as mothers always arouse sympathy in Euripides. All his women love their children and fight fiercely in their behalf.52 Even Medea never stopped loving her children, although she murdered them to spite Jason. Women glory especially in being the mothers of sons, and the lamentation of mothers over sons killed in war is a standard feature in Euripides’ antiwar plays.53 Yet in patriarchal society the father is the more precious parent. The suffering of the children of Heracles in the absence of a father is the basic plot of the Heracleidae. Mothers whose husbands are dead refer to their children as “orphans.” 54 Alcestis, when she chooses death, includes in her calculations that her children need a father more than a mother, but expresses some doubt whether he loves them as much as she does.55
In subtle ways Euripides reveals an intimacy with women’s daily lives remarkable among classical Greek authors. He knows that upon returning from a party a husband quickly falls asleep, but a wife needs time to prepare for bed. The chorus of Trojan women relates that, on the night Troy was taken, “My husband lay asleep.… But I was arranging my hair in a net looking into the bottomless gleam of the golden mirror, preparing for bed.” 56 Euripides recognizes that childbirth is a painful ordeal, that daughters are best helped by their mothers on these occasions, and that after giving birth women are disheveled and haggard.57
Although the dramatic date is the Bronze Age, the comments of various characters on questions of female etiquette in Euripidean tragedy anachronistically agree with the conventions of Classical Athens: women, especially unmarried ones, should remain indoors;58 they should not adorn themselves nor go outdoors while their husbands are away, nor should they converse with men in public;59 out of doors a woman should wear a veil;60 she should not look at a man in the face, not even her husband.61
In the post-Classical period Euripides enjoyed greater popularity than the other tragic poets. His influence can perhaps be detected even among the early Christians who idealized the dying virgin as the most valuable of martyrs, and among whom—in a manner not dissimilar to Euripides’ Bacchantes—women spread the worship of a revolutionary cult which challenged established religion.
The women of Sophocles and Aeschylus have a heroic dimension which says little about women in Classical Athens. The women of Euripides are scaled down closer to real life, and in this respect the tragic poetry of Euripides approaches comedy.
Aristophanes is an appropriate bridge between Euripides and Plato, for he criticizes the radical views of both on women. The three authors touch on a number of the same topics, including women’s sexual desires and the marriage relationship. Before proceeding, let the reader be duly cautioned that women were by no means the only victims of Aristophanic invective and ridicule—the comic poet was a critic and teacher of the entire society. It is also necessary to remember Aristotle’s axiom that comedy presents people as worse than they really are, and that the literary genre itself demands obscenity, which is sometimes distinctly unfunny to a modern reader.
The three comedies in which women play the largest part are Lysistrata and Thesmophoriazusae, both produced in 411 B.C., and Ecclesiazusae, produced in 391 B.C.62 These three plays reveal a range of attitudes toward women from misogyny to sympathy, and probably reflect, with the distortion to be expected in comedy, the feelings of the Athenian audience.
All the conceptions about women which are scattered through Aristophanes’ other comedies are concentrated in Lysistrata. The play was performed in the twentieth year of the bloody Peloponnesian War. Many rational solutions to the political problems of Greece had been tried, without success. Aristophanes, in The Birds, produced in 414 B.C., had even imagined a peaceful commonwealth in the sky. In Lysistrata, he turned to another fantastically absurd solution: a sex strike on the part of the women of Greece. The women, led by the Athenian Lysistrata and aided by the Spartan Lampito, withdraw to the fortified Athenian Acropolis. A few ribald scenes with panting, sex-starved men show that the tactic works. The women achieve their objective. Peace is declared between the warring Greek states, and husbands go home with their wives. The superficial elements of the plot thus appear complimentary to women: they have succeeded where men had failed.
Feminists may disagree over the granting or withholding of sex as a weapon against men, and classicists familiar with the bisexuality of the Athenians ponder the effectiveness of a sex strike.63 More fundamentally, we can consider whether Aristophanes presents an attractive picture of women in his comedies. My impression is that Aristophanes was no more favorably disposed toward women than the ordinary Athenian.
The heroine, Lysistrata, is intelligent and successful, but she admits that her knowledge is derived from listening to her father and other older men talking. She is the vehicle of some of the most misogynistic jibes in the play, informing the audience that women are never on time and prefer drinking wine and sexual intercourse to all other forms of activity. She also feels the body of Lampito and contributes to the lewd appraisals of the physical attractions of the women who join the strike. Lysistrata exhibits hatred of the femininity in herself, but since she’s a woman, we are ready to assume that her opinions about women must be correct.
Elements of Lysistrata reappear in other plays. Praxagora, the heroine of Ecclesiazusae, resembles Lysistrata, although her personality is less clearly defined. Praxagora admits that she acquired her skill in public speaking from listening to men. She is also highly critical of other women whose intelligence is not capable of carrying out the strategies she formulates for them.64 In contrast to the sympathy between women which can be detected in Euripides, women in Aristophanes exhibit little loyalty to other women. Younger women are spiteful to older women when competing for a young man. Wives despise and envy prostitutes.65
The bibulousness and lust of women are common occasions for laughter in Aristophanes. It is illuminating to compare Euripides’ treatment of the same themes. In the Bacchae, the tragic poet shows why women, confined to the loom and spindle, welcome the orgiastic release promised by the wine god. Likewise, in Euripides’ depiction of Phaedra it is evident that he understands a woman’s struggle against ungovernable erotic impulses. Aristophanes merely points to these vices as inherent weaknesses of women.
In Lysistrata, men are also lustful, but their urges are better governed than those of the women. The men in Aristophanes prefer heterosexual relationships. They enjoy looking at the unclothed female body of Peace at the end of Lysistrata, and sexual desire for their wives ultimately compels husbands to abandon warfare. Yet, during the strike by wives, Aristophanes offers alternatives to men: homosexuals and female prostitutes, who were not invited by the wives to participate in the strike. In contrast to the men, the women are deprived of sexual relationships and break their oaths by sneaking off the Acropolis to return to their homes. The sex strike causes greater deprivation to women than to men, and can even be viewed as a strike against women. Sex-starved though they are, the women do not consider turning to other women for homoerotic gratification, nor does it occur to them to employ any of the famous male prostitutes of Athens, the youthful slaves reserved for the pleasures of men.
Women as well as men are viewed as gluttons. One reason for their objection to war is that their favorite gourmet treats, including a particular variety of eel, are difficult to obtain (336). On the other hand, the alimentary system particularly of men is referred to in numerous scatological jokes.
Aristophanes is probably most unkind in his depictions of older women. The vices detected in all women are particularly grotesque in old hags. They are nymphomaniacs, but their objects of desire are younger men.66 They are drunken and lewd.
In Aristophanes, women’s clothing can function as a symbol of degradation. Although it is fair to note that the exchange of clothing between husbands and wives in Ecclesiazusae merely disgruntles the men, Lysistrata suggests that a magistrate be dressed in women’s attire to humiliate him. We are reminded of Euripides’ portrayal of Pentheus in the Bacchae. Pentheus also felt discomforted by masquerading as a woman, but Euripides shows him as an unsympathetic character.
Expressions of compassion are rare in Aristophanes. Yet he records the anguish war can cause to women because of their family relationships. Mothers lose sons, and girls must abandon the prospect of marriage. Aristophanes was a firm believer in the nuclear family. He disliked Euripides’ heroines for sabotaging their families by adultery and the introduction of suppositious children into the house, and he criticized utopian schemes that abolished the family.67
The introduction of monogamous marriage was considered a civilizing step in the progress of humanity. According to a myth known only through post-Classical sources, the Athenians attributed this institution to their legendary first king. Cecrops. During his reign, when Athena and Poseidon contested the patronage of Athens, the women, who were more numerous, voted for Athena while the men voted for Poseidon. In revenge, the men took away the vote from women and declared that no longer would children be known by their mother’s name. Formerly, sexual intercourse had been promiscuous, and children did not know their fathers. Hence, marriage was instituted by men as a punishment for women, simultaneous with the loss of women’s political equality and sexual freedom.68
The utopian literature of the Classical period recommended a return to what were thought to be some of the primitive features of Athenian society. In terms of women’s lives, these would include the elimination of monogamous marriage and known paternity of children, and the opportunity to play a role in public affairs and enjoy sexual freedom. In utopian literature, women approached closer to equality than they did in any other genre of ancient literature or in real life. In the utopian community of Phaeacia described in the Odyssey (6–8), the status of the sexes was more equal than anywhere else in the Homeric epic. The major extant utopian works of the Classical period containing explicit provisions for women are the Republic and the Laws of Plato.69 Aristotle also mentions some features of the utopias envisioned by other ancient authors.
Greek utopias, rather than being thoroughly equalitarian, are invariably stratified by classes. In the Republic, Plato included women among the ruling elite. His provisions for the highest class of women, the guardians, provide an index for the philosopher’s beliefs about the potentialities of women. Within the guardian class there was additional stratification, with the males as a whole forming a higher class than the females. There was no equality between the sexes in Utopia, but Plato admitted that the greater physical strength of the male was the only important distinction for social capacity. The female guardians, of course, ruled over both males and females of the lower classes. Thus some women, at least, were superior to many men.
The higher status of women in Utopia was suggested neither for the particular benefit of real women nor out of sympathy with their plight. Rather, certain proposals which happened to affect women were made for the purpose of eliminating civil strife. Private property was a major source of contention. The philosopher Phaleas of Chalcedon foresaw marriages between wealthy and poor and suggested that wealth be equalized by having the rich give dowries but not receive them, and the poor receive dowries but not give them.70 Plato went further in his Republic and totally abolished the possession of private property for his highest stratum of citizens.
The elimination of private property meant that no man needed a legitimate heir of known parentage. Thus, Utopia could eliminate sexual monopoly over women, which was recognized as a major source of friction among men. Herodotus had reported that the Agathyrsi practiced promiscuous intercourse so that they could all act like brothers and kinfolk and not treat each other with envy and hatred.71 In the Republic the necessity for monogamous marriage among the guardians was eradicated. Plato proposed that women and children in the guardian class be the common property of the males, and went to great lengths to elaborate the means whereby parents were not to recognize their biological offspring. He proposed that the female guardians of marriageable age be held as a community of wives, never mentioning the community of husbands that would have inevitably existed simultaneously in the absence of monogamous marriage. Thus it is clear that the sharing of wives must be viewed as another aspect of the elimination of all private property. The wives are, in fact, referred to by the legal term for jointly held property: koina.72
Like other irrational appetites which could not be totally eliminated from Utopia, sexual desire was subject to strict regulation and matings were controlled. Criticizing ideas similar to those expressed in the Republic, Aristophanes showed women demanding sexual satisfaction, especially old women demanding that young men first have intercourse with them before proceeding to the younger, more attractive women.73 Nevertheless, in the Republic, the inclinations of the female guardians are not taken into consideration, but the males’ are: Plato established as a work incentive more frequent intercourse with the women.
The notions that rivalry for wives could foster ill feeling among men and that heterosexual intercourse could be a reward give still another dimension to the question of the sexual desirability of respectable women in the Athens that Plato knew. Sharing of wives and children—in other words, the abolition of the private family and the oikos system—would promote good feeling among men. The community of wives became a standard feature of utopian philosophy and was found in the ideal societies envisioned in the Hellenistic period by the Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus, by Diogenes the Cynic, and by Iambulus.74
Prostitution was eliminated from Utopia, either explicitly or implicitly. In the Ecclesiazusae, the women banned prostitutes.75 Plato specifically outlaws Corinthian hetairai—for these women connoted a luxurious, degenerate community. He does not mention other prostitutes, but it is difficult to imagine where they might be useful in the top stratum of his Republic. In the paradise proposed by Crates the Cynic of the late third or second century B.C., there was a community of women and children similar to Plato’s, and prostitutes were specifically eliminated.76
In the Republic Plato stated that males and females were similar in nature, and that the only significant distinction between the sexes was that the male begets and the female bears children. Since the sexes were similar in all respects except physical strength, they were assigned similar duties. Because Plato had great faith in education, he prescribed the same curriculum for guardians of both sexes to prepare them for their duties. He also relieved guardian women from the biological burdens accompanying motherhood, by providing for the assistance of nurses.
Many of Plato’s ideas derived from an idealized view of Spartan women. Like Spartans, the female guardians pursued a program of physical fitness, waited until adulthood to bear children, could bear legitimate children to more than one man with the proviso that he be a member of the approved social class, and moved freely in public. Plato went even further than the Spartans in prescribing that women strip for exercise and in delaying the age of childbearing to twenty, rather than the Spartan norm of eighteen.
In view of the limited lives of Athenian women and the misogyny of classical literature, the provisions for the female guardians in the Republic are remarkable. Plato’s critique of marriage and the nuclear family, coupled with his provisions for an androgynous life style accessible through equal education and state-supported child care, foreshadows the ideas of modern radical feminists such as Shulamith Firestone and Simone de Beauvoir. And the elimination of private property in the Republic brings to mind the Marxist doctrine that the accumulation of wealth and the monogamous marriage led to the subjection of women.77 Yet Plato’s philosophy was not undiluted feminism.78 He did not believe that women were, on the whole, equal to men, although some women were potentially superior to some men. He also repeatedly classified women with children, perhaps because, in his own city of Athens, the wives often were only fourteen years old.
In his later work, the Laws, Plato described a less utopian but more feasible community than he had in the Republic. The result was a compromise between the idealism of the Republic and the reality of Athenian life. The differences in the provisions for women begin with the notion in the Laws that there are important distinctions between the sexes beyond their reproductive roles. In the Laws, Plato reinforced traditional sex roles, making females obedient, modest, temperate, and gentle, and males competitive and aggressive. The education of girls was similar to that of boys, but the emphasis was different. For example, a program of physical fitness was prescribed for both sexes, but girls were not required to participate in the more martial and competitive activities (8. 834D). Married women were to exercise clothed (8. 833D), rather than nude as in the Republic. While in the Republic women who showed an inclination could be employed as warriors, in the Laws women served only after their childbearing years and then only in emergencies (7. 814). The sexes were distinct even in music: modest songs were appropriate to women, noble and manly music to men (7. 802E).
In the Laws women were more limited by their biological functions. Monogamous marriage was mandatory. The age of marriage for girls was between sixteen and twenty, for men between thirty and thirty-five (6. 785B–C). A ten-year period of procreation followed (6. 784B). Only after childbearing were women free to serve the community in other capacities. Older women were employed in prestigious ways, but ones that reinforced traditional sex roles. They supervised the administration of marriage laws, the family, human reproduction, and the rearing of young children. They were free to have intercourse with whoever pleased them, but were not to produce children nor draw attention to these post-marital affairs (6. 784E-785A).
The interest in the role of women which we have detected in Euripides, Aristophanes, and Plato can be analyzed in relation to a relaxation of traditional patterns of living during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 B.C.). Profound civic disturbances as well as simple warfare are described by Thucydides.
Due to the conditions of ancient warfare, more men than women were killed and the female-male population ratio rose accordingly. In Athens, this increase was aggravated by the departure of a large expedition for Sicily in 415 B.C., plus the Spartan occupation of Decelea in 411 B.C., which forced the Athenians to fight throughout the year rather than, as previously, only in the summer. We assume that many Athenian women were forced to abandon their seclusion and perform tasks formerly reserved for men.
Some may have abandoned their decorum as well. However, Thucydides, the dominant historical source for the period, has little to say specifically about women, but the comedies of Aristophanes dating from the second half of the war show that the profound disturbances in traditional morality throughout the cities of Greece had their disruptive effect upon women and family life. The unusual behavior of Hipparete, of the second wife of Callias, and of Agariste (see this page) was surely the result of the turmoil of war.
We are reminded of the freedom enjoyed by Spartan women while their husbands were away at war for long periods of time, and see here an anticipation of the liberty to be gained by Roman women in similar circumstances. However, in Athens the period of men’s absence was relatively brief, and we cannot detect any permanent change in the political, legal, or economic status of women of the Classical Age after the Peloponnesian War.79 Yet a revaluation of women’s position in society was under way in some intellectual circles,80 and there was a perceptible change in the depiction of the female figure in the visual arts which can best be discussed in the context of the Hellenistic Age.